Comfort Won’t Make You a Man

Where did you learn to become a people pleaser and an enabler?

I guess I've always had been. I've always had been a people pleaser and enabler because I never was able to— I would just go along with the flow and try to—

Where did you learn that? Because you learned that before you entered your marriage. What you did was shut down your feelings and you learned to give other people what they wanted from you, and you learned that your feelings aren't important. You didn't shut down because you emotionally neglected your wife for those 42 years, brother. You shut down because you learned that your emotions and how you feel and what you want and what you desire and what's going on with you is not important. It's not relevant compared to what other people want to do and how they feel. You learned that in your environment, in your childhood. I guarantee you, you learned that other people and how they feel and what's going on with them is more important than you. You learned that how you feel is not important. George, welcome to the show, brother. What do you got for me?

Thanks, Tim. Uh, Tim, I've been struggling with a problem, I guess, for the last few months. It's really longer than that. I've been talking to my coach James about it, and I just can't, just can't seem to get off the mark on this one. And the problem is, is my wife met a gentleman through a business group years ago, and they're very good friends. And I've become friends with him too, and his wife. But the problem is, you know, I feel she's closer to him than she is to me. And they have more fun together. So much when we go out together, they're always sitting next to each other. I feel like a third wheel at times. And in talking to my coach about that, I said, well, there must be something in my past. And we did discover something in my past that could have been it. It was back 40-some-odd years ago when I was engaged to someone else before, and my fiancée at the time befriended a male also, and we broke off the engagement. So I think that's the trauma that I'm feeling. But the problem is, is that I can't— even though I know it's there, I still feel anger and jealousy at times when we're together, and I just can't seem to get rid of that. And it comes off from me as I'm always angry, I'm always not in a good mood, I don't want to have fun, you know, that type of thing. And I just want to see if there's some way of me getting rid of those feelings. You know, I tried tools of, you know, eBreak and other things, and Box Technique, and, uh, it's still there in the background. It doesn't seem to, you know, vaporize. Okay. It's always hidden.

Let's take a look at something, because you don't want to gaslight yourself by telling yourself that, hey, this is just my trauma showing up when this is really just a, a boundary violation and a, and a misalignment in values.

Right.

Let me ask you this. Let's just start here. Are you and your wife emotionally connected?

No. Okay. You know, we're not emotionally or, or Or physically. Or physically, right.

Okay. So you guys are not physically or emotionally intimate at all?

No.

Okay.

And it's been that way for, for years.

Okay. Does she talk and text with this gentleman?

Yes, she does.

How often?

Daily.

On a daily basis.

And so much so that I know his wife has gotten upset about it and she's asked to be copied on every text they have together. I have.

So you're not the only person who thinks this is inappropriate?

No.

Okay, so I'll tell you this. I wouldn't be okay, and I'm not an insecure guy, and I wouldn't be okay with my wife talking to another guy on a daily basis when my wife and I are in the midst of marital conflict, marital strife, and we're not physically or emotionally intimate, and she is actively speaking to another man and getting her needs met outside the marriage. Now, is she in denial about that?

Uh, no, but she has— she is not in denial about it. She admits that she's very good friends with him.

Okay, she admits that she gets her needs met outside the marriage by this other gentleman.

Well, what do you mean by needs? Like, emotional needs? Yeah, I would say— I would say so.

It's an emotional affair that's happening in front of you, right? And okay, and even this guy's wife knows that it's inappropriate and feels uncomfortable about it?

I, I guess she feels uncomfortable. Yes, let's, let's say yes. So she would feel uncomfortable and think it's inappropriate as well.

Okay. What happens when you confront your wife about it? Does she get reactive about it?

Yes, she says, well, that's just the way it is. I'm not going to stop my relationship with, with Kenny. His name is Kenny. I'm not going to stop my relationship. I, I enjoy their company. I enjoy her company also. They're friends, but, you know, she might be friends with her, but But the wife may still have a, you know, a problem with the relationship as well. I haven't talked to the wife about it, but yeah.

Well, I don't think any guy who had some semblance of morals and values who was in your situation and emotionally disconnected from his wife for as long as you have been— and it's been how long, you said?

Emotionally disconnected?

Emotionally and physical disconnection has been going on how long?

Over 10 years.

