A man explains how husbands provoke their wives into emotional outbursts, then blame the wives for reacting. He lists the tactics: gaslighting, manipulation, contempt, stonewalling. Real change requires owning your role completely, not therapy or excuses, and finding men who will hold you accountable.
You know why your wife reacts the way that she does? You know why you keep blaming your wife? Is because you're taking your wife to that place emotionally. It's called reactive abuse when you push your wife to her breaking point and then she emotionally reacts, and then you point the finger at her for something that you antagonized. See, that's a part of the way that you prevent yourself from having to look in the mirror and acknowledge all of the dysfunctional behavior that you engage in. See, when your wife feels like she's being gaslit, when your wife feels manipulated, when your wife feels unseen and unheard, when your wife has to experience the contempt, the stonewalling, the defensiveness, the criticism, the lack of emotional connection, the lies, the deceit, the mistrust, and then your gets reactive about it, you play the victim and blame her for the way she reacts so that you could go back to living in denial about the fact that you caused it. And see, this is a way in the relationship that you remain in a state of denial and self-deception. Your walls of self-deception are thick, bro. But check it out. I see right through it. I see right through it. And I'm not the only one. This is going to cost you everything if you don't stop. It's going to cost you everything, man. And I want to tell you right now, the saddest part about all this is that you want nothing more. You crave emotional intimacy and connection, but yet you're mistrusting trustful of other people. You crave vulnerability. You crave that, but yet you won't open up. You want permission to do the work. That's why finding a brotherhood of men who are committed to being better fathers, better husbands, better leaders, better brothers. So when you find men in your life that radically hold you accountable to being the best version of you, better keep those men close to you. Because guess what? Men like that don't come around very often. Men that want you to be the best version of you, those are men that truly love you. Men that are willing to call you out because they see you self-sabotage, they see you enter a state every single day that's completely counterproductive to where you want to be and what you say you want for your life. You need people like that in your life. You need people like that in your life. You have a beautiful family, man. Look what's right in front of you. Your whole entire life, this is what you wanted. But isn't it ironic that you're the one who destroys it? And then as that thing is being destroyed and as that thing is on fire, you blame it for going up in flames. But let me ask you this: who struck the match? You can't be the arson. You can't be the arsonist. To your own marriage and then blame the marriage for being on fire. See, you got to be willing to look within yourself. You got to be willing to take radical acceptance and extreme ownership over the issue, because guess what? Who's going to solve it? If you're not willing to take action? Who's going to solve it if you're not willing to lead that charge? To lead? You're expecting somebody else to solve your marital issues before you do? That's why all the guys in my program get radical transformations. Because why? Because I believe that you have what it takes to solve this issue far more than any marriage counselor, because they're not in the relationship. You are. If you have the right tools and if you have the right people in your life, you can solve this. But it begins with you. It begins with you. It begins with you having a brutally honest conversation with yourself. About why you start fires. A brutally honest conversation with yourself about why you antagonize people the way that you do, about why you fear vulnerability the way you do, about why You don't love yourself the way you should, because no man that truly loves himself or his life would blow it up.
