My Ego Tried To Win The Argument And Lost The Marriage

We challenge men to drop excuses, own their choices, and rebuild trust with consistent action instead of repeated apologies. A personal story of divorce leads into practical steps for full accountability, emotional regulation, and leading your home without ego.

• growth begins when we stop defending ourselves
• honest reflection on divorce and personal responsibility
• what real accountability language sounds like
• why half truths are lies that protect patterns
• removing but from apologies and owning impact
• rejecting the victim role and manipulation
• building consistency, emotional regulation, and humility
• leading household energy without ego
• reflection questions to make change actionable
• finding support through friends, counseling, and faith

Share this episode with a man who needs real accountability. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at ExcellenceAbove Talent

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Core Message
• 0:46 Why Accountability Hurts And Heals
• 2:00 Divorce Story And Self-Reflection
• 2:47 What Real Accountability Looks Like
• 4:16 No More Half Truths
• 5:15 Stop Saying But
• 7:21 Drop The Victim Role
• 8:19 Change Requires Consistent Action
• 10:05 Ego, Household Energy, And Repair
• 12:28 Freedom Through Accountability
• 13:54 Weekly Reflection Questions

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

You're listening to Excellence Above Talent, a podcast where we have the hard conversations about the lives of men and what leads us to achieve greatness and suffer defeat. Hear from other men's journeys as well, as we all learn and grow together to become inspirations to ourselves and those around us. And now your host, Aaron Thomas.

