Part 1. For The Guys. How To Meet Your Wife’s Emotional Needs and Get Off The Crazy Cycle.

Summary

In this episode of the Earn Your Title podcast, Danny Dumas discusses the essential dynamics of love and respect in marriage, drawing from Dr. Emerson Eggerichs' book 'Love and Respect'. He explains how men and women have different emotional needs, emphasizing that women need more love and men need more respect. Dumas introduces the concept of the 'crazy cycle' that occurs when partners fail to meet each other's needs, and he provides actionable advice on how to break this cycle through understanding, communication, and unconditional love and respect.

Takeaways

• Women need love like they need water.
• Men need respect like we need water.
• Assume your partner is a good person.
• The crazy cycle occurs when needs are unmet.
• You must take responsibility to break the cycle.
• Communication is key in relationships.
• Use the magic phrase to reconnect.
• Unconditional love leads to unconditional respect.
• Relationships can be repaired if both partners try.
• Express love consistently to meet emotional needs.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Love and Respect
02:40 The Crazy Cycle Explained
05:05 Breaking the Cycle: Taking Responsibility
11:15 The Importance of Communication
16:50 The Magic Phrase for Connection
21:43 Building a Healthy Relationship

Love and Respect 

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Transcript

0:09

All right, try that again. Take two. Hey guys, my name is Danny Dumas and this is the earn your title podcast and I've got a good one for you today. I recently attended a, a, a marriage seminar with a, a very smart wise man and he gave me a phrase like, like magic words that I'm going to give to you. But before I do that, I have to explain a few things about the power of these magic words and when you're allowed to use them. But the, the, the, the man's name was Dr. Emerson, Eggrich. And he wrote a book called Love and Respect. And in this book, Love and Respect, he explains that men and women both need love and respect, but they're different in different quantities. And if you think about a survival situation, if you find yourself out lost in the woods, you know that within three days, if you don't have water, you'll die. But you could go three weeks without food before you die. The problem is, is that we both need love and respect. Women need love like they need water. It's a three day thing, man. If they don't get it, they are physically, emotionally, and mentally dying on the inside. They might be able to go a little while longer without respect, but if they don't have love, they're dying on the inside. And the problem is men need respect like we need water. If we don't have that water or that respect in three days, we start dying on the inside. We can go quite a while, three weeks, without love, but we don't, we have to have that respect. And the problem comes is when you try to show love to your wife by showing her respect instead of love, unconditional love. And the problem with your wife is that she tries to show you love by showing you unconditional love and not unconditional respect. And so we go through this thing called this crazy cycle, which I'm gonna explain in a second. You have this crazy cycle. Before I explain the crazy cycle and the magic words and the few tips that I took away that I think are very important, I wanna let you know Two things, one that this is going to be a two part episode. One, this one is for you. The second one, the next one I'm gonna do, I'm gonna bring my wife in, it's gonna be for your wife. It's gonna be something I'm gonna ask you to share with her, but there's gonna be some rules. And the first rule that I'm gonna force you to, you know, we're making a commitment, I'm looking you in the eye, and I'm saying, listen bro, you can't share this with your wife unless you're willing to commit to this rule. And the rule is, the first rule is, you have to assume that when your wife wakes up, She's waking up as a good person that doesn't want to ruin your day. She's waking up as a kind, caring, compassionate person who's not going out of their way to just make your day miserable. And I understand that maybe for quite a while, the interactions you've had with your wife have been really negative. And buddy, I'm sorry that's happening. That is tough. I understand your wife has been disrespectful. I understand you don't feel like giving her unconditional love, but if we don't start out from the framework of that my wife is a good person and that she does love me and that maybe the reasons I feel the way I do and the reason she's treating me the way she's treating me is because she doesn't know any better. She's trying her best. If you can't come at it from that vantage point, I don't think any of this works. Is your relationship done and over? No. I just think you need to work to the point where you can say, You know, I married someone who loved me. That person's deep down inside there. And the way they're showing love is maybe the way that they, their mom did. And that