Why Therapists Focus on You (Not Your Avoidant Wife)

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Quick poll for you guys. Who do you think is more apt to stick it out and become a solid, secure partner in a relationship? A woman who shuts down emotionally when things get real and secure and safe in a relationship, or a guy who freaks out when his wife doesn't text him back after 10 minutes? Believe it or not, we have the data, the science to show us who is more apt to work on themselves to become a more secure individual and in turn work on improving the relationship. And the data probably doesn't surprise you. Here is something that I hear all the time, a scenario that is described by my followers and the guys that I work one-on-one with at help4men.com. The guy who is admittedly probably a very anxious guy, he's always pursuing the wife. He's very preoccupied with the health of the relationship. He's the guy that reads all the books, watches all the YouTube videos, listens to the podcasts, and on and on. He is usually married to the gal who is the polar opposite. The avoidant one. She wants nothing really to do with him, especially after they got comfortable and moved in together and had kids together and all that stuff. She really seems to have changed. Her demeanor has changed overall from one that is attached to one who really is, keeps everyone, including him, at arm's length. Those anxious guys drag their wife into counseling where it seems more often than not, the counselor seems to be very preoccupied with him. All of the advice and critique from the, uh, counselor, therapist seems to be aimed at husband, the anxious one. Never does their advice seem to point towards the wife. After seeing this over several sessions, the husband becomes annoyed and eventually blows his top and says, "Hey, Mr. or Ms. Counselor, how about her?" And often the energy is redirected right back to husband. "Nope, we're gonna concentrate on you." Why do you think that is? The knee-jerk reaction from a lot of men is that it's a sexist thing. It's a very anti-man thing. There's nothing could be wrong with the wife. It must be man. So let's concentrate on the man. That may happen, sure, in some cases. But from what I've seen, and I've spoken, by the way, to therapists who have acknowledged that my line of thinking is the correct one, which is basically, dude, if there's anybody that's gonna change in this relationship, initially that's going to put in the work to work on their own insecurity, which shows up differently between the two people. His flavor of insecurity is anxiousness. Her flavor of insecurity is avoidance. Who is more apt to put in the work initially to change themselves for the better? The dude. Mr. Anxious. He is way more apt, you know, when the therapist says, "So there is a book that's interesting that you maybe, you know, may want to read," the guy will take out his pen and paper and go, "What's the title again?" When the therapist brings up certain kind of concepts such as attachment styles or Freudian thinking or whatever it may be, Mr. Anxious is right dutifully writing it down or taking out his notes app and typing it in to look up later. When the therapist brings up past childhood issues and baggage that they both bring to the table and describes, you know, some of the dysfunctional things that they may have seen growing up, the anxious guy just nods and says, "Yeah, that sounds familiar." And he learns from the experience, and he leaves each session saying, "I learned something about myself and about us as a couple." The avoidant partner, not so much. The avoidant partner often sees these sessions, if you will, as very invasive in nature. They don't like to talk about this kind of stuff. They don't like to be open and vulnerable and open up and talk about their childhood and talk about their sex life and everything else. That's the last thing they want to do. So who do you think the therapist is going to give their attention to? The person who seems to take in their information and actively want to change and actively want to save the relationship? Because let's be honest, that's the endgame for all of these therapist types, is to save the almighty relationship. Or do you think they're going to waste their time and talk to the brick wall of the avoidant one who just over and over again says, nope, Nope, nope. And that in turn causes the anxious partner to lose hope, and the chances of that couple coming back for subsequent sessions just went way down. Anytime we get into this talk of these attachment styles and so forth, it really does sound like you are demonizing the avoidant partner, and that's not necessarily fair. They bring their own perspective to this, their own flavor of insecurity, but it's insecurity nonetheless, just like with the anxious dude in these examples. So let's look at this from a data point of view. Is there something to my thought and the thought process of a lot of therapists to the whole notion of let's, you know, concentrate more on the anxious person, let's bring them more to center, so to speak, more secure? Looking at it, this isn't necessarily, you know, scientifically accurate, but I look at it as like this pendulum swing of way over here is anxious, way over here is avoidant. Where you want to be is somewhere in the middle, what we call secure. Who is more apt to swing their pendulum over? It's the anxious person. They're, they're trying like hell to swing just to save the