https://www.listennotes.com/e/e7ebc1b9439f4a858babdad0056b37b4

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After zoomies at the dog park, it's time for Drive up at Target. In goes a big bag of kibble and one squeaky chicken toy for the good boy. Drive up that's ready when you are. Only in the Target app, just tap Target welcome to Dear Dr. Tracy, the podcast that dives deep into the messy, beautiful world of relationships. I'm Dr. Tracy, clinical psychologist, relationship expert and your go to guide for navigating relationships, boundaries in laws, and everything in between. Whether you're striving to rekindle the spark, set healthy limits, or build deeper connections, this is the space where real talk meets expert advice. Together we'll tackle the tough questions, untangle the sticky situations, and uncover the small shifts that lead to big transformations in your relationships. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's rewrite the stories you tell yourself. This is Dear Dr. Tracy, your guide to creating relationships that feel Good. Hey, it's Dr. Tracy. Thank you for clicking Play. I have a great conversation ahead and I just loved what every place that we go to with this conversation. But before I tell you about today's guest, I'm going to ask a favor of you, my listeners here in my community. To please subscribe to the podcast, click those three buttons. Click subscribe. You'll be notified when a new episode comes out when you open up the app. This, believe it or not, is a way to help people find the podcast. It's a way to help the podcast continue to go. And while you're there, go ahead and click the five stars and leave me a few words. I read every single one of them and always so grateful for you taking that one moment to let me know how you're finding the podcast this season. All right, I'm thrilled to bring back Matthew Frey, relationship coach and author to the podcast. His book this is how your Marriage Ends helps us to learn from his lessons of his failed marriage and divorce and is he's helping other people to not make the same mistakes he did. And this is really what I love about our conversations, is he shows up both with his own personal experience, but also that of coaching other people so that we can create healthier, more connected Bonds Frey has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Sunday Times, Tamron hall show, and also he's hanging out on his substack. He's got some great pieces there, so go and check him out. Let's go into today's conversation all about defensiveness. Happy wife, happy life. And we're making emotional connection front and center. Matthew, thank you for joining me here on the podcast. I am so thrilled that you are back sitting here in the podcast because the first episode, the first conversation you and I had together is actually one of my most downloaded podcast episodes. So I want to welcome you back.

Thank you. That's really nice to hear, by the way. That's that, but thank you. It's nice to be back. It's been a couple of years.

It has. It's wild.

Look forward to whatever you want to talk about.

Yeah, that's great. And for listeners who haven't found your episode before going to link it in the show notes with all of your links to find you and the pieces that you're working on, the work that you're doing. And our other episode is around micro, micro betrayals and emotional neglect, which is such a good one. But today I wanted to talk about this viral video around what a celebrity said and how it really applies to our relationships. And I'm curious if you've, if you've seen it, but there's this quote that people use in relationships and I think it really oversimplifies what relationships need to thrive. So it's the Benny Blanco quote. He is a songwriter, a record producer. He's dating Selena Gomez. They're actually engaged now. And the quote, the specific piece I want you and I to dive into today is the Happy wife, happy life. So I'm curious, what are your initial thoughts about this statement? Because it really oversimplifies what it means to connect in partnership.

Yep. So I've always had a problem with that phrase. And I, I don't want to, I don't want my problem with it to be taken as I don't think wives deserve to be happy and in relationships. I, I obviously that that would certainly be the aim. I don't like the implication that if I do what I perceive to be whatever my wife wants me to do, that, that like checks all the boxes. One, there's like A group of people that's really offensive to and they don't want any part of a relationship dynamic like that. And I happen to be one of them. And then there's like another one that'll learn the hard way that like a people pleasing attitude and doing what you think someone else wants will. It will lead to a lot of problems. I mean, we could spend hours talking about all the ways our intentions do not align with what someone else experiences after we do it. So even our attempts to make other people happy frequently fall short of actually accomplishing that. And not only that, there's the whole school of thought that we're responsible for a large bit of our own happiness. And I don't again mean that as some excuse to not take responsibility for our impact on relationship partners, but there is a limit to the amount of happiness we can provide someone else.

Let's talk about that right there. Is that what we do might be taken in a different way. So knowing that you work with a lot of men, you coach men, tell me a bit more about how that would show up for someone.

You know, that's a really good question.

Or even in your own experiences. I'm curious. It is something that we do, right? It's. It's this relational piece where we watch the other person and we then do something in hopes that they will be okay, that they'll be happy.

I'm mortified to disclose the story to you. I'm pretty sure I've never told anybody this as like Matthew Frey, relationship coach. I really am. I'm embarrassed. Everybody's gonna cringe. I once bought a new dishwasher and positioned it as a gift and it's not, it was not a good idea. And right. There's like, there's all these like, sort of like cliche moments and like romantic comedies and things like that where like husbands are buying vacuum cleaners and things. It was really awful. And honestly, honestly, if I had the wherewithal that I have now and the vocabulary and let's call it relational skill that I have now, that would have been just fine. But I didn't. And so this thing that I thought was nice, it was like this massive upgrade. And I was like, hey, this is like, this is so much better than like what we're dealing with now. And I really thought she'd be happy about it. And she wasn't. There's a.

