Tim Arrigo explains how men can respond when wives test them after being hurt. He argues that these moments are chances to prove consistent change through actions, not words, and that patience and accountability rebuild trust and safety in the relationship.
Sometimes your wife is checking your pulse to see if the old version of you is dead yet. Yeah, it's like a killer in a horror movie. Your wife is provoking you or antagonizing you or testing you to see how you'll handle it, to see how you'll handle yourself amidst the adversity in your relationship. So you have these tests, these opportunities. See, they're not triggers, they're opportunities. Is it an opportunity or is it a trigger? Is it a trigger or an opportunity? See, it's an opportunity for you to do what? For you to show up as somebody different. If you can create enough conscious awareness amidst that moment of that trigger, if you can step back and you can access your prefrontal cortex, your logical brain, which you'll be able to do is to be able to recognize one thing. Before your wife can learn to trust you again, she needs to learn that you're a safe person. Before your wife can trust you again, she needs to know, are you really serious about the changes that you're making, or is this just another temporary shift that you're making to manipulate her? A lot of times your wife doesn't believe in your behavior enough because you haven't been consistent. You don't have a good track record over a long period of time. Your lack of leadership, your lack of taking direction, the lack of accountability. But see, it's not what you need to say to win her back. It's what she needs to see in order to trust you again. When people like what they see, they're more likely to listen to what you say. So stop worrying about what she— you need to say to her and start worrying about what she needs to see from you. A lot of the times you're going to get tested, and you need to be strong enough in those moments to endure the test and understand it's not a test in a negative way. She's really testing to make sure that she's safe in the relationship again with you and invariably is not going to get hurt. When people don't want to get hurt, they want to assure that they're not going to get hurt, and so they engage in a lot of survival behaviors and defense mechanisms to try to protect themselves. Stop taking it personal, bro. Start seeing it for what it is and not what it appears to be. It's a way that your wife is trying to feel safe and protect yourself from being hurt. Why? Because you can't injure people and then determine how quickly they heal. You You don't get to inflict a wound and then determine how quickly somebody should heal. Be patient amidst that process. Learn to see it for what it is. It's not a trigger. It's an opportunity.
