Marriage is difficult. It's hard. There's challenges. There's
unforeseen
circumstances that come about and just blindside us.
But there are also
9
different types of marriage and relationship pitfalls that you wanna avoid that'll make the marriage and the relationship
a lot easier. We're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 239
of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male.
The 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 certified coach Brian Goodwin as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the relax mail. I'm your host, Brian, and I'm a certified men's coach who assists men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their lives.
These men are struggling with their relationships, men who are trying to find ways to make their bride happy, but sadly, they end up making themselves more miserable in the process.
What do you do? How do you fix this? How do you change your approach to your marriage, and why is this sacred institute so full of strife and tension?
Well, we're gonna and we're gonna be fixing,
trying to fix a little bit of this this week because
we're talking about 9 different
pitfalls
that will just completely mess up your marriage, mess up your relationship.
And this is because a lot of the times when it comes to our our relationships, we wanna take a lot of stuff
very personally. We
things that are said, things that are done,
it all circles
around
the details and the specifics
of what is said.
And a lot of people wanna
put
power to that word.
They say
they'll say something that's supposed to be hurtful. And if you agree with what's being said, then, yeah, it's going to smart. It's gonna hurt your feelings.
But it's not the actual words that are hurting your feelings. It's the actual
agreement
with what was said. You added power
to the words. The words themselves are just vibrations.
You know? They're just words vibrations that are shaped by your mouth and your vocal cords, and that's all.
But there's a lot of other things that cause
problems
and and
and issues in a relationship.
And we're gonna start go ahead and jump right on in because there's, like I said, there's 9 of them. And, yeah,
they're
they can be tough that some of them
are easy to get around. Others are are a little more challenging. And the first one is that
the victim mindset. We struggle with a victim mindset. Everybody does. We
society has almost dipped them dipped everybody into this bath of let's be a victim.
And the victim mindset and the victim themselves
are just
a person who gets no respect, and rightfully so. And this is something that a lot of people
don't like to hear. Oh my gosh. You don't respect the victim? No. I don't respect the victim. Nobody respects the victim. Even the victim doesn't respect themselves.
Nobody respects the victim because
they are the victim.
Now there are true
victims,
people who and you can even still argue a bit about whether they
they brought the pain upon themselves
or if the
if it's something that's truly
random in in life and that you had no way of preparing for it. One of the, you know, good example is walking down
a street
and you get get robbed.
Is that
were you truly a victim? I mean, you could have
walked instead of walking down a dark street, you could have walked down a
a lit path. You could have walked been in a more busier area instead of walking alone. That mean, there's a lot of things and steps that you could have taken.
And, in
relationships,
falling to the victim
is a lot of the same thing.
When you start if, say, your wife
is
is nagging on you about mowing the lawn, well,
you're always picking on me blah blah blah. You know, we might come up with a story where we play the victim.
That's
not ever gonna be anything that really helps anybody out.
When you start playing the victim, you always pick on me, blah blah blah. 1, no one's gonna to respect somebody who says, you always pick on me. Alright? No one
everyone's gonna go, yeah. Okay, dude. You need need to grow a pair.
But, also,
you could keep that argument at bay
by, you know, mowing the lawn. You can always do that. You can
take action. You could take responsibility for your actions. Did you fail
to pay the electric bill?
If you did,
own up to it.
Own to own that to that dirt. Take the take a hold and firm hold of what your what your dirt is. Own your dirt. You will become a better man because of it. You'll become stronger
because you have chosen to actually take responsibility
for your actions or your well, even your lack of actions is actually an action. So if you want to have a better relationship, a better marriage, when you are responsible,
when you're taking responsibility
for your actions
and for your thoughts, because those are the 2 things you truly can control, then you're going to be ahead of anybody who wants to put try to play the victim. Because when you're a victim, you're
wearing your wife out.
She's having to first off try to
to fluff your ego back up because, oh, well, you know, you've you've you've hurt my feelings. No. She didn't hurt your feelings. You let your feelings get hurt because you had a thought.
