So many times when it comes to being married, we run into the problem of
we get
marriage, you know, roommate syndrome. We our marriage just kind of falls flat, and it there's nothing to it.
There's no spark. There's no
no excitement
about it. And so what do we do? How do we change that? Can you actually even rekindle a marriage? We're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 240
of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male,
a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host of certified coach Brian Goodwin as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Amen. Hello, and welcome to the relaxed mail. I'm your host Brian, and I am a certified men's coach to assist men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their life. These are the men that are struggling with their relationships, trying to find a way to make their bride happy yet or making themselves miserable in the process.
What are you to do? How are you to change your approach in marriage? Why is this sacred institution
such
a a mess of emotions
and strife and struggles?
Join me, and we're gonna discover exactly how you can actually relax
and have the marriage that you want. Wanna love, peace, and more. And today,
we're talking about
what happens after 10, 15, 20 years into a
relationship where we start to notice the roommate syndrome. We start noticing
the
the flames,
of passion don't burn nearly as hot as what they used to.
And we're we struggle with that, especially when
we try some stuff. We'll we'll,
we'll go in and we'll start trying to act like our
old selves back when we were, you know, 25,
26 years old.
We were a lot younger back when we didn't have all the fights and all the
disagreements
and the snipes
and and the hurt feelings that we've done before
before all of that ended up happening. Have and we try to show up like that, and we turn around and get ourselves rebuffed. We get shoved away, and we told, yeah, nice try. Daily dollar short type of stuff.
And we start to really think that
you can't rekindle a marriage once the fire has gone out. That's not true at all.
You get
you can rekindle a marriage. It just depends on what your thoughts are, and we're gonna kinda cover
how to rekindle a marriage. What are some steps? What are some things that you can actually do to get your
the passion in a marriage going again? The passion in a relationship, even if you aren't
married and say you have a you're you've been dating each other or living with each other for a long while and
the fire has gone out,
there is a way to spark it back up and get things going again.
And so the first thing you actually wanna look at on here is you wanna be honest
and not just honest with yourself, honest with your wife, honest with your girl,
honest
to the point to where it's not just
stating factual things.
You want to yes. You want to state the facts, but you also are going to want to be
emotionally honest.
This is why I did this. This is how I was feeling at that time.
You're not so much
vomiting
emotions all over your wife because it does not ever work. A woman will
zone out the moment a guy starts
talking about his emotions and sharing, you know, how he feels about this particular circumstance.
And it is not a
a conducive
form of communication
for guys to share with their wives.
So what we have to do is yeah. We wanna talk about
how we feel, what we were thinking at that time.
That will give us more
more information. That will give us the more of an opportunity to share with our wife and and give them the
the the knowledge
and the
openness that they're asking for. Because, I mean, meantime, these guys are being told. We've gotta share emotionally open up to our to our wives. And that's not necessarily the case,
but we do want to
include our wife into
the discussion. So when it's first starting off and you're wanting to start pivoting into a better marriage,
you're gonna have to do a little bit of the awkward thing. You're gonna overstep. You're gonna you're gonna notice when she when she glazes over that you're going into emotion land way too much.
But, you can
talk about
why and what you were thinking
behind
the
behind the emotions, then you're gonna be able to
start
building a decent foundation and that you're still a long ways off. This is just the, hey. I am announcing
a
change in in
the relationship.
Change in relationship.
And so how we can
can
improve
with that is that we're 1st off, like I said, that's the the emotions getting starting off with the full honesty is going to
to be
just the foundation. That's the base work you're announcing. Hey. I'm making some changes here. I'm gonna become a I'm working to become a better person,
and this is why this is what I've done in the past. I know that I've caused a lot of problems, yada yada yada.
From there, you have to start making the steps. You're not you can't just expect your wife to suddenly go, hey. Alright. Well, he's made all he's a new person. Poof. Well, all things have all changed. No.
