SSS183: I’ve coached 1,200 men. This is what kills relationships

I've worked with 1,200 high performing entrepreneurs and I've noticed that there's some common factors that kill their relationships. It's not the major things that you expect, which is cheating and money issues. These are more subtle things that have just as big of an impact. And in this video I'm going to break down three things that destroy relationships. And the good thing is they're really simple. It's easy to make these shifts and changes once you know what they are. So let's get stuck into it. The first thing is usually the thing that's driving your success. Your financial success in your business or your career is often the thing that's killing your relationship behind the scenes. It's so common for a high performing male to bury himself in his work. To completely disconnect from his emotional experience, which causes him to not be able to show up emotionally for his partner. Gets him a lot of success in business, but at the cost of the emotional connection at home. And I reflect on my own journey back when I was 23 years old. I just started dating my partner Amanda. And I was playing some professional soccer at the time and working as a full time tax accountant. And what ended up happening was I had so much drive and motivation to achieve, to play well on the field, to do well in my career, but I wasn't very good at expressing what I was feeling on a day to day basis. And what would tend to happen was if I had a bad game or had a bad day at work, I would just bottle everything up. I wouldn't actually express to her what I was feeling. And she could pick up on these moods, she could pick up on these, you know, these versions of me that would go quiet. And what I noticed this due to her, my partner, was that, you know, I'd become not really fun to be around. I, my kind of the joy and my energy was gone. And that leaves her kind of like guessing, like what version of me is going to show up? And it started to erode a bit of the trust in the relationship. Because what women are really needing from their man is like consistencies. Authenticity is realness. When a man's not expressing his truth and he's withholding things, not just from her, from other people, she can pick up on that. And it wasn't until Amanda started to reflect back to me that like, I'm being serious all the time. I'm so serious and I'm, I'm taking life, you know, too seriously. And when I got those reflections from her, I Started to realize like, man, I need to like relax a little bit. I need to take this pressure off. So I remember going to my first yoga class and starting to get into my body and firstly joining men's groups and giving myself the space to actually express what I was holding onto and how much lighter that felt. Even though at the time it felt really hard to go into the emotional world, the moment I did that, I felt so much more connected to her and she could feel my energy more. I wasn't so in my head and the main part was just by me getting in contact with my emotions. I ended up performing better on the soccer field and in my job because I was no longer blocked. Blocked emotionally, I was. My expression came through more freely. My creativity started to come online and when there's lightness in my creativity, I perform better because I was, I was more in flow. So if you're going through this kind of situation where you're bottling things up and you're not expressing your emotions, this is some of the things I would suggest you start doing. The first thing is you want to develop some sort of meditation yoga or mindfulness practice. Something that's helping you get into your body so you can actually practice feeling more, thinking less and feeling more. The next thing you want to do is find a group of men a safe space with other guys, people outside of the relationship where you can talk about what's going on beneath the surface. Not always talking about business and numbers and data and goals. Like talk about, what's that? How you feeling? What are you afra? What are the things that you're embarrassed about? What are the secrets you've been hiding from the world? The moment you've got a space to let things off your chest, you're no longer dragging around this emotional weight from your past that gets in the way of the real you showing up in the relationship or showing up around your family. The next thing I suggest you start doing is having emotional check ins with yourself throughout your day. Emotional check in is just an intentional pause where you just stop what you're doing. What am I feeling right now? What's going on inside of my body? I usually suggest the guys that I'm working with to download an app called How We Feel. It helps you practice these emotional check ins because it prompts you and gives you different words to select the emotions that represent how you're feeling in that moment. The better you are at doing check ins with yourself emotionally, the better you're going to be able to pick up on your partner's emotions and not try to shut them down or make them wrong or judge them. The more you have a safe space for your own emotionality, the more you're going to handle and embrace her emotionality. The next thing you want to do is if you, if you're working in a high pressure job or a business and you've got calls or intense things happening throughout the day, you want to have a transition ritual set up at the end of the day, meaning when you close out your workday at 6pm or 5pm, you want to transition back into your body. You want to transition back into a version of you that's more light, more relaxed, more calm. You don't want to be still in your head thinking about