Over 10 years. So you've had 10 years of emotional and physical disconnection, and then there's another guy in the picture, and your wife probably doesn't even recognize that she's getting her needs met by this gentleman, and you have a problem with it, but you haven't established boundaries about it.

Why? Well, I don't know. I guess the boundary, what, what would the— I haven't gone out, but we go out with them several times a week. I haven't met them with them. A couple of times because that was my boundary. I said, no, I'm not going out again.

I'm not preventing her from seeing the boundaries, and I'm not going to be in a marriage where we're not actively working on building back our marriage while you're getting your needs met by another man inside the marriage. So that's not the marriage that I want. So is your wife interested in working on the marriage?

I don't think she is, to be honest with you.

So you have a wife that's not interested in working on your marriage, who's actively getting her needs met outside the marriage. You've been emotionally disconnected and physically disconnected for 10 years, and she's telling you she's not going to stop having emotional interactions with this gentleman on a daily basis, so much to the extent that this guy's wife has also determined it was inappropriate and she doesn't like it and she feels uncomfortable about it. And what do you believe is the solution to deal with this?

Well, I tried to tell my wife that we should go out more as a couple, just being her and not involve them, which we're starting to do. But it's not the same, you know, it's not the same, I guess, connection or fun that we have when we're as a group of 4, you know. So we have to learn how to basically—

well, how did you guys end up emotionally disconnected in the first place?

I think it had to do with my, my work experience. I traveled a lot for work. My wife says she's been— we've been married for 42 years. My wife said she's been emotionally disconnected from me for over 30 years, since the kids were young, because I was never around. I was always working, and when I was around, I wasn't present, let's just quote unquote, for her or for the kids. So she always had this void in our marriage. And, uh, as far as, uh, physical intimacy, that became, um, difficult also because either— okay.

Uh, how have you felt about it? How have you felt? Do you believe that that story's true?

No, I don't believe it. Well, I know I wasn't around. I know I worked, I, I traveled for work. I would go out, you know, 5 days a week and I would be out.

Okay. So, so what does your wife tell you that you need to do to fix that?

To fix it? Well, she would say, um, it, there's, there's nothing to fix it. The damage is already done.

Okay. So your wife's basically saying the damage is done and now I'm gonna use that as a scapegoat to get my needs met inside the marriage by another person, right?

Yeah. She's already told me, she's already told me no, forget about anything physical. You know, that's—

then you don't even have a marriage.

I agree, I agree. We don't have any physical connection. I, you know, we always talk. I always—

what would happen if you started talking to another woman and you started having a relationship, quote unquote, just friends relationship with a woman that you talk to on a daily basis and then went out to dinner with, with your wife? You think your wife would be okay with that?

No, no.

Well, then why can there— why is there allowed to be a double standard in your marriage?

Right. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But I don't have that right now. I don't have another—

okay, here's the real question. The working and the disconnection was a byproduct of something else. So why were you guys not emotionally connected? It wasn't involving work. What was the real reason? Was there any grief and loss? Was there any significant event that happened in your lives that caused you guys to get disconnected? Did you go through any hard times? I mean, what really happened?

I'm going, I'm going back 30 years now when the kids were younger. Was I disconnected? Yes, I probably was with work and everything else. And, but I thought I was available on weekends. But she says my kids, my two kids, remember my daughter passed away a few years ago, but my two kids that survived today say I wasn't quote unquote present when they were younger.

How did you, and your daughter passed, how?

She, uh, she just didn't wake up one afternoon. I think it had to do with the COVID vaccine, but that's my opinion. Yeah.

My condolences, brother.

Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, that was— she passed away in, in 2023 at 38 years old, a week shy of 38. All right. Yeah. Thank you, Tim.

2023, 38 years old, right? Your daughter passes away.

Okay.

What was your response to the grief?

Well, it was, you know, grief and loss. You know, I was— we were both pretty shocked. We got the phone call from my son-in-law that he found her dead in the bed. So it was pretty traumatic. She had two boys, Jackson and Ryder, that were, you know, 8 and 10 at the time. And, uh, it was shocking, you know, but we spoke to her a few days before, but that was about it. We, we didn't have a— over the years, I guess, over COVID and everything else, we didn't have a strong relationship with her. And she moved down to South Carolina So we were starting to rekindle the relationship. So that was, uh, it was a little bit difficult, you know?

Okay. Let me ask you this. A, after your daughter passed, did you find yourself kind of shut down emotionally?

