Bryan Goodwin: Are you tolerating
something in your marriage, or are you accepting? Now there's a big difference, and we're gonna talk about why one is actually better than the other. One will actually produce a better
experience in your relationship. Let's put that away over the other. And we're gonna be talking about, are you accepting or are you just tolerating
on episode number two seventy of the relaxed male? This is The Relaxed Male,
Bryan Goodwin: 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 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 Mill. I'm your host, Brian.
Bryan Goodwin: And
I am so glad to see that you have taken
the initiative to actually take on
having the better marriage. Let's have the better relationship, have the
the
relationships with our children that we have been wanting,
having the
marriage that we have been craving.
And we do that by,
at the base, changing our thoughts.
And we so many times, our thoughts get us into so much trouble because we
wanna think, well, this is happening. And
whatever that that circumstance
is,
our thoughts will create our results.
And one of the instances of this is what we're gonna be talking about today, and that is are you accepting
or you're are you just tolerating? And there is a big difference between the two and why accepting actually allows for your relationship to be better. We're,
just not even gonna bury the lead. Let's just blow it on out there.
And so
but before we get started, wanted to just say that if during the show, if you end up hearing something that you like or hear something that
really just resonates with you,
please, if this is your first time listening,
bring up the, show on
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Also, if you're interested in reaching out, touching base, you have a question, a comment about what's being said on the show or being or wanna know a little more detail, you can always send me an email over brianwithay@relaxedmail.com.
Look, I'll see it and and answer them back, and, we can have we can have
a a good, a good discussion through email and and
and or I can receive the the question and and be able to, share it on the
podcast if you if you choose.
So anyhow,
getting started, let's dive on in as I don't wanna waste your time too terribly much, and
wanna ask,
in your relationship, there's a lot of things that
our wife does that we don't like.
There's a lot of things that
our wife
doesn't like about us or doesn't like that we do.
You know, you'll hear the the
stereotypical. He leaves his underwear on the floor all the time. He just takes his clothes off, drops them on the floor, and goes about, I'm not his mother. You know, that type of stuff.
It also could be that, you know, you're
you're you've got your complaints about the wife and everybody has their types of complaints. And the problem that we often have with these complaints is that we're just tolerating
these
idiosyncrasies.
Most of the time, it's just the idiosyncrasies that, you know, your wife doesn't go to bed at normal time, and you're you've gotta go to bed at,
at nine so that you can get up, go to work early, whatever.
Or she
she's
telling you how
you don't care about her because you don't take out the trash in the morning. You know, whatever the pro whatever the issue is, whatever the problem is that y'all are having. A lot of it is
the
the arguments that you have are based upon
what you're just tolerating.
And you hear in society, we're we're supposed to be more tolerant. We're supposed to tolerate, you know,
the things that we don't like.
And I'm here to say, really? I don't that just doesn't sound
very pleasant. Doesn't sound like something that would
allow me to have the best life that I wanna have.
And if I am sitting here just tolerating
my wife
blatantly disrespecting me,
then I'm not going to have the respect
that I deserve. She I am just,
tolerating and allowing her to just step all over me. And she's if she's doing the same thing, then, again,
it's not causing you any
it's not causing you any harm, but it's causing a lot of harm in the in the relationship. If you're not respecting your wife
and she's just tolerating it, then
eventually,
the pre the the pressure
of that tolerance
is going to build up till somebody snaps. Somebody
blows up and just goes, what in the hell's going on? You know, they're gonna we're you're gonna have that 02:00 in the morning fight
or that talk,
it's more more likely at 02:00 in the morning of
I'm done.
I'm not playing this game no more.
I'm getting off the ride
and
she falls for a divorce
or you do
either one.
And that all happens because of tolerant,
tolerating,
the different
whatever's going on in your life. Now
the problem with tolerating is
the biggest part is that you're not allowing whatever the
the circumstances.
And we're gonna talk about what allowing actually means
because
that sounds like, oh, well, I'm supposed to just let her, you know, spend money without any
without any any
word. No. That's again, that's tolerating. When you're,
when because you're if you're going coming at her with the thought of you're spending all the money. We have no savings. We're we've gotta start saving money, and you're just,
you know, you're tensed up about it.
You're passing your your power over to the the fact that the wife is spending all the money.