the emails or the invoices you didn't send. So that transition ritual could be 20 minutes, half an hour. That closes out your day, but where you're on your own. Men need this space and women need it too, to just have been your own energy. Like change your clothes or put on some music and just relax a little bit and kind of symbolize this, this the closing out of the day and then starting out of you being in family mode, you being in relationship mode, whatever it is, where you're back in your heart instead of your head, then the final thing I would suggest you do here to help kind of remedy this, you know, disassociation from your emotions is practice self expression daily. You know, thinking about how to express what you're feeling. Like we mentioned the emotional check in part. You can do daily journaling or you can do some sort of art, creative expression practice. That's going to help you get in the act of allowing emotions to flow through expressing yourself. And if you're not used to doing that, you're probably going to like shirk that off and be like, what's up? There's no point in that. It's not going to have time for that. But remember, the more you can allow energy to flow and circulate, the more magnetic you're going to become, the more authentic and real you're going to be. And that's where your partner is going to feel that. And that's the energy that allows you guys to stay together in the long term. So something practical I want you to start doing immediately is the next time someone asks you, how are you feeling? What's going on? How's your day? Don't just say, not, not bad, good. All right? Actually tune in, give them a real answer, like breathe into your body. How am I feeling right now. And you could just express, especially if your partner says, how are you feeling? You say, hey, you know what, I'm feeling a little bit tense, feeling a little bit anxious right now. There's a lot of things on the go. So if I'm being a little bit distant, that's probably why. The moment you have that emotional vocabulary to speak truthfully, you're letting your partner into your world and all of a sudden they're going to feel more connected with you. Doesn't mean you're dumping your emotions onto them, but you're letting them know, this is where I'm at, this is what my body's feel right now. I'm open or I'm closed, and I'm closed because this is happening. So don't take it personally. I just need to take 20 minutes to myself and I'll be back to hang out with you and be sweet. That level of transparency and clear communication through emotional expression is going to do wonders. And how your partner feels around you really determines the level of intimacy, the level of playfulness and joy. And just to summarize this, your emotional expression is a big part of this. And there's one thing that really destroys how your partner feels around you that I want to mention next and that is shutting down or going silent. Now, the inverse of having clear, transparent communication during, you know, moment to moment relational dynamics is shutting down when things get uncomfortable. And this is the second common thing that kills relationships that I see in men. High performing men as not having the ability to stay in the fire, emotionally stay available for their partner. When things are getting heated at home, emotional intensity is coming at them, they immediately just collapse because they don't have the internal space to handle what their partner is feeling to support them. So I had this client that's calling Mark that I was working with a couple of years ago and he came to me because he wanted to say his relationship. He felt like his wife was being really distant with him. And when we started working together, we realized that there had been years of emotional shutdown, emotional abandonment, and him kind of stonewalling his partner and not opening up about what she needed when she communicated to him. And one of his ways that he would remedy this emotional intensity that she brought up to him was he would smoke marijuana, he would smoke weed. It was his way of taking the edge off and numbing himself. But what this ended up doing was over a period of time, he was essentially abandoning and rejecting his partner in these key moments when she really needed him. As A safe, stable support system. And over time, she closed her heart slowly but surely, and she didn't communicate to this. This to him, unfortunately, but ended up getting to the point where it was almost too little, too late, where the love was completely gone. Because this is what happens when a woman's not seen, understood, and loved in this way is she starts to slowly pull her heart away. And it got to the point where he had this massive awakening and realized, like, holy shit, I haven't been there for her in those. In these key moments. I haven't shown her the love that she really, really craves. And he didn't do this intentionally. It was just this unconscious pattern that was playing out in his life because he didn't know how to relax and breathe into and process and feel the intense or uncomfortable emotions that she was triggering that were coming from his past. So once I gave him the accountability to start to break some of these toxic habits like the weed addiction, he was then able to feel more of these emotions. And then I was just giving him practices like learning how to sit with emotions through meditation, learning how to release anger through anger practices. Once I gave him the tools and practices to transmute those emotions, then all of a sudden he could see the needs behind his partner's requests. And that's when his relational leadership went to a whole new level. So