Yeah. I would say, I think we, I think that the shutdown was there before between my wife and myself, you know?

No, no, no. But just in how you dealt with the grief and loss.

Yeah, I guess we, yeah, we were both, we were both shut down.

We're both, you know, Like, you guys were already disconnected prior to the loss of your daughter. Did you guys have any conversations about it? Have you processed it together?

I did. We did talk about it, yes. And I did do the, you know, grief and loss letter, or in the Grow program here, I showed it to her, what I felt, you know.

But, but do you feel like you, after the loss of your daughter, did you shut down?

I guess yes, in a way, shut down.

You know, okay, you know, my other marriage, when, when there's disconnection, George, a lot of times the disconnection happens because you don't express what your needs actually are in the marriage, and your wife doesn't express what her needs are either.

Well, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Tim, because I just had the conversation with her about that last week. I said we have to sit down and discuss our needs and expectations in this relationship. And I basically wrote down a few things and I was ready to talk about them, but she did not want to talk about anything. She goes, she goes, basically she said that if, you know, I know my needs and that's it. And, you know, I'm not going to, I don't want to talk about my, basically how she's, she put it. So she's shut down as far as expressing what those needs are.

So, so basically the problem that you both had, because nobody stays in a marriage with a person for 42 years and is emotionally disconnected, the person is emotionally disconnected. From them, and they don't become emotionally disconnected from that person as a result, or deal with their emotions in unhealthy ways. Also, it's like most people, when they express what their needs are, they don't know what their needs are. They just want somebody to accommodate their own, uh, triggers or trauma. So it's like, it's not that I want you to meet my needs, although I express it that way, it's that I want you to accommodate every time I'm triggered. And it's a never-ending goalpost of how I want you to act to make me feel better on a daily basis. So it becomes codependent where I rely on you to act and behave a certain way with these expectations that I place on you so that I can feel better and not so triggered when I'm around you. So that becomes basically making you responsible for making me feel better, and then in essence blaming you for why the marriage is unhealthy. But yet no matter what you do, if you jump through a thousand hoops tomorrow and wear a different hat today and a different hat tomorrow and a different hat the next day, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant because nothing that you do is actually going to fix it. Because I've already— I'm already locked up in my own problems. And until I own that and I come out of denial, there is no fixing anything.

Right.

So right now, would you say that's where your wife is?

I would say that's where she is. I know she is seeing somebody on Friday mornings. I don't know what they talk about. You know, we have talked about a little bit about this program that I'm in. She's basically expressed that she, you know, like everyone else's wife, she doesn't really see a change in me. I feel a change in me. Me because it's not what I was.

Well, here's the— it's back to what I just said. Yeah, how could she wreck— I mean, it's, it's saying I don't see a change in you. You can only make somebody the scapegoat for so long, and they can only change so much before you actually realize that you're the problem, right? So it's, it's like saying I haven't— you haven't changed, you haven't changed, you haven't done enough. That's back to what I said. It's the goalpost. It's the never-ending goalpost that you can never reach because it's not actually about you changing. It's about her staying in denial and then blaming you and using you as a scapegoat to justify why the marriage is the way it is. Although every marriage has two people that play a part in the marriage, right? I don't care if it's a 90/10, somebody has responsibility on the other side, even if it's that they shut down, don't set boundaries, don't speak up, don't express themselves. So right now you have a wife who's unwilling to participate in healing a marriage of emotional disconnection for 42 years. And I would say this, I would say that you are conditioned to continue to shut down even right now and not establish boundaries inside your marriage about what is right and what is wrong and what is tolerable and what is not tolerable. Have you had a best friend out there? You got a good buddy of yours?

Um, not really. Basically, my friends are her friends, basically.

Okay, well, that's a problem. You got to get brothers to connect with. Do you talk to anybody inside the program?

I did, not lately, but I talked to Justin Walton. I do text people once in a while, but I haven't really spoke to anybody.

Oh, you got to do that, brother. You got to reach out.

Yeah. Okay.

You gotta reach out more, bro.

Yeah.

You can't do this alone, man. Iron sharpens iron, number one. Number two, you're old school, man. Like you're, you're old school. You know what I mean?

Right.

Deep down inside, are you embarrassed or humiliated or, or angered about what's happening because it goes against your values?

