Your Wife Wants Divorce And You’re Panicking (Here’s What To Do Instead)

Hey, Cody Butler here, and I'm making this video for men who find themselves in the situation where your wife has just told you that she wants a divorce, she wants out of the marriage, the marriage fundamentally is over for her, and you're in a position where your instinct right now is telling you to fight for this marriage, to do what needs to be done, to beg, to convince, to persuade, whatever you need to do that she's wrong and to try and change her mind. And I'm going to share with you in this video why doing those things, if you want to save your marriage, is actually the worst thing that you can do right now, and I'm also going to share with you exactly what you need to do that is going to give you the best chance of getting her to change her mind. Now, I've worked with literally thousands of men in divorce situations, and I've seen and helped them turn around seemingly impossible situations, and it can be done, but you have to follow a very specific course of action here. So let's talk about what's actually happening in the marriage right now. So the situation is your wife says, "I'm done." She wants a divorce. She wants out. So the immediate response from the man typically in this situation, and you might find yourself here, is one of panic, one of urgency, of emotional escalation of the situation. You need to do something. So your instinct is screaming right now, fight for this marriage, fight harder, convince her. And as, as the man, we have that instinct to fix things, right? We're Mr. Fix-It, and we're going to want to try and fix the situation. Immediately, because what it feels like is if I don't act now, I'm going to lose her forever. If I don't take that action now, she's going to be gone, and I have, I have to act now. There's panic and there's urgency. So what's actually happening internally, internally with you here, and this is very important because you have to understand what's happening so you can overcome this and take the right action, is that you've been suddenly confronted with loss, with consequences of the things that have been going on in the marriage for a long time. She's probably been telling you what's wrong. You've— you've been aware that things need to change. You've been aware that things have not been great but you haven't actually been fully confronted with the consequences of those actions yet and now she's telling you she wants a divorce. The consequences are in your face and also the emotional cost of what's going on. You're looking at all kinds of emotional turmoil turmoil here, turmoil. Not just losing your wife, but losing, uh, you know, settlements, children, investment portfolios, division of assets, all kinds of things. All of a sudden you're confronted with, and there's just an overwhelming urge to fix that. So up until now, up to this point, there's actually been little or delayed consequence to the behaviors. You've behaved a certain way, and like I said, you probably understand that things needed to change, but there's just been no cost to that behavior, so the urgency to fix it has not been there. But now the divorce threat is on the table, those consequences are immediate, the need to fix them is now, and the pain that is being experienced by not fixing those problems becomes absolutely in your face. You're confronted with it and it's unavoidable, so the urgency to fix it is right there. And of course, this creates panic, and that panic activates survival behavior. You go into the fight or flight mode, which— let me ask you a question, right? Which one of those two states is going to help you save your marriage? Is fighting going to save your marriage, or is running away going to save your marriage? So this is what's going on. And when you go into that, when that panic state is activated, you have to recognize that because it puts you in that fight or flight, and neither one of those is going to do any good for the marriage whatsoever. So this problem that now exists of consequences are immediate, painful, and potentially in panic mode, the man reaches for the same tools that have always regulated the marriage for years. He's been trained that these tools work, not because they're necessarily good tools to use, but because she's not wanted to deal with consequences. So in the marriage, we've potentially used pressure, guilt, we've controlled, manipulated emotional intensity, anger, all of these things to control situations. Now, a good example for me was when I was drinking, I used anger to control that situation. If my wife brought up anything around the drinking, then I would get very angry very quickly, and I would control and manipulate the situation by making it far too costly for her to bring that topic up, which meant that it never did get brought up and never had to be dealt with. So these tools have been very effective during the marriage to actually control, and we got to be honest here, right? We got to see the situation as it is, and we got to see ourselves as it is. It's not— the goal here is not to see the situation better than it is, and it's not to see it worse than it is. It's to see it as it is. And if we don't recognize these, which almost certainly are present because she's leaving, then we're not gonna be able to fix the problem. So during the marriage, These mechanisms— pressure, guilt, control, etc.