You Want Her Back: Start Acting Like This

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This workshop is built from nearly a decade of working with men in marriage crisis, watching some recover their marriage and watching others fail. The patterns are predictable.

Transcript

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So today I want to talk to you about the fastest, most effective way to reset your marriage. And if you've heard something from your wife along the lines of I want a divorce, I'm not in love with you anymore, I need space, I need time away. A man's instinct in this situation is going to be to figure out what exactly does she mean by this. So he goes inside of his head and he starts to analyze his words and all of the situations that surround it, and then he reacts to the situation based on the interpretation that he thinks she means. But this actually is exactly where most men make the situation worse, can worse and escalate the demise of the marriage because what if your interpretation of what she said is wrong? And the fact of the matter is, what your wife is saying to you is rarely the real message that she's trying to communicate to you because the truth of the matter is men and women literally speak different languages. So in this video, I'm gonna I'm gonna break down 10 of the most commonly misunderstood phrases that women use in marriage breakdown, marriage crisis, what they actually mean psychologically from her perspective, and why misunderstanding what she's saying actually pushes your wife further away and escalates the divorce process. So this is the formula to reset your marriage, and it's this it's simply to follow her instructions. She will tell you exactly what you need to do if you're able to decipher what she's actually saying to you. So after today's video here, you're never gonna have to guess again about what your wife's saying. And if you stay to the end today, then I'm gonna break down the single most misunderstood that has ever been spoken by a woman to a man, and it's a sentence that actually almost every man hears in the divorce or separation process. So let's get into the fastest way to reset your marriage here. So the big idea to keep in mind throughout this entire presentation today is that in relationship conflict there are actually always two layers of communication going on simultaneously. The first layer is the felt need, and this is the emotional condition that is trying to be resolved. And the second layer is the mechanism. So this is the action that she believes might resolve the felt need that she's trying to communicate. So most men respond to the mechanism because that's what she's speaking. She's talking about the mechanism. And this is very, very, very important to understand. So let me give you some examples here to make this concrete before we go into the situations exactly. So when somebody says, I want pizza, the felt need is not for pizza, it's hunger. They have a need to get their hunger satisfied. The mechanism is pizza. Now, the mechanism could be a burger, it could be Chinese food, it could be a chicken wrap, it could be fried chicken, it doesn't matter. The felt need is hunger. And if I ask you for pizza at 10 o'clock in the morning and you bring it to me at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the mechanism you've responded to the mechanism correctly, but by failing to understand the felt need, the pizza is no longer what's looked for at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. In fact, it's the exact opposite to what's needed. So another example here to make this concrete before we move on is let's use a man example. I need a drill. So the felt need in this situation is not for a drill, it's for a hole. If you ask me for a drill, can you hand me an electric drill, Cody? You don't want the drill, you want a hole, is what you're looking for. The mechanism, the drill is simply the mechanism that you think that you need to get that hole. So men almost always respond to the mechanism that the woman is communicating, and he never sees the felt need that is what the what she's trying to actually get met underneath that. So when you meet the felt need, the mechanism becomes irrelevant. If you ask, if you say, if I say I want pizza and then I eat a hamburger, the mechanism is completely irrelevant at that point. The felt need of hunger has been met, and now the mechanism has changed. So this is why it feels like with a woman that the goalposts are always moving. It's that they're not moving, the felt need remains constant, but in every in any given moment, in a fluid situation like a marriage, how that need is going to be met, the mechanism that's needed to meet that need is going to be constantly changing. So the first principle here is if you misunderstand the felt need that your wife is trying to communicate to you, you are absolutely going to respond to the wrong problem. In the same way that if I ask you for pizza at 10 in the morning and you bring it to me at 4 in the afternoon, you haven't understood the felt need and you've solved the wrong problem. So let's get into the 10 most misunderstood statements that you've heard all of them or most of them if you're in marriage crisis. So the first one is going to be I need space. So the felt need here is the relief from emotional pressure. The relationship currently feels tense to her, it's exhausting, it's overwhelming, and she needs relief from that pressure. Now, her mechanism to get that relief is distance. Space from you removes the emotional intensity and gives her the relief that she's needing. Now, how he interprets this when she asks for space is that she wants physical distance from me. She doesn't want to be close to me, she wants to be away from me, etc. Now the cost here is that he panics, so he chases, he explains why she doesn't need space, he pushes for talks, he wants to know how much space, how long. So what he actually does is he increases the need for space instead of decreasing it because he doesn't understand what she's actually asking for. So the second most common phrase here is going to be we need to talk. We need to talk, Cody. The fount need here is going to be