But, again, you're playing the victim. She you're wanting to put all the responsibility of your emotions being
happy or sad or what over onto your wife's shoulders.
You played the victim.
All of a sudden, the other person has to come into rescuer mode, and that takes a lot of energy. That takes a lot of,
of determination and intuition
to get people to actually
do the work that you actually need to be doing yourself.
And when you fail to do that, you're going to tire your wife out. You're going to get her so fed up with the fact that you're stomping around being a petulant little child that
she's gonna end up
dropping you. And so, yeah, victim mindset is one of the biggest cancers
in a relationship. When you can stop playing the victim now don't doesn't matter whether the whether your wife is playing the victim or not. That is because, again, you can only control 2 things, your thoughts, your actions. You can't control your wife. And that's what the next actual pitfall is, believing that you can control another person.
Alright? When you try to control somebody else, when you try to to,
to manipulate a person into whatever, first off, they're gonna see right through that disguise. They're gonna see that you're
trying to manipulate
them emotionally into whatever. Nice guys are famous for doing this. We do things called covert contracts where we'll go off and we'll we'll clean the clean the floor. We'll we'll,
do the dishes and and wash the clean up the the bathroom,
clean the tub, clean the toilet, clean it all. We'll make this place sparkle
on the sole fact that we want our wife's clothes to suddenly magically fall off.
The only problem is is that we never bother to ask our wife if, hey. If I do all this, will you get naked for me?
And so when all of a sudden she doesn't just magically start having her clothes come off,
we get angry. We get
put out about the fact that she that this
isn't happening. And so
we can't we have to be able to understand that we do not control other people.
Our actions
can influence
another person,
but we cannot control them. I mean, look at the child. Look at a newborn baby. I mean, that little baby,
we should if we can control somebody, we should be able to control a little baby as to whether they're going to be cry or not or whether they're gonna be happy or not, and we can't.
Hell, we usually spend the 1st month just trying to figure out what in the world the little kid's trying to tell us. We put ourselves through so much
agony because we, again, we can't control. We can't make the child happy. We can't make the toddler happy because we tell them no, and they throw themselves on the floor
and and throw a wall eyed hissy fit. They're not going to be
of a we're not gonna be able to control
anything that they do.
They have their own thoughts. Your wife, again, has her own thoughts. You have your own thoughts. Your thoughts, your thoughts, your thoughts.
And what you believe those thoughts mean
doesn't necessarily mean what your wife thinks they mean. So you have to
stop trying to control her. Stop telling her, ah, you can't go over there. Well,
most people, especially if you're a gen x or if you most people, if you tell them you can't do that, they're gonna go,
watch me.
Check this out. I'm fixing to go do it just because you told me not to. And we can try to coerce. We can manipulate. We can threaten. We can do all this stuff. But, again, in the end, that person has to agree
with the threat or agree with the outcome
for it to have any effect on them. So, again, they have to decide. Yeah. I'm not gonna do this because he might beat me up. He I'm not gonna do this because he might go ahead and just
cut me off from, from any other resources
and run off. I am not going to to yell at my wife because then she might leave.
We can try to
manipulate all we want,
but if the person doesn't wanna be manipulated,
again, they're going to just they're gonna bowl over
anything, any threat that you try to make. They're gonna call you out on it. They're gonna call your bluff. And if you try to hold true,
then you're just making yourself out to being worse. So trying to control people makes you turn out to be an ass, and you don't wanna be an ass if you're trying to have a better, stronger,
more joint connection.
Another thing that you, that a lot of guys do
that
breaks down
relationships,
destroys marriages,
well, not necessarily destroy, but it it definitely does not help the relationship at all, is
when we get upset, we stonewall. We just turn shut down. We just alright. Yeah.
Uh-huh. Alright. Better.
And that's all we'll do. We're not helping
the situation.
What are the results that you want from your relationship?
A lot of most guys will say, we wanna have more sex and a better connection with our wife. We want our wives to be happier so that we they will be happy with us so they will show us love.
Okay?
Sitting there with your arms crossed
and not saying anything is not helping matters at all.