relationship and become a healthier partner. So do we have data to back that up, that the therapist's efforts are better spent with the anxious person? And the answer is yes. A 2020 longitudinal study that tracked almost 4,000 adults for 16 weeks found the following: people that were categorized as anxious, 25 to 30% of them in therapy became— reached or attained a level of secure. On the other hand, the avoidants, only 10 to 15% of them reached the pinnacle of secure. So anxious folks are twice as likely, roughly, to reach the level of secure compared to their avoidant counterparts. Meta-analysis of what we call security priming, which are those little mental exercises that cue up thoughts of being loved, we see that results in major drops in those, uh, anxious tendencies and those anxious partners, but a much smaller drop in avoidant characteristics or tendencies in our avoidant partners. Partner buffering, quote unquote, these experiments during conflict and stress reveal a clear pattern between the two. Supportive behaviors calm anxious stress about twice as effectively as they coax avoidant partners into opening up. So again, no matter what the mechanism is at play, you're way more apt to get a more secure positive reaction out of your anxious partner than you are of your avoidant partner. Across 100+ studies, men score higher on avoidance and lower in anxiety than women. So this is something that I've mentioned often, is that in the general public, we don't see the women being the avoidant one. We see the genders flipped. We see the men being the more avoidant one. It's a very typical masculine trait when the woman's like, I want to go talk to somebody about us, and the guy rolls his eyes, goes, Jesus, can we just stop already? Can we just stop with the drama and just exist? Sounds very masculine for a reason. It's mostly men that do that. But in my world, gender's flipped. It's the women that are the avoidants. So is there a difference, it would seem, between a avoidant women and avoidant men as far as their capability of changing? No, avoidance is avoidance regardless of gender. The results are the same. So to summarize, both the anxious and the avoidant partner in these relationships have a difficult time navigating a long-term monogamous relationship. They both bring their baggage to the table. But if your end goal is to change and become a healthier couple, your anxious person is way more wired for that job, the work that it takes to, you know, get to the pinnacle of security, and your avoidant partner much less so. There is a blanket statement that I make, and the data seems to, you know, bear this out, which is avoidant partners really aren't wired for long-term monogamy. That requires a certain level of vulnerability, openness, the ability to change, with, you know, the seasons of a relationship. The anxious people have a really difficult time when the love and passion in a relationship tends to dip, especially men, but they're able to become more secure and put in work, such as with my book, "The Dead Bedroom Fix," to become a more secure individual and reintroduce romance into the relationship, versus an avoidant person, they're perfectly happy, so to speak, on their own. They eschew any kind of effort towards reconnection. That is quite literally the last thing they want to do. So you're caught in this catch-22 of the only way for this avoidant person, uh, to get better is to raise their hand and say, I need a little help here. But the last thing the avoidant person wants to do is raise their hand and say, I need a little help here. So you can see it's really tough. What these therapists and others are saying is there is a small glimmer of hope here for the anxious with this avoidant partner if they want to, you know, become more secure as a couple and become romantic again. The small glimmer of hope is that the anxious partner changing— stick with the anxious dude changing— that his secure behavior will result in two positive outcomes here. One is that The avoidant partner sees, oh, I see the change they're making. They're backing off. They're becoming more independent. And in turn, that is more attractive to me. And I start becoming more at a center and I realize, oh, you know, maybe I want to jump on this healthy relationship train. And away they go. Positive outcome number 2 is dude becomes more secure and realizes, what the hell am I doing with this woman? And he goes and he forms a much healthier relationship with a person who is way more matched with him in temperament. That's what these therapists are saying. Dude, the chances of me changing her and in turn helping your relationship, slim to none. But the chances of me changing you or helping you realize, you know, how you can change, way bigger chances. And in turn, that may bring her more to center. Fingers crossed. But if not, dude, you'll be fine. So to summarize, change is possible, but the chances of doing so are not evenly distributed. You, the anxious man, have roughly twice the chance of becoming a more secure individual, which in turn helps your relationship compared to your avoidant wife. Sorry, that's just the reality of the situation. If you are ready to speed up that journey to security and realize a better version of yourself and better relationships as a consequence, check out the Brotherhood at help4men.com or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. We're standing by and waiting, and we'll see you in the next member meeting.