Yeah. Well, I'm not really embarrassed, but I guess humiliated. Yeah. I would say, you know, because, uh, you know, I feel like it should be different. I, I look at other couples and I see a difference in them that I see in my own relationship. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that, that always caused the angst, I guess, to say, well, why can't I be like that? And this is going back 15, 20 years, you know, seeing that. Yeah.

And I would say there's nothing wrong with that. Let me ask you this. If we called, let's say, a good buddy of yours and he told you that his wife was doing what your wife is doing and his situation was your situation, what would you tell him?

I would tell him probably what you said, set boundaries and determine what you need to do to to, uh, set some goals for yourself. That's why, you know, I keep, you know, going back into the program and trying to understand why I feel this way, you know, what, what's the cause of, of my issue. But it would be nice if the person on the other side would look at their own issues as well. But I know I have no control over that, Tim. I know that.

Well, well, you do have control over you. A boundary— a lot of people set boundaries and they're not real boundaries, they're threats. You can't talk to this guy. That's not a boundary. That's a need for control, right? A boundary is I won't be in a relationship where my wife and I are struggling and she's actively involving another man into our relationship at a level that poses a potential threat to our emotional connection in our marriage because she's choosing to emotionally connect with this man. So it's not she can't emotionally connect with me, right? It's, it's not that she can't emotionally connect in general because she can with this gentleman. She can't emotionally connect and is choosing not to do that with me and work on our marriage. For that, I can't be in a marriage like that. So that is a boundary. I will not participate in a marriage where this continues to occur and you don't want to work on our marriage. Those are boundaries. Attempts for control— are you making commands and demands about how you want her to act to accommodate how you feel? That's— those aren't boundaries. But boundaries are— they're not about what you need her to do. The boundary is, is about not you telling her what to do or how to act. It's about what you're gonna do and how you're gonna act.

Right. So, and hopefully she'll follow along, you know?

Well, no, hopefully you'll follow along.

Right, right.

Yeah. Hopefully you'll follow along with your own boundaries. When you set those boundaries, hopefully you will follow through on the boundaries you set. So here's the question, million-dollar question, brother. What boundaries do you need to set and what happens if they're broken? Because you know what a boundary proves? Whether or not you respect me. If I set a boundary with my wife and she violates the boundary, it proves that there's no respect. And a marriage without respect is automatically dysfunctional and unhealthy.

I know if I say the boundary, I want— I don't want to go out with those people anymore because I don't feel comfortable with it, that's not going to be something that she's going to agree to, you know.

But it doesn't matter that she agrees or not. That's not the point. My boundaries are not dependent on other people's behavior. My boundaries are dependent upon my values my core values, my morals, my ethics as a man, the standards that I have in my life. My boundaries are based on those things. It's a code that is instilled inside my life. Doesn't matter whether or not she— if she doesn't align with the boundaries that I set, you're revealing to me how you really feel about me and our marriage. And then the real question is, then what are we doing here? Then what are we doing?

Otherwise, we're not getting anywhere. We're just going through the same motions.

Yeah, and I would say this, I would say when you allow that to happen, you automatically get emasculated. Like, you have to stand up for yourself inside this marriage, just like your wife should be standing up for herself inside this marriage. It's like you guys have to stop sweeping everything under the rug all the time and not having the difficult conversations and living in denial. And, and just, it's easier for us to not talk about it because it's going to be a conflict and an argument. It's like, when are we gonna actually get honest about what are we doing here? What's going on with our marriage? What are we doing? You don't wanna work on it. I don't want you to be having an emotional connection with another gentleman whose wife has already determined it's unhealthy too. She's uncomfortable with it. I'm not the only one, right? Which proves that my level of being irrational or insecure about this is, is, is far less than it would be had I was just saying, hey, I don't want you to talk to that guy cuz I'm uncomfortable. This isn't about your past. It's not about a prior engagement when you were younger. It has nothing to do with that. Yeah, it has everything to do with boundaries that you're not setting in your marriage, and you're just getting walked over, and you're enabling patterns in your marriage that are unhealthy, and you're not doing anything about it. So stop being an enabler.

Yeah, the problem is that this— I enabled this for the last 10 years.

Yeah, that's— you got to stop though. Just because you did it for the last 10 years, George, doesn't mean that you need to beat yourself up for that and live in the shame and guilt, and then lay down kind of like the learned helplessness. You know what learned helplessness is, right?