she wants to feel heard, she wants to be emotionally acknowledged, and she wants to feel like she has a say in the relationship. Now, her mechanism for getting this is conversation. We need to talk, we need to have a conversation. This is her mechanism. Talking is how she gets that acknowledgement from you that she is an equal in the relationship. How the man interprets this is she wants to solve a problem. So the cost here is he shows up as Mr. Problem Solver, Mr. Fixit. He shows up with logic, he feels up, shows up with solutions, he shows up with plans on how to move forward. So when he hears we need to talk, he shows up going, right, she's got a problem, I need to fix that. Which is not what she wanted at all. That was just the mechanism she was asking to feel heard within the relationship, and by showing up as Mr. Fixit, he's actually compounded the problem, and she feels even more unheardheard than to start with. Number three is you never listen. You never listen to me. Now the felt need that she's trying to meet here is significance. Again, she wants to feel like she's important in this relationship, like her voice means something, her opinion means something. She wants her feelings to matter to you. She's trying to connect with you, and she wants you to see her as important and she wants to have that connection. Now, unfortunately for her, the way she communicates this, her mechanism for getting this is she complains about your listening skills. She complains about you. So he interprets this as she thinks I didn't hear what she said. She thinks I'm not listening to her. So he explains himself, he defends himself. And the end result here is that the emotional fracture within the relationship that she's trying to communicate, it remains active and it doesn't solve the problem. Now, number four is I'm not happy. None of us have ever heard a woman say we're not she's not happy, right? Like it's a it's one of the most common complaints. It's like she's unpleasable, I can't make this woman happy. Nothing makes this woman happy. Well, let's look at what the felt need there is. It's for emotional connection. When she says I'm not happy, she's saying I don't have the emotional connection that I'd like to have with you, which is a signal that she wants to connect with you, not disconnect. It's a sign, it's a signal that she wants you to lean into the relationship, not that she's unhappy with the relationship. So she's trying to tell you that she feels distant or disconnected from you, and she's giving you the path back to that connection. Now, the mechanism that she's using here is she's suggesting that something needs to change, something needs to change in this relationship, Cody, because I'm just not happy. Well, we're all men, we know how we take that, right? That either she wants lifestyle improvement, it's going to go one of two ways here that she wants lifestyle improvement or that she's dissatisfied with the lifestyle that I'm providing her, she's ungrateful. So, again, this can go one of two ways. The cost of the relationship is that instead of recognizing that she's looking for greater levels of connection with him, he plans trips, gives her gifts, improves the lifestyle because he doesn't understand that she's asking for more connection, not a better lifestyle. Or he just takes it personally and goes, I'm not good enough for her, I'm insignificant to her. He takes it off offensively, he withdraws. And again, the emotional distance within the relationship continues to expand. Number five is you've changed. Who's had their wife tell them that they've changed? Well, her felt need here is going to be she needs to feel stability and predictability within the relationship. Her nervous system at this point is completely dysregulated. She needs some predictability for her nervous system to reset, and she needs some stability for her nervous system to normalize to where she can attach to you again and she can bond to you again. She wants to feel emotionally safe around you. And the way that she's pointing this out, the mechanism that she's using is she is she's pointing out that her desired behavior has changed within you. When she started the relationship, she felt emotionally safe with you and she was able to connect and bond with you in a way that was safe, stabilized, and predictable. Now that mechanism has disappeared and she's no longer able to bond and connect with you. And when she says you've changed, she's given you notice that this is damaging to the relationship, and she wants that emotional safety to be reestablished. If we can understand the felt need here, we can meet that need very easily, and we all get what we want. So how the man interprets this, you've changed, is she doesn't accept me for who I am anymore. I'm not good enough for her. She's controlling, she's manipulative, she wants me, she wants to turn me into something that I'm not. So the cost here is feelings of in the man is the man feels resentful, he feels angry, he can feel rejected, he feels unappreciated, he doesn't feel good enough. And of course, what does he do? He escalates the situation. Instead of recognizing that the felt need is for stability and predictability, because of the way that he's interpreted the mechanism, he does everything to actually destroy that. He escalates the situation and becomes more unstable, more unpredictable, and not only does the emotional safety that she's telling him in that moment that she needs, not only does it not rebuild, he actually actively destroys it at that point, causing the further decline of the marriage. Number six is she might say, I feel alone, or a variant of that within this marriage, I feel alone. What's what the felt need here is she's asking for partnership. She's asking for you to be more engaged in the marriage, she's actually asking for you to come back into the marriage, and her mechanism for doing that is she's expressing loneliness. Now, again, how does the man interpret this? She's attacking me, she's ungrateful. What does she mean she feels alone? Does she not understand that somebody has to pay the bills? I have to go to work, her mortgage doesn't pay herself, her car doesn't fill itself up with gas