Would you be okay if I broke that apart in there? I'm curious because what were you. If you're willing to share and also Matthew, thank you for sharing that story. And you know, gosh, we can all connect to these moments of did I actually do that? Because we look back with hindsight, with more information, with more self awareness and ability to reflect on how the things actually unfolded and we can all see, oh, you know, I really missed the mark on that one. Or I didn't see what was really happening in the dynamic. Because I'm curious for you if you're willing to share what was it that was uncomfortable for you or what was the hard thing inside for you as you were thinking, I want to get this dishwasher.

I don't know that I'm answering your question the way that you're asking it, but I, and a lot of men that I work with are put off by the notion that their attempts to do good are so as they see it, routinely dismissed and like the negative is focused on. That is such a common theme that I'm confident you've encountered a bunch of times. And a really common refrain from the men that I talk to is this airing this frustration that it's like, I love this person, I sacrifice for this person. I've made so many changes in my life for this person. I feel like a huge percentage of my day to day life revolves around honoring like our marriage and, and boundaries she set up and things she's asked for and still it's not enough. And then it manifests when I bring flowers home and she's like, I don't like lilies or whatever, you know, like, and it's so frustrating. It feels so like rejecting and, and I don't know, maybe disrespectful. I'm not, I don't want to speak for everybody, but that was akin to how I felt when I bring this at the time given like our income and like the stuff that we had. It was just like this really, really like significant like upgrade for a kitchen. And the fact that it was taken as such an, like an affront, I, I simply didn't have the context for it. Something I talk about in my work all the time that I think annoys people, maybe because I, I use it so often, is I like to think about people's experiences with peanuts and how the vast majority of us, it's just like this delicious snack that you have at a baseball game or whatever. And then there's a small segment of the population that might die if they ingest one. And it makes perfect sense for both groups of people to respond to peanuts as they do. But if you didn't have the context that you might die from a penis. Be like, that person's insane for acting like that. Snack food is this super dangerous thing until you, like, learn. And I feel like that's almost what happens in relationships is I fundamentally lacked awareness around things like the mental load and, you know, like emotional labor and things like that. The subtext was way lost on me at whatever age I was when that happened.

Turning 40 has changed how I think about almost everything, especially my health. I'm recognizing that my body's changing in perimenopause and how important it is to fuel my body in a way that supports my energy, mood, and strength. I like to joke with Greg that I don't go a single meal now without talking about my protein intake. And honestly, I want to feel strong. Not skinny, not good enough. Not just barely scraping by with energy, but strong and in charge of my wellness. That's why I've added something new to my routine, and it's kind of a game changer. It's also today's podcast sponsor. It's called Lumen, and it's this small handheld device that acts like a personal metabolic coach. I was so excited to try it because I was having a hard time trying to figure out where my body was at and whether I was actually hungry or just in this weird pattern in between sessions, seeing clients. So what you do is you just breathe into it first thing in the morning and it tells you the percentage of whether you're burning carbs or fat. Then it gives you a personalized plan plan for your meals, movement, even your sleep and stress. Lumen has helped me get clear on what my body actually needs, especially as my hormones shift and as I'm using it, I'm also becoming more attuned to my stress levels. I love that it also tracks what I'm doing in terms of my cycle and also movement. And I feel like finally my plan matches where I am in my life. If you're focusing on strength, stability, and optimizing your health, Lumen is a tool worth adding to your routine. I've honestly loved using this. It's been such a game changer for me. Go to Lumen me deartracy to get 15% off your purchase. That's L u m e n me deartracy. Thank you Lumen, for sponsoring this episode and for giving us more insight into our bodies one breath at a time. One of the things I think about that is also around the core needs in our partnerships, which is around and you and I talked about this in the last podcast episode, around validation, around consideration, around seeing the other person. I know you write about this in your book, and this is often this undercurrent for couples that it's not the new dishwasher. It's not about who's finishing off the laundry. It's this experience of, do you see me? Do I matter to you? And I think then this kind of happy wife, happy life thing is that we in some ways almost don't see. See the other person for that core need for whatever it is in that moment. Because. Because our brains, you know, for many of the men I work with, for them, their brains are like, almost this, like, live wire. And it's the, what can I just do to make sure you're okay? Because really, what that is for them underneath is, am I okay? Am I really okay? But if I make sure you're happy, then it tells me that I'm okay. Instead of then sitting in their own needs and saying, here's what I need to be in this relationship as well. Right. I mean, what's. What's the cost of us always putting someone else's needs ahead of our own?