— they were used intermittently and as needed. They were not all used at once. So in the crisis situation that you now find yourself in, all of these mechanisms potentially get deployed simultaneously. We apply pressure, we use guilt, saying, what is this doing to the family? We can go to the church and ask them to apply spiritual pressure. We can go to friends, we can start to manipulate by talking about settlements or what's going to happen or why this is economically or socially unacceptable. We can start to manipulate through emotional intensity. We can go into depression, anxiety, hoping that when she sees that we're suffering, that will cause her to change her mind. At this point, none of these— these have not all been used together. They've been used intermittently, but now the crisis is here. All of these get deployed simultaneously in one go, and this creates a super weapon effect in the marriage. You have now deployed literally a super weapon on your wife, and what this does, it creates maximum pressure on her and it creates maximum emotional intensity on her. And from a subconscious perspective, that seems maybe like a good thing for us, right? Like, we want to apply maximum pressure. We see it as positive, apply pressure in terms of what this is doing to the family, the children, etc., etc. But this is not a good thing for her at all, because what happens is this backfires really, really badly and simply just reinforces that she's making the right decision in leaving. So the behaviors that are being used here in a panicked attempt to save the marriage are actually the exact same behaviors that have damaged the marriage in the first place, and it's what she's actually trying to get away from. And stick with me here because I'm going to show you that what we inadvertently do is that by not understanding really why she wants out of the marriage, by misinterpreting that and not fully understanding it, we actually create more of the exact same environment that she's actively trying to escape. So when we're in this panic mode, it increases the, increases her emotional suffocation. It increases her overwhelm, increases her pressure, and it increases emotional labor. She now not only has to deal with this overwhelm, pressure, etc., she's also having to deal with managing you and managing your emotions. So this, all this does is reinforce inside of her, in her sub, in her conscious mind and subconscious mind, is the exhaustion that she's experienced and the lack of safety that she's trying to escape from. And it's going to create an emotional shutdown. It's going to have the exact opposite effect. So the key point that I'm getting at here, to make this succinct and clear, is for her, divorce is not about leaving the marriage. For her, divorce psychologically represents relief, it represents space, it represents emotional safety, and it represents a lower level of, of emotional intensity, right? So when she experiences— she's experiencing divorce as an escape pathway from emotional overwhelm, or in other words, she's looking for relief from the emotional overwhelm in the situation. And when you do the things that panic produces, it actually produces more of the very things that she's looking to get away from. She's looking to escape escape. So she's looking for relief, space, emotional safety, lower intensity, etc. This is why she, she's leaving. She sees that the only way she can get that is to exit the marriage. Um, when you respond in this way, you just increase all of the things in that, that she's trying to escape from. And as we can see in a minute, this is going to be very detrimental. So the key here is we have to pattern interrupt. We have to interrupt what she's expecting from you if you have any hope of getting her to reconsider and change her mind. If you reinforce the very emotional conditions that she's trying to escape from when she brings the news to you that she wants the divorce, you are going to reinforce that she has made the right decision, and that is a big, big mistake. So what she's actually expecting from you right now when, when she tells you that the marriage is over, she wants out, she's expecting you to pressure her. She's expecting begging from you. Pleading. She's expecting convincing behavior. She's expecting an emotional escalation of the situation. She's potentially expect— expecting guilt to be applied, control attempts, emotional collapse from you. When you emotionally collapse, that applies pressure to her because now not only is she dealing with her own loss of this marriage, she's also having to deal with you as well, your emotional condition, and quite frankly, she's bracing herself and she's expecting for an increased intensity, more emotional labor and emotional suffocation from this situation. If you provide this, if you give her what she's expecting, you are only going to reinforce that she's made the right decision. And unfortunately, the instinctive result in men when they are faced with this loss and they go