SSP151: 10 Years Of Brutally Honest Relationship Advice For Men In 17 Minutes

At the time of this recording, I'm 30 years old and I've been dating my girlfriend Amanda for 10 years. And if I could go back in time and give my 21 year old self some relationship advice that would save him some heartache and confusion, this is what I would say. The first thing is a healthy nervous system equals a healthy relationship. Early on when we were dating and I was trying to grow my business, I was drinking a lot of coffee, working long hours on social media a lot. And it resulted in me really struggling to be present around my partner at the end of the day. And I noticed that whenever she would express emotions to me, I would actually get overwhelmed. I would shut down, I would get really defensive around her. And it wasn't until I developed practices and rituals that helped me stabilize my nervous system to get me back into a parasympathetic state at the end of a day is allowed me to be able to fully see her and be there with her. I had more emotional capacity, I could respond instead of react. And it all came down to the stability of my nervous system. The second thing is that 80% of the trust in the relationship is built upon me, creating emotional safety for her, similar to what I share, just shared about the nervous system. Emotional safety is built around my ability to hold a safe space and see her and understand her without reacting. And early on I really struggled to do that. I struggled to listen without reacting. And it's a common pattern I see in a lot of men is like we get into such an overwhelmed state where we just completely shut off from seeing our partner's emotional needs. So trust is built off a consistent ability to hold an emotional safe space and allow my partner to feel seen and understood. And the third thing her complaints are your opportunity to lead her back into her truth, which is her body. And this is the thing, you know, sometimes early on in my relationship and sometimes now, when my girlfriend complains about something, I'm very quickly to take it personally, I'm very quickly to get on the defensive. And that's normal, right? Because usually my partner or sometimes my partner's not very good at expressing her truth, which are feelings. So what I choose to do now is see her complaints as opportunities to practice leadership, to get beyond my mind's attachment to being right and see it as a chance to guide her back into my body, sometimes just through listening and empathy and validation so that she can express from a place of truth. And what I've seen happen when she does that is that she's able to process and unravel and discharge her emotional experience. And then she comes back to a sense of safety and a sense of wholeness with me. And. And now she then sees me as someone who she can bump up against or she can, she can express emotions to because she knows I can hold her. And that's just created so much more trust in our relationship through that. The fourth thing I would say to my younger self is that when your partner feels loved and led by you, she will pour back into you in ways that you can't even see right now that will support your purpose and mission. And early on when I was dating my partner, you know, I was really committed to my purpose. I had this really big vision and dream, dreams of leaving my corporate job and building a coaching business and traveling the world. And I was so focused on these endeavors that I would sometimes miss the small little things that would go a long way for my partner. The small acts of appreciation or the small, you know, gifts or the quality time or the little things like her birthday. Going out of the way, out of my way to make sure she had the best, the best possible day. I would overlook that a little bit. And it caused her to sometimes not full feel fully as loved by me. Even though I did love her, I didn't show it in those little ways. What I started to do later on in the relationship was start to see these micro moments as opportunities to share with her how important she is to me. And when a woman receives that and when a woman feels that from her man, she just wants to give back to him. Like they're devotional beings, they want to pour back into you. And when you just do the small little things, like if something important, tracking what's important to her, if you know that she really loves a certain thing, or a friend's birthday is coming up and you go out of your way to show that you're really taking note of those things. Then what happened for me was she just started fueling my purpose, supporting me in my goals, being that oracle, that intuitive insight that allowed me to grow faster in my business because she just wanted to support me because she was feeling so loved and supported by me. Now the next thing, so important for men, whenever your girl is expressing emotions, do not try to fix them. Just listen to them and receive. Don't provide solutions. Early on, I was, I was always quick to give a. Give a solution to a problem because I came from the corporate world as an accountant in a previous life when I was 21. So my job was to help businesses either right or wrong in business, right. But in a relationship, it's not right or wrong. Sometimes emotions don't