A lot of us struggle with that. I'm certainly still. I haven't evolved beyond finding it useful when other people say, hey, this is. This thing about you is good or okay or whatever. I do think a lot of men lean into signals from their. From their marriage that. That they're good enough. And I try to say that with some empathy. I get some pushback. There's like. I think it's getting a lot better because I think I'm really mindful of my tone when I write, and I'm much more careful about how I say things today than when I started 12 years ago. But I still. The. The big. The biggest group of people that pushes back on my work are, like, angry men.

Oh, tell me. Yeah, tell me more about the red pill.

Sort of, you know, manosphere community, so to speak. Well, they mean they really see it as. I mean, I think they try to frame my work as trying to placate relationship partners, specifically women. Like, most of the time, you know, that's sort of statistically who I'm. Who I'm writing to the most. Men in relationships with women. And they. They take a lot of frustration with the idea that I want to be careful about using the word point fingers because it implies blame. And I don't mean blame, but I sort of try to point fingers or shine spotlights on the idea that a lot of people Usually men in relationships are doing things going back to our original point that they don't calc to be harmful, but is experienced as, as harm or pain or otherwise negative by their relationship partner. And that, to me, that's the most useful framing for repairing trust in relationships. It's not bad person doing a bad thing trying to hurt partner. It's good person with good intentions failing to realize I'm giving peanuts to a person that might get sick and die from doing like. It's. That is, to me, the model for, like, what we do in our relationships and can we be trusted to not do things like that? Going back to this notion of being seen and being known, you know, I'm also, you know, thinking back on that story about the dishwasher, thinking my wife probably communicated ex wife, to be clear, I, speaking about it in the past tense, probably communicated things that she wanted a number of times that might have cost the same amount as this. And, you know, to choose this random thing over, you know, something that she, like, maybe expressly. And then I can't sit here and tell you what any of those things are because they didn't do the work of knowing my wife well enough to be attuned to things she needed and wanted at any given time. I didn't have that relational skill, which I've come to think of as the art of noticing, which I just wrote about, like a day ago. And I really would love. If there are men like me listening to this by any chance, please think about the concept of noticing as a skill you can train yourself to do at a higher level. Because I don't think when your spouse or your partner is mad at you that it's because you've necessarily done something bad or wrong. I think it almost always falls into the category of I didn't even consider that idea. But if you strengthen your capacity for noticing, you're going to mitigate, like, so many of those misunderstandings.

We're going to go off. This is not written on my piece of paper. And this is why I love talking to you, because light bulbs go off. So I want to first highlight, Matthew, what you just said, in the sense that we look, we take apart intentions and your sense of goodness, and we all need to go to this place of you are good. All people make mistakes. So you men, you are good. You are good enough, you are adequate, you are worthy. We've got to bust through that. And many men, when they start their work with me, if I go too fast into that sense of worthiness and Shame they carry. They'll say, no, that's not me. But then oftentimes we'll trickle along and we hit that mark. That. That's this underneath thing for them that they haven't brought to light yet. So we want to then be able to see intentions. Intentions. You might have had good intentions with the dishwasher. Matthew. There's an episode that's come out recently on the podcast where Greg and I talk about him booking a hotel room for me because he saw me feel overwhelmed. And he's like, I'll just go and book a hotel room. You can have a night by yourself. I'll surprise you. You haven't slept well. We're in a home Reno here, go to the hotel. And my face just dropped when he told me, because I just wanted connection. I just wanted you to see me and to say, oh, you're struggling in this too. But instead you went and fixed it. And that's not at all what I want. So that intention, he had good intentions, but we have to see the impact. But now where my light bulb moment is kind of coming off, is this or coming up is this piece around you saying noticing the. Of noticing? Because so many conversations I have with women are around. It's like my husband is on autopilot. I actually wrote a blog piece around my understanding as a couples therapist of why men don't. Don't see the mental load or initiate some of these pieces because of this autopilot state that they get into. And you're saying here the art of noticing, if you could just notice, that could completely change what's happening. So how do people start to do that then?

Funny, I'm. I'm just again, sort of starting. I intend to like once every week or so until I sort of run out of researchable ideas. I'm going to write about this for a while, but the first one that I wrote about yesterday or the day before was this concept called the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique. Are you familiar with that?

Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite go to's.

Nice. And so that's like a really nice exercise, right? Every day you can do this really quickly. This doesn't take like a super long time. It's not like carving out 30 to 60 minutes for, you know, going to a meditative temple and being silent. This is something you can just do that's going to increase awareness, noticing mindfulness, like every day. And I think it's notice five things that you can see, four things that you can Touch and like, really notice, like the difference between, you know, your kitchen counter and like the fabric on a pillow. And this is where I'm going to get it wrong. Is it three things you can hear?

Hear, Yep.

Okay. And then, you know, like, you hear birds outside. You might hear your H VAC system running. You might hear a pet or a child or a car driving by. Who knows? Two things you can taste or smell and then. And then the other one. And I'm sorry, because I'm not like an expert on any of this stuff.

