Tim Arrigo recounts a client call where a husband's wife grieves the man he used to be. He explains her pain through the five stages of grief and argues the husband must become that man again, not through ego but through servant leadership and real change.
Just got off the call with a client. He said, how do I fix my wife's pain? I said, number one way to fix your wife's pain is to first understand why she's in pain. And she's in pain because she lost her husband. She's been losing the man that she married, the man that said his vows on that day. She's slowly lost that man. The disintegration of her marriage and her self-esteem and her self-worth by him changing into a lesser version of himself and then expecting her to accept that. It's the 5 stages of grief and loss. What are they? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Your wife is in the depression stage, or she's in the anger stage. She moves through these stages of grief and loss. Why? Because she's losing you. She's losing the man that she married, a guy that just tries to use his power through mentality that he uses at work, and now he uses it at home, and he just neglects his wife. He can't respond, he just reacts. He's ego-driven, and he's in a position where he expects— he has an entitled attitude towards his marriage. He doesn't have servant leadership, he doesn't have decisive leadership, he doesn't have loving leadership. He has a massive ego with massive walls of self-deception and denial about the fact that he's going to lose one of his greatest assets. One of your greatest assets is your marriage. Did you work your whole life to kill your marriage? What does it pay to win everything on the external but lose everything on the internal as a result of it? Your wife is in pain because your wife wants back her husband, the man that she married, the man with compassion in his heart, the man with that look in his eyes where he would look at his wife with love and admiration and care. He would look at his wife like she truly mattered to him, like she was one of the most valuable, most important things that he ever had in his life. Cherished her. He cherished the time they spent together. You take it all for granted now. You know what? Here's the sad part. You know on the inside, yeah, your wife's not perfect, but you know on the inside that you're slowly losing the very person in your life that you said 'til death do us part.' With— you said those words. And see, now here you are, and you're going against the vows that you made, and your wife is hurt by that. So how do you fix your wife's pain? Why don't you gain back your edge? Why don't you gain back all the qualities that you lost as you slowly descended into this version of you? Don't be upset about the fact that your wife still believes in the fact that you can change. But you know what? Maybe she's just depressed about the fact that you don't notice and you don't feel like she's worth it.
