Wife Wants Divorce? Here’s How To Respond To Her Criticism.

Hey, Cody Butler here, and I help men who are in divorce crisis situations. And today I'm going to answer a question that I've received from one of my clients, Mike. And the question is, how do we take constructive criticism and not turn it into resentment, not make the situation worse? And this is a great question because it's a, it's an issue that pretty much all men are dealing with. So what I want to say here is this: we're not going to give you the simple surface-level answer because in order to change the fruit of your life, to change the fruit the results within your marriage, to get a different outcome, you have to change the root of the tree. An orange tree is always going to produce oranges. A lemon tree is always going to produce lemons. We got to go deep. We got to pull up the root that's causing the problems. So I'm going to walk you through what's going on here and how to make sure that this doesn't happen to you. So what happens with constructive criticism is most men do not hear criticism as feedback. They hear it as failure. They hear it as their own personal inadequacy, adequacy. They take it as an indictment of incompetency. And small, small comments from your wife can trigger massive emotional reactions that really escalate the situation and expedite the demise of the marriage. So it's really, really important that we learn to differentiate between constructive criticism and non-constructive and how to actually deal with it in a way that moves us forward towards our goal, which is to save the marriage here. So why is this? Because why do we take criticism so per— uh, personally, even when it's constructive? It's because criticism often hits our identity. It hits us at an identity level, not just the behavior that's being criticized. So that— what is the core fear that's going on, the driver, the root that is beneath this criticism? Well, Often men interpret constructive criticism in the form of, "I'm failing. I'm not good enough. I'm incompetent. She— nothing I do is good enough for her," when actually, in fact, quite often a woman is not criticizing because she's unsatisfied with the situation necessarily. She's giving you the roadmap to move forward. Now, competency in a man is deeply, deeply, deeply tied to masculine identity. As men, The biggest thing that we fear is to be found out, to be incompetent. And often when we feel criticized or she gives us criticism, constructive or otherwise, that criticism feels very, very threatening to us because it, it not only addresses the issue at hand, but it also activates existing insecurities and wounds that are inside of us that are deep and buried. Not just the current issue that we're talking about, or to put it another way, we're not actually responding to what's in front of us. We're responding to past hurts, past issues, past insecurities that she's now bringing up. Now, one of the big steps in developing emotional security, or emotional intelligence rather, is understanding appropriateness. So anger, for example, is not inappropriate. Anger is appropriate. Jesus got angry in the temple. He fashioned whip and smashed up tables. Love is slow to anger. Love is not something that's inappropriate, but what is inappropriate is, is when we use it. And what is inappropriate sometimes is how these identities are triggered. So what we want to do is learn, learn to be angry at the right person at the right time in the right amounts for the right reasons. And quite often when we get this constructive criticism, we justifiably get angry, but we're angry at the wrong person at the wrong time. For the wrong reasons and in the wrong dosage. We're angry at someone who's done something to us before that we never actually truly processed, and now the person in front of us is paying the price. So the big misunderstanding here when dealing with criticism or constructive criticism is that men believe that criticism equals a verdict. This is a verdict on you. You are being judged. They believe that it equals rejection. It believes that it provides proof that they're failing, and it also triggers the "nothing I do is good enough" response in the man. That of course, again, this, this comes back to the Competency Belief. None of us want to feel incompetent, and quite often that's what it triggers. So what criticism often actually is, it's information. So I like to— the clients that I work with, I tell them that any criticism, constructive or otherwise, it's just a data point. That's all it is. It's a data point to be evaluated and acted upon. Criticism is simply information. It's feedback about the emotional experience that your wife is having right now. Now, she could be having a very bad emotional experience. That doesn't mean that you're responsible for that experience, or you caused it, or you're incompetent, or you're being judged. She's merely having an emotional experience, and feeding that back to you in the form of criticism is being taken personally. Criticism is also often a map to what's not working. She's telling you, this is not working for me, not because she's criticizing you or she's, she's being mean. She's telling you to give you the pathway to what