Don't be THIS GUY In Relationships

There are certain types of men, certain archetypes of men that are way easier to manipulate in a relationship. And oftentimes these guys are getting walked over. They don't have very good boundaries. Their needs aren't getting met. They're building resentment internally. And the truth is that if a woman is walking all over you in the relationship, it's not always just as simple as she's manipulative or she's a bad person. Usually it's because there's a part of you that is not only allowing it, but inviting it in. And that can be a hard thing to hear, but it's honestly one of the most useful things that I can tell you, because the reality is that for most of the men that I have worked with, when they find themselves in a relationship with a woman and he's not getting his needs met, right? You're not happy, you're not super content, you're not getting what you want outta the relationship. You kind of feel like you're having to tiptoe around. There's something in you that's pushing you into these dynamics with women that are not working. And so today I'm gonna break down the 4 archetypes of men that are the easiest to manipulate in a relationship. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what builds each archetype and what breaks each pattern, okay? So that you can see it so that you can take action on it and that you can start to move yourself out. And so what I want you to listen to as you go through this episode is which category, which archetype do you really fall into? And maybe start to think about a couple of your buddies. You might see a couple of your friends, you know, how they operated their relationships and start to notice which category they fall into, because I'm gonna give you the tools to also help them eject. So archetype number 1, let's dive straight in. Architect number 1 is the shamed man. This is the man who is absolutely, he's just entirely riddled with shame. His whole identity, his whole sense of self, he really grew up believing internally that something was fundamentally wrong with him. And maybe he was fed these messages directly, right? If you are the shamed man, it's very likely that you either grew up in an environment where you were just constantly fed messaging, what's wrong with you? Why can't you get this? How come you're always acting this way? Maybe it was a parent, right, who was constantly criticizing you and shaming you and pulling you down. Or maybe it was being told that you were never good enough or you were too emotional or too sensitive, or you had to perform a very specific way in order to get any type of love or care. And so you constantly felt like, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough. Whatever it was, you internalized this verdict about yourself that you are not enough. And how this shows up in the relationship and why, if you are a man that has a shit ton of shame, the clinical diagnosis, why it's easy for you to be manipulated in a relationship specifically with a woman is that that wound and that shame doesn't just disappear. When you enter into relationship, it actually gets amplified, right? So it might at first try and go underground. What's wrong with me? You know, I'm always getting things wrong. I'm always messing things up. What's gonna start to happen is that any sign of disappointment or disapproval from the woman that you're with is going to activate all of that old shame. You'll start to fold. You'll start to collapse on your boundaries. You'll start to collapse on the things that are a no for you. You'll apologize when you didn't do anything wrong. You'll work overtime in the relationship, trying to do everything you possibly can to make her happy, because deep down, what you fundamentally believe is that you're actually not worthy of being in that relationship. Now, for if you're with the right woman, ideally she's going to reinforce that, you know, you're, you're a good man and that you are worthy and all those types of things. But it's, it's almost never going to be enough for you to believe it. And if you are with a woman that has a lot of her own stuff, what's going to start to end up happening is that you are always going to be the problem. So what can happen in these dynamics is that if you are the shamed man, you will almost always attract women who either you put on a pedestal and you see through your own eyes that like, "She's just way too good for me. I don't deserve her," all that kind of nonsense. And you start to act in a way that reinforces the shame, or you attract the super critical, never good enough type of woman. She's just always on you and you absorb the blame constantly. You try and keep the peace because conflict feels like another reinforce, another piece of evidence that you are unworthy, that you're causing something wrong in the relationship. So a lot of the men that I have worked with that are the Shamed Man archetype, they attract women who see themselves as the victim. They attract women who see themselves as always being in the right in the relationship, and that men are always the fundamental problem. So you guys, the shamed men, love ya, but you seem to attract a lot of these types of women that reinforce something's wrong with you, you're at fault for what's happening in the relationship, or you start to operate that way constantly, taking on too much responsibility in the relationship and never actually being able to say, "You know what? This one is on you. And you do need to take accountability for this," and setting a standard and expectation. So, okay, what do you do if you're the shamed man? Very simply put, shame doesn't go away through approval. It goes away through self-confrontation and self-validation, right? The truth is that you don't need her to validate you. That's a part of the shame cycle is that the shamed man outsources his validation, his approval to the women that he's with, and it's never insourced inside of you. And so the big shift, there's two big shifts that you as the shamed man need to take. Number one is separating your personhood from behavior, separating the fact that you can have made a mistake and you're still a good man. You can have messed something