The one and then one is one slow, deep breath.

I think of it as strengthening a muscle. I know that's not to the letter of the scientific law how this works, but I think it's a useful way to visualize it that if I do this every single day, I'm building a noticing muscle and it's going serve me well. And there's all these things that you understand on a deeper level than I do about emotional regulation and how useful the side effects of a practice like that, just in addition to noticing will be when you're like, under emotional duress, like in the midst of conflict with your partner, you're theoretically going to be much more present and steady and capable of responding in a way that serves the relationship rather than harms it, which is what so many of us do. And we're not emotionally disciplined.

That is a great tool and I absolutely love that you are talking about it and sharing it. It is something that I have been using for years within myself. And then it's one of my go to strategies to teach my clients. And the. The piece here is we want to remember. So. So why do you say practice it every day? And the reason is you don't show up on race day and expect yourself to run the 5k, 10k. You have to practice a skill. It is like a muscle to strengthen the muscle, but so that in moments of stress, your nervous system now knows how to do this and can make contact with that skill. And then the other piece here around why this is so important, I'm just kind of adding to what you had said is because it is actually like a skill for our nervous system and we talk about resilience building so that there's this ability to notice times of stress when your nervous system is getting overwhelmed, maybe it's starting to go outside of its window of tolerance. You then notice that bring on this type of tool so then you can come back to a state of regulation that that is what that is. And the other way I love framing this one. Matthew, to be able to practice noticing is when was the last time you were actually in the shower or you were actually brushing your teeth or you were actually in your car? I just drove to an appointment in back and I can tell you I wasn't completely mindful. I wasn't fully grounded and present. Right. I don't remember making that turn that I have to make all the time at that spot or in the shower this morning, did you notice what that soap actually smells like that you use every day? So these are all of these ways I. I love that you're talking about that. So this idea then for noticing, then if you're doing it by these small exercises, you can start doing it with your partner, maybe make the link for people who are listening. How does that then translate into what we want to do in our relationship to strengthen connection or. Or intimacy?

Even when I think about the chain of events that occurs in most relationships that I encounter, including the one that I was in that ended in divorce 12 years ago, I think about the end of that chain of events. Being my relationship partner feels alone in this relationship. And. Right. The math of that, if we can just quickly summarize, is I do something that fails to calculate accurately for how the other person experiences it. And one of my most air quotes famous, and I roll my. When I say that things I've ever written is something from about nine years ago called she divorced me because I left dishes by the sink. It was like the most viral thing that I'd ever written. So ready, leave this dish by the sink. This glass. It was a drinking glass. And, and, and the way I talk to my clients about it is that it can only mean one of two things. For her, it meant I left it there as an fu. As a. Hey, there's a conflict between what I want and what you want. I choose what I want over what you want. And I will do that consistently. When our wants and needs come into conflict with one another, and here's proof, you know, here's more proof. And all right, it's just one of a thousand things I do that communicates I'm going to choose me over you. I do that really mindfully and intentionally on purpose. That's one theory. Like, that's one possibility. The only other possibility of why that glass is sitting there when my wife walks into the kitchen to find it there is that I did it air quotes by accident. That I did it thoughtlessly, carelessly. And this is almost always what's happening in people's relationships. It's not middle finger fuse, it's these sort of inadvertent pieces of evidence I've left behind that say you weren't significant enough to remember. You're not a big enough figure in my life. You don't rise to a level of prominence and significance enough for me to even realize that you will be affected by this thing that's happening. Whether it's a toilet seat I've left up, whether it's this glass by the sink, whether it's bringing the dishwasher home, all of those things. And what that tends to yield is a conversation by the person that feels hurt that says something's wrong. And then it goes back into like the invalidation dance we do. Because I don't think like you, I choose what I think over you. Because I don't feel like you, I choose what I feel over you. Or I'm going to get really defensive and I'm going to prioritize my reputation management and my intentions over cooperating with you to actually like make better the bad thing that's going on for you. That is the thing I've come to call the invalidation triple threat. So I don't consider you. And I make decisions not because I'm awful, but because I'm busy and undisciplined. And then when you try to talk to me about it, my real world experience is that you're mistaken, that you shouldn't think or feel that way. And then I get into this pattern of having like an argument with you about it. And the recipe leads to a 15 year relationship where the other person says, you know what? Anytime something hurts me and I take it to my relationship partner, if they don't approve, if they don't agree with what I think or what I feel, they abandon me to deal with the bad thing alone. And this is the pattern over and over again. I'm only loved. I'm only shown up for when they rubber stamp approve that I'm allowed to feel hurt by this. And that's the recipe is this. I'm alone in my relationship and it manifests in sort of less, I don't want to say sinister ways, but like more nuanced ways. Like I just had a baby and I now have two kids and clearly if I go away for a weekend, I have zero faith that these children will be cared for and gotten to their appointments and things like that because I can't trust my husband to do that. I feel alone in parenting. I just, I don't know I've come to think about that idea like really powerfully. And it's, it's because of what we don't notice it more so than like what we intend. It's how I feel about it. It. I don't know if that's, that gets some pushback from, from angry people who've been hurt and abandoned in their relationships. And I'm, I don't lack sympathy for those people. I do think there's some really, really terrible situations out there, but I don't think screaming at the men makes the situation better.