You're
you're robbing yourself
of
any agency
in what's what you're doing. When you're tolerating
her overspending, you're not talking about the overspending. You're not addressing the problem,
that's come showing up. You're stating, hey.
She's gonna she spends the money. She's blowing she's blowing the money left, right, and center.
She's gonna learn eventually that you can't do that. And okay. Yeah. She will. She'll eventually learn. And one day, she's gonna wind up being 65. You go, well, why don't we have any savings? It's like, well, let's look here. You spent $3,000,
in,
on on clothes and dresses for January alone of 2025.
February was, thankfully, is a shorter month, so it was only $2,000
that day that month. You spent $3,000
in March,
you know, and, you know, you go through there and you go, this is all the money that you spent. You thought you had to have it. And
now there's a lot more to
the relationship,
and
you wanna dip down and start looking at what is it she's trying to
trying to fill with doing all those types of purchase. She's doing overspending. I mean, that's something most guys will kinda complain about. Now us guys, we overspend too.
I'm not gonna leave you off, put you,
let you just walk away scot free on this. We have our own problems that our wives have to tolerate
or doesn't have to tolerate, but they choose to tolerate.
But when you're
just tolerating something, doesn't that doesn't mean you're allowing
whatever the circumstance is. You're not allowing
the spending of vast amounts of money.
You're just not speaking up. You're you're still
you're being very intolerant, which is fine because
society, if you're not being tolerant, oh my God, you're being so intolerant except for the folks that are being intolerant or be being very intolerant
or being very intolerant or being very intolerant.
There's way too much tolerance stocks.
And they're so we have
a kinda have a conundrum because if you're
you're not necessarily
allowing
a bad behavior, say your son is
getting poor grades.
Are you tall and you're choosing to tolerate it. You're not necessarily
allowing him to have poor grades because you're just
you're not saying anything.
You're
just you're just kinda tolerating. You still have
the thoughts around whatever the topic is. So if you're tolerating the fact that you are having a
unsatisfactory
love life,
and you're still sitting there thinking that, well, she's
I just have to I just have to deal with the fact that she's
she doesn't like sex.
Alright? Now does she like sex? Does she not like I don't know. You don't know.
You have to set and have to do the work of sitting down and having conversations with her
and hearing
what it is she's actually saying
before you can actually
make
a a judgment call on whether she is actually
not liking sex
or just
maybe it's the way you presenting sex that is real
a real big put off to her.
So how do you how do you approach her in a way that turns her on to let her know that, hey. You're you
feel a little Randy here. Let's let's go play a little bit.
How do you say that? Well, if you're sitting there just with your in a in a butt hurt mode
because, you know, she doesn't wanna have sex. You made your mind up. She doesn't wanna have sex. She doesn't like sex. She doesn't care for sex.
She's you know, the the whole statement that I I'm still fight with that women don't like sex except for 30 circumstances that they're wanting they're looking for a man, they're trying to keep a man, or they're wanting kids. Other than that,
the the rare unicorn
is happens from time to time, but those are, you know, incredibly
few and far between.
Now
you can tolerate
that you don't get to you don't have or you have an unsatisfactory
sex life.
And though you have that, you're still going to have the thoughts
that are plaguing you and that are making you unhappy. Because yes, your thoughts are what make you unhappy.
Not the fact that your wife isn't getting naked for you. Not because your wife is getting on her hands and knees for you. It is because you have the thoughts about the fact that your wife isn't wanting to sleep with you.
And maybe it's just that she doesn't wanna sleep with you for that one time that you asked her.
Or maybe it's because you've tried
once a week,
twice a week, three times a week for the past four months, and she still has shot you down every time.
Those unclean thoughts, and I'm not saying they're dirty, I'm just saying they are
polluted
with,
with thoughts that do not serve you.
The thought of women don't like sex,
except for they
are looking for a man, trying to keep a man, or wanting to have kids,
that that thought does not actually serve me. It does not do me any good
to to have that thought. It just creates a line of resentment
and and anger and frustration.
When in all reality, I know my wife
likes sex. Hey. We've had two we got two kids.
So it tells me she likes it enough to have at least to, do it twice.
You know?