into panic is to bring about these behaviors, to bring them to the table. And it just reinforces that she's made the right decision. So why your reaction in this situation actually validates her decision to get a divorce? Because the panic response also often confirms that this relationship cannot produce relief. Remember, the main thing that she's looking for in this situation is relief, emotional relief. That's what she wants. And the reason she wants the divorce is because she believes that she can only get that relief outside of the marriage. If she can see that she can get that relief in the marriage, then that will cause her to question her decision. So when you panic, it just doubles down that this relationship is incapable of producing the relief that I'm desperate for. It reinforces that divorce equals safety, that divorce equals peace, and that divorce equals emotional breathing room for her. You are teaching her right now that she's making a good decision getting a divorce. Now, his reaction accidentally and unintentionally, but nevertheless, validates her decision to leave the marriage. It confirms her fears that now she's going to have to deal with even more emotional overwhelm. And this is where she wants you to move out. She wants to move out even legal intervention takes place, because now the relief that she's looking for is just getting worse. It's becoming more and more distant, and this is where she's going to really double down now on wanting physical space from you, when actually truly what she wants is emotional space from the, the pressure in the marriage. And it's another video, but that's exactly what she's referring to when she says, "I want space, I need space." She doesn't need space from you, she needs space from the emotional pressure that the relationship creating, or in other words, she needs relief. And the reactions from the man also destroy any remaining emotional safety, if there was any remaining at all. It's now gone. So the critical principle here is that, to understand, is that the, the instinctive response that you're having is actually, and usually, the destructive response. Late-stage marriage crisis is actually very intuitive. Now what works When I work with men on this, they say, "How can that be, Cody? So you're telling me that I need to agree with— you're telling me that I need to do all of these things that just feel completely counterintuitive and feel like you're actually just giving in to her requests and just laying down and dying?" You— that it couldn't be more opposite from the truth. The actual solutions which I'm going to give you in a second simply are not laying down and just giving in and acquiescing to all of her commands and basically moving into behavior and going, yes dear, whatever dear, your wish is my command. Completely the opposite. So what feels emotionally correct often and nearly always actually makes the situation worse. So my question is, if your instincts were correct, if your intuition was correct, how is it that you're in this situation? Instincts have led you to this place. They're not reliable. And if you want to save this marriage, you're going to have to put them off to this, to the side, and start acting differently. So What should the man do instead? Well, as I've just said, the answer is not passivity, it's not giving up, and it's not emotional shutdown. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying give in here and give up. Instead, you need to interrupt the expected pattern. We've just covered what that is: pressure, guilt, control, manipulation, more emotional pressure coming from her or being placed upon her. Your, your best friend here is a pattern interrupt. She's expecting more pressure from you. You need to interrupt that and produce less pressure, and that means withdrawing from the relationship and pulling back, which to you is going to feel like giving up. To her, it's going to feel like relief, and as we've said, she's looking for relief, and she needs relief if she's going to question her decision. You're not giving up, you're giving her what she needs. You need to reduce the emotional pressure that she's experienced. You need to regulate the emotional intensity of the situation. Be calm, cool, collected, and measured. Not panicked, not in fear. You're going to probably swing back and forth between resentment, fear, pain, panic, personal attack. You're going to feel a lot of emotions here, which is just going to add to the situation. The goal here is to emotionally regulate yourself internally, that regulates the intensity of the relationship, that gives her what you need. You need to respond calmly. You need to hear what she has to say and listen to instead of opposing and responding immediately. Your response is going to make the situation work— worse. And you need to create relief for her where she stands instead of an escalation of the situation. Your panic is going to escalate, and this is just going to make the chances of divorce harder, more and more. So what is the pattern interrupt that we need to engage in here? Well, here's what she's expecting right now. She's expecting you to pressure her. She's expecting you to panic. She's expecting