No. And I think what you're touching on here though is that of course there's always nuance and context into these topics that we're having and these can be applicable to many people. But there are some people where this doesn't apply to them or their situation is different. But you are touching on one of the biggest themes that I see in my community, which is I continually ask, I continually poke, I continually to say, where are you? And you don't meet me there, you don't see me. And then that is this invalidation cycle. And it starts with. And it's almost, and it's interesting because it almost starts with this piece of the sink example. It's not to say your way is right and we don't want to get into that, but it's to say we're in a relationship so we're going to co create what it means to be together. And that I think is where couples get stuck. They forget to do the co creation. And so even in the conversation around the mental load, yeah, this is an important conversation we're having. Things are changing. And one of the pushbacks I hear about this conversation is, well, are you changing the tires? Are you getting the oil changed? Are you getting the, are you cutting the grass? By the way, I did learn to cut the grass before I had kids and it was fantastic because now I go outside with my earbuds in and cut the grass. But it's, it becomes this tit for tat, who's doing more rather than saying, let's come to the table and understand each other's experiences. And you had said, kind of like giving that stamp, that rubber seal stamp. It's not for me to say to you, you're right, I'm a bad person. I didn't put the dishes away. It's for me, me as the man to say, oh, I could see how that doesn't feel good for you. And there's something about our system that's not working. So how can we then do this together? Is it an end of the day that we hang out together, put on our favorite playlist and we get the dishes done? Is it that the expectation is that the kitchen needs to be spotless every hour, every moment, and I'm not aware of that? Ex. Right. So it becomes this, this evolving conversation rather than targeting you aren't good. And then that defensiveness that shows up for it. You know those small things that unexpectedly make you feel like you're making good choices. For me, it was filling up the water bottles for our family picnic the other day and realizing I don't have to second guess what's in our water anymore. There are so many things that we can't control. But giving my family clean, safe water, this is one that I can Today's podcast episode is Spons by Aqua Tru Water Purifier. The water tastes so good, even Greg has commented on it, and that's something that he never notices. But even more than that, I love knowing that I'm making these choices for my family. Aqua True uses a patented four stage reverse osmosis system. It's tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants, including lead, chlorine, forever chemicals, and yes, even microplastics. There's no plumbing, no installation, which is what I love because I'm not having to change things within my counter. But it sits on my counter and it works. And it's not just me. 98% of aqua true users say their water feels cleaner, safer and healthier. If you've been looking for an easy, powerful way to protect your family, this is it. Right now you can get 20% off. @ aquatrue.com use my promo code Tracy. That's AquaTrue a Q U a T R U dot com promo code Tracy. And honestly, once you taste the water, you'll get it.

One of the things, one of my favorite ideas that I like to talk to men about is this concept of just like, how to not be defensive. And, and for me, just a couple key ideas like really help if, if you're not a bad person and you intended no, no harm, there's truly no reason to defend yourself because you're not being accused of anything. You might be being told in a non optimum way that something you did did was bad for the other person. But it's, it's not. I'm sorry I'm bad and did a bad thing to you. It's, I'm sorry that this is what happened to you and then seek to understand again. And I just, that's why I love talking about peanuts so much. Like if you find context, it makes sense. If I invite the same person over three times that might die from ingesting a peanut and every time they come over snack food I put out contains peanuts. I mean, that person and I are going to have some trust issues afterwards. And I find that to be an apples to apples comparison of the sorts of things that wear down trust and security in relationships. It's not these. Oh, and that's actually pretty overt. Once we learn contextually that this substance is poisonous to this kind of person, it's usually a lot more subtle than that. Like, like the toilet seat being left up or, or the glass I left by the sink. And I want people who are prone to defensiveness. And I'm raising my hand here. I am sort of chemically prone to defensive because I'm so convinced that my intentions are good all the time. And what I've learned how to do is completely eliminate from the equation, sort of like my experience with it, and just focus on what happened to the other person independent of any other factor what that other person just experienced. And if my brain's capable of saying, well that would be not great, then I'm capable of apologizing for it. It doesn't mean I'm guilty of a crime. It means I'm sorry you couldn't trust me to notice that that's what would happen when I made that decision or when I didn't show up for you or whatever.

That piece right there where you say what happened to the other person? Anytime I feel defensive, first reminding myself I'm a good person, I have to know that I have to trust that. And then that's the self trust piece. But then you also just said right there, what happened to the other person? Be more curious about that so we don't get stuck in this defensiveness spiral.