by itself, or she's unsatisfied with my companionship when it present. He takes it as a very personal attack, and of course, the cost to the relationship is he take he escalates, he withdraws, he goes into self-defense mode. And what this does is the exact opposite to what she's trying to do. It actually increases the emotional loneliness within the relationship for her and again escalates the demise of the relationship, which leads to number seven, which we're starting to see some more serious uh phrases now. I don't know how I feel anymore. What does that mean? It means she's looking for some emotional clarity. She's confused, is what it means. I'm confused and I need some clarity is what she's saying. Her feelings are confused after repeated disappointments from you, and as you can see, that the previous six statements that she makes, which have been attempts to reconcile the relationship, to uh give you the roadmap of how to reset the marriage and how to come back into the marriage, all of these attempts to connect with you because she's communicating through mechanism, and as men we misunderstand that have resulted in disappointment. She's lost hope that the marriage can change. And now she's confused. She doesn't know if this is ever going to change, and she doesn't know how she's going to feel about this. So the mechanism that she uses to communicate this is distance and uncertainty. Which, when a woman becomes distant in a marriage and she starts to use the vocabulary of uncertainty, this is never going to end well for a man. He's going to interpret this as she's losing attraction for me, she wants to see other people, uh, she's planning an exit, etc. We're we're starting to get into some dangerous territory now. This is where controlling behavior starts to come in. Um he accuses her of a lack of commitment. He accuses her of not wanting to work on the marriage. He may start to accuse her of wanting to see other people or to be in another relationship. And all this does is she's asked you for clarity and you've responded with confusion. All this does is is it deepens her confusion. Number eight is I'm done trying. I've had it, I've got nothing left to give here. Or words to that effect. So the felt need here is hope. She's she's looking to find some hope that this can turn around, that this marriage can actually be saved. She no longer believes the effort is going to change anything, she no longer believes that her words are going to change anything. And her mechanism here to get this hope back is with is withdrawal. And to be quite frank, this is the first time that the mechanism has actually worked, and it's why most people are here on this call, because this is when you respond. This is when you actually start to understand the felt need. And when she withdraws, this is where we start to get serious about understanding what's going on. So, what happens when she reaches this point and says, I can't do this anymore? She stops investing emotionally into the relationship. And this is typically where the man is going to go, she doesn't care about me, she doesn't care about the marriage, she doesn't care about the children or the family, she wants to go out and bang another man, she wants to have another relationship, she doesn't care, she's changed. This is how he's going to interpret this, not understanding the process that's happened before this, and of course, the cost at this point is catastrophic to the situation, to the marriage. He sees her behavior at this point as being the cause of the crisis, and he responds in a way, he treats her as the cause of the crisis, makes her the problem, not understanding the previous five years that we've just covered, and effectively removes any remaining hope that he or the marriage can change. Again, confirming and providing the exact opposite to what she's asking for. She's asking for hope by withdrawing, and the man responds by removing what little hope is remaining. Number nine is nothing ever changes. So we're in just apathy at this point. The felt need here is she needs hope that improvement is still possible within the marriage. The mechanism that she uses to can to communicate that this is criticism and frustration. This is where we're in solidly in nagging territory. She's she can't be made happy. This woman's never happy, nothing I do makes her happy. The goalposts always get moved. She tells me what she wants, I give it to her, and then she's not happy still. Hopefully, you can see how we arrive at this point here right now. Because her mechanism in this late stage is to criticize and to show frustration. It's all she's got left. How the man interprets this is I can't please this woman. Nothing will ever be good enough for this woman, nothing I do will ever make this woman happy. And of course, he stops trying. He dismisses her happiness as an impossibility, he destroys a healthy partnership-style relationship as a complete impossibility, and as a result, he ends up destroying any remaining hope that she has at this point, rapidly escalating the situation towards divorce, separation, or somewhere you don't want it to go. And number 10 is I just need some time. So the felt need here that your wife is experiencing is she needs to emotionally approach she needs to emotionally process how she feels about the situation. She is at the end of her tether, she is coming to the end of her ability to handle what is going on. She's realized now that the situation's not going to change, she's realized that her needs are not going to get met. She's realized that what it is is what it is, and what it is is what it's going to be. She needs to process how this feels, and she needs some space to sort that out. So her mechanism at this point, instead of leaving the marriage directly, is to delay. How he interprets this, she's preparing to leave. When she starts to withdraw to get that space, determining to understand in her own self how she feels about the situation. He thinks that this is it. She's making her getaway plans, planning her exit, probably seeing somebody else, definitely wanting to see someone else. So what he does in this scenario is he demands clarity from her that she simply doesn't have