you to take, to engage in emotional control manipulation. She's expecting all of these things. She's bracing herself for it. The unexpected calm that you need to produce. She is simply not expecting calm from you in this situation. This is going to go directly opposite to what she expects. When you create relief, it creates— when you, when you create this calm, it creates relief for her. Remember, this is what she's seeking, this is what she wants, and when you create that unexpectedly, it creates relief, it creates emotional destabilization in a good way Right, it creates uncertainty about her certainty. This is our goal here. Our goal at this point is not to save this marriage, is not to fix this marriage. We've got one goal at this stage, and that's to get her to question her certainty about her certainty. Right now, she's very certain that this is the right decision. This is why she's saying it's final. This is why she's saying it's over. This is why she's saying there's no hope. None of that is actually true. She's saying that based on the fact that she expects you to pressure, panic, and emotionally control. The emotional destabilization that you want, the positive emotional destabilization, is the destabilization of her certainty. That's what needs to be destabilized, and the way you do that is by pattern interrupting. So the pattern interrupts that I'm suggesting here challenges her emotional certainty. It challenges her predictive expectations. She's already predicted in her mind how this is going to go. She's played it out. She's war-gamed it. She's determined already, and she has a confirmation bias about what you're going to do, and her nervous system has made assumptions about how this is going to go. She's had years of experience with you. She's expecting a very negative response because that is the expectation she has of you. That's why she's leaving the marriage. She does not believe that you are capable of providing relief. That's why she's leaving the marriage, because it's the only way she can get it at this point. So when you create unexpected calm, you're not laying down and dying and giving up, giving up, or just giving in. You are challenging her nervous system assumptions, her predictive expectations, and her emotional certainty about how she feels about this situation. So why is this critical? Well, hopefully this is obvious at this point, but let's cover it anyway. So when the pressure decreases in the marriage, her emotional safety increases. I've got— if you don't know about emotional safety, I've got tons of videos on this channel on emotional safety. Critical that you watch that. Go and watch some of those videos. But when the pressure decreases, or the pressure that she's expecting doesn't show up, the emotional safety increases. This is a pattern interrupt. This is a positive thing. When that emotional safety increases, her certainty destabilizes. This is critical. Again, your goal is not to save this marriage or change her mind at this point. Your only goal is to destabilize her certainty, and the way we do that is through increasing emotional safety. Men ask me all the time, Cody Butler, can this marriage be saved? And if it can, how long is it going to take? Well, my answer always is the same. Are you capable of creating emotional safety for her, and how long is that going to take? If you can create emotional safety within the marriage, then there's a high probability that the marriage can be saved. How long is it going to take? Well, how long does it take for you to create that emotional safety? So when you create this relief, it creates an in— it interrupts the emotional momentum of her decision. So she's not sure at this point if she's made the right decision. She's looking for confirmation. That she's made the right decision. And if you give her that confirmation through behaving like a monkey with a machine gun out of panic, fear, and desperation, then you are going to confirm that the decision that she's made is the right one versus responding with cool, calm, collected emotional stability and reducing the level of pressure and introducing relief into the situation. That is going to cause her to question her decision. It is going to create certainty destabilization. So let's talk about some important distinctions here, because I know some, some of you will immediately go, so I just have to do everything she says, I just have to agree with everything, I just have to be a simp. No, that is not what I'm saying. Let me be clear, this does not mean agreeing with the divorce. It does not mean becoming completely passive. It does not mean abandoning your boundaries or refusing to set boundaries, and it does not mean pretending that you don't care, going, "Oh well, you want a divorce, fine, no big deal." Doesn't mean any of that stuff. It means choosing a higher course of action with emotional intelligence and emotional sophistication that allows you to interact with her in a way that reduces pressure and allows her to voluntarily start to destabilize her certainty around the situation. And this requires skill, this requires understanding of the female psychology, this requires understanding of your psychology and what's