the lesson in this is the longer you suppress your emotions, avoid hard conversations, and shut down in moments that matter around your partner, she's going to start to lose trust in you to be there for her. And that eventually is going to kill the relationship because she's just going to rely on you less. She's going to go elsewhere for emotional support. And then ultimately you're not going to be very fun around each other because she's going to just project the lack of safety she feels around onto you. So if you find yourself stuck in this pattern right now of emotional avoidance, emotionally shutting down, or avoiding hard conversations, this is what you should do when conflict arises. If your old pattern is shut down, the new pattern I want you to step into is lean in. I want you to get curious about what's coming up in your partner. Don't just listen to her words. Listen to the emotions that's underneath them. And even if those words that she's sharing with you feel very triggering, feel very personal and like an attack, remember, it's never personal, it's never an attack. It's coming from some unmet emotional need back there that she's requesting you to see and understand. Her, they'll hear the blame and not the pain. So start to connect with whenever she's got some sort of request, some sort of frustration or anger towards you, it's usually because there's an unmet emotional need. If you remember that, you can lean into listening with empathy instead of shutting down and trying to defend yourself. And just remind yourself every time you shut down, that's you emotionally abandoning her. And every time you do that, it's reducing the love and the trust she has in you. So just start to reframe her emotional situations or her requests for support as opportunities for you to start to lead her, as opportunities for you to start to show up for her in a way that maybe you haven't before. And if you pull this, like, drive and determination that you have for your career or your business or your competitive sports, if you pull that same drive to succeed in this area into the area of your relationship, and you see these little micro moments as the prime time, game time moments where your partner needs you, your family needs you, and the success of the relationship and your family is dependent on these little micro moments. Are you going to go back to your old ways or are you going to get curious and ask what's really happening beneath the surface there? Can I be in my body Instead of react? If you see those little moments as opportunities to step into new levels of leadership, you're just going to start to respond completely differently instead of just react on old ways. So that the mental framing or the perception that you place on your wife's complaints is a huge thing in stepping into this, this new identity that we're sculpting for you. So just remember that what she really wants isn't the perfect man. She just wants to know when things get messy, you can be there. Stable, responsive, calm, grounded. The only way that you can do that is start to regulate instead of retreat. Okay, so regulation means, like, examine. If you've had a long day at work and you know that your emotional tolerance is super low, then you need to give yourself permission to take some space to build that tolerance up or to create that emotional space. You know, that's your responsibility to make sure that you're not allowing yourself to stay in this really low window of tolerance from a nervous system level so that you're not like, reacting without having much space mentally to choose a new response. So just keep note of that. Got a big day coming up, big day of calls, big day of exercise. You're going to need to give yourself the space in some sort of Nurturing feminine practice. Whether it's yin yoga or time in nature or meditating, just napping. Give yourself that space so that you have the emotional availability to step into this new way of being a grounded, responsive, calm, curious leader when it comes to emotions with your partner. So here's a practical example. The next time you're feeling the intensity of something that your partners brought up, you're feeling like you want to react and go back into some sort of knee jerk reaction or just project out your frustration onto her. This is what I want you to do. I want you to feel your feet on the floor. I want you to breathe into your lower belly, behind your navel or your belly button. I want you to breathe in and breathe out for four seconds. In for two seconds, out for four seconds. And then I want you to imagine relaxing down the face, the jaw and the shoulders. So much tension is held in the jaw and then the upper back and the neck. If you can just focus on relaxing into the body in those moments and creating almost like an anchor point during these times, it will create just a micro moment of space and, and you're turning these situations into a little mini meditation or presence practice that pulls you out of the head, which is where all these old repetitive reactions are stored. It creates this new trigger that allows you to go into the body to notice, okay, I'm getting quite heated right now and my heart rate is coming up. You might notice some of the tension that's there. And instead of you wanting to like getting caught up in what she's saying, you're not getting caught up, you're becoming aware of what you're feeling. The moment you become aware of what you're feeling in that moment. All I want you to practice is saying what you're noticing. I'm noticing these feelings or I'm noticing these feelings in you. And then you identify. Do you have the space to support her in that moment or do you need to