Tim Arrigo argues that men going through separation shouldn't focus on winning their wife back. Instead, he says rebuild your identity, work on codependency, reconnect with God, and do the internal work first. Getting her back won't fix the real problem.
Men fall apart when their marriages fall apart because the majority of them are highly codependent. You look at the word codependency, you could take off the co and you can add chemical. You get chemical dependency. You take off the chemical and what do you get? Dependency. It's a dependency issue. And so the position that they're in when the marriage goes south is, I need my wife back. I need my wife back. No, brother, you need a relationship with you back. You need a relationship with God back. You need to get in alignment with the better version of who you are, period. My brother, the solution is not to go back into that state of dependency, which makes you desperate and makes the solution and the relief and the joy and the peace and the comfort and the security that you have inside dependent on someone else. Nobody in your life should ever have that power over you. You know what you should do? Be able to walk down the street and know that you're a catch. Know that you're a good man. Know that you bring something to the table inside this relationship. Why are you not able to recognize that? Because you're probably not giving yourself your best, which probably put you in the position that you're in inside your marriage. So what is the solution? Like, let me just get my wife back. Let me— I need my wife back. And here's the sad part. Their wife's in a good mood. They're on good terms with their wife and they're on cloud nine. Their wife's in a bad mood, their wife is triggered, and their whole day has gone down, downhill. It's gone south. Their moods fluctuate depending on the conditions inside their marriage. And let me tell you, if you're walking through a divorce or a separation, there's gonna be a lot of ups and downs. So you better learn to emotionally detach, and you better learn to become emotionally equipped to handle this adversity every step of the way. See, the marital issues are just a point of adversity in your life that truly reveal how you've lost your identity. Your identity was stuck in the marriage, just like your identity has been stuck in your business. You don't know your identity as a child of God. You don't know your identity in your true authentic self. Who are you when you're not married? Who are you outside of your business? Who are you? No, I didn't ask what you did. I asked who you were. Who are you? And see, if you can't describe who you are, then what does that say? That you've lost who you are. And so you're wanting the marriage back. Say, I need my wife back. I need my wife back. And what are you doing? You're operating from a position in your life— your wife doesn't want that. Do you think your wife wants the responsibility of your happiness, of your relief, of your security? No, she wants you to have that first so that burden is not on her to make you feel confident, comfortable, and secure inside the marriage, my brother. My brother, this is entirely about you. Don't you see this? Your loss of identity inside the marriage is what created the problem to begin with. So getting your wife back doesn't solve that, because being with your wife didn't cause the problem. One more time. Being with your wife didn't cause the problem. So stop assuming that getting your wife back or being back with your wife solves it. It doesn't. You gotta know yourself. You gotta know your heart. You gotta look inside you. You gotta be honest and real. You gotta do that work. You gotta find your strength. You gotta know who you are at the end of the day. Know what you bring to the table. You gotta do that work. You gotta evolve. Stop being in a position of dependency in your life. Stop trying to fix the fractures that you feel inside by looking outside at another person situation, thing. Sometimes we need to be stripped down to nothing and have nothing to realize that this is between me and God. This is a war between me and the old version of me. Because getting your wife back doesn't fix you, it just keeps you in that cycle of codependency.
