Tolerate Her Bad Behavior, Become The Bad Guy (OR Face The End Of The Relationship)

All right, team, welcome back to the Mantalk show. Connor Beaton here. Today, we're going to be talking about why tolerating her bad behavior, her emotional outbursts, makes you inevitably become the bad guy or leads to the end of the relationship. Now, maybe some of you have noticed that in 70 to 75% of divorces, the woman initiates that divorce. And it kind of got me thinking, and maybe it got you thinking. Are all of those men so terrible that the woman has to end the relationship? Are they so dysfunctional and lacking in the ability to give her what she wants or needs that she has no choice but to leave the marriage or leave the relationship? Obviously, the answer is no, that's not the case. Yes, in some relationships, there are certainly highly avoidant, highly dysfunctional men who are sometimes aggressive or completely tuned out, completely shut down. Maybe they're abusive. There's many different examples of this. But that's not, from what I've seen, the rule that is the exception. The majority of the time, these marriages aren't ending because there's somebody, there's a man that is so dysfunctional that that woman can no longer tolerate the relationship. That the majority of the time it is an ending of a relationship or a marriage with a good man who's very active in the relationship and trying to do all the right things but missing out on one very crucial key factor. Now, what you will hear from a lot of women when they are upset with relational disconnection. And there's obviously everybody, men and women have their frustrations within the relationship. But for a lot of women, what they'll say is, I don't feel known. I don't feel emotionally understood. I don't feel like you care about how I feel. Some iteration or version of this. And oftentimes this will cause a man to go on a kind of emotional hunt to try and figure out what it is that she's actually saying. What does she want me to know? What does she want me to understand? What am I trying to figure out? And a man can get himself stuck in a kind of maze that has no exit. And the bar for what she's looking for can move all over the place because he's misinterpreting what she's actually saying. Okay, so there's two things that are going on here. Number one, yes, she wants to be emotionally known and understood. That means that you, you can begin to ask questions. What do you want me to know? What do you want me to understand? How do you actually feel about that? And she has the responsibility to bring some of those things forward. Outside of that is the number one way that the majority of men erode their relationships with a woman. And that number one way is by allowing themselves to become completely overrun by. By a woman's emotions. No woman wants to know that she can emotionally steamroll you into compliance or submission. She wants to know that you can have some form of containment. You can understand how she's feeling, you can acknowledge it, you can understand what's happening in you. But if she knows that she can emotionally overpower you at any given time to either win an argument, get what she wants, have you change your mind when you've said no to something, she will likely lose trust and respect for you over time. And if this happens over and over and over again, or anytime she brings her emotions out and she starts to feel something, you get reactive and frustrated and critical and harsh, or you shut down and you disconnect and you don't talk to her for days, she will feel like she has gained some type of unwanted power in the relationship that has caused you to become emotionally dysregulated. So, yes, women want emotional connection. They want you to know how they feel, what's going on inside of them, why they're upset about certain things. They want to know that you have the capacity and the skill to be able to connect with them in that way. However, what they're also looking for is what I call emotional containment. And emotional containment is the knowing that you have the ability to confront or stand up to her and her emotions. And I'll give you an example of this, because my wife talks about this all the time. When we were first dating, we were in Hawaii. I think we were on the island of Kauai, and we were driving through the island and we were just having a conversation, no idea what we were talking about. But suddenly it entered into a little bit of a disagreement and she said something that I didn't like. Again, neither of us actually have any idea what the disagreement was about. And I simply turned to her and looked at her and said, I didn't like that. Don't talk to me that way. And that was it. That was the whole thing. It wasn't a threat. I didn't yell it. It was just very matter of fact. I didn't like that. Don't talk to me that way. That wasn't okay with me. That was the whole thing. Then there was silence for a little bit, and we continued to talk and everything was fine. There was no issue whatsoever. And later on that day or the next day, she came to me and said that was one of the most impactful moments in any relationship that I've had. And she's told this story time and time again from that moment and other versions of this throughout our relationship and in our marriage. And she said, the reason why that was so impactful was because you were able to connect and contain how I was feeling without making me wrong. Judging me, criticizing me, yelling at me. You just set a very clear and healthy boundary that something wasn't all right with you in a very grounded, cool, and calm, collected way. And she said that was the very first time that any man had actually ever done that for me in my life. And at first she said, I felt a little on edge, but then I felt like I could actually just surrender and be totally fine because there was no hostility actually baked into it. So that's an example of what emotional containment can look like. It's being able to set the tone for the highs and lows of where things are going to go. Like if you're dating somebody or you're married, and she clearly crosses a line. She needs to know that you have the ability to stand up and say, this is not okay. I'm not okay with what you're saying right now. That's not all right. The way that you're speaking to me. This goes against the agreements that we have in our marriage or our relationship. We need to pause the conversation and return to this when both of us are in a better place. So in order to do this, in order to bring this in the relationship, because this is the fundamental lacking thing that most women, when I really poke into it, women who have gone through divorce, women who have ended relationships, one of the biggest fundamental pieces that women will tell me time and time and time and time again, is that he couldn't be with me emotionally. And when I get clear on that with them, it's those two things. He didn't care about how I felt, or he wasn't able to meet me emotionally, which you'll hear a lot of women say, which basically means I was able to. To walk all over him emotionally. My emotions didn't have any containment from him. He never set any boundaries with them. He never said any. Something wasn't okay. He let me go emotionally. And no woman wants to feel that way in a relationship. Now, I'm going to give you a caveat here. I want to make sure that you are not interpreting what I'm saying as you, as a man, are responsible for how a woman feels. Not what I'm saying. I'm also not saying that you are responsible for her being emotionally immature. Not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you speak and have some standards about what's acceptable and not acceptable within the context of the relationship. Because if you tolerate bad behavior from you or from her, she will lose respect and trust in you. Just like you would lose respect and trust in another guy friend if you treated him unfairly. If you were just imagine this. You have a buddy and you are constantly talking shit to him, putting him down and not in like a really like a joking way, back and forth, but like kind of sincerely walking all over him. And he never says anything to you or every time you do that, every time you say one little barb. He's reactive and volatile and hostile. How would you feel around that man? You would probably feel like you can't trust him, you can't rely on him, you don't feel safe with him because you never know how he's going to react. Is he just going to let you walk all over him or is he going to explode at the drop of a hat? This is the experience that a woman has with you as her partner. So you have to be in charge of your own charge. Where this all starts, and this is the most important piece, is that you as a man need to have some level of dominion of mastery of fluency over your own emotions. The majority of the time women are divorcing, ending relationships with a man is actually because he is emotionally immature. It's almost that simple. As you develop emotional maturity, women will gravitate towards you more and more because it is a rare quality that they all seek and search for. And you as a man, as you develop more emotional maturity and mastery, you will not tolerate being in a relationship with a woman who is so emotionally volatile, chaotic or immature. It is a win win situation for you and the women that you date or are with. So drop your thoughts and comments below. If you are watching this on YouTube or Spotify, do not forget to subscribe. And if you're on YouTube, hit the bell notification because it's the only way to get reminded of the content. Otherwise you know, it can get lost in the algorithm. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify. Curious to hear what all of you thought about this. And as always, let me know what other topics you would like for me to dive into. Thanks for tuning in. Connor Beaton signing off.