You can’t heal what you hide

This message is to all the wives who have a husband who comes home and says, when he's asked if he's doing okay, I'm fine. See, all those men that hide behind the I'm fine mask, see, these are men who have never really truly learned how to open up with you. Men who've truly never learned how to express their true emotions. See, they can express anger, but that's the only acceptable emotion that they allow themselves to feel because it's the illusion of control in their life. See, men that wear the I'm fine mask, see, they're men that are suffering in silence. They're men that have suppressed their emotions. They're men that have buried their trauma. They're men that are disconnected from themselves, their children, and their wives. These are men that if you ask them how they really felt, they couldn't even tell you because they don't have much emotional intelligence. These are men that have learned to bottle up what they feel, discard what they feel, hide what's going on with them. And to develop a relationship with themselves where they judge, belittle, and criticize themselves for the littlest things. See, there's a difference between men like this and men who hold themselves accountable, build themselves up, speak truth over themselves, but still keep a positive mental attitude. See, men who bottle up their emotions, who hide their emotions, they don't have the ability to connect with you because they can't understand how you feel unless they understand how they feel first. See, emotional intelligence is a lot of different parts. It's empathy. It's understanding what somebody else might be going through emotionally. It's motivation. It's social skills, reflective listening, active listening. It's, it's relationship management. It's knowing, understanding your, your past and how it's affected you, your personal belief systems, the things that hinder you or inhibit your ability to connect with other people. And see, so many of these men have bottled up what's gone on with them as a way to survive. It's a survival mechanism. Because when you learn that self-awareness is a painful process, when you learn that introspect— introspection is painful and not beneficial in any way, then you learn how to not look inside, and your whole life becomes based on not being self-aware. If you through something painful earlier on in your life, there's nobody to talk to, nobody to open up with, right? If you get burned by other people, the people that are supposed to love you and care for you aren't able to, then you learn how to just shut it off. And you see it, you see it as a liability and a detriment and a hindrance to your progress as a man. And that might allow you to be really successful in business, but see, the double-edged sword is it destroys your family, destroys your marriage, it destroys your relationships. Why? Because, oh, you can shoot the shit with your buddies, but you can't have a deep emotional intimate connection with your wife. And then you get upset and you get in the position where you're like, you know what? And you just want to say, you know what, forget about it. And you want to throw it all away. Why? Because you know on the inside what you're really running from. And you know that in order to connect with your wife, you have to simultaneously confront that.