You're not helping
your your
your
results, whatever the results you want, because remember
your thoughts create your emotions, your emotions, create your actions, your actions, create your results.
So if you're thinking I'm just gonna shut down, she's she can't tell me what to, you know, she can't, she's gotta stop nagging me. That's a big one. Got yeah. I will hear guys talk about. Oh, she's just nagging all the time. Well, she's probably nagging for a reason, man. So, again, she's nagging all the time. She they're playing the victim in line, but then they as a means to combat the the
the nagging because they failed to uphold their responsibility,
they stonewall.
They want a better connection, but instead of they stonewall, they stop talking, which makes the wife
frustrated.
They so the wife nags, they get angry. Their action is to stonewall. The stonewall
causes the wife to get angry, frustrated. She stops talking. So you're breaking the connection even more.
That is an opposite of what you actually want, and that happens most of the times when you're being
unintentional in your actions.
While if she comes at you and she's nagging at you, if you stop and actually listen to what she says,
you could probably come up. You may not wanna mow the lawn right now. It may be a 104 degrees outside. You don't wanna mow the dead burn lawn right now. You're gonna do it tonight midnight when it's, you know, down at least to 85 degrees instead of instead of being
a 105.
You'll deal with the you'll deal with the, with the neighbors complaining later. And so we have to we have to have a means of connection. We have to talk. We have to have those conversations.
So you don't wanna control people and you can't do and you're not gonna control them by stonewalling because that's just not gonna work either.
So but you also because you can't control a person,
that blows the whole chance of you thinking that you can make your spouse happy or you're that you're or put on the responsibility on your spouse that you
make them happy. Alright? Or they are supposed to make you happy.
You can't make the other person happy because, again, your thoughts are your thoughts. That means your emotions, the emotions that you feel are based
solely on the emotions
that
you feel that you produce that are produced by your thoughts.
So trying to make your wife happy
will cause you to go into victim mindset again,
because all of a sudden I can't make her happy. I've tried everything. I can't make that woman happy. Well, yeah, you're right. You're not you can't make her happy.
So stop trying. You can could only control, again, 2 things. These are the major principles of things that I talk about. Those two things are your thoughts, your actions. You cannot make your spouse happy because you cannot control
her thoughts.
You can't control her emotions. So one of the best things you can actually do, one of the best gifts if you're struggling in a marriage or a relationship
is absolve
your spouse
from any responsibility
of making you happy. Now granted, that's going to set
her mind into a tailspin because all of a sudden she's like, I don't have to make him happy. Why does he not have to why do I not make him happy? Why do I not have to make him happy? What does what's this mean? What does and she's gonna go into her own little spiral of what ifs, and she's gonna spin out for a while.
And it's it is uncomfortable for us to look at and to see and for her to cope with,
but she will eventually come around to understanding that she gets to focus in on herself. She gets to try to make her own self
happy.
Because a lot of times, she's struggling with making herself happy. You're struggling with making yourself happy. So if you throw yours the responsibility and the controls to your emotional happiness to somebody else who's not even
understanding how they make themselves happy,
then how is that going to do you any good? If they can't make themselves happy, how do why do you expect them to be able to make you happy?
This is this is a big question. This is a question so many people do not understand. They do not grasp.
But yet,
so many times, divorces happen because one side or the other goes, well, they're just not making me happy, and so I'm I'm gonna find somebody else. Well, no. You're right. They can't make you and they're not gonna make you happy. They can't make you happy. It's impossible to make them make you happy,
and it's not because you're a miserable person.
It's because
they don't have that ability. We were not granted that by God. Alright? We don't
have never been given the ability
to go off and and have
control over somebody else's emotional well-being.
We
can help instill thoughts that might bring give them better ideas of of happiness,
but that's about the closest we can come to any type of control. We can share our thoughts,
and that's what coaching does is we I share thoughts,
differing thoughts,
and thoughts outside of the norm
that allow you to have a better and different view
of the world because
you a lot of times, we beat ourselves up over stuff that
just is not going
to serve in any form, fashion, or another.
So
when you worry about your wife being happy and or worry about the wife not making you happy,
know that that's you're in a pitfall, man. You're she can't.