needs to be repaired. It's, it's, as I say, it's an attempt, it's an attempt at a repair situation. So why does criticism then, when quite often is— it's not personal, and it's not even criticism the way we perceive it. Why does it turn into resentment? Well, it's because criticism, it digs into that deeper wound that we talked about earlier on. This is why we talk about root and fruit. This— we're talking about the root name. The criticism coming from your wife, it activates shame coming from childhood. There's a million places where this shame can be coming from, from your school experience, from your own personal insecurities, from inadequacy beliefs in yourself. And we all have these, right? We all have hidden shame. We all have insecurities that we don't want the world to see. We all have these inadequacies. And when our wife criticizes us, it forces, it triggers us, it rubs those beliefs the wrong way. And the relationship becomes, becomes, the relationship becomes a source of pain whereas we expected the relationship to be a source of validation and a source of removing that pain. So we expect, we have an expectation of our wife that she's going to soothe our pain, and she's going to help us with past shame, insecurities, inadequacies, all those things. But then criticism actually, it does the exact opposite to what we think it's going to do. And we interpret that as negative. And of course, that then turns into resentment. And escalates the situation. So what men often unconsciously expect from their wife, which they're not entitled to, and it simply isn't your wife's job to provide, quite frankly, is reassurance, emotional safety, affirmation that they're secure as a man, that, you know, their masculinity is what it needs to be, their competency is there. We're looking for unconscious reassurance in these areas. And this is not our wife's role to reassure us that we're a man. It's our— why it's our role to be masculine enough to make our wives feel secure. And when we feel insecure in our masculine role, our wife is not going to feel safe underneath that. She's not going to feel emotionally safe, which it's critical she has emotional safety. It's not critical you have emotional safety. It's critical that she has reassurance and affirmation because your role as a man is to be protector, provider, prophet, and priest. And if you need her to reassure, provide emotional safety, affirmation, confirmation, competency, reassurance, all of these things, you're not being a protector, provider, prophet, and priest. You're being a dependent at that point. And when we understand that it's not her job to provide these things, then the resentment starts to go away. So when we're in this position of needing reassurance, emotional safety, and affirmation, The criticism feels unfair, it feels attacking, it feels violating, it feels all of these negative emotions, not because it is those things, but because we're not in a place ourselves to where we're able to hear what's being said neutrally or without emotion. So what does your nervous system do? How does your nervous system react when you get this criticism? Productive or otherwise. Well, often we'll go into explaining mode when our wife says something like, "You're doing this," or, "You're doing that," when actually she's just saying, "Please stop it. If you want this marriage to be saved, I need this behavior to stop. I'm telling you what you need to do in order to save this marriage." She's giving you the roadmap, which is actually an act of love, not an act of criticism. We go into explaining, we explain why we've done that behavior. Instead of actually recognizing that she's asking you to withdraw that behavior. The second thing we do is go into counterattacking. We attack back. If we, when the criticism feels like an attack, we go into attack mode and we attack back. The third thing is we can go into withdrawal or equivalently shutdown. We can start to shut down within the relationship and we can also go into resentment mode or we can do pretty much all of these things, right? We can go into it. We can, we can do all of these or any combination of them. Simultaneously. But ultimately, none of these are beneficial if you want to save your marriage. So what we need to do here, if we want to uproot this root and plant a new healthy root, is there's a reframe required here. So understand that criticism is not an attack on your identity. It's not an attack on who you are. It's merely a data point. It's simply saying that she doesn't, she doesn't like this behavior, or this behavior could use, could be modified. In the same way that you, there are many things that you would like to see change in your wife that it's not an attack on who she is or on identity for her to say. If you ask for more sex, for example, that's not an attack on her or identity. It's simply a request for what you want, which she also could take as criticism, by the way. So feedback, feedback about your behavior, the second point here, does not equal a verdict about your worth. Just because she doesn't like your behavior does not mean that it diminishes your worth or your value personally. Again, this is where a lot of the conflict comes from. On why we