up and you're still a good man versus messing up, making a mistake is a piece of evidence to reinforce that something's fundamentally wrong with you. So you have to start to disprove the story inside of yourself. You have to do it because what the shamed man does is he tries his best to get other people, specifically women, to disprove the story that he's broken or that there's something wrong with him. And what you need to do is you need to start to disprove that story from the inside out. Out. So the work is to start to learn to tolerate disapproval without collapsing, making mistakes without that having, being a reinforcement tool for that, the story that there's something wrong with you, and to start to insource that you are good, that you are whole, that you are complete, that you are worthy by validating yourself. right? This is where your power lives. All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. Okay, archetype number 2. This is probably gonna trigger some of you guys that watch, you know, this type of content. But archetype number 2 is the chronic growth guy, the chronic growth guy. So what creates this guy? Well, this is kind of a very interesting archetype because this guy usually is somebody that discovered personal development and it did help you change, right? It helped you to create, you know, new frameworks and new ways of viewing the world. You read the books, you did the courses, you went to some of the retreats, and you like to pride yourself on how aware you are. Now, the problem is that with some people, with certain women, that is going to get turned on you, and you are going to use this self-improvement as a way to actually avoid certain types of conflict. And that conflict that you avoid is usually the really hard action, the really hard conversations. So growth has just become a part of your identity, and what comes with it is this kind of hidden rule which is that a man always takes supreme accountability. And because of that, you tend to attract women who don't want to take accountability, who want you to take all the accountability, and you're happy to take that accountability and that responsibility on. So another way of saying this is that the chronic growth guy is sort of the over-functioning A-type. Chronicle Growth guy is the over-functioner. And what you'll notice is that the chronic growth guy tends to get into relationship with under-functioning women or hyper over-functioning women that they then become in competition with. And that's what the manipulation is because all of your behaviors, all of your actions, all of your choices either come from this place of I have to overcompensate because of my under-functioning partner, or I'm in competition with this woman who is also, you know, of this mindset. So here's why it's easy to manipulate the Chronic Growth Guy. And if you are of this mindset, you just start to notice some of these pieces in your relationship. You've been conditioned, you've been conditioned to really look inward and to take supreme responsibility. All roads lead back to you, right? That you have to do the work, and you start to lose the ability to externally look at your partner, at the woman that you're with and dating, and say, actually, this is you, this is your work. You actually need to go and reflect on this piece. And so what can happen with the chronic growth guy is that you're always taking responsibility and accountability for absolutely everything. And the woman that you're with can manipulate you because she will always be shirking responsibility. She never actually has to step into the arena of owning that something is, that she's contributing something to the relationship. Now, the problem with that and where this can lead, as you might probably be guessing, is that every relationship conflict will turn into this type of chronic internal audit. What did I do to cause this? How am I at the epicenter of this? And this is usually an extension of the I need to perform to get love from childhood. So the chronic growth guy is usually the guy in childhood that like needed to perform in order to get love. And then you're attracting women who are saying, yeah, you do need to perform to get my love. "you do need to operate and behave in a certain way to get my love." And usually those women are staying in a place of non-vulnerability. They don't have to be vulnerable. They don't have to open up. They don't have to, you know, sort of express deep desire and love for you because they're staying in this position of, "You need to do some work. You need to fix something, solve something, see something before I will engage with you." And what that does is it doesn't actually ever put them in the position of having to step forward, having to be vulnerable. So you end up getting caught in this loop that your mistakes need this constant type of reflection, and that you are completely responsible for it, and that your significant other doesn't have any, any part to play in what's going on. And so there's a part of you that's hiding, and it's usually the part of you that says two things. One, I've already done enough and I am enough. So enoughness, for the chronic growth guy, being enough, having enough, having done enough doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist. He never allows himself to settle and ground fully in the knowing of I'm enough, I've done enough, I am enough. And this is good enough. And so he's constantly chasing the next thing that he has to do, and enoughness in the relationship and the communication and the sex life and all the different areas of the relationship are over the horizon. And if your partner, if your woman knows about this, whether consciously or unconscious, unconsciously, she can weaponize this again, sometimes very much unconsciously, so that you are always in pursuit of being enough in the horizon, on the horizon. And she will constantly move the goalpost. And it's a way for her to stay out of having to face and confront her own BS. So what do you do? Well, the real accountability in psychological work, in personal development work, is about discernment. It is about discerning what part of this actually is me, what element of this