When to Walk Away from a Marriage: Knowing You've Done Enough?

A question that I often hear from all these anxious guys that reach out to me is, when do you know you've done enough? A lot of guys say that they have a lot of work to do on themselves, but when do they know it's the point of, all right, dude, you've done all you can? They don't want to walk away from their relationship. They don't want to give up. They want to put— they're not afraid to put in work. They just want to know that they've done all they can before blowing up their life, basically. Like our friend Alejandro here, who filled out the Dear DSO form and submitted his story. And you can do the same at deardso.com. That's deardso.com. Fill out the form. And if your story is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see or for the podcast listeners to listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you may listen to your podcasts. And if you're watching this on YouTube, Facebook, X, wherever it may be, do me a favor. Click on subscribe, follow, like, leave a comment, share all that good stuff. Click on the little bell notification bell on YouTube. YouTube. All of these things help me out a great deal. Thank you so very much. I do appreciate it. Now on to today's submission from Alejandro, and the subject line is Avoidance and Addiction. That's not good. He says, thanks so much for all that you do. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. He says, I was in a, quote, needy frame for the majority of my 17-year marriage, and I've been working on myself the best I can. I have been implementing what I've learned in your books as well as others. I've been reframing myself as the awesome husband without needing any approval. My wife was raised with an emotionally abusive mother and she is extremely avoidant. She copes by playing on her phone all day and smoking weed every night after putting our child to bed. She wasn't always this way, but she is extremely uncomfortable with connecting to herself. Every time I try to get close or intimate, parentheses, not sexually, just connected. She pulls away. She's not mean about it, but she slips away from the connection. She's also not taking the best care of herself. She has a poor diet, and she uses pharmaceuticals to maintain her weight. I'm finding it harder and harder to want to connect with her after being pushed away for all of these years. I feel like I still have more work to do to become that A+ version of myself as a masculine husband. I'd say that I'm around a B grade now, uh, but here's the question: at what point can one say that they've done everything that they can as a man to lead their wife to a blissful marriage? How do I know when I've done all that I could and she's just not joining me on this journey? Good question, and it's one that I hear all the freaking time. So what you got is a wife here who is exhibiting signs of possible depression. Just being an overall not very winner kind of person. She, you know, smoking pot, poor diet, not taking care of herself, staying on the phone all the time, avoiding time with husband. You know, we can put it this way: she's kind of dumped you, hasn't she? Because the person who wants to keep husband and family intact will do things in order to maintain the connection to their spouse. They will do things to maintain their attraction as a as a human being. They will do things to maintain their health, to be a good example for their child, to be a good spouse to their husband. This isn't a gender thing. Same thing for the men. You know, man, if you just sit around, you have a giant beer gut, and all you do is sleep on the couch all day and fart and play video games, there should be no surprise when the wife slips divorce papers to you after telling you over and over again, like, to shape up. And you're just like, eh, go fuck yourself. Well then, here you go. So this is a real common thing from a lot of anxious guys I talk to, which is— this isn't your story, but what I often hear from men is, um, my wife gained a ton of weight. She complains all the time. She— her hygiene, you know, has suffered, like a lot of depressive, uh, symptoms. Um, she's not bathing properly, gained a lot of weight. She's just really kind of gross. And on top of that, she's really mean. She's mean to the kids. I end up— you know, a lot of men will say, I take the kids away from her a lot of times so they don't have to be around this this gross, angry monster that's at the house. She refuses any kind of help. She won't get help through therapy. I've told her, I think you're depressed. She says, go F yourself. And this persists for years and years. And eventually this anxious guy's often say, I feel bad, but I don't have attraction for her anymore. And I'm like, dude, of course you don't. Who would? This is a natural progression in the relationship. One partner does XYZ bad things, other partner says, I don't like this. So don't feel bad if you're losing attraction and everything else to your partner. Now, at the same time though, here you are, you know, you say, I feel bad for losing a connection to her. After all these years, it becomes harder and harder, of course. But then you come back with, but I don't think I'm an A+ version of myself yet. I'm only a B grade. And the insinuation here is, and you put it in pretty blunt terms, I want to lead, lead my wife to a blissful marriage. There is something to that. There is something to the masculine role of being the emotional and whatever you want to call it, leader, the steward