I mean, right isn't defensiveness. I find defensiveness to be probably the most consistent sort of low hanging fruit opportunity to eliminate something that does a great amount of harm to connection, trust, security and all the things we want out of our relationships is undermined by defensive responses when somebody says, hey, something's wrong. And again, I do think mindfulness around how we communicate pain we feel is useful. But I want to stop short of like preaching to women about doing more emotional labor for the men that they're in relationships with.

What would you say to the man who says, well, she comes to me and she's critical all the time. How am I not supposed to be defensive?

Sure. And I mean, to me, that's so contextual. And if I'm talking to a guy and he says that, I start, like, gently probing at, like, the past 15, 20, 30 years, depending on how long they've been together. One of the visual aids I use, sort of mental, mentally, that I think is useful when I think about repairing trust and relationships, is this idea of imagining the duration of my relationship and units of measurement of one day. And we're gonna visually mark every day of our entire relationship history with either a green check mark. Pretty good. Good things happened. The relationship was at minimum, like, stayed the same or a red X. It got. It was a paper cut. It was. Got a little bit worse. Took a little bit of damage that day. The quality score of the relationship went down on. On the red X day. And I say, now really visualize that line and be really honest with me. Do you think, like, what does that look like? And then I volunteer that mine is going to be a largely red line with several flecks of green spread throughout. But over many years, you know, the damage of each little red X moment, these little moments of, I didn't consider you, I didn't validate you. I got really defensive. When you tried to communicate a problem you're having happening, all of these things that are experienced negatively by somebody else yield red X's. And this is me talking to a guy that I think is delivering these experiences to their relationship partner. I'm like, can you understand how, in the context of, like, statistical probability, you're married to somebody or with somebody who's going to bed at night and waking up in the morning with their nervous system, their subconscious, assuming that it's mathematically likely that today is going to be a red X day, that a negative relational thing's gonna happen? And then when we can get to, like, agreement on that, then we start talking about what trust in the relationship looks like. Doesn't trust in the relationship look like predominantly green check mark days for a consistent long enough period of time that the other person chemically, subconsciously believes when they go to bed at night and wake up in the morning, that it's going to be another day like that, another good day, where the relationship is fostered and sort of cared for appropriately by both people? Yeah. And so I start saying, when we can realistically say, look at this, look at this consistent, trustworthy thing that's happening, and your relationship partner is saying this. If it was always like this, it would have always been great. And I have a little faith that tomorrow, next week, next month, next year can be great if this continues. But I'm still a little worried about it right then. Can we start talking about whether you're perceived as being criticized all the time? Like, that's. A lot of guys are like, matt, you don't, you know, in my book, the negative criticism, sometimes you don't blame her for anything. You don't tell us any stories about things that she did. And I said, how is it fair for me to. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how to be critical of somebody who was reactionary to, like, the experiences that they had. I don't how many of the things that I hated that she did in the relationship would not have happened if there was an enormous amount of trust, security, intimacy in our relationship. I don't have any idea what the answer to that question is, but I'm pretty confident that like 98% of the air quotes, bad things don't take place when I'm operating on a level that I perceive to be ideal as a relationship partner. I don't know what your take is on that, but I'm a big believer in radical personal responsibility.

Responsibility, yeah. And I was actually just gonna kind of come into this, this part of accountability, responsibility and ownership. And I think we all, all people need to have that within themselves. And when I come from my emotionally focused couples therapy perspective, it's the cycle. We look at the negative cycle and how two people influence each other. And then at some point, she, your ex, wife, the woman listening comes to you in this soft way, maybe soft, or this way to connect with you. Hey, let's watch a movie tonight. And you say, oh, no, I'm too busy. Or you're on your phone. And so then that's a missed chance for connection. Or you choose to play the video games. I'm just thinking of the stories that I hear from, from my clients. And then it's the no longer am I going to come to you, but instead it's the like, oh, you've left this here. Anyways, the negative cycle takes over. And in that cycle, both people are responsible for their own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and assumptions. But that, of course, is influenced by the other person. And so it's so easy for us to sit here and point outward because I also don't want, and I know you and I are talking about hetero relationships. I also don't want her to sit here and say, well, see, Matthew, Says it's him. No, we all need to go into ourselves and ask ourselves, how am I reaching for my partner? How do I see and validate them? How do I bring issues forward to create connection? And just the same way as someone else being able to say, how do I take accountability for this piece? Can I circle back to happy wife, happy life? Because you had mentioned earlier how maybe someone who is saying this is also doing a bit of that. People pleasing the. Watching the other person, the. Them wanting to see that they're okay. And I think what happens for this person is they start dismissing their own needs and sharing what's happening for them. And that I also think is a piece that contributes to them feeling defensive.