was toxic. Maybe the way they're showing love is the way they saw their parents relationship and that wasn't good. So I need you to just take a, take a breath and maybe you don't believe it, but act like it. That when your wife wakes up, she's not trying to ruin your day. She's not trying to intentionally be disrespectful. She's trying to show you love. Let's talk about the crazy cycle. The crazy cycle is in order for my wife to feel fulfilled, I need to show her unconditional love. And for me to feel fulfilled, she needs to show me unconditional respect. And I'll explain that unconditional respect because we understand unconditional love. When you go get married, you promise to love for better, for worse, richer or poorer, you promise to do those things. You don't promise to say, I'm going to respect you no matter what. So I'm gonna explain the respect part. But for you, you understand you need to give unconditional love. sometimes you're giving unconditional respect and your wife is really, your wife really needs the love part and vice versa because so let's say I don't show my wife unconditional love. She decides I haven't earned her respect and because she doesn't give me unconditional respect, I don't give her love and she doesn't give me respect and we go on the cycle, the crazy cycle. And maybe you've been on the cycle for years and it's going to seem tough to get, get off the cycle, but it can be, it can be very, it's doable. Now in order to do this, What I'm asking, and I need you to analyze your relationship, and I know we want to say, when she changes, I'll change. When she shows me respect, I'll show her love. So all I'm asking is, whichever one of you, you or your wife, is the more mature person for you to start. You be the one that says, you know what, I don't enjoy the crazy cycle, I don't think she does either, and I feel like I'm more mature, so I'm going to start. Now hopefully, I am challenging you, and you're gonna say, yeah, I'm definitely the most. yeah, I'll do this. So that's what I want. Go after this, right? Go after your woman, right? Go after the relationship you've always wanted. So, so step one, assume she's doing good. Assume she wakes up in the morning, doesn't want you to have a miserable day. And step two is you're going to be the one to make that change. So let's explain like a scenario of the crazy cycle. Let's say you have a stay at home mom, your wife's staying home. She's got a couple of kids and normally you're home at five. You realize that you need to go to the grocery store. and you end up coming home at six. So you're an hour late from what you normally do. You guys didn't talk, you know, it's not normal. You get home. When you get home, your wife says, what took you so long? It's six o'clock. I thought you'd be home at five. Why didn't you call? And you immediately go, my gosh, I just walked in the door. How about a, sweetheart, how are you doing? How was your day? Let me give you a hug. It's good to see you. it's immediately boom, boom, boom, disrespect, disrespect. Where were you? Why were you there? What took so long? And you're like, whoa. And you know what? Because you love your wife, right? Unconditional love. You say, you know, I'm not going to engage in this because you just made me upset. I'm going to walk away. I'm going to, you know, sit down and I'm going to watch TV and we're just not going to have this because I don't want to be disrespectful. Well, you just started the crazy cycle. Now I'm not saying that it's It's okay for a wife to come at her husband like this. But what I don't think you understand is that she was coming at you because she loves you which guys I This one's a hard one to wrap your mind around because we think differently, you know in this in this book The author talks about men see through blue sunglasses with blue hearing aids We see things the way men see things and we hear thing the way men hear things and for women pink sunglasses pink hearing aids It's a filter. It just makes everything come out weird. So why? Why did she come at you like that? And how on earth could that be love? Well, the reason that's love is because most women, and I'm gonna speak in generalities. I totally understand that you might be married to someone who is different and you're different, but generalities. A woman is an integrated person, meaning if one thing is messed up, everything's messed up. A great analogy is if you took a bunch of Christmas lights, you had hundred lights on this Christmas string of lights. and you took out one light, one light bulb, and that was an integrated light strip, all the lights go out, right? Nothing works when the one bulb is out. You, more than likely, are compartmentalized. If you took out one light, you've got 99 lights. You could take out 50 % of the lights all over the place, and you're still good in those areas, right? Now, are you broken? Yeah, those sections of lights are gonna be dark, and it's gonna be bad, but you can totally function. The other 50 % of lights, it's a skill we have, right? We can compartmentalize our lives. We can say, This is bad here, but