This does it doesn't work like that at all.
It doesn't help
for you to just even do that because you're just setting yourself up for more failure.
Moment you go off and say, hey. I'm going to be becoming a better man,
And then you go back and sit on the couch. Your wife, your girlfriend are gonna go, there's that better man. Yep. Same as always. Just being the bump on a log. You've not you haven't changed for me at all. You're
just the same guy. You've made that promise before, and you're gone back and just done the the same thing time and time again.
So you're gonna have to show her that, one, you're actually making the changes. You are the change, and you don't really actually have to step walk into into the,
the the room and go, I am a new man.
It
doesn't you know, you might get a little bit of a chuckle out of. You may get a little bit of laugh, but you're not going to get
a standing ovation or bravo as in
that you have made this, announcement.
So
you're
to to be able to
rekindle a marriage, you're gonna have to be ready for
the long haul.
You're gonna have to take the time to
go
all out and be willing to take the needed steps.
And there's more steps to it. There and what those steps are gonna be are gonna be different from one relationship to the next.
So what you're wanting to do is
you're gonna have to do a lot of experiments.
But a couple of the things that I wanna recommend
are some good starting places, at least places that you can
get a good idea of what
is needed. And first one is just start making thoughtful gestures.
Go back to dating your wife. It's a good way to look at that
thoughtful gestures. Are you start bringing her
flowers
and bringing her
gifts and not just showering her with them, but it's because, I mean, you do have
a lot more bills now than you did back when y'all first were dating. But at the same time,
show her that you are thinking of her, sending your text messages from time to time.
Write out a whole page,
write her a love note.
There's a lost art. Actually, write a love letter. Put it in an envelope. Write it down at her address. Drop it in mail.
And 2, 3, 4, 5, depending on how long it takes for your mail to get to where it from place a to place b.
It can it could take a little bit, but still,
it will be just a surprise letter that arrives in the mail. And there is something about a letter in the mail that just
is is a
an attention getter.
We don't we're not used to getting letters in the mail anymore. And that's email has has ruined a lot of that. Text messaging has ruined that even more.
But to take the time to write out a love letter
and to express
to put the time because it does. It takes a lot of time. Not just the one where you sit down and you tell, don't and, for god's sake, don't let have AI do it because, no,
you want it written in your handwriting,
but she can't read it. Doesn't matter.
Write it in your handwriting.
Write it in your
in your own words,
and then send it off to her. Or just leave it sitting on a,
in in an envelope by by her coffee cup,
or just write little little love notes. I mean, there's a lot of things, a little thoughtful gestures that you can do, Things that let her know that you have taken the time to
remind her that you are thinking of her.
Another thing you can do, and some people
scoff at love the whole theory and idea of love languages,
but there's there is something to that. And so if you've not ever tried
looking to see or in looking into what, the 5 love languages are, you can always go and to, I think it's 5 lovelanguages.com,
and they've actually got a quiz there. But the 5 love languages are acts of service, physical contact, words of affirmation, gifts, and quality time.
And we usually have 2 that really
ring
true to us.
And what rings true to us and what rings true to our spouse,
2 different critters altogether. You may be and most guys are physical contact. We like physical contact and then usually either acts of service or jam for affirmation
are the 2, the other 2. And so and whichever one, some guys who have,
physical contact is a little bit lower than words of affirmation. They would rather have an attaboy than they would have a handy.
It it just some guys are like that.
But
when it comes to
your what your wife likes, it she may be quality time and acts of service. So maybe
she's one who does really respond to you just randomly going in and cleaning up the, cleaning up the kitchen, not saying anything, not expecting
anything from it either.
You may be the one it may be a an act of service that you go out and you grab her shoes out of the out of the garage,
and you keep them, bring them inside so they'll be warm in the wintertime
so that she didn't have to put her feet in in cold shoes.