going on with you. This is why I'm going in, in depth into what's going on inside of you right now, so you can understand it, because that understanding is power. Knowledge is power. So what this does mean is you emotionally— it means emotional regulation, both for you and the relationship. You need to get control of yourself.. It means reducing pressure in the situation. It means interrupting the destructive patterns that you are engaged in right now. And no, this is not a video on, "So it's all the man's fault." No, it is not all the man's fault, but you are in a zero leverage situation right now. If your wife has asked for a divorce, there is a total leverage collapse. She's not going to participate. She's not going to work on this. She is not going to carry her weight. Yes, in a normal healthy marriage, it's 50/50. She has to work on it, you have to work on it. But we're not in a normal situation at this point. We're in a crisis situation with a leverage collapse. You have no leverage, and that's just the truth. So right now it's about interrupting the instinctive destructive patterns that have got us to this position, and it's why she's leading. I know they're there. How do I know they're there? Because she's wanting to get away from it. It wasn't constructive, meaningful patterns that create, created emotional safety and relief that caused her to want to leave. It is the destructive patterns, and it's about creating emotional safety again. It's what it's all about. If ultimately it can come down to this, right, we could summarize it as this: if you want her to change her mind, you have to create emotional safety. That's what everything relates back to in this video. So the core internal shift that you need to make right now, these are some questions, uh, that will help you identify the path that you need to take, you absolutely have to stop asking the question, how do I stop this divorce right now? And you need to start asking the question, how do I, how do I stop reinforcing the emotional conditions that created this in the first place? If you can stop reinforcing the conditions and you can start to back those out and remove those conditions, then that will destabilize her certainty, and then we're in the position to go to step 2. But until we're able to destabilize that certainty that she has, nothing else is going to work at this point. So our core takeaway from this video is that most men accidentally reinforce the divorce decision through panic, through instinct, and through what they consider to be intuitive behavior. The exact same mechanisms that damaged the marriage cannot repair this marriage. The mechanisms that we use to get our way so far within this marriage and to control the marriage, you can't use them anymore. They have to be thrown in the trash. We have to introduce new healthy mechanisms that are going to be able to repair this mess, uh, marriage. Thirdly, it's relief, not pressure, that destabilizes her certainty about this. Telling her that she's damaging her children, telling her that she telling her that she's gonna lose half of the investment, the financial cost, telling her all of these things, they just increase pressure. They do the exact opposite. They don't, they stabilize and increase her certainty. Relief is what actually destabilizes the certainty. And emotional regulation matters much more than emotional intensity. What do I mean by that? She doesn't want to hear how much you love her. She doesn't want to see you make all these efforts. She wants emotional regulation. That's what she's requiring in order for her certainty to destabilize and to reconsider this decision. And this is— this involves a higher level of emotional sophistication from you. It involves a higher level of internal regulation. It involves understanding yourself, and it involves elevating yourself to a more sophisticated individual. And that, that's exactly what we do in the Win Your Wife Back program. If you want my help with this, this is exactly what we teach men to do, uh, and there'll be a link in the description. You can learn about that. So start out with a free workshop. Um, I have a free workshop for you called You Can Win Your Wife Back. As we've just discussed, most men unintentionally make things worse in a divorce crisis, and the instinct that you experience is often very destructive. So in this free masterclass, which you can sign up for, Um, I'm going to share with you exactly what to do. I'm going to go into more details here. I'm going to talk to you about what to avoid specifically. I'm going to talk to you about how to— the very actions, the exact actions you can take to stop reinforcing their decisions and how to create conditions where this, um, it can destabilize their certainty and that the situation can actually start to shift. So if this was helpful, if this was helpful for you, please, um, return the favor and help me by giving a like, a subscribe, and just leave a comment saying helpful, helpful content. That really helps me a lot. And if you can share this content on social media, even better. And if you want to learn about emotional safety, watch this video right here or here, and I'll see you in the next video.