it's good here and I'm okay, cause I'm here right now and I'll deal with this later. That doesn't work for your wife. When one bulb is out, it's all out. It throws everything off. It's all bad. The whole day is bad. So what she is, the reason she's coming at you is because there's some conflict in her life. There's some worry, right? You were supposed to be home and at 5 10, when you weren't home, she started thinking, where's he at? I hope he's okay. I hope everything's okay. And at 5 30, when you weren't home, She's even more worried. She's like, should I call? I don't want to nag. So she starts building up some anxiety and this anxiety is taking light bulbs out, right? She's feeling a disconnect. She's feeling unsafe. I mean, it's hard for us to think about. So she might go to the point, what if he's in a car accident and he's dead and now I got to raise these kids by myself and life is terrible. And she blows this up and you're thinking that's crazy. And you know that you had to stop at the grocery store. When you got to the grocery store, there was a huge line, but you know that... She was out of the favorite thing she likes, you know, for dinner, she wanted to have a can of Coke and we didn't have any, so you had to wait and you just took some time and you just forgot to call and that's all, that's what you know, but she coming at you because she feels a disconnect. And so when she gets home, because she's integrated, she needs to put the bulb back in and get everything else working again. So what does she do? She communicates verbally. And this is what's hard for guys. So she communicates, communicates verbally because she loves you. And she doesn't like this feeling of being disconnected. So she's going to try to recreate, reconnect you when she gets in. So when she says, where are you? you know, I was worried about you. You know, why didn't you call? She's just trying to say, listen, I'm a little bit stressed out. Let's reconnect because I need to put the light bulb back in a new one. So it works. So my rest of my day is going to be okay. And for you, you think this is so disrespectful. Am I ever late? You think I'm out cheating on you? Like you, you, you can go there too. You can go to all these blow it up. And because you want to be respectful. You know, if you're at work and someone came at you, but they were your friend, you're like, you know what, let's just drop it, we're gonna step back, it's okay, drop it, we're good. And that's all you need to do to reconnect the relationship. Your wife needs to do this verbally. So sometimes when our wives are coming at us, they're coming at us and this feeling of maybe being interrogated because they're trying to reconnect. And all you probably would have had to do is say, I apologize for not calling. That is my bad. What had happened is I stopped at the grocery store. I knew we were out of Coke and I know you like to have Coke and we have pizza. That's so I stopped, but there's a huge line. I apologize and can give her a hug. That would have been, that would have showed unconditional love. And that's what I'm asking you guys to do is to realize that our first response probably isn't what she needs. She's trying to reconnect verbally and she needs you to reconnect verbally as well. And that is not our strong suit, but because you're the more mature person. I'm gonna ask you to do that. I'm gonna ask you to reconnect verbally. You need to have these conversations. You really do. You have to be able to talk and that is hard. When you shut down because you feel like you're being respectful, she sees that as you not loving. And because you're not loving, she's gonna not show you respect, which brings up the badgering, which increases the amount of questions and then you're on the crazy cycle. And I know... And to know that is a hard one to wrap your mind around, that the fact that just dropping it isn't good enough. You need to verbalize this. And you need to be willing, maybe if it's a bigger deal than maybe just being late, it's a bit larger issue, to talk about it more than once. know, if she had one of her girlfriends and there was an argument, they would get together and they would converse back and forth. Well, I felt this and I felt this and then you felt this and then. One would say, I am so sorry. The other would say, no, no, I'm sorry. And they would complete the circle. You know, they would pass the problem back and forth until they all worked it out and they would need to truly resolve it, get it done. I know that if me and you had a problem, we'd talk about it and we're like, are we good? We're good. And maybe we'd say sorry, pat on the shoulder. We would drop it and we'd walk away and we actually would be good. Your mom, your wife might need you to have that conversation. And then if it didn't go exactly like she thought, she might need you to have it again. And that is true unconditional love. It's the willingness to say, know what, I know that I feel this is stupid, that I've already apologized once, but she needs you to do that. She needs you to connect verbally. The other thing she