So whatever the acts of service are, we express and talk about what those acts of service are and, are not just acts of service, but, 5 love languages are. And as we continue to have those conversations
and we talk about it and we display
those those acts and those gestures,
we
are starting to build
a little bit more
of the foundation and a little bit of a platform
for the
marriage to rekindle. Now, other things that you can do is actually get curious.
When it comes to having a strong emotional connection with your spouse, with anybody,
talking is the way we do that. That is our number one form of communication. We convey a lot more. Now we add our
our facial expressions and our body expressions and things like that.
Yet,
when we are talking with people,
many times we're so busy wanting to talk about what other people are thinking
and what somebody says, I've gotta reply for that and we've gotta reply for this. And those are ways
of talking. But if you want to really build a strong,
incredibly,
incredible
relationship
with somebody, get curious about them. If you're wanting to have bond and have a better connection with your child, with your son, your
daughter, and you notice they play video games, but you don't, then sit down by them. You don't have to play. Just ask questions about it. Get to understand.
Come to understand what their world is about. Why do they do what they're doing the way they're doing it?
That type of thing. So get curious. Stay curious. Ask questions about your wife. Why does she like this show? And not to just scoff at it, not to to make,
light of it, but just so that you come to understand
what it is about the television show she likes. Maybe she likes, God forbid, the Kardashians.
You can try to understand. Try to come to to an a,
an understanding is what it is about the car. And most of the time, I like for my wife. I mean, she it's just she says because they're so
absurd
the absurdity
of what they do is is beyond
compare. And so it's just one of those where she just kinda stands around
and and watches the show and is gobsmacked by the the stupidity of these
this house full of women.
And the same for, like, the house real housewife series and things like that. And I'm always having trying to understand why she watches these reality television shows.
And she does. She watches them. Why? Because she likes them. Alright. Cool.
But
we get curious about it and we are able to come to understand
what it is. And then you also find little
elements of
ahas
in that. Those when you're staying curious and you're asking her questions, you're actually developing more quality
time
in the quantity of time that you spend together.
Now when it comes to whatever it is you're doing with within your marriage, if whatever steps you're trying to take to change,
you wanna pay attention to the thoughts that you're actually having.
Because this will this will will
hamstring
you more times than
I care to admit
because I've done this.
You have because our thoughts are the
our thoughts create our emotions.
So we have a circumstance,
say
the wife, I don't know where she sighs.
What does that mean?
And we start having that thought. What does that mean? Oh, she is pissed at me.
Well, you start getting a little nervous. You start, you start asking her, are you okay? And she's like, yeah.
Well, are you sure? You don't sound like you're okay. Yeah. I'm fine.
You had the thought of she's mad. You start getting a little anxious.
You start ask bombarding her with questions.
And because you're doing that, you're and you're lost in the thought that she is mad at you.
You end up invariably making her mad at you because you won't drop the issue.
Your thoughts create your emotions. Your emotions create your actions. Your actions create your results.
So what
thoughts you have is going to create your results. Your thoughts lead your results every single time.
Now your whatever
the circumstance is, that's just, that's just an event that has happened in your life. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just an event. It's it's just
there.
And it's not, it's, it's a neutral event until you apply a thought to
it. Now, once you have a thought you're gonna decide, oh, that was something really good. Or that was something, it was something really bad.
And if you
don't pay attention to what your thoughts are, a lot of times you're going to go down a very an an unintentional
direction. And this is going to cause you to
separate
and disconnect a lot more than it is going to allow you to connect. So you have to start paying attention to what your thoughts are. Those thoughts will allow you to have lead you to the the results that you're wanting. And a good example is of this is
how many people have
had mental fights with your spouse, your girlfriend, whatever.
I know I've had quite a few of them. I've done it multiple times where I'm sitting there
and all of a sudden, not whatever reason, my brain kicks off and I'm into
a a heated discussion with my wife. And we keep having discussion, and I've decided, I'm gonna just show her, and I give her all the what for's and where are the's and everything else that I could all the evidence, all the surmountable
evidence. I just bury her in the in the facts, and I
feel better about myself.
