Tim Arrigo describes the loop that breaks marriages: one partner admits fault, the other responds with blame instead of empathy, so admissions stop. He argues men often adopt a victim stance that keeps them stuck. When a spouse owns a mistake, respond with empathy and normalize it rather than twist the knife with more criticism.
The most common cycle in a marriage that's ending is the cycle of invalidation and defensiveness. It's where both partners are entrenched in their current position and they refuse to be open-minded to seeing the situation in any other way than the way that they view it. And what they try to do is they try to force their perception onto their partner. As soon as their partner starts to share their perception of what is wrong about the marriage, why there's conflict, why there's strife, why there's disconnection, other partner invalidates their perception by telling them that they're wrong and gets defensive about what the other person is attempting to address. And what this creates is cycles of invalidation and defensiveness, basically telling one another that their reality is wrong and refusing to move forward until the other person owns their part. And see, if we want to create a culture of ownership inside our marriage, we need to learn how people don't want to own anything if all there is is negative reinforcement on the other side. We need to learn how to brace the fall when people do take ownership. We need to positively reinforce the ownership that's taken. So for example, if your wife— if your wife takes ownership of something that she did, then what you do is you tell your wife, hey honey, that's okay, I do that too. And you know what, that's totally normal considering what happened. You learn how to brace the fall of her taking the ownership. You learn how to normalize the behavior. You learn how to relate through your own fallibility instead of your wife takes ownership or you take ownership and then you, you want another, you twist the knife. It's like, yeah, honey, I know I really messed up there. And then your wife says, yeah, well, you should know because see, you always do this. Nobody wants to own anything when on the other side of ownership All there is is scrutiny. All there is is a person on the other side reinforcing the fact of what they did wrong. That does not create a culture where ownership is positively reinforced. We are a team as a married couple working together towards a goal. We are both fallible human beings. No marriage is destroyed without both people having a part. And that even includes extreme scenarios, because even if that person's part is shutting down their feelings, isolating, not being honest, not opening up, everybody has a part. And as men, I see so many men who blame their wives for why their marriage isn't healthy. And the problem is, is by doing this, they don't realize how they make themselves a victim. They can't move forward. And they stay stuck in a position that they claim to hate. Yet ironically, they don't leave. So we have two choices: either leave or stay. And if we stay, we accept the fact that no relationship ever goes from a fairy tale on its wedding day to a nightmare without us having a part as a man. So my brother, I want to encourage you right now. Your ego wants you to deny, defend, and deflect. But see, higher consciousness, a bigger, better part of you, is ready and willing to look at you, ready and willing to own your part, to influence the marital dynamic. Because you can't control your wife, but the positive changes that you choose to make can absolutely influence her. Because if you can bring out the worst in one another, don't think you can't bring out the best in one another.