make sense. And it wasn't until I started to get out of my own way and learn to listen with empathy, to relate to my partner's emotions and validate them by saying, hey, you know what? That's, that's. I'm sorry that you feel like that. Is there anything else that you're feeling right now, or I can understand why you feel like that way. What else is coming up for you right now? The minute I started to do that, I started to notice that, hey, I didn't actually need to do a whole lot when my partner's feeling emotional. I just needed to be there and listen to her and empathize with her. And in doing so, she felt seen and understood. And when she feels seen and understood, she then feels safe to let go of the burden that she's carrying. And so much of our relationship conflict was like, reduced by me just developing that ability of not trying to fix up problems. The next lesson is have a transition ritual from work mode to relationship mode. For so long, I made the mistake of thinking I could go straight from a business call, straight from a creative act on my. On my computer, straight into having a date night with my partner or having intimate time with my partner. And you may have noticed this as well. There's this, there's this turbulence. There's a bit of residue left over from a workday that if you carry it forward, you do not have a transition ritual to take you into your downtime. Then you're still in your head. And women are living through the world of emotions they're feeling more than us men. And the moment I started to set up transition rituals in my life, which could be 20 minutes of meditation at the end of the day, or taking myself to a yoga class, or having a moment outside in nature before I re engage with my girlfriend. I was then able to have more sensitivity. I was then able to be more present in my body and have more presence and connection with her in the moments that mattered. So make sure you have a transition ritual from your work to your home life. Now, the next lesson was find healthy outlets to express your anger. Now, for me, growing up, it wasn't anger was an emotion. I felt safe in my expression. I ended up shutting it down. For a lot of my upbringing, I watched my dad sometimes express his anger in unhealthy ways. And that caused me to not develop a good relationship with this part of Me. So that meant when someone upset me or someone did wrong by me, I would often just withhold that energy. I wouldn't express it, I wouldn't say what I was feeling and what. Worst of all, I wouldn't give myself an outlet to go into that rage and that primality. And what it resulted in my relationship was sometimes I get irritable, I get reactive, I get frustrated. Passive aggressiveness would show up. And I noticed that these were all signs that there was anger trapped in my body. And the moment I started to give myself permission to go into this energy, to release it consciously and safely through certain practices, I then realized that I could return in my relationship as a safer space. I was more clear, I had less fear. I wasn't hiding anything in the shadows. And in doing so, I came across more stable. I had more stability in my nervous system. And women can pick up on that immediately. Make sure to have an anger release practice in your life. Okay? Now this is a really important lesson that all young men need to know early. The earlier you know this, the better, which is whenever your girl is expressing emotions or she's expressing her energy, never, ever, ever tell her that she's overreacting. And maybe you've done this already and you found out the consequences of minimizing your girlfriend's truth or your wife's truth, because when you tell them that they're overreacting, you're denying their experience. And when I did that, I just. The conflict that would often arise by doing that was just never worth it. And I learned to acknowledge and accept that sometimes her truth is gonna be more intense than mine. Sometimes I can't make sense of what she's experiencing because she's a woman, and that's okay. But don't. Do not deny it. Ever. Accept, allow, and embrace it. When you do that again, she's gonna be able to devote back into you in ways you can't even see, because she can. She can rely on you to hold her, and that's a beautiful thing. Now the next lesson that I would say to my younger self is, start to track what's important to your girlfriend's life. I already alluded to this before, which is loving and leading her in small ways. The only way you can do that is by tracking what's important to her. And I used to miss these things, you know, I never took note of her favorite foods. I never took note of the things that she loved. I never took note of all the different friends who she loved hanging out with, which made it Hard sometimes when her birthdays came around, I was like, shit, what do I give her on her birthday? And I was stuck. And her birthday's never really resulted in her feeling as special as I wanted it to be. And ultimately this comes in the day to day moments when you're around your partner. The moment I started to track and notice, oh, she said she really likes that song. Oh interesting. She really wants to go to that restaurant. Oh interesting. She really loves this friend and they love this activity