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

What's up, my beautiful people? Aaron Thomas with Excellence Above Talent. We're still in phase one. This is episode three. The title is Accountability Without Excuses. Growth begins the moment you stop defending yourself. Real accountability doesn't have a safety net, a justification, or a but attached to it. If you want your life to change, you have to get honest about hiding behind excuses. Honest about not hiding who you are as a man, as a person. Let's be real. Men hate accountability. Not the ideal of it, the reality of it. Most men love being accountable to others, but they fall apart when it's their turn to take it. Why? Because accountability forces you to face the version of yourself you've been avoiding. The version that caused harm. The version that made excuses. The version that pretended to be the victim. But if you can't take accountability, you can't change at all. And I would pose this question, ask yourself when it started being easy to be accountable for your actions. Because it took me till about my mid-30s to finally just accept who I was, what I've done, to sit and be accountable for it. Really going through my divorce and processing how I got there. Cause again, I can't blame my ex-wife for divorcing me. I have to figure out what I did to create a space to where at one point this person loved me to fast forward eight years down the line. And she told me there was a 0% chance of us getting back together. Hurtful, wanted to play the victim and blame her. I tried to sleep with women to take that pain away. And the pain never went away until I finally sat down to look in the mirror and had that tough conversation with myself about how I got there. And then I began to change. One, accountability means you stop blaming everything around you. Abusive men blame their stress, their childhood, their partner, their job, their triggers, their intentions, their bad day. Accountability says, I chose that behavior. It was wrong, and I'm responsible for changing it. No extra words, no escape hatch, no emotional manipulation. You look in the mirror and you deal with you. Two, accountability means no more half-truths. Abusive men love half-truths. They admit the small thing so they don't have to admit to the real thing. They'll say, I raised my voice, but not I tried to intimidate her. Which is also a coward thing to do. A lot of men are running around here saying I'm a real man and I take care of business, but when confronted with their own actions, they minimize it and not tell the whole truth. They'll say something like, I got frustrated, but not I blame her because I couldn't manage my emotions. They'll say I screamed at her, but not I'm having a hard time dealing with my insecurities right now. Half truths are just dressed up lies and they protect abusive patterns. Hashtag half truth equals lies. Point blank period. Three. Accountability means you stop saying but. Nothing destroys accountability faster than this one word. I know I was wrong, but it won't happen again, but I'm sorry you feel that way, but the but just erases everything you said. And the but is usually when an abusive man starts to blame someone for his actions, his words, his feelings. Accountability ends with a period. There is no justification. I screamed. And if you are going to be real, have the conversation. I screamed because I couldn't deal with how you were looking at me. It brought back memories of how my mom used to look at me and I reacted. And that's something that I am willing to and trying to work on because you don't deserve to be yelled at. These are the statements that we should be having. These are the conversations that we should be having. And if you're with a s with your spouse, your girlfriend, and you can't have these tough conversations with her, then you have to start asking yourself, is she the one I need to be with? Four. Accountability means you let go of your victim role. One of the most toxic behaviors abusive men engage in is flipping the script and making themselves the victim. They say things like, you don't understand how stressed I am. You make me feel like I'm the bad guy. Everyone is against me. That is a form of manipulation. That is a form of manip That is a form of manipulation. It's an attempt to dodge responsibility by shifting sympathetic. It isn't it's an attempt to dodge responsibility by shifting sympathy towards yourself. A real man doesn't weaponize his pains to excuse his behavior. A real man tries to find ways to protect the people in his life, his wife and his kids, his community, by working on himself and making himself better. Five, accountability means you're willing to change, not just apologize. Apologies mean nothing without action. Repeated apologies with no change, that's emotional abuse. I won't yell at you again and you yell again. I'm sorry, I won't do it again, and you do it again. And it's a cycle that you find yourself in that you have to break. No one else will. Accountability is shown through consistent behavior, emotional regulation, honesty, transparency, humility, self-reflection, doing the work even when no one is watching. Accountability is a lifestyle. It's not a moment. You have to live it each and every day. If you don't like where you're at in your life, it's not the boss or your skin color or the bad choices you made in the past. You have to figure out a way to work on yourself and fix what you're going through. You cannot do it alone. You will need people, a relationship with God, a counselor, friends where you where you can really like have deep conversations. As a man, if you want to change, you will change. And if you're not going to change, stop manipulating the people in your life saying that you are. Here are the hard truths. You cannot heal what you won't acknowledge. You cannot change what you keep excusing, and you cannot grow while protecting your ego. Funny thing about your ego is it's completely made up by you. The things you feel offensive about isn't something that that person did. It's your ego saying, they're making me feel some type of way. So I'm going to react in a negative way because I need to feel my ego back on top. For an example, there were times in my previous marriage where we were having an argument, and halfway through the argument I realized, oh, she's right. And instead of being a real man looking at her and saying, you know what, this is on me. I misinterpreted what you said. You're right in this situation. And I want to apologize for putting us on this path. Because as a real man, you can't blame your wife or kids about the energy in your household. Because if you don't like the energy that is in your household, you have to f you have to look at yourself. Because you are the one that controls the energy in your household. No one else does. So don't allow your ego to put you in situations where you know you need to be accountable, but because it'll make you feel like you're less than a man, it'll make you feel like you're losing. And no man wants to feel less than. No man wants to feel like they're losing. But at the end of the day, you're not losing anything. You're making it better by being accountable for your your actions and your feelings. You're not a weak man because you admitted you were wrong. It takes a strong man to admit that. And then find ways to fix the situation and not take the situation and protect his feelings and his ego. True accountability is painful, but it's also freeing. It opens up the door to transformation, the real kind, where I can walk into a room and I have nothing to hide. There's no ego there. And I'm not saying I'm 100% ego free because I still have an ego and I still want to protect myself. And when I feel like I'm going down this path, I'll take a deep breath and assess the situation before just continuing on a losing process. Because as a man who is trying to communicate with his ego, you will always lose. You'll never win. Because even if you win, you don't feel good about yourself. Because you didn't tell the whole truth. And you were protecting how you felt, and that'll get you in a lot of trouble. So the reflection questions for this week. What's the excuse I use most often to avoid accountability? When was the last time I played the victim to avoid accountability? What harmful behaviors do I need to take full ownership of today? Write down one excuse you're done using. Say it out loud. Then share this episode with a man who needs real accountability. I would also say share it with your spouse or a friend or a trusted friend so that they can hold you accountable for your one excuse that you're done using. Because if we're trying to be real men, real men who are okay with being broken, that are willing to pick up the broken pieces and put himself back together, not by himself, but with the help of God, family, friends, counselor, your pastor, because broken men need people in his life to make him better. The right people. And we are on this path right now as men of refining our footing because for the last couple of years, we've been scared to be men because there was such an attack on manhood. And I understand it, I understand why there was an attack, but instead of trying to understand, people just threw stones. And there are a lot of young boys, young men, and men in general trying to pick themselves back up and not understanding how they got to where they they are. And I'm letting you know right now being accountable for your actions and not running from who you are, when those stones are being thrown at you, they hurt less. They'll start hurting less and less and less to air. When a stone is thrown, you can pick it up and you can say, Yeah, I did that. And you can find ways to make yourself better. Because that's the whole point of being a man. It's not staying in your ways, it's finding ways to be the best possible version of yourself. So if anyone hasn't told you today that they love you, let me be the first to say I love you. You're awesome, you're amazing, you deserve the best that this world has to offer. Do not give up, do not quit. The world does not get easier, but you will get stronger. You have a blessed day. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And for daily, motivational, and up-to-date content, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at ExcellenceAbove Talent. And remember, keep moving forward, never give up, and you are never alone in this battle. We'll see you next time.