And so you slokin' around,
playing the victim, again, it all kinda leads up to the victim mindset,
that victimhood
causes you to stay unhappy. If you wanna be happy, you have to make yourself happy,
and you do that by changing your thoughts. Now something else that actually helps a relationship
grow, especially
if you've been married for 20, 28 years like I have, if you've been married for several years and all of a sudden, you're you step back and you go notice we're not really having the best connections. We're not having the
types of interactions that I wish we had. By now, we should be, you know, the cute little old couple that goes walking around town and everybody goes, oh, that's cute.
But we're not. We just kinda she's in her room. I'm in the living room. We're just kinda doing our thing.
What's what gives here? Why are we not better connected?
That is
where discussions
and conversations
come into play.
So the next set of of of
pitfalls are actually
more about building a better connection. If you don't,
if you are
not being curious, which is the next one, you're
going to your your relationship's going to fall apart.
When you're not being curious
and having a curiosity
about your about your spouse,
they're going
to just not
sync up like they used to. You have to start continue to ask questions.
What is it about your
spouse
and why is it that all of a sudden they're interested in, I don't know, beekeeping?
And
why is that all of a sudden the passion that they have? Have you ever thought of asking it? Or is it just, oh, well, you know, it's just one of her new new things. She's into that. She'll be in in it for a couple weeks, and then she's done with it. Is it really?
Or is it that she's trying something
and because you show no interest and you show no support for her, she just she's trying to find something to connect with you? Just not and she's just failing to say that or verifies.
You know? Maybe you're the one who's jumping from passion to passion to passion, and she's just like, meh. And you're sitting there going, well, why does she not care about what I'm doing? Well,
because there's no curiosity there.
Why don't you ask her?
Why don't you find out the solution
and and start asking those questions
and listening to what she replies with? You become smarter. You become more connected the more you get her to talk.
And that's, like, well, that's the question
and the tricky part of it all is you have to actually get her to talk. You actually have to take the time
to set, look her in the face, look her in the eyes,
and ask,
so
why do I feel like you're not supporting me on this late latest
mania that I have?
And hear what she says.
It may be something that might hurt a little bit, might sting a little bit
because you agree. Yeah. Yeah. I've been
distant in a while. I'm
whatever.
Might be something that has
a big element of truth, and it might hurt a little bit because you agree with what she says.
But then again, it might be something that she, just her own observation and it and you're like, you wanna tell her, no, that's just that that's not what you're what it is. You got it all wrong. Well, you have to have
two way conversation. You don't want her to dismiss your thoughts.
Don't
dismiss hers.
So, get curious.
Don't dismiss.
Now, another one that causes a lot of people problem and it ties in with being curious
is
after you say I do
and a couple 4 years after that, especially after kids come along,
suddenly, you realize we haven't gone out on a date night in probably about a year and a half. What are we what are you gonna do then?
You know?
You we've dropped date nights, and then we sit back and go, well, why do we not ever feel all connected to each other no more?
That's the reason why, man.
You've not you're not taking the time to
date your girlfriend.
That woman that you dated for 2 years, y'all dated each other.
She was your girl. And all of a sudden, it's, oh, it's my it's my wife. Instead of saying, this is my girl, man. This is this is my number one babe.
Now it's
yeah. And this is my wife. My if you're as bad as I am there for a while, I was like, yep. Yep. And
forget to even introduce the wife to everybody around her. So
got many of many of discussion on that one that you wanna
introduce the wife. Alright.
Guys, that's that's that's a given. That's a that's a tip, not not a
not a pitfall.
But we have to have date nights. Alright? We have to start treating our wife as a girlfriend again.
Bringing flowers, sending putting out little notes, I love yous, and stuff. And,
yeah, it feels cheesy at the beginning, and that's good
because why we're it feels cheesy is because we're uncomfortable.
We're having thoughts about why a relation or why we have to do this and what she's going to think and our she's gonna think we're being just we're we're wanting something out of this. And then if you yeah. We do. We want something out of this. Not necessarily
always sex, but we wanna have a connection with our wife.