needs to do is she needs for you to connect physically, but not in a sexual manner. If the only time that you come in physical contact with your wife or have affection, is if you want something out of it, she's gonna feel not loved. She's gonna feel like you're using her just for that one part of your life. And this could just be a simple come in, a hug, and just hold her until she lets go. You know, I heard an interesting thing about Disney. Any of the Disney characters that are on site, in character, if a little kid runs up to them and gives them a hug, the Disney character hugs them until the little kid lets go. And it's interesting, there's been some special needs kids that don't have normal social cues, right? That they come in, they're gonna hug Cinderella, and they're just gonna hug her. And you can see this, it looks kind of awkward, that Cinderella actress, she's just hugging. Do that. Hug your wife until she lets go. But it has to be sincere. It can't be, you're not playing, you truly are showing her unconditional love. There's some other tips that can help you. You need to tell your wife that you love her and why you love her. This is something my wife has done a lot. I didn't really understand it. And it goes back to just basic needs of, know, husband is to provide love. Love is security. Love is providing. You know, love is verbal for them. It's saying things. So you need to tell your wife that you love her and then why you love her. And you need to do it. like you would like every day. Like it's not something like, told my wife I loved her for Valentine's Day. It needs to be said over and over and over again. They need to hear that. Like my wife, she asked a lot. She was like, do you love me? I said, yeah, I love you. She's like, how do you know? How do know you love me? And you know, in different periods of my time when I was newly married and all, like, I would come up with all kinds of things. She's like, how much do you love me? And I was, you know, if I were driving, I would say more than every streetlight that there are in the whole world. Cause I just saw streetlight, you know, more than, and then maybe, you know, as we got kids and retired, I would just say, I just love you a lot. And I was tired, you know, I didn't want to be creative, but it's a very simple thing guys, that just going out of your way, you know, sending a text message. I have a challenge for you. I challenge you to go buy a package of sticky notes. Just a normal Post-It note, sticky notes. There might be a hundred in there, I don't know. And I challenge you to get rid of them in a year by writing something good towards your wife and leaving it somewhere she can see it. They need to hear that consistently. Think of it like taking a shower. Taking a shower once a week is not enough. You're gonna stink. Telling your wife that you love her once a week is not enough. The relationship is not gonna be there, because she needs to feel the unconditional love. She needs to feel that deep down inside and know without a shadow of doubt that that is what you feel. And this is gonna be hard because she is not going to show you unconditional respect because she doesn't understand that language. So that's my next, my next episode is gonna be with my wife. Me and her are gonna be talking about this unconditional respect. But the only way I'm going to allow you to send this, or me and you are making an agreement, is that if you agree to start off with unconditional love and then realize that she is trying her best, that's how we're going to send this out. And before I'm done, I want to give you the very last statement. I want you to start this unconditional love thing and maybe give it a week or two. And then when you have that moment where she's coming at you and she's being disrespectful and this is brave, right? And I'm there with you. I've decided, I remember at one point I thought, you know, I'm just never gonna tell my wife that I feel frustrated because I would tell my wife, you know, I didn't like the way you said that. And I didn't have the words, I didn't say disrespectful, but something about it just didn't feel right and made me upset. And so I would just say, and I would confront her. I'm like, I didn't like it when you said this. And then at some point I would, like an hour later, she's still mad. I'd end up apologizing for saying that. And so I just said, you know, this is stupid. I'm not going, if I have a negative feeling, I'm just going to suck it up. I'm going to compartmentalize. I'm going to pull that bulb out. I don't need it. I'm just going to, I'm going to back away from it. I've said that and I lived a long time in my relationship and it's going to be 20 years coming up where I just, you know what, if I have a bad feeling, I'll suck it up. I'll deal with it. Not a big deal because I don't want this fight. I don't want this argument, but I got this phrase and this is the magic phrase I mentioned at the beginning. You have to start, you have to be having showed unconditional love before you can use this. But then you have to have some bravery to use this. And this