The problem that comes with that is that you actually are develop
planting a little seed of disrespect in the back of your head.
And this was evident because I used to do this all the time where I was just having a mental argument, and I was just
just laying in there,
giving out all my resentment and and frustrations and all that onto her. And
our we'd have actual arguments, and no, I wouldn't anywhere near as
verbally eloquent as,
in real life as I am in my head.
And so
we would just wind up having a bunch of
arguments and and hurt feelings and all that.
That is until
I ended up hearing somebody say, stop
beating your wife in in mental argue in those mental arguments. Let your wife win from time to time. I was like,
who's who's gonna know? Who cares?
But I went ahead and I was like, oh, let's try this. Let's you see what happens after a particularly
decent,
decent disagreement that we had. And I was like, alright. Let's try this out. And
I did. And as I through the couple I don't know. Probably about a month, month and a half. Anytime I had a mental argument
that I caught myself having, I would
I would
just I agree. You're right. And I would just let her win
whatever she stated her side of the the of the the argument was in my head.
And
sure enough,
several time the the this the arguments and the disagreements that we were having at home in real life
started to fade. They became fewer and fewer and fewer,
and we started having
more actual discussions.
Did we agree all the time? No. Did we still have fights? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We still have those elements of conflict, and those elements' conflicts are actually not something you wanna want run away from.
Those are elements where we want to actually
go and and come to a conclusion with that discussion.
It yeah. We're
both of us are fighting to
stay connected. We're both wanting to make sure that we have
a a healthy
end result.
But for that to really be the case, we have to stop
and
and make sure that the the fight itself is actually reconciled. So we've we come to a conclusion. We come to the end,
and we are coming together to reconnect.
And
when you're, when you do that, you're going to
really
have stronger connections.
And that happens because
you're 1
you're not your life is not dependent upon,
you know, the the
your wife and what she wants to wants to,
wants to have have done. Your your her her
her ideas and your ideas are going to smack together. They're gonna just head butt from time to time.
But what you take those thoughts to mean
and what is actually the meaning behind them are gonna be 2 separate things. And if you let your thoughts run into the
into the fight or flight phrase,
you're not gonna listen to what she has to say, and you're not gonna come to understand what it is she has to say. And you're going to break down those lines of communication.
And
then you're going to be worse off than you were before. So you want to make sure that you're having
good and effective communication. And one of the important ways is just let your wife win the mental arguments. It's not important. She's not gonna know that she's won.
Your your friends ain't gonna know that she's won. You're just you're the only one who knows, and you can make it mean whatever you wanna make it mean.
But the thing is is when you do that, you
are starting to actually show up in the marriage the way you want to. Instead of showing up in marriage with some resentment
because, you know, she is you've shown her. You've showed all the disrespect in your mind to her, so now it's time for her to just
be, you know, just to be there. Well, no. That's not going to help.
So
the way you want to be able to make sure that you have that marriage, whatever your marriage,
your ideal marriage, whatever that ends up looking like,
you want to do start looking and describing
and having an idea of what that is.
What is your ideal marriage? What is your ideal relationship?
How do you
want that relationship to be?
Is it,
you know,
sex, 3 times a day, all all week long every day of the of the month?
Or is it just that you want to have
a a marriage and a relationship
where you feel
that everything is
where you have the feeling of fulfillment.
Is that the do you wanna have the relationship that
allows you to
express what your what your desires are? Express what your your
hang ups are,
and be able to talk those through with your wife?
Or would you like to rather have a marriage that is, say,
more content with
with what's
going on financially. These are all things that you can have in your marriage.
But how do you have those elements in your marriage? Well, you have to decide what do you what you want.
Decide what you want.