I always, I think, felt like, you know, I'm just trying to, like, live. And then I want to make sure I'm not doing things that my wife perceives as. As negative. Right. And then. And then I'll be good enough. And then was frustrated when, you know, the ships in the night kept missing each other for years and years and years, and her attempts to communicate it again, I simply did not have the skill and vocabulary for. And I hope that doesn't sound like I'm alleviating myself of responsibility. It's just simply what I think most young people, most young men, I think, particularly encounter when they get married. I was 24, 25 when I got married, and I was not equipped to navigate relationships in the way that I feel like I understand them better today.

Yeah, I had this conversation with a client recently as I've been seeing them for a few years. And I said, you know, you're just entering adulthood now, and they're in their early 30s. I started seeing them in their mid-20s. And I really do believe that we are doing so much work and growth around our identity, around relationships, around ability to regulate emotions, not just until our prefrontal cortex is done forming, which is 22 to 24, but I find even those other years in the 20s, we're still trying to figure it all out. Right. But what I'm curious then, with the work that you're doing with men, how do they then start shifting into this place of sharing themselves and not focusing so much on her and making her happy?

The way that I tend to talk about that is I have this, like, idea I share in the book called, like, Move the Dots Closer. And it's this really simplistic way of visualizing the. The score or the state of your marriage or your relationship. And I think of it as I'm A data point. I'm a dot on a horizontal line. My relationship partner is a dot on a horizontal line. And there's going to be fluctuations. They're going to get closer together and further apart, depending on things that occur day to day, week to week in our relationships. And I. The trends that'll move the dots further apart, indicating less connection and the relationship being less healthy, and then moving dots closer together. That's the way that I talk about it all the time. And so I'm like, if the mission is moving the dots closer together is consistently improving the state of your relationship, and ultimately what you're doing is repairing old wounds and establishing new, hopefully consistent trust patterns in your relationship. We're trying to achieve trust and security is like the words I tend to use the most. I'm like, well, one of the things that undermines trust and security in a relationship is the absence of truth, the absence of honesty. And so what I tell most of the men I talk to is like, I talk to a lot of women in this work. And one of the most common refrains of the women I speak to is that the idea that their husband or that their significant other isn't honest with them, to which I think most of us sort of default to the idea. Do you mean he lies? He's like, deceitful and he lies to you and she's almost always says, no, no, he's not a liar. When he says words, I believe them to be true. It's that there's this absence of honesty, this withholding of thoughts and feelings I know he has in there about me, about the world, about himself, about anything. And, and that's. It's data I don't have access to. It's information that I could use to love him and be connected to him more effectively. And, and it's being shielded from me from one reason or for one reason or another. And, you know, everybody's going to have their own experience with, with why he's not sharing. I think most of these guys just. It doesn't occur to them that intentionally sharing what I think and what I feel is useful for connecting two people in a relationship. I think maybe sometimes they feel like, well, when I've been on the honest in the past, it's resulted in some measure of conflict. So I'm not good. I'm going to avoid anything that might be, you know, conflict or that might result in judgment or rejection. I know there's definitely a lot of that. If I. My emotions, I might be seen as, as weak I might be seen as unattractive. I don't want her to think of me that way. A lot of guys do that too. But I'm preaching this notion of, hey, we've got to reestablish healthy, consistent trust in the relationship. And this is a big part of it, this intentional sharing of what's actual, what you actually think and feel. Can you do that? And, you know, step one is like noticing yourself. Like, notice my thoughts, notice my feelings. And then step two is, can you have the courage to say it out loud to a person that you have to be able to say it out loud to in order to have a healthy, connected relationship? And a lot of young men just are not. They don't have that model for them. Once again, not to defend it or make excuses for it. It harms dramatically relationships. That is, my approach is if, if the mission is dots moving closer together, that then this is an important piece of it. Please think about it. And when you're having these conversations, please don't withhold truth from your relationship partner. No matter what that truth might be. It's usually not, you know, like, scary. You know, I. I think, I don't know. You're going to have your own sort of relationship with that idea. I'd really love to hear how you talked to men about it.

Yeah, I mean, this is, this is the piece. This is the noticing. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? In this moment, in this moment, you need to bring awareness to your experience. I do come back to this. You have to be able to trust yourself that what you think and feel is worthy of sharing. And it always is. It always is. And when I come from that attachment perspective, I think how powerful it is. Actually the word that we've been using is the privilege to have another person know you. This, this person wants to know your thoughts and feelings. That's what brought you together. Was this something about you, was the way you viewed the world? That's your person? Yes. Share those things with them. And then as the relationship unfolds, we start to do all this tricky stuff. Our old wiring takes over and we stop sharing. And then we think, oh, no, they don't want to listen. They don't want to hear it. But yes, they do. So awareness, noticing is the first piece. I love, Matthew, that you've said courage, because it does take courage to slow things down and to put it out there. The piece that I add to that is sometimes people who are more of the withdrawers or avoidant of hard conversations, what can be really helpful is to first walk around the issue and to say something like, I've been having thoughts and feelings about this thing we're about to do and I want you to know that I'm trying to formulate them to come to you to share that right there even is this way that I'm going to build connection and let you in on my truth. But I really want to highlight what you said because I think it's so important, is that the absence of truth, the absence of knowing you internally is what breaks down that connection in a partnership.