We want these connections. We want these interactions.
And to do that, we want to be able to date our wife and have a good time
with her.
And, yeah, go good time in any way you wanna describe it.
So
but
we have to stop dropping date nights. Start dating your wife again. The moment you start dating your wife again, you're gonna start getting a lot more curious about what it is she's interested in these days. And that's gonna bring everybody up and out. You're gonna see her happier
because there's a stronger connection. It allows her to relax a bit.
And be able to relax also brings goes into the next one, which is being able to laugh.
Sadly, as guys a lot of us guys, we tend to be these
overly stoic, not the properly stoic,
but because properly stoic men, it it is the domestication
of our emotions that we're after.
While those who are
who believe that we're supposed to be completely emotionless,
which is anybody from the current sis in current society, for whatever reason, society thinks that men aren't supposed to feel emotions.
I don't
buy that. I actually, anything,
society tells me, I do the opposite.
So if you're not seeing
what you want out of society, there's a good chance that we have to change.
And go in the opposite direction of what society wants
will
will help
you help you out tremendously. And part of that and to bring your wife into a better connection
is to allow her to laugh.
Do be the goofy guy. Yeah. Society
media likes to portray men as these big, dumb,
bumbling oafs,
and that is true. That's incorrect.
But
at the same time,
we are supposed to bring in the levity. Let's bring in the lightness, bring in the happiness into the family. And if we're wandering around being all moody and,
we're not gonna get anywhere. Alright? We're not giving our wife a reason to re to react and to relax and to and to soften herself
into this relationship.
If you allow her to have the time to
sit back and giggle a bit because, you know, you're
not and not necessarily just jumping into the bedroom and helicopter and at her, but, you know, doing something funny,
you know, playing a joke on yourself, little self deprecating humor is always wonderful.
And the moment you do that, you're going to end up having
a wife who is a lot softer and a lot
more inviting, and she's going to be more relaxed. And when she's more relaxed, she's gonna be more willing to actually
accept you
as the guy who is
here to make her day wonderful
and to help her have a good time. And so all that, just because you're able to do something that allows her to to laugh,
Laughing in strengthens helps strengthen a relationship in so many ways.
Another thing that helps another pitfall you wanna avoid, though, is taking words too seriously.
You always
let me down. That sounds serious,
but it no. It's not. It's they're just a set of words.
Do you agree with what was said?
Do I do you always let your wife down?
If you say, yeah,
then guess what? You're going to feel the weight of those words.
While if you
take the time and you
hear the words of what she's saying of she doesn't feel supported,
then you can actually start trying to get to
a position where you actually are, say, able to support her. When she says words,
a lot of times, we take the words to mean what we want them to mean. Again, we take the words to be very personal. Not that it's wrong, not that it's right. We just make them personal.
And so we start
we make these words mean things that
not not necessarily. Maybe she is just wanting to have a conversation.
Maybe she wants to be included in your life. Maybe that's why she wants to hear you talk about yourself a bit more
because
she wants to hear wants to be included in your world.
And so this is, again, why you wanna be curious. What is it about what she said
irritates you? And find out about that. And then what is it that she really wants to know? And then take what she says
and examine that.
Examine it by you bouncing them off of her. What do you actually mean by that?
And when you have those types of conversations, when you have those abilities to to share
those moments together,
you're going to grow and you're going to have even better
relationships.
You're gonna have better,
stronger,
more meaningful connections with your wife. And the last one is the toughest. The last
pitfall
that so many of us fall into
is that we leave disagreements
unfinished.
Often
relationship where where there's 2 people, 2 people, 2 opposing thoughts
See the same thing. I can look at a watch watch a Star Wars movie and have a good time. My wife can watch it and be bored out of her skull. Are she watching a different Star Wars movie? No.
The circumstances
are completely neutral until we apply a thought to it.
And so your wife,
when she says words and you say words,
y'all are going to incorporate
2 different meanings
because they're 2 humans with 2 different thoughts.
And so there's a lot of times there's going to be a lot of friction. There's gonna be a disagreement
to what the is being said.