So we we know that she
that she likes
sex. She's had sex with us multiple times, but what's causing her to not wanna have sex with you? Another issue with with
having the
going through and tolerating something is that you still have the resistance,
the the
resisting of the emotions
that are tied with that thought.
Well, she doesn't like to have sex. That's, you know, causes a bit of resentment. You feeling resentful.
And so you're still going to act upon that resentment
or you're feeling sad, and so you're going to act upon that sadness by getting angry.
You're going to
feel like a
victim,
so you're going to become
try start trying to do emotional emotional
manipulation.
There's still
the emotional
feelings that you have there. You're going to start doing the different types,
resisting
feeling those emotions.
You don't want to have the the feeling of of victimhood. You don't wanna have the feeling of frustration.
You don't wanna add the feeling,
of resentment.
And so what are you gonna do? A lot of guys, they go off to work, and they work long, hard hours so they don't have to think about what's going on with their with their wife. They're tolerating
that they don't have
that they're not having the the sex life that they want.
And in doing so, a lot of men turn around and have an affair
because their emotional
gas tank gets so low that
any girl comes by
and shows the slightest inclination
of
interest in the guy,
he's gonna go home.
I'm actually a lot handsomer than I thought I was. I figured I was just this ugly ass troll butt. And I'd, you know,
I'd all of a sudden, you know, Susie in accounting is
wanting me to go have dinner with her.
Holy smokes. That's kinda cool.
So we have these resistance
the resistance to the different emotions that we feel. And that cannot lead to the to affairs, but it also leans
to
to other
coping mechanisms
that
don't serve us either.
So we start overeating. We complain that we're fat, so we feel horrible. And so what do we do? We eat. So we don't have to think about being fat.
We're eating because we're fat, and we're bitching that we're fat. So we're gonna eat because we don't wanna feel the shame of being overweight.
We wanna complain about not having a good relationship with our wife, so we sit down in front of the television and watch football game all weekend.
We sit down and watch, play the video games all weekend. I'm guilty of that myself.
That's something I'd battle on a regular basis is, well, let's play I'm gonna try to get through this game. I'm playing Dying Light two right now. I'm trying to get through it so I can get back over onto Elden Ring because my son went off and wanted me to play Dying Light two with him, co op style. And
yeah. Yeah.
So
so, yeah, instead of sitting in the bedroom with my wife and
just
having a a
experience together with her. I'm in the living room. She's in the bedroom, and we're not
being close. Now is there is that the part of the problem? Yeah. That's a big part of the problem.
And I accept what that problem is. And again, we'll get into what accepting is here in a moment.
But speaking of problem,
tolerating,
tolerating people
cause or actions
and circumstances
causes us to ignore what the actual problem is.
Like I said, if our wife is over is spending too much money, is blowing
what we save on on clothing
and random stuff
at a,
on on Amazon. I mean, the the Amazon driver knows your wife personally and and by first name basis now.
What's the actual and you're tolerating it. You're not going into
detail. Why what is she hoping to accomplish by spending this type of money?
And she you know, the first couple times you ask, you're not gonna get much out of her.
She's like, I'm just buying stuff. I just find it,
something needed to, to
find something needed. I think it's a pretty dress. I need whatever.
And
you're just
and you just,
are tolerating it. You're not gonna get to the point that she
feels
unimportant. She doesn't feel beautiful.
She feels
like she's let people down, that she is not being the wife that she wants
wants to be. And so she, as a means to
plug that that emptiness up inside of her,
instead of having the hard discussions that she needs to have with you,
y'all are she just goes off and feels better
helps herself feel better by going off and shopping.
Same way as when you go off and spend a
a a lot of money on a new fishing reel. You feel pretty damn nice when you go spend a hundred and $50 on a new fishing reel. Doesn't mean that
it's a good purchase.
Same as her buying a whole bunch of dresses doesn't mean that she is wanting
a closet full of dresses because you know she's turning around and
giving the majority of those dresses away.
The sweet
taste of success
and,
win
by purchasing a an expensive dress or an expensive
fishing rod
or anything else
is fleeting.
It's almost
right after you buy it, you're going,
man. I really shouldn't have bought that.
Do I really need another fishing rod to go with my 13 others?
You know?