is the line. What you said to me felt very disrespectful. Now there's more. The second part is the magic part. And this is where I think you're just gonna melt your wife, right? You're gonna just melt away these negative feelings. The second part is, I do something that felt unloving? Right, because we have love and respect. We both need these things and you can only get it from the other person. So, What you just said felt disrespectful. Did I do something that felt unloving? What a magic phrase, because what you're doing is you're saying, I didn't like this. It makes me feel bad, feel disrespectful, because I know, because the underlying idea is that you're a good person and you want good things for me and you don't start your day trying to make me unhappy or disappointed or angry. Because of that, there's probably something that I did that makes you feel unloved. Maybe I, you know, I was late. I didn't call. was, you know, I don't name the thing. What a magic word. What a magic phrase. Cause it addresses the problem. Because if you just let things go forever, eventually all your light bulbs are out and you're just a dim man. You're a shell of a man that goes to work, come home, watch TV, go to work. You don't have this. You don't have a relationship that I know you can have. And I know you want it. Say those words that felt disrespectful. that I do something that felt unloving. And then just watch what happens. How does she get a negative response to that? if she does, then maybe you need some marriage counseling. Maybe she's not ready to do it because this is the hard part and this is why this is gonna be a two-parter this is why I want you to send this to your wife or your girlfriend or fiance is because, and I don't think we like to admit this as men, I don't like this. I like the book Extreme Ownership, I wanna do it. I'm gonna take responsibility for it. The only way that you can get respect from your wife is if she gives it to you. Now it's gonna be way more easy for her if you're showing her unconditional love, to show her unconditional, for her to show you unconditional respect once she learns what that looks like. But it's hard because you're vulnerable, right? And we don't wanna be vulnerable. We don't wanna admit that something that we need, something so precious like water, we can only get it from our spouse. But I think that's the magic of a relationship, right? No, that is the reason we were put together is because you give her what she needs and she gives you what you need. And when that happens, life is good. You know, I'm very blessed to have a good relationship. I realize that you're listening to this and thinking my relationship is terrible. My wife is disrespectful. I almost can't stand to be around her. I'm telling you, it's not broken. I'm telling you, I shouldn't say that. It might be broken, but it can be fixed. It's not irreparably broken. You can do some things and you can start. Maybe she'll never respect you and then maybe that relationship is truly broken. But one, you have to start. And then two, you have to ask her for what you want. And it might just literally be a switch in her brain that needs to go, my word, he loves me unconditionally. That's what we're designed to do. And I think as a culture, we know that, right? We know we're supposed to love our wives. They don't necessarily know that we need unconditional respect. And they might actually balk at that idea like, I'm not, know, respect is earned, right? In the work atmosphere, you want to be respected, you should earn it. It's not work, right? We're in love, right? We're in a relationship. And your wife doesn't have to like everything you do. you're, you know, if you are gambling more than you can afford, and if you're drinking every night till you're drunk, she doesn't have to respect your actions. But you as her husband, you need her unconditional respect. And that's what she's designed to do. Like I think, That is the calling that a wife can do is to give her husband respect because that's what we need. So these are the rules. You have to treat her like she's trying to be a good person, right? If you're going to send this to her, you have to be very tactful. Like, Hey, I don't think you're doing anything wrong, but this was very helpful. And there's some things that I need from you and only you can give them. And I think this will be a toolbox. I'm going to have my wife with me. So she's not going to let me, you know, say anything like super sexist or whatever. So Send this to your wife and hopefully you have a great relationship. Read that book. I'll link it in the description. It's really good. If you need help from me, if you want to talk about some of the things that I've learned, reach out to me. name or my email is Danny at Danny Dumas.com. I'd love to talk with you. I'd love for you to be able to figure out how to show your wife unconditional love. I'd love for you to get the under unconditional respect and I would love for you to have an amazing relationship. My name is Danny Dumas and this is the Ernie Title podcast and I will talk to you later. Bye.