do I actually really need to own, and being able to hand back what is not yours. Being able to say no, being able to say I need you to look at this, and being able to say I can take accountability for my part and I need you to own yours. The Chronic Growth Guy, again, I I just wanna reinforce, it's very common that you will attract sometimes under-functioning women who do not take accountability. And so part of your work is going to be about you stopping the process of workshopping yourself and actually being able to say, "I need you to meet me. I need you to step in and take some ownership. I need you to be more transparent. I need you to talk about," the parts of yourself that you're having trouble dealing with. And that can be very, very helpful in healing. Archetype number 3 is the spineless man or the scared man. This is the guy who's— I mean, this is pretty straightforward. He's just afraid. He's afraid of his anger. He's afraid of, you know, this is— if this is you, you're afraid of your anger. You're afraid of losing the woman that you're with. You're afraid of being alone. You're afraid of being seen too much. You're afraid of having your needs, wants, and desires be met, or being criticized. You're just afraid, and you're afraid of attachment, intimacy, closeness, connection, and sexual satisfaction. That's a really big one for the Scared Man archetype. So you may have grown up in a pretty volatile household. This is pretty common from what I've seen with guys where conflict meant danger. Any type of conflict, any type of disappointment, that meant danger. And so your nervous system has learned to appease, shrink, and be quiet, right? Because again, conflict is danger. And so you have learned how to try and either suppress your needs or just meet them yourself. And you've, you've kind of lost the ability, and this is something you need to know to develop, to tolerate emotional discomfort and tension. Right? So either way, no matter what the upbringing looked like for you, whether it was super emotional volatility or it was just a lack of chaos, of any type of conflict, there's a fear inside of you to engage in any type of rupture. And so you see your anger as a problem, your needs as a problem, your wants, your desires, they're all an issue that are going to lead to some type of of problem or rupture, and because you don't know how to repair that, you avoid it. Now, why this is easy to manipulate? Well, very clearly, a lot of the times, the scared man, the scared archetype, he does the manipulation for himself. This is one of the insidious parts about the scared man is that he's constantly turtling up, shelling up, avoiding discomfort. And so what can happen is that you oftentimes will find yourself with a woman is the antithesis of your internal experience. She is loud, she's brash, she's direct, she's assertive, she is not afraid to tell you when she's angry. And so a lot of the times the scared man will partner with women who are either the spitting image of him, so she's terrified as well, and they're just two scared little turtles that never kind of come out of their shells, or, you find yourself with a woman who kind of embodies the monster of what you experienced growing up that led you to have all of this fear. And that is a wonderful way, if you find yourself in that type of relationship, to stay stuck in the fear, in the scaredness, in the non-action. So what you need to do is you need to understand a couple of things. Number one, Conflict is not a love language, it's not a kindness. Conflict is something that you need to learn how to be proficient at, and you need to learn where there is room to tolerate and where there is a type of conflict that is a non-negotiable, where it's actually just not okay. So for the man that's terrified and scared in a relationship, you have to begin to expose yourself, right? Exposure therapy. You have to start to expose yourself to risking small types of conflict. Hey, I actually don't want to do that. You know what? I'm really interested in trying this. This is what I would like to eat for dinner tonight. You know what? I forgot to do that. Because again, the scared guy, the scared man, he a lot of the times will not expose himself, and it can lead to even more turmoil because he's afraid of the truth. He's afraid of telling the truth. He's afraid of exposing the truth. And so a lot of the times the truth is hidden and that leads to even more conflict. And if you're with a woman who is more direct, who is more assertive, then a lot of the times that will make her enraged when you withhold, you lie through omission, right? You just don't even tell her the truth. And then she finds out and she's even more pissed off. So you have to start to expose yourself to the truth. You have to start to bring forward your needs, wants, desires, your yeses, your nos, your expectations in small incremental daily choices, decisions, conversations, so that you can build the capacity to tolerate the hardship, to tolerate the tough conversation, and to tolerate the discomfort of when things break down. Now, you also need to discern, and this is a big one, and again, this is what I'm talking about is a practice of holding tension, because the scared man, has the, the, the only response that you developed in the face of conflict was to run from the tension, to shut down from the tension or the discomfort that you experienced emotionally. And so you have to learn to stay in relationship with somebody when it's uncomfortable and when there's conflict happening. Now, the big piece that I want to say about this, which is super important, is you need to choose somebody ideally that you trust or would like to do conflict with. A lot of the times, you guys that are the scared men, I really feel for you because a lot of the times you guys choose women that, I don't wanna say are unhealthy necessarily, but they are reckless with their anger. They do not have a lot of control with their anger. And so they can be, verbally abusive, they can be emotionally abusive, they can be loud, they can threaten violence. So a lot of the times the scared man puts himself back in a situation where it feels overwhelming and confronting to