give yourself the space by saying, hey, you know what, I don't have the emotional availability right now to be here for you in the way that you need. I'm just going to give myself 10 to 15 minutes to regulate, to calm back down and then I want to come right back to this conversation and we can resolve this just by communicating in that way rather than going quiet or reacting. Now you're showing leadership. It's emotional leadership. I want you to practice this on a day to day because the moment you can get good at this, then you can give yourself grace because you're not always going to have the emotional space to be there for, especially if you're playing a big game in your business or your career. So give yourself the grace and the patience to reregulate if you need to. But if you communicate in this way, your partner is going to understand it. She's going to respect that. Even if in the moment it frustrates her, she'll respect it because you're being real and that's what she wants. So if you want some more tips on how to practice regulating in the moments that matter, or showing up for yourself in a way that's going to give you the clarity and the confidence to lead in your relationship, then I made a 30 day email sequence. You can click the link in the description. It's 30 days, 30 insights for men to be able to put to use some of these tools to be able to show up more efficiently in their relationship. So click the link in the description if you want to get access to that. So to summarize, learning to stay when every part of you wants to shut down is a crucial skill that's going to save your relationship. And if you remember that it's not going to be easy initially, just know that it's going to be uncomfortable. But if you can embrace that discomfort like you're already good at doing and all these other areas of your life, you can. If you can just embrace emotional discomfort and see this as a necessary skill to support the next level of leadership in your life in this particular domain, then now you're going to embrace every little challenge. And even though you might not show up the perfect each time, the more you just catch yourself and go, I went back into the old reaction, you know, let me review that progress. Well, let me review what happened there and then practice and reminding yourself, how do I want to show up in these moments? The more you can have that self awareness and then the self reflection, you're just going to get better and better and better until you'll be in the moment one day and it won't trigger you as much. You'll be in your body, your partner will express, you'll be able to see her and connect with her and you'll be able to give her the space and validate what she's feeling. And then all of a sudden she's gonna be like, wow, who was that? Thank you. And then she's just going to open to you, she's going to just pull back into you in ways you can't even see right now because of that Leadership. So you won't be able to do any of this, though, if you start to lose sight of your purpose. And that's point number three, if you lose sight of your purpose in the relationship, it becomes very hard to connect with the aliveness and the energetic potency that your partner really needs. And I want to give you another example. A friend of mine, Alex, was in a relationship, long term relationship, and he started to kind of please people, please in the relationship. He started to compromise himself in ways to keep his partner happy. And some of the ways he would do this is like he would just always do what she wanted on the weekends. You know, he loved sport, he loved adventures, he loved traveling, he loved going out for restaurants, but she didn't like that as much. And over time, he started to do all these things to keep her happy, yet he was suppressing his joy, suppressing his aliveness. And over time, because he was compromising himself in this way, those little moments of resentment that started to build up, he wasn't actually able to pour love into her because he wasn't pouring into himself. And what I realized when I started to chat with him and give him some guidance was that your relationship is reflecting the level of aliveness you have in you. If you feel like your purpose right now and the joy and the enthusiasm you have for life is out of seven, then that's going to be reflected in your relationship too. And sometimes I said to him, you're going to have to upset her to prioritize what you need to feel your absolute best. And that might be just uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long term, she's going to appreciate and respect that because she needs you at your absolute fullest and fullest in your inner masculine purpose. So the lesson in this for him and for me when I was sharing it with him, was that due to these childhood patterns of being the good boy and doing what you're told as a kid, you can easily fall into this dynamic in your relationship as well, where you neglect taking ownership of your space, you neglect saying what you mean and meaning what you say, and actually setting some boundaries around the things that you need to be at your best. Then it's the space that you need, the adventures that you need, the time with your friends that you need. And if your partner is upset with that, then that's some of her own patterns that she gets to overcome. So don't withhold the growth that becomes available by not expressing or saying what you need a practical way that I want you to now Go ahead and review this in your life is actually rank the level of aliveness that you feel in your work, in your career, or in your friends, in your adventure, in your health. Like, how alive do you