Tolerating
allow causes you to ignore what the problem is because you don't wanna face
what the problem is because that you're gonna come across viewing
being viewed as intolerant, or you're afraid you're gonna be viewed as intolerant, be not be intolerant. And if you piss your wife off, I mean,
she's gonna be mad at you. And if she's mad at you, guess what she you're not gonna have. You're wanting to have more sex, so how are you gonna have more sex if you pissing your wife off. Right?
Well,
that's where
conflict intimacy comes into play,
where you have those hard discussions. You have
the,
the critical
disagreements
in your relationship
so that you're able to
advocate for yourself and your wife is ab able to advocate for her. You wanna have a better relationship. You've gotta start working on the intimacies.
You gotta start working on your four pillars.
And part of those four pillars, the man the mind pillar, you're not
tolerating
stuff that you don't tolerate anymore,
that you don't like. You don't stop just simply tolerating it.
Because when you're tolerating, you're simply enduring the circumstance. You're not
you're not
allowing
your thoughts to be heard. You're stifling yourself. You're knocking yourself. You're playing small out of fear,
and you're approaching whatever the problem, is with an idea that you actually are not very kosher with. You're not you don't like the idea of, well,
I'm just gonna tolerate it because eventually, she's going to learn that she we can't have,
you know, spend $10,000
on dresses every year.
You don't like that idea, but yet there you are. You're entertaining that idea by simply tolerating.
And that's why when you tolerate, you're putting yourself into victim mode because, oh, it's not my fault. I I told her not to do it, but she keeps doing it anyhow. So I am not completely out of out of,
I'm I'm in I'm in,
in alignment with yourself.
You're not in align you're out of alignment. You're out of,
you're out of the
oh, shoot. The brain the word just flew right out of my head.
Anyhow,
you
when you're you're
when you're in victim mode,
you're not being true to who you are.
You are
just accepting that you have no power. You're abdicating
all power and responsibility to an action. It's not even to your wife. It's to the reaction that your wife is doing to the current circumstances
that are affecting your affecting your life.
When you tolerate it, you're letting that
that action, that event
to actually just
be the the Godzilla of your Godzilla
of your
of your life, and so you
are not
being true to who you are.
While if you are accepting
of a
of an event, this actually frees you up tremendously
because
accepting
is where you have already done
the
thought work
needed to clean your thoughts up so that you have
good thoughts. You have done the work, you've gotten across the river of misery, and you're looking at whatever it is that is the problem,
and you have actually
accepted it and allowed it.
Wait. You're telling me that I should allow my wife to spend money again.
I meant talked about this,
but no,
instead of your wife spending a lot of money and you're getting all worked up because she's spending a lot of money,
but you've done the thought work to where you go. I see my wife
as the human being that she is.
She is a woman who has
emotions that are just as messy as mine. And yes, men, we do. We have messy emotions. The difference between how we
display our emotions and how our wives display our emotion or display their emotions, not display our emotions, but
but how they display their emotions
is
we are more
verbal
and more action oriented in our emotions. We get angry. We may go off and, you know,
for
sake of, lack of our of of originality, we go out and chop wood.
We go we feel,
feel threatened
about,
our wife getting angry at us, so we shut down.
All right? We stop talking. That is actually a display of an emotion.
We are feeling
like we have been,
had the thought that we are inadequate.
And so we feel inadequate
because we think, well, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing for my wife.
If she is
if she's feeling bad about something, I'm I'm not providing as for my wife as I need to, so I'm inadequate.
So to get rid of the inadequacy,
you know,
a lot of times we'll go off and we'll drink a beer instead,
or we'll go over we'll do some overworking. We'll, again,
we'll
chop wood. We'll do something.
And while we're doing that, a lot of times, this is where we do our thought work.
Sadly, a lot of guys do not do thought work. They just
run from those
those thoughts, those emotions. We
we don't wanna feel them, so we overeat. Women do the same thing.
It's just
we do
it in a very
in a lot more physical manner.
Women, they like to talk about it. They will go to the girlfriends, try to talk about it. They'll go to come to you and they'll try to talk about it. And
it actually helps
our wife
if you can sit there
and allow her emotions to come out.
But instead, we resist, so we talk we try to tolerate
the emotions come along and so we're
and as soon as we see something, nope. Okay. I'm going.