of a relationship, especially post-kids, especially after so many years. What I've seen, the most successful relationships are one where the guy and gal both put in work to maintain the couple machine, not just the family machine, but the machine as the husband-wife couple, the romantic couple. And often when the wife is so over, anxious and emotionally and mentally drained by life. A lot of women have a lot of problem with anxiety. So, you know, having 2 or 3 kids and a job and all this other stuff just really drains them. It's up to the husband to step up to the plate, so to speak, and go, here's what we're gonna do. I'm calling the nanny, I'm calling the house cleaning service, you and I are going away for the weekend. Somebody has to step up and do that role. So I can see where you're coming from as far as that's concerned. You're saying like, maybe I haven't taken on that role enough. Maybe there's some glimmer of hope here that if I do more of that, she'll come around. And I say, it happens occasionally, sure. But given everything that you're describing here, I would say don't hold your breath. There is an industry out there of men's self-help stuff, if you will, men's self-help advice that basically preys upon what we call codependence in men. It's all your fault, dude. You're just not man enough. You're not alpha male enough, you're not handsome enough, you're not charming enough, you're not fill in the blank enough. And they just totally, you know, when you come back to them and say, yes, but wife has, you know, so many years of severe depression, drug abuse, and everything, they're like, that the reason is, is because of you, dude. And often these groups, or whatever you want to call it, these companies, whatever it may be, will take a lot of your money to tell you just that. There are these boot camps I've seen online, they've gone viral, where men will spend I think it's like 15 grand or something ridiculous like that to have a man scream in their face and call him a wuss. They're going through some kind of rite of passage military thing that they never went through, and they spent all this money. And I have a feeling a lot of them go home and they feel like, yes, I've, I've done it, damn it, now I'm a man. And then weeks go by and they go, shit, this wife still hates me, wife's still depressed, and, you know, wife still won't touch me. What was all that for? Well, that was to line the pockets of guys that are taking advantage of your Codependency. There's a book on codependency, if you haven't read it yet, called No More Mr. Nice Guy, written by Dr. Robert Glover, who I consider a friend of mine, colleague. We've, uh, collaborated on some stuff. We've done podcasts together, events together, and so forth, um, that you probably want to read if you haven't already. Sir, it takes two to tango. Your wife has problems. She needs to get help with said problems. Often it behooves the other spouse to say, if you don't get help with said problems, you're going to lose me. And I'm not your therapist, I'm not your coach or whatever it may be. I'm your spouse. So if you don't want to put in that kind of effort, I understand. It's totally your right, you know, to refuse to do so. But you have to understand, it's also my right to say I'm not going to be your spouse anymore. That's the kind of language it takes to get the ball moving often. But don't be surprised if she says, don't let the door hit you on the way out. What's interesting is often with these guys that tell me like, how do I know I've not done enough? I'm not an A+ dude, like what you're saying here. I need to be more of a man. It's all my fault, it's all my fault. Those guys tell me like, I'm in it, I'm in this for a long haul, whatever, whatever it takes. If it takes, you know, 5, 10 more years of therapy and work, I'm, I'm there, dude. I'm that kind of guy. And, and then the guy, you know, works on himself and he becomes more confident and he's more fit and he starts, you know, just all-around better dude. And, uh, sure as shit, uh, some young little thing, you know, starts flirting with him and he's like, wife schmeiß I'm out of here. Happens all the time. So be cognizant of that. Uh, are you really in this for the long haul? Do you love her? Do you respect her? Do you appreciate her? Those things are very important. It's not just about the old in and out. I know we often talk about it's the woman needs to respect the man and everything else, but it needs to go the other way as well. If you don't respect your woman and love her and appreciate her, there's no hope here. You're just spinning your wheels. So be honest with yourself. Do you really want intimacy from your wife? You really attracted to your wife? Do you respect your wife? Do you like your wife? Some deep questions to ponder. But I thank you for reaching out. Hey, check out the Brotherhood, help4men.com, or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. These are the type of things that we talk about all the time in the Brotherhood. We have very lively discussion forums, very active live Zoom meetings. We record all of them. We have over 1,000+ hours of Zoom meetings that you can listen to. We have all my books. We have free courses, one-on-one coaching. We also get together in person for our conferences. We have one coming up here in 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. We would love to have you. So check it out, the Brotherhood, at help4men.com. And guys, thank you so very much for watching, and we will catch you on the next one.