And this is where we start to get conflict.
And so many of us are very conflict
avoidant. We start getting into fights or start getting an argument,
and it's victim, victim. I'm being victim, and and they throw that out and then run away,
or the other one just stonewalls and, again,
runs away, and they
wait until
the heat of that argument
calms down,
and then they come back trying to act like the fight never happened. And, yeah, you can pretend that the fight never happened, and she can pretend that the fight never happened. And
things can kinda get back together, but it's always gonna have that weird awkward sensation about it until you stand
face to face
with her and you hear what she says, she hears what you say, and you don't fall into the victim mindset.
You don't sit there and think, well, she's woke up today. She's out to get my goat. She's out to piss me off. No.
Assume.
Don't assume,
ill attention. Don't don't assume ill intentions.
Don't
go into the area of your oh, no. You're wrong. She's what if the other person's not wrong? They're just having their own experience. Right?
And then if you would take the, leaned in and started becoming more curious about what their complaint is
and without falling into the victimhood,
you will actually have better conversations
with each other. But that's the problem is we want to throw fall into the victim. Oh, well, I know. I'm just the I'm just a loser. I'm just the dad. I don't know what in the hell I'm talking about, and go stomp off. Then all of a sudden, wife has to come and rescue you. Well, that's gonna irk her. You're destroying the connection. You're destroying the trust. You're destroying everything that's needed
for a good romantic
connection
and strong marriage to come about.
So you have to learn how to talk to each other. You have to learn how to how to share
your thoughts
boldly.
Share your thoughts
with confidence that you are saying them correctly
and that you're going to allow your wife to have whatever emotion she wants to have. If she gets pissed off because you said something, okay. Did you say it right? Yes. Okay. If not, then maybe check and see if you can do a do over. That might help out tremendously to go off and say, you know, well, I I said that that sounded way better in my head than it actually came out. So let's try this again.
And if she agrees, then great. You can
have go through and resay it and maybe have have a better outcome.
But if you have a disagreement, if you have conflict, if you're having an argument and a fight,
don't run from it.
Because all you're gonna do is you're going to tear those connections apart,
and they're going to be weaker. But if you sit through and have a conversation
until you hit resolution,
those connections, even slightly frayed for a bit, are gonna rejoin, and they're gonna be stronger. And when you have those stronger connections, you're going to have a better marriage,
and you're going to understand each other a lot more.
But it takes work.
Marriage is not easy. Marriage is not for the faint of heart. As you've heard,
it is a lot of work
because you have 2 people
who make life e I mean, we're all full of emotions and then of some, humans and emotions are messy,
And that's what makes us so beautiful and so wonderful is the fact that we have these
insanely messy emotions that erupt and blow up at the most inopportune times because we had some thought. It happens,
and we're good,
and we're okay. And if you would like to be able to have
better, stronger,
more
in-depth emotions
and or not emotions,
more in-depth.
Well, you'll you'll have more in-depth emotions as we go through
and get coached with
about your about your relationships, but we have more in-depth relationships
where y'all are able to have those late night discussions again, where y'all
don't run away from from disagreements. Y'all actually lean into those disagreements because you know that they that conflict, that discomfort that you're feeling in that, all that anxiety that you feel because she's getting a little bit yell y and so you're getting a little bit yell y back,
you just go through that that that discomfort. All of a sudden, you find that on the other side of the discomfort is a better
relationship,
and I can help you with that. I can help you have a better, stronger relationship.
And if you're interested in it, you can always go down go to my, go to the website at relaxmail.com,
and you will see a place that you can actually get some go and get consultation. Or at the bottom of this
of the show notes here, you'll see a link that you will take you to relaxmail.comforward/lovebirds,
and you can actually
have
the better relationship. You can allow me to coach you into having that better, stronger relationship
if you're interested.
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and building their their group of their band of brothers. These are all important things that men do. Thanks to
relaxed male, they that message is getting out. And so you can actually share that with, with your your with your friends too.
So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Y'all take care. Y'all have a great rest of the week, and we will see y'all next Thursday. Till then.
Bye.