together. Create a notes app on your phone like what I did and start putting all these things in, all the things your girlfriend loves or your wife loves so that throughout that doesn't have to be on a birthday or Valentine's Day, just anytime start to go out of your way to give these gifts of love or show that you really care about her. She, when she received that, you watch what happens to her heart, right? Women are devoting, they're giving from the heart. As men we receive from the heart and we give from the lower regions of our body. And women, it's the other way around. Watch what happens to your partner when she feels loved and seen in that way by you. She's going to give to you in so many, so many new ways. It's going to be beautiful. The next lesson that took me a while to learn probably around the eight year mark of our relationship was don't lose sight of the purpose of the relationship. Now this is really common in long term commitments where you know, couples are living together for a long period of time. Like what was happening to us? You know, we lived together during COVID back in 2020-2022. We're stuck in Perth, Western Australia living in a house and not really exploring too much. You know, we're kind of just going through the day to day motions. I was running a business and she was working in a marketing agency. And what I realized was during this time we often were becoming less intimate. There was a less attraction, there was less polarity and spark between us. And that was because I and her had lost sight of the purpose of the relationship. What was the relationship really here to serve? And the moment I defined that and was like, well this relationship for me is here to. He is here to serve the evolution of our souls. It's here to support the movement of sexual energy and passion and lovemaking that makes a male and female attraction so beautiful. Same as a male and a male. But there's a polarity and a feminine female and a female that there's always a polarity there's always a beautiful exchange of sexual energy and the moment that's diluted, you've lost sight. I lost sight of why are we doing this? Really? What's the purpose of this relationship? And hey, maybe your purpose is to just be in a, in a roommate situation and just co live together, that's fine. But for me it was to co create together and for that to happen, I had to support the purpose of the relationship. The result, what we ended up doing it was having clear roles. Noticing that I couldn't expect my girl to play multiple roles. I can't have her being the housemaid and the cleaner and my accountant and my business advisor all in one. And my lover. Notice how it's so hard to for her to fulfill all those roles. So I started to just like take some roles off her plate and go, hey, I want you to be this for me. And as a man, it's so important that you define that and you clarify that and then you action that. The next lesson that I started to learn later on probably as well, like the late at the back end of our 10 year relationship was take regular breaks from each other. Obviously during COVID it was hard to take time away from each other, but now that we're traveling the world, we're doing this a lot. But early on when you don't spend time away from each other, the same thing happens, right? Your, your attraction gets diluted because you're just too in each other's energy. And as a man you'll start to adopt more feminine traits. As in a woman, she might start to adopt more masculine traits. And you can imagine what happens when that starts to occur because you're too enmeshed in each other's energy. And when I started to have more time on my own, more time away from the relationship, more time with my friends and allowed her to do the same thing, I got so much clarity. I was able to rediscover my purpose and realign myself in my home life with how I wanted to show up. And that supported my her as well. So it can be hard to do this if you have kids and you have a family and all of that. I get it. But it's so important that you do it. It could be just on a Sunday maybe you're going to have some solo time with yourself and go into nature and you know, start to journal and reflect on how you're showing up in your life. And as a man, we need that time and solitude to sharpen ourselves. When I gave that to Myself and I make it a priority and make sure it's scheduled. Relationship longevity is almost guaranteed. The next lesson is learn to develop the ability to communicate your emotions with clarity. That means for me, early on, I was never very good. You know, early on in my life I was not good at being in contact with my body and my emotions. Maybe because I was growing up in Australia that, you know, we have this tall poppy syndrome. If you're from Australia, you'll get it. But you learn to just minimize yourself. You learn to just turn the volume down on your expression because you know that people are going to shut you down externally. And that means for most men, we don't do very good at expressing our emotions. And at least for me, that was the case. So whenever something was wrong, I was not feeling good in the relationship, I was feeling upset or tired or anxious about the day. I would kind of withhold that from my partner. I wouldn't really share it to