get hotheaded and react in certain ways, because when we feel attacked personally, we translate that into, she's attacking my value as a human being, she's attacking my worth as a, as a person. So the important distinction to make here is that it is something is wrong versus I am wrong. There is a problem versus I am the problem. She is not necessarily saying that you are wrong or you lack worth. She's saying something is wrong in the relationship here, and you can either take this as it is and stand a chance of saving the marriage, or you can go a different route with this. And a lot of men will just say, well, why should I have to do this? Why can't blah blah blah? That, that's fine. But again, the question I was going to bring up when working with clients is, do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Do you want to fix this marriage or do you want to be validated in that you're right? So I would suggest that the only correct position to take is you want to be married, at which point whether this is right or wrong really becomes somewhat irrelevant. So what's the fix? We understand what the problem is. We're taking criticism, either productive or otherwise, uh, constructive or otherwise, personally. We're turning it into resentment. We're feeding that resentment back into the marriage and it's destroying the marriage. So that's the problem. What's the solution? Well, the solution is the self-awareness question. So you have to ask yourself, what would I have to believe about myself for this to offend me this much? Why am I so offended by this? We don't stop. This is emotional intelligence. This is a higher level of emotional sophistication. Now, when you, when you feel challenged to the point, or criticized to the point you want to lash out or escalate, stopping for a moment, pausing, and asking yourself the question, why am I so offended by this? Because that's going to tell you, that's going to give you the answer to the question. Or to phrase this another way, what belief about myself is being triggered right now? What is going on inside of me? Why am I so triggered? When you can do that and you can, you can answer that question honestly, honestly, you're able to shift from a position of defensiveness to a position of curiosity. Now instead of feeling triggered and attacked and needing to defend yourself, you can go, okay, well, what's going on here? What wound inside of me is being, being, being agitated here? What past hurt that hasn't been resolved, or what belief about myself do I need to work on? She's actually truly giving you a gift here if you're able to move through the initial emotional outrage and move to a place of curiosity instead of defensiveness. That defensiveness. So here's the thing, right? And here's why a lot of people fail with this. This requires emotional maturity. We're talking about emotional sophistication. We're talking about emotional intelligence. We're talking about stepping your game up. And the truth of the matter is, if you're watching this video because your marriage is failing, your wife's asked for a divorce, that is a non-negotiable for you. The level of emotional maturity that you have has to step up. The level of emotional sophistication has to step up. Without a change of behavior, there is not a change of circumstance. And without a change of emotional sophistication, there will not be a change of behavior. This is prerequisite to saving the marriage. So what is emotional secure— emotional maturity in this situation? Well, it's the ability to hear discomfort without going into a complete collapse breakdown. It's about being able to emotionally regulate yourself, about becoming predictable. This is going to feed back into her emotional nervous system and regulate her. When, when she can give you feedback and you're sufficiently emotionally regulated enough, or she can give you feedback in the form of criticism to where you're sufficiently emotionally regulated enough to take it calmly, to reflect on what's being said, and to respond intelligently, not, not emotionally, or just reach out with aggression out of just an animalistic instinct, then she starts to feel safe and the relationship starts to improve. So emotional maturity also involves separating your identity from the feedback. It is not an indictment or a verdict on your identity. It is simply a data point. This is what, this is what we teach with the clients in the Win Your Wife Back program. Everything is a data point. When you can, when you can look at it as a data point that requires an analysis and feedback, then you're starting to become emotionally mature. So it also, emotional maturity and sophistication just involves simply listening without an immediate reaction. Pause, step back, think about it for a second. It's very simple, but it's also very difficult. So some important nuances here is not all criticism is healthy. Some criticism is constructive, some criticism is not, but how you respond to it is going to determine the damage that it actually does to the relationship. Again, do you want to be right or do you want to be married? If your wife is behaving in a way that is unhealthy, that the criticism is unjustified, it's uncalled for, it's