Make the make the choice
and then start showing up to for to the marriage as that,
as the confident man, as the man who is
sure of himself.
And, yeah, we're gonna fail. We're gonna stumble. There's gonna be times your wife says something. All of a sudden, you turn back to the little stumbling. Well, you know, well, no. I'm sorry, ma'am. And you're gonna become the people pleaser. You're gonna wanna run into the people pleasing mode, become the nice guy.
And when you catch yourself doing that, you can turn it off. Go, no. No. We're not doing that no more.
But to be able to show up how you want, you have to make the decision before
anything else.
How do you wanna show up for the marriage? For me, I wanna show up as a confident,
masculine man who helps his wife have a wonderful life on herself.
And to do that, I have to know who she is. I have to know what she wants. I have to know I have to be able to have the conversations that are needed
so that we can do
those particular things. So we I have to
decide what does it look like to be
a strong masculine man. What does it mean to be and to be able to do any of those, I have to follow by 4 pill pillars of a relaxed male.
I have to have a good strong mind, body, soul, and have my
have my community
of other guys that I talk to on a regular basis so that I can present myself to my wife
as a strong, confident man.
Now another thing that you want
that helps to have a strong and rekindle the the the marriage
is
the the 6 by 6
rule for hugs.
And I got this out of a, out of a book called the,
How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.
And
the fact that we do
when we have skin skin contact,
whether
it's does not necessarily have to be sex, but it's just when we have,
skin to skin contact, we develop. We release oxytocin, serotonin, and all the other feel good hormones and and,
and neuroceptors
that that,
in our brain.
And so one of the things that actually helps they've seen help create better connections with,
with their spouses is when you hug your spouse
for 6 seconds, at the minimum,
6 seconds,
6 times a day, which is about there's nothing more than it's it it equals out to be in 36 seconds total.
But just going in, giving her a hug,
don't have to say anything. You just count in your head, you know, 1,001,002,
1,003,
1,004,
1,005, 1,006.
There there you go. That was a full hug.
Do that 5 more times after that
and you will see
that she actually opens
up to the discussions, opens up to
to to inquiries and and topics of of
of conversation
a lot readily or not more not more readily, but more
available
to those conversations
as you continue
hugging
it out. Because our intimacy
that we're wanting that allows for our the passion to be rekindled in in a marriage.
That intimacy is a muscle.
And it's not just a muscle in the in the wife's side. It's not just a muscle on the guy's side. It's muscle that both of us have to exercise
because it's not necessarily
the passion
for
sex that
increases the flame of
of a relationship. Though sex is important for relationships,
it is the thoughts that we have behind
the relationship,
behind what causes us to have sex. Those thoughts those those thoughts, again, create emotions. So we have the thoughts that creates our
desire to have sex with our wife, with our spouse,
and we have to keep working on that. We have to keep
exercising that because it's easy. We can fall fall through the wayside, and all of a sudden sex is
once every other, you know, every other month, and then it veers down to once every 6 months. And
then eventually, it's for your birthday, and and all of a sudden, you feel like Dale from the king of the hill. And it's
and it's sad. And the connection's just not there anymore,
though it can,
come back. But you have to be intentional
in your thoughts and your actions
and all these and work on how to build the intimacy and hugging it out. And as y'all go walking down the street instead of just, you know, you're walking
4 steps ahead of her or 4 steps behind her or even side by side, you reach out and you hold her hand or you put your you hold her arm or or something like that. I'm always offer my arm to my wife, so and she usually grabs on that to it unless I said something that just really pisses her off. And then she even there's times that she's still mad at me, and she will still grab a hold of it.
It is the acts
of
of showing that you care. Again, like I said at the beginning, you have to sit there and start making thoughtful gestures.
And all the gestures that you make that are towards your wife
need to be
ones of of of intentional
thoughts, intentional
actions
to show her, a, that you still cared tremendously
for her.