her. And what that created was her having to guess sometimes about why is Jordan in a mood? Why is he being distanced from me? And as men, we don't, we don't want our woman in their heads. We want to try and reduce that as much as possible. So when she's going into her head trying to guess what I'm feeling, well, she's going into her masculine and all of a sudden there's this disconnect between us. She's not actually able to support me because I'm not actually letting her into my world. So the moment I developed emotional vocabulary and the ability to express my emotions with succinct words, then I was able to create better connection with her because I could authentically share with her, hey, this is what's coming up for me. I'm feeling disconnected, I'm feeling closed off, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling overwhelmed, feeling disappointed. And there's more truth in what I'm sharing because it's coming from my body. And so many of us, me included, sometimes share non feelings interpretations of feelings. So a great practice to get into. If you need some support with that, download an app called how we Feel. Start to set reminders to have check ins on a regular basis so you get good at emotional expression. The next lesson is this next lesson. It was one that almost caused us to break up because I couldn't see it. And that lesson was when my girl comes home to a clean house, it supports her in dropping into her feminine energy. Now there was this time where in our relationship where she was going off to work. In 2021, she's going off to work at a digital marketing agency. I was working from home on my laptop, growing my coaching business, and I was just so focused on growing my business that I would often neglect just the little ways that I could keep the house tidy or sometimes leave my stuff lying around. Nothing major, but it was enough to for her to come home and be like, hey, can you just tidy up after yourself? And over time it started to turn into these mini arguments that were occurring because I was saying to her, hey, I've got more important things to do than clean the house. Surely that's not. Can't you see that building an empire here, this is more important than these little things. And what that did was it denied her reality. It rejected one of her core needs, which was for me to take care of some of the things that are important to her. Remember before I said, track what's important to your partner. This was one of those things to mine. And when I neglected that, it was almost like me neglecting her. It was me saying to her, I actually don't care about you that much because I'm denying this really important thing. And what I realized was the feminine loves to come home to beauty. They love to come home to cleanliness because it helps her and she's just had a long day in an office or another job, then it's even more important than that's the case. So what I realized, it doesn't mean I need to be doing the cleaning all the time, but I just need to make sure that the house is clean and things are beautiful. So I looked into hiring a cleaner, I looked into getting some support to make sure that this was taken care of. And now I'm making an important priority in how I show up for her. And now the final lesson that I'm going to leave you with, which I wish I had told my 21 year old self this right away, which was don't push your partner into personal development or spirituality. Now, so many times I thought I was in the wrong relationship because I was really into this path of bettering myself. This was back in 2017 when I quit my corporate job. I was so committed to meditation and all the things and reading all the books and attending all the events. And my partner was working at a bar, loving her life, just still figuring herself out. And it created a lot of confusion for me and her because we're like, are we kind of meant to be together here? It kind of seems like we're on different paths. And so many times I tried to nudge her in this direction and almost pushed her further away. And it wasn't until I just accepted that she's on her own path, she's on her own timeline. She doesn't need to be into the same things as me. She doesn't need to have the same value or same spiritual beliefs as me initially. And when I allowed and gave her space to discover that on herself, what ended up happening was she found her path in a beautiful way. And now her path, even though it's unique to mine, it's different to mine. We support it feeds into each other. She's her path. Her. Her beliefs feed into mine. And we have this now beautiful connection that she's on her own personal development journey and it doesn't need to look like mine. And at the same time, we gain so much from having different perspectives. So just know that your partner doesn't need to have the same values as you initially. Sometimes more beautiful, in fact, when they have different beliefs and different perspectives on the world. So there we have it. There's the lessons for my younger self. I hope you got some value from this video. Drop a comment below and let me know if any of this resonated. Love to hear from you. Hit the subscribe button if you want to see more videos like this. And all the best on your relationship progress and your evolution.