unhealthy. She's going to do that. You're not responsible for her behavior, and you cannot really change her behavior, but you can change how you respond. And this is what this is about. It's about understanding that you have a choice in your response here. Taking criticism, healthy or otherwise, and turning it into resentment is a choice. Taking it and turning it into fuel to, to self-improve and to improve the relationship is also a choice. Now again, understand not all criticism is accurate. A lot of times somebody will criticize us, our wife or somebody else, and it's simply inaccurate. Again, it's not about reacting to it, it's about choosing how you're going to respond to this. And when the criticism is given, even if it's inaccurate, if the question is asked, is this accurate? What would I have to believe about myself in order to feel this way? To be so triggered, then we can determine if the criticism is accurate or not. If the criticism is inaccurate, what does it matter? Just file it away, disregard it, and get on with your life. So the next thing is emotional reactivity blocks discernment, or it blocks emotional sophistication. When you become emotionally reactive because you're simply reacting to the fact you've been criticized, all wisdom leaves your body. All discernment leaves your body, and you are now a monkey with a machine gun. You are now in a position to do damage. If you want to save your marriage, you want to improve your relationships, discernment is essential. Wisdom is essential. Emotional reactivity destroys that. And the last thing here is defensive people. If the criticism produces a defensiveness within you, you cannot evaluate feedback clearly. You're emotionally drunk. You're not, you're not clearly evaluating. Now, if you evaluate the feedback that you're being given, and it is the evaluation that you've discerned accurately through being emotionally calm, taking time, asking good questions, and doing a proper evaluation of the data points— if this is an attack at that point, well, then that produces a different response within you, but you are acting intelligently at that point. So the core takeaway that I want you to take away from this is resentment is often a wounded identity protecting itself. That's all it is. Again, if you want to change the root, you got to change— if you want to change the fruit, you have to change the root. The resentment coming from the criticism is an indication of a wounded identity protecting itself. That needs to be fixed. If you can fix that, then the need to defend that wound simply goes away and the criticism is just water off a duck's back. There's a lot of criticism that you receive on a daily, weekly, and ongoing basis that simply doesn't affect you. It just— you just ignore it. You don't even register it because it is not— it is not rubbing a wound that is there. When the criticism comes in and there's no wound, it just bounces off you with like your bulletproof vest, like water off a duck's back. But when there's a wound that you're protecting and that criticism attacks that wound, now the wound is going to protect yourself. So criticism only destroys you when identity collapses underneath it. So again, the criticism is attacking your identity and the identity is collapsing. The, the solution here is not to tell— say, Cody Butler, how do I stop my wife criticizing me? Or how do I stop the criticism? It's, it is to understand that your identity is collapsing underneath the criticism and to bolster that. To ask the question, why is my identity collapsing here? If you fix that, then the criticism is irrelevant. She can quite frankly do whatever she wants. She can say whatever she wants, and it is not going to affect you. This is the goal. The goal is not to change your wife and tell her to stop criticizing you, or, Cody, how do I stop my wife from criticizing me? The goal is to identify the weaknesses within the identity, build it up to where the criticism is irrelevant. You want to criticize me, criticize me. It just doesn't matter to me. I simply Don't care, it doesn't affect me. And emotional strength. So emotional strength is staying open without becoming defensive, even when you want to defend. This is emotional sophistication. This is, this is taking yourself to multiple layers and multiple levels beyond where you are now. Being able to hear criticism and go, okay, help me understand that. Okay, what am I missing here? Versus just going straight in and attack, attack, attack. Escalating the situation and convincing your wife that leaving you is a good decision. So if you like this, if you like this level of analysis and you want to know what to do if your marriage is in collapse right now, if your wife's asked for divorce, I've got a free masterclass link in the description. I go in what to do, what not to do, the things that are going to give you the best chance of turning this around and the mistakes that you can make that will absolutely destroy your chances. And if you like this content, leave, leave a link, leave a comment in the below. Give us a thumbs up, subscribe, really, really helps. Let me know you like this content and I'll make more of it. That's it from me. Bless you all, talk to you soon.