Yeah. You basically, you become complacent in what you're, where you're at basically. Yeah.

They did an experiment. Martin Seligman did an experiment with dogs where he would put dogs in a cage and they would, it would have an electric floor in the cage and he would shock the dogs and shock the dogs and then the dogs couldn't get out of the cage. So they would just lay down and just take the shock. And then he took those dogs out of that cage and they put them— in this experiment, they put the dogs in another separate cage with a divider where the one half was an electric floor and the other wasn't. And he put other dogs that were not a part of the first experiment in that cage with the dogs who were part of the first experiment with the electric floor. And when they shocked the floor on the one side, the dogs who were not in the first experiment would just jump to the other side, to the safe side. But the dogs who were in the first experiment would just lay down and just take the shock because they learned helplessness. That's what you've done.

That's what I'm, I'm taking the shock.

You're taking the shock.

So stop. So if I set the boundary and she refuses—

no, no, no, you're, you're still not getting it, George. The boundary is not about her. It's not about whether or not she resists the boundary or doesn't respect. It's, it's about you. Following through on your boundaries. A boundary is not a boundary without an ultimatum. It's, it's what are you willing to do for the future of your life and marriage if the boundaries and the standards, the ethics, the morals, the code that you have as a man is not being respected? I'm not going to sit here and enable a dynamic with my wife that is clearly toxic and unhealthy. I'm not doing it. You have a sexless disconnected, emotionless marriage that's been going on now, what my wife claims, for 32 years. I'm isolated in my home. There's no physical affection. There's no emotional connection. My wife is actively speaking to another man on a daily basis that she then hides under the guise of a business relationship, but yet the guy's wife is uncomfortable about it. And anybody's wife who was uncomfortable about it, anybody's normal reaction would would be to that, oh yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. Yeah, you're right. Let's refrain from this and let's recalibrate this relationship. If the roles were reversed and you were talking to his wife and he messaged you and said, I want to be involved in these threads, this is becoming borderline inappropriate. If you truly had good boundaries, you would step back and say, hey, yeah, you know what? You're totally right. Inappropriate. Because I respect your marriage. That not only tells you that your wife doesn't respect your boundaries, she doesn't respect the other wife's boundaries, right?

Yeah.

So stop being an enabler, right? So here's the real question: where did you learn to become a people pleaser and an enabler?

I guess I've always had that. I've always had that, a people pleaser and enabler, because I never was able to— I would just go along with the flow and try to—

where did you learn that? Because you learned that before you entered your marriage. What you did was you shut down your feelings and you learned to give other people what they wanted from you, and you learned that your feelings aren't important. You didn't shut down because you emotionally neglected your wife for those 42 years, brother. You shut down because you learned that your emotions and how you feel and what you want and what you desire and what's going on with you is not important. It's not relevant compared to what other people want to do and how they feel. You learned that in your environment, in your childhood. I guarantee you, you learned that other people and how they feel and what's going on with them is more important than you. You learned that how you feel is not important, right?

You learn, you learn to be a team player with your, with your siblings, you know, and not express your needs above everybody else, you know. That's what I did.

Did you learn that in your childhood?

I would say yes, I did. Yeah, you know, I grew up, grew up one of 4 kids. We, we didn't have a lot of money, but, you know, it was just, uh, the way it was, you know. We basically had to, you know, no one really, you know, was ahead of anyone else. We were just always together, and basically we just— if somebody wanted to do something, we went along with it. We didn't set our own opinion.

So here's my closing question for you: what needs to happen for you to stop being an enabler and start setting boundaries in your marriage? Because that's the only hope that you will have a marriage.

I basically— I need to establish my needs and expectations in this relationship.

You need to firmly set boundaries, and you need to be willing to walk through with those, follow through with those boundaries.

And if she doesn't really want to establish, set those, then she doesn't respect me.

Correct.

My boundaries.

And you have all the information that you need about the future of your marriage, and then you can make a choice from that point, right? But you got to stop with the learned helplessness, brother. Thanks for coming on today.

No problem. Thank you for your feedback, Tim. I appreciate it. I, I learned a lot tonight. Thank you.

I'm gonna send you some stuff over right away. I'm gonna send you some resources. It's time to set some boundaries.

Yeah, yeah, please do. Thank you, brother.

God bless.

Talk soon.

Have a good night.

All right, love you.