But when you accept, you can hear
what she's saying. You can even ask questions
that help to help her dive deeper into her own emotions,
and you're not doing it to try to fix her. That's why we fix stuff
is because
I would rather try to get the problem
handled, taken care of, out of the way
so she doesn't have to hang on me about it anymore.
So when we're accepting
that our wife is overspending,
it's not that we're accepting the overspending, we're accepting our wife's emotions that are causing her overspending.
We can start to listen to what she's saying
a lot more, and that way we can
at least offer a relief valve that so she instead of spending $2,000
in a month, she may only spend a thousand dollars. Hey. Saved you a thousand bucks right there, man.
When you approach approach a problem with the
you with a problem with a good thought,
you're actually
okay with the fact
that your wife is
is over overspending.
But again, like I said, it's not because she is overspending, but because of why.
You can work to fix
her action.
Y'all can work together. You may have to go to a counselor.
There's nothing wrong with that. Marriage counselors are do a great job. They help provide you with
tools on how to effectively communicate,
but you also
regain your power
when you accept,
because you've made the choice. Because maybe something is happening. Maybe your wife is sleeping with another man. You're not going to accept that. That is actually still very powerful.
You have the choice to accept something. You don't really have the choice to tolerate something.
People will be okay with the fact that you're going off and go, I do not accept the fact that my wife is having an affair.
You don't even have to accept the fact that your wife is
overspending money,
but you're taking your power back by being accepting.
And when you can accept
now when I and when and, also, I guess I'm a little late in the game to be saying this, but accepting stuff
isn't
you accept stuff based upon what your your moral sense of morale morals
tells you.
So you're not
being tolerant of something
causes you to become tolerant of immoral things
while
accepting stuff
or or transpose that within,
unaccepting stuff, not being unaccepting to a,
to a circumstance
allows you to voice your your thoughts and your opinions a lot
better. And if you can voice those
that disapproval,
you actually
are working on your on your conflict intimacy,
and you can actually
come to a healthy conclusion.
But again, to be able to do that, you have to be able to know
why you're accepting or why you're not accepting. You cannot
do this
in good in good conscience
if you do not have
the clean thoughts behind it.
You have full knowledge of what the problem is when you're accepting something.
You have come to the point of understanding
the problem
completely and have come to a satisfactory
resolution
by accepting.
May take that you and your wife have to talk it through for a while, and you'll eventually come to a point that you can accept
what's happening.
She is going to spend a lot of money on the grandkid.
You're just gonna have to accept that one, man.
But the greatest thing about accepting is that you get to keep your power. You hold on to your power. You hold on to your agency.
You don't get you're not
blowing around
by the winds of of society. I mean, we see society doesn't know what in the heck they're doing. I mean, look back in 2020 when they had all the shutdowns and stuff. So many so much tolerating
tolerating was going on
back in 2020
and stuff that wasn't even making any logical sense.
Like, the the virus
was above four foot in the air. So if, you know, if you walked around in a
in a restaurant,
you had to wear a mask on. But the moment you sat down, you could take your mask off. Oh, well, you know, I've I don't have the Wuhan flu on my hands,
so I don't you know?
So
we're
completely deflecting
all all
all viruses
on that clear plexiglass,
screen that we used to have to deal with
that everybody was bumping.
We
tolerated
that we had to stay
in our house
in lockdown while the elites
went out and played,
walked around
nonchalantly, got their hair done like Nancy Pelosi did, got you know, went to fancy restaurants
like Gavin Newsom did.
You know? There's a lot of,
you better do this so I can do this
type of stuff that was going on, and we were tolerating that.
And that's
the key
difference between tolerating and accepting. We didn't accept it. We tolerated it, but we weren't accepting it.
So what happens when you tolerate
and you accept?
There are gonna be two different results.
So what is it that you
are tolerating
in your relationship?
What are you accepting
in your relationship?
What do you wanna change
in your relationship?
If you're kind of curious about that, then please
reach out to, to me over brianwithay@relaxmail.com,
or you can go to relax mail dot com forward slash
try coaching.
And we will, we'll give you a chance to see what coaching is actually all about.
Why and how does
relationship coaching even help you have a better
relationship?
So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for for listening. If, anything on this show resonated with you, please
share it out. Share it on Facebook,
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And if you, have any questions, again,
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Bye.