Too, that she is still your girlfriend and you're you're going to start dating her more often. And then you ask her, literally ask her instead of just walking out and, hey, go ahead and get dressed. We're gonna go out to eat tonight. Ask her just like, hey, Friday night. Do you wanna go,
mind if I take you out on a date? And you say it as a date?
You're gonna see something in behind her eyes perk up. She's going to light up just a little bit more than normal because
holy smokes. I haven't gone out on a date in
in 20 years if you've been married. I mean, for me, it's been 28 years,
and it takes a little while.
And so we get
we get our ourselves
into routines,
and it's one of the biggest problems with being married for
for so long is that we stop
the meaningful things because we have worked ourselves to just survival mode. Let's just make sure we get to keep the kids alive. Alright. We've got the kids still alive. Let's make sure we still have food. We got the lights on. The cable's on. Everything's on that we need to have on. We're great.
I'm going to work, coming back from work, going to work, coming back from work. We stop
hugging it out. We stop holding hands. We stop having those discussion hours. There's another thing that you could actually do is sit down and have
just sit down,
allocate an hour, maybe 8 o'clock every Saturday night. Y'all sit down and y'all talk
about something.
I'm working right now, I'm working on a a PDF that'll be 800
conversational
questions that you
and your wife can have. And I'll keep keep you updated. Is there any particular
topic
that of discussion that you would like to have have some questions thrown in? Let me know. You can reach over to me, brian with a y at relaxed mail dot com.
And let me know. Hey. I'd like to see what some questions about this. That was really disgusting, wasn't it?
Nothing like having spit flying out of your mouth, but alright.
So
we can we can have
these discussion hours. We can sit down and allocate. Then the discussion may only last 5 minutes, or it may last an hour. It may last 6 hours. Who knows?
But as long as you've been intentional on, wait, we're gonna talk for an hour here,
and you do,
great. If you don't, great. At least you did it. At least you'd asked a a harebrained question
and y'all handed to a topic of discussion for 5, 10, 20, 60, 120,
375
hour,
minutes. It doesn't matter.
But as long as you did it and you tried reaching out and you offered that olive branch and talked and you talked and you talked and you talked. Because the biggest thing about it is after all you've done, all that you've said, you wanna still
keep trying.
The more you keep trying, the more results you will have. You're gonna fail. You're gonna mess up. You're gonna piss her off. And there's gonna be time she's gonna piss you off, and that's okay.
Because
after you've gone gone through and gotten gotten mad at each other,
you can come back. You can reconcile. You can reconnect.
No one says that once you get mad at your wife, you have to stay in your corner for the next 5 hours. No. You just
got mad. You got said what was said. You probably said broke the 97% rule, which if you don't know, 97% rule, there's 97% of the dumb things you actually wanna say. Don't say them.
And so when you get finished with the argument, with that discussion, with that that bit of of
of arguments
of of that of conflict,
come back together,
resolve
the hurt,
and that resolve the the the the
the problem,
and then you can carry on. And you'll actually start realizing that all of a sudden y'all have
better
relationships because you're willing to stick it out. She's not scared that you're gonna just give up and leave, and you're not scared because she sees that you are actually
adequate of a man because you're willing to stay and talk it through.
So, guys, with that, I'm gonna say thanks a lot for listening.
If if you have any comments, questions, anything like that, you can also you can always send me an email over at brian with a y at relax mail dot com. If you would like help to building your relationship a little bit more, making your relationship stronger,
You can do so by going over to relaxmail.comforward/lovebirds,
altogether one word.
And,
and we can set up a time. We can have a discussion, and we can take that next step
of having the life that you actually want, having the marriage that you desire.
So, guys, with that, if you have any
questions, please, please share share them. You can also reach me over on any of the of the social media sites. And with that, guys, I'm gonna let you go. Y'all have a great rest of the week, and we'll talk to you all then.
So till then
that was really awkward. Sorry.
So till then, guys.
Bye.