feel? And if it's below a 7, like ranking on a scale of 1 to 1 to 10, if it's below a 7, then it's time for you actively to make some shifts here. Because without realizing that's killing your relationship, your partner is only getting 70% of you because you're not taking ownership of the things that you need in your life to be at max capacity. The next thing I want you to do after that is identify the curiosities, the things you want to explore, the adventures, the challenges, the people that you want to spend more time with that you haven't been doing. Maybe you want to start surfing. Start, go ahead and make time for surfing. You want to go on more hikes, go and make more hikes. Regardless if your partner wants to join you or not invite her. If she doesn't want to come, all good. You still need to go and do them. If that's on your heart. It's almost like finding a new edge for yourself is going to make you come more alive. And she wants that from you, you know, so you have to create it. Even if she gets a little upset that you're taking some time with the boys. You go on a snowboard trip, well, that's fine. You know, she's got, she's always going to want you to stay and be around her. That's sometimes what women are like. They'll want to be around your energy all the time, but as a man, you can't be around them all the time. You know, you lose some of that edge when you do that. So you get to prioritize this by listing what are these curiosities and adventures and things you want to do more of and start to actively pursue them this week. And like I alluded to, the next thing is make sure you're spending healthy amount of time away from your relationship. That's pursuing a larger purpose with friends or an adventure or a challenge. Do it without your partner, like some things do with your partner. But in this case, I want you to make time to do things without her because that's going to just sharpen you more. It's going to also give her the space to not be so dependent on you as well. And that when you return together, the spark and the, the, the attraction is going to be at a whole new level. So remember my Friend, the next time your partner asks you to hang out or to do something with you and it's pulling you away from your purpose and you can sense that you haven't nurtured yourself yet. Instead of just immediately appeasing what she wants, communicate effectively that, hey, maybe you need a little bit more time to go and do this thing, or hey, I need to prioritize this this morning for my energy, for my presence, for my joy. Let's hang out a little bit later. Don't be afraid to just make the space or claim the space for the things that you really need. Now the caveat with that is if you're just going all in on what you love and what you joy and your purpose and you're neglecting quality time in the relationship, then of course you can understand that that's going to backfire as well. But for the guys who struggle with the nice guy patterns, just make sure you're not compromising the things that you really love in your life that make you alive. And this week, I want you to practically communicate exactly what you need so that you have that space. So there we have it, brother. The three main things, shutting down your emotions, losing your aliveness, and not connecting with emotional expression through overworking in your career or your business, are starting to kill your relationships over time. And the more you can start to actively step into creating that space, leading emotionally and prioritizing the things that make you come alive, your relationship will go through a transition period where you'll go to the next level. Instead of it being a breaking down phase, it can be a breakthrough phase. So make sure you action. Some of the stuff that I've shared in this video, just write it down, make sure you go through the notes and just put in the comments like what are the main things you took from this that you actually want to implement? And just remember, bro, if you're on the edge right now and you're feeling like you're losing your partner and you're losing a bit of hope, just remember she's really looking for that edge that, the masculine edge. And if you've lost that through complacency or passivity, just know that you can get it back just as quick just, just by going, hey, you know what? I can, I can change this. Believing and knowing that you can reframe or reshift your identity any moment in time. And the moment you do that, you're putting in a new energy. You're infusing a new energy into your environment, into your relationships, and that new you, she's gonna feel. She's gonna feel that and be like, oh, who's this guy? Like, this she. It will feel like she's dating someone brand new. So don't just talk the talk, walk the walk as well. Okay. You can say, hey, babe, these are the things I'm gonna start changing. I'm gonna be different. I'm gonna start showing up in these ways. But make sure you actually go and follow through and do it. And I promise you, you want to completely shift how your relationship feels and she's going to be all over you again, guaranteed. So with that said, if you do want some additional support with this, I have a relationship school. It's an online community and course for men and women. I have a specific track for men where you can learn some of these tools and practices and underlying awareness to help you shift into this new identity as the man she really needs and your family needs. So just click the link in the description if you want to check that out. But overall, so proud of you for tuning in and taking in this content. Keep doing the work and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.