deal with the conflict. So you want to discern, is this even a safe relationship for me to do this work? And if the answer is unequivocally no, that is important data and information. Because you might actually be acknowledging that, hey, I've actually put myself back into a relationship that's kind of emotionally or verbally abusive to reinforce this scaredness and this fear inside of me that's so familiar relationally. Last archetype, the fourth one is the worshiper. The worshiper. Ah, the worshiper is your classic pedestal-er. He's the nice guy. And he, he pedals women, pedestals women, not pedals women, pedestals women. They're always above him. They're always superior. They're always better. And then he's confused when they are looking down at him. And this can happen for a number of reasons, right? You may have grown up in an environment where you idolize women at a distance, where your mom was constantly putting you in this position of having to idolize her. Or you're overcompensating for a lack of feminine love early on. A lot of guys that grew up in a household where maybe your mom was an addict, maybe your mom was emotionally disconnected, maybe your mom was a workaholic, this is what leads to the worshiper. Because for a lot of young boys, they're trying to get mom's attention. They can't get enough of it. And so they end up worshiping her as like this superior being that they are in devotion to. And so a lot of the times you see a woman as this kind of like Madonna archetype, right? You, you, you praise her. She's like this sacred archetype. And your job is to exist, to keep her happy and to keep her from leaving. Now, how does this make you manipulatable? It makes you easy to manipulate because you're always in an inferior position. You've handed all the power to her automatically just by being in the relationship and saying, "You are superior to me." But what you're actually doing is creating a pretty palpable imbalance that makes real partnership nearly impossible. And so it makes it hard for the woman that you're with to respect you. It makes it hard for her to trust you because she holds, really at the end of the day, she holds all the power in the relationship because you see her as somebody to be worshiped and you as the worshiper, somebody that needs to dote on her and enshrine her and all of these things. And at the end of the day, it makes you easy to manipulate because what ends up happening is eventually, she starts to feel like, oh, I have all the power, all of the influence in this relationship. And this is kind of the, the, the, at the core of like happy wife, happy life, right? If you took that really at face value, it's like I exist to make my wife happy so that my life can be good, right? I exist to worship my wife, worship my girlfriend so that my life can be good. right? And this kills polarity. So the odd thing that a lot of the worshipers find is that you find yourself in a relational dynamic where very quickly into the relationship, polarity's collapsed, and there's not a lot of sexual tension, and you are having less and less and less sex. And very often these men, what I have seen, find themselves in a largely sexless relationship or marriage, because they were worshiping a woman who wanted to maybe not be treated in that way. So what do you need to do? You need to shift from worshiping to presence. You need to shift from seeing her as some, something that you need to follow and sort of like an archetype that you need to sort of follow and that you need to praise and you need to devote yourself to. And somebody that is on equal footing to you. And what that means is that you start to see your own value. You start to express your own needs. You start to express what is good about you. So you'll notice for the guys that are the worshipers, they are constantly talking about how amazing their girlfriends or their wife are. But when you listen to them talk about themselves, it's in this kind of undercutting, undermining, disrespectful way. So you need to start to reference yourself as somebody that's valuable. You need to start to see your own worth, your own value, and you need to operate from that place in making decisions, choices, and the actions that you take. And so the simple question that you can ask yourself is, if I respected myself as much as I respect her, What choice would I make if I respected myself? If I valued myself as much as I value her, what decision, what choice, what boundary, what expectation would I put into the relationship? And if you let that single filter be a filter for you, what you will start to do is you will start to actually center your own value in the relationship and stop operating in this way as if You exist only to be of service to her. So here's the thing, with all of these archetypes, just to sort of close this out, these aren't necessarily character flaws, okay? A lot of you guys might listen to this and think like, "Oh man, this is because I'm defective. This is because I'm broken. This is because there's something wrong with me." No, absolutely not. These are all adaptive strategies that you have learned to try and maintain relationships with women. And those adaptive strategies were born out of some type of wounding, some type of pain that happened early on in life, either early in childhood in your family system or early on with women where you just weren't really taught what to do. And you can shift out of that. And usually what I have found is shifting out of these archetypes leads you more fully into being your own self-led man, to having your own agency. To having a deeper quality of independence and autonomy in your life, and more importantly, a deeper level of self-respect where you aren't operating, uh, where you're not interacting with women from this pain. You're operating from your sense of self-respect, from your value, from your own quality of almost self-love, I guess you could say. So let me know in the comments below, which archetype are you? What are you taking away from this? And what are you going to put into practice. And don't forget to man it forward, share it with somebody that you know will enjoy it. Till next week, Connor Beaton signing off.