Yeah. If, if trust is the aim, if that's what we're trying to get to, you're, whether you realize it or not, sabotaging those efforts when you withhold honesty or truth. That'd be useful to the other person to add to like what we're saying right now. I think if we're going to talk about like sort of a grounded, real world way of accomplishing this, it's hard for a lot of people. There's children, they're busy jobs, there are long work commutes. Everybody's scenarios are different. But if you have a scenario that allows you to make a little date with your partner, every day is ideal. Weekly would be a good second place way of doing it. But get together and do something like whatever it is, it doesn't really matter what the activity. Share an activity. I honestly think like taking a walk together is sort of the most practically like useful and healthy and. But you leverage that very specifically as the time with which we're gonna. And I don't want like guys listening to this to think it's like, oh no, we're sitting down for serious relationship conversations. Maybe at the beginning it's like that. But in theory and in an optimized, healthy relationship, it is. I, with intentionality, make time to communicate with my partner and to make time to be present and hear what's going on with them. That allows us to see, hear, know one another, to be attuned. I won't be surprised by what's going on. I won't make as many missteps or, or do things that are out of alignment with, you know, like what he or she wants or needs right now. If I'm constantly like checking in with them in this way, that to me is like the real power of that is, is your capacity for like seeing and knowing somebody, that there's way less mystery if you've made it a routine practice to check in with one another. And again, I understand that's Going to sound like a foreign concept to some people and, and maybe like a scary one. But I, I hope they think about how often we get in these little sort of like relationship circumstances because we didn't realize something. And this is how you mitigate that. I notice because of how well I know my partner, because I practice knowing her or him every day.

Yeah. I just want to repeat that for people. I practice knowing him or her every single day. That, that's so powerful. Okay. Thank you, Matthew, for joining me here on the podcast. I've had lots of light bulbs, I've had lots of aha. Moments with you around noticing, and I love the tangible exercises you're giving everybod. So I'm going to ask you one more question, and that is if you were to give listeners just one thing that they could do to build emotional connection and move away from invalidation, that circle of invalidation, what would they start doing today?

This is going to be one of the things they say. I'm going to piggyback on something I said already, and I hope this doesn't sound like too simplistic or stupid to you, but I think about somebody that's like, say, trying to like, like do a weight loss goal or trying to achieve like a, a personal best time in a 5k or a 10k or whatever. You're sort of like incrementally working your way there by, by working on the craft, whatever that may be, over and over again. And, and, and there's sort of like accountability with like weight loss charts or with keeping track of those times when you're running well, going back to like the dots moving closer together or further apart. I think one of the simplest, fastest ideas that are useful and, and grounding for people in relationships is take a piece of paper or a notebook somewhere and every day just, just plot it. Did the dots move closer together? Did they move further apart? And you're taking five to however many seconds to let another consider it and then you think about all of the things that occurred and then put what you honestly believe. And I think it's useful to have your relationship partner be, be a part of that potentially at minimum, do it on your own and check in with them. But the reason I say that is because if I'm working on like a weight loss goal, like, I'm not going to like eat the Snickers ice cream bars every day and things like that, I'm not going to sabotage my efforts. If I'm working on moving the dots closer to every day, it's going to sort of intellectually usurp some of my lesser instincts that might come off as defensive or invalidating or otherwise trust the roading in a relationship. And so again, I hope that didn't sound too simple, but right. It's like a, it's like a way to like hack the what do I really want to accomplish right now? Do I really want to have a debate about the merits of the glass by the sink or do I want my relationship to be the best it can possibly be? And to me, right, it's, it's not about who's more right about the glass. It's about who shows up with the highest amount of relational skill.

I am all about simple, frequent strategies because we do live busy lives. We do experience so much overwhelm that we want to actually have something so tangible. And so what you've offered right here is something that people can do today and move forward with that. It's actually going to make an impact. So thank you for sharing that. Matthew. Matthew, where can people find you?

My home on the Internet is Matthew Frey.com but where I spend all of my time is on Substack and I'm embarrassed that I don't remember if it's like substack.com backslash Matthew Frey. It's some combination. But I write a newsletter on the platform substack called on the Rocks and if you go to Matthew Frey.com you'll get prompted to sign up. And it's like a, just like a free two to three times a week newsletter where it's I share ideas like this and that's honestly the most relevant place to follow along if anybody were interested in doing so.

That's great. I'll put the link in the show notes. Thank you, Matthew for being here with me today.

Yeah, it was such a pleasure. Thank you.

I have to remind you at the end of every podcast episode that this is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for the care from a licensed mental health care provider. Until next time.