at this point. And at a time in the marriage where she's seeking clarity, where she's uh feeling very overwhelmed and she's looking to clarify her feelings, he piles on more overwhelm, he piles on more instability, he piles on more crisis. And again, the pattern here is because the felt need is not seen, heard, or understood, only the mechanism is responded to that he actually now escalates the marriage to a critical tipping point. So the pattern here through all of these scenarios is in many relationship crisis situations that we experience, the statement describes the mechanism. We have to understand this. What she is communicating to you is not what she wants. She's communicating the mechanism. And before anybody, before men start going, well, she's just playing games, why doesn't she communicate properly? You do the same thing as well. We all do the same thing. We communicate in terms of mechanisms, not felt need because we're unsophisticated as human beings, and this is a higher level of communication. We all do it. So what happens here is the emotional need, the reset sits underneath the mechanism. And when the mechanism is misunderstood, the response that is provided misses the real issue that's being asked for. So this almost always escalates the threat of the marriage. When the mechanism is responded to, not the emotional need, the felt need, it will almost always, most certainly escalate the threat to the marriage. So I said I was going to give you the most common phrase, the most misunderstood phrase that virtually every man hears in marriage crisis, and here it is: the single phrase that appears most consistently right before separation happens. I love you, but I'm not in love with you. Who's heard that before? So men almost always, without exception, interpret this phrase incorrectly. So here's the breakdown of what this actually means now, using the structure of felt need and mechanism that I've just explained to you. So the felt need when a woman says, I love you, but I'm not in love with you, is she needs emotional safety and relief from her own internal conflict. At that point, this is not about you anymore. This is not about the marriage anymore. She is trying to explain her own internal conflict. So at this point, she feels completely emotionally exhausted from the marriage. She's gone through everything that we've just described to try and get her felt needs met. The end result is she feels disconnected and she feels conflicted between attachment to you and resentment of you. This is the internal conflict that she is trying to resolve. This has nothing to do with you at this point. Part of her loves you and wants to work this out, and part of you she wants, she can't she can't stand and wants to have nothing to do with. She needs to reconcile this somehow. So part of her still cares, and another part of her no longer feels the emotional bond to you that she once had. So this statement is an attempt for her to separate caring from connection so she can explain the conflict that she feels inside. How can she have connection and want to be with you or and at the same time want to have nothing to do with you? This is how she this is how she reconciles this. So the mechanism for her to do this is she reframes the emotion the relationship emotionally. She no longer is viewing you in the same way. You are now being put into a new container, a new category. And by saying that she loves you, but she isn't in love with you, she creates psychological distance that allows her to detach emotionally from you while still being able to recognize and acknowledge the history of the relationship. This is very important, particularly if there's family, children, there's a continued, a required, continued relationship. She has to recognize what has happened while can creating a new container to move forward in. So this, when she says, I love you, but I'm not in love with you, it helps her justify in herself why she is pulling away from you. And for that reason, it is 10 out of 10 bad. When you hear I love you, but I'm not in love with you, you are at DEF CON 5 at this point. So how the man interprets it when he hears that, most men hear she still loves me, there's still hope, I just need to reignite the attraction in her. And they interpret this the statement, I love you, but I'm not in love with you, optimistically because of the word love. I love you, but I'm not in love with you. The cost here to the relationship, to the man, is he focuses on restoring romance or he focuses on trying to restore the attraction. But the deeper issue is that emotional safety has been utterly destroyed. She is all out of attempts to try and fix that. She's she's used every weapon in her arsenal to try and get you to recognize it. And the end result is she's exhausted, uh, trust has been entirely eroded, all hope has left the relationship, and she's done. There's nothing left for her to give. She has nowhere to go but to leave the relationship at this point. So his response is he's bigger gestures, romantic attempts, persuasion, etc. Which does absolutely nothing to resolve the deeper emotional underlying felt need here, which is emotional safety. So the one big idea here to take away from this presentation, the entire video can be summarized in this one sentence. The most damage in marriage crisis happens because men respond to the mechanism being requested instead of the emotional need that is creating it. So the conclusion that we can take from this is I need space, I'm not happy, you never listen to me, I feel alone, I want a divorce, I love you, but I'm not in love with you. Suddenly, these statements, they're not random complaints that are coming into the marriage, it's not a woman nagging, it's not just what they do, etc. etc. etc. They're signals of underlying, unmet, essential, required, emotional needs, and she's telling you how to reset this marriage in real time. So if you've heard I love you, but I'm not in love with you from your wife, or if you want to see how you can recover this crisis if it's got to a certain point, then I show you how to do that. I've got the steps, I'll put it in this video. Here we'll go into that, and now we'll jump over to.