Life Is Not Fair And Nether Are Your Relationships, Why Being Generous Is Better Than Being Fair.

Summary

In this episode of the Earn Your Title Podcast, Danny Dumas explores the dynamics of marriage and relationships, emphasizing the importance of teamwork between partners. He discusses the common pitfalls of keeping score in relationships and advocates for a shift from a fairness mindset to one of generosity. Dumas encourages listeners to embrace the role of the 'alpha male' by being proactive and generous in their relationships, ultimately fostering a deeper connection with their spouses.

Takeaways

• You and your spouse should view each other as teammates.
• Keeping score in relationships can lead to resentment.
• Fairness in relationships can be detrimental.
• Generosity should replace the fairness mindset.
• Being an 'alpha male' means taking care of your partner.
• True masculinity involves being generous and supportive.
• Consider hiring help for household tasks if needed.
• Communicate openly about responsibilities in the relationship.
• Small changes can lead to significant improvements in relationships.
• Experiment with being more generous for a month. 

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Relationship Dynamics
05:07 Shifting from Fairness to Generosity
10:12 The Alpha Male Perspective in Relationships

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Transcript

0:16

Check one, two. Hey everybody, my name is Danny Dumas and this is the Earn Your Title Podcast. We've been talking about marriage and relationships and love and respect and if you haven't had a chance to go listen to the last two episodes, you should. The first one is me talking to you as a guy of how you can show your wife more love and have a better relationship. The second one is me talking to your wife or your spouse or your significant other about how she can show you love by showing you respect. So those are really good episodes I had my wife on. And got a lot of positive feedback. So if you haven't heard those, go back and listen to them. And today, this will be the third one about relationships. then after that, we're gonna move on to start talking about some other things. But I wanted to bring up a concept that my wife actually brought up. And while I had her, I guess I fundamentally understood what she was saying. I hadn't actually thought of it in the way that she put it. She said something to the extent of, you know, that mean her, it mean your wife. you and your wife are on the same team. why I would say people would say, yeah, yeah, we're on the same team. That's logical. I feel like in a lot of situations, we don't feel like we're on the same team. And you know, when you're first married and the honeymoon phase and everything, life is good and you just want to make, make the world a better place together. And then at some point, you know, kids are definitely a contributing factor to this. I think we start keeping score. We start living our life where I did this, so you should do this. I take the garbage out, so you should do the dishes. And we start with this ranking system and we're keeping track. And the way my wife said it, she's like, by you losing, I lose. And if she wins, if I lose, she doesn't win. If she loses, I don't win. So why are we keeping score? Why are we doing that? Why does that happen? And I don't know a relationship where it doesn't. I know it for sure happens. as happened to us where I feel like, I'm just doing so much more. And it's very interesting because I know in my life, and I really haven't had a chance to do some of the advice that I'm giving you, but I'm going to, because I've been really thinking about it over the last week, is how did I determine, how did we as a couple determine who was gonna do what? You know, it's interesting at work. We live at a fire station. you know, 10 days out of the month, I go there and I live there. We call it a fire house. We clean the bathrooms. We wash the dishes. We make food. We make our beds. We sleep at work. We do everything at work. We watch TV together. We hang out together. We go to emergencies together. We do everything together. And everything has to get done every day. Like we clean the toilets every day. We... when after we're done eating, we do the dishes every night. We wiped on the tables every night. We take out the garbage every night. And it just kind of happens. And I remember that I really don't like mopping. It is not something I enjoy. I would rather clean 10 toilets than to mop a floor. I don't know why. I don't know why that is. I just don't like mopping. And when you're working in a fire hall, we obviously have rank. have different. bosses or whatever and I am now like the highest ranking person in my district. So I'm the boss of a bunch of people. And I made a decision, if I'm ever working on my shift in my district as a captain, not an overtime, I'm not gonna mop. I just said, you know, I don't like mopping and I'm not going to do that anymore. I'll clean toilets, I'm gonna contribute, I'm not gonna make the guys do all the work, but I decided I'm not gonna do it because I don't like it. But I've realized when I looked at my personal life, are there things that I'm doing that I don't like? And I just happen to become the guy that cleans the garbage disposal out when stuff gets stuck in there. Am I that guy? And do I hate that so much? Because what happens, I think, is when there's tasks that have to get done in a relationship, we start to, it's not like one for one. Like it's not, you know, I do the dishes. so that my wife does the laundry and that's one to one. Like I would say, like say if I hate doing the dishes but somehow that became my job, well that counts for like two points. And my wife likes to do the laundry so that only counts as one point. So when I do the dishes, she actually owes me one point. And as silly as that sounds, I think we do that. If you're honest with yourself, I'm very honest with myself, I think I put things that are like, like I paid the mortgage. Therefore, I shouldn't have to. name the thing I don't like to do. And that's not a really a great, great way to play the game, like the game of marriage. That is a lose-lose. It's trying to be fair. And I don't think the goal should be fairness when it comes to your, your, your wife. And so I'm going to share some of the things I have done and some of the things I'm going to attempt to do to get away from that, that role of fairness. The first one, it could, it could be, this could, I will admit this has potential for danger. So do this at your own risk. I think if you and your wife are in a good space, you know, you've been, you know, been agreeing with each other. Things are good. This is probably a good, a good time to do that. If you're currently struggling and fighting every day, push this one down the road. Give back that love and respect. Get to where a relationship is good and then try this. But just list all the tasks that you do solely. Like I do this, this, this, and this. She does this, this, this, and this. And then look at the list. and not comparing it to the other one, say hey, of all these things, like for instance, my wife does the majority of the laundry and I do the majority of, I do all the landscaping outside. I cut the grass. Like that is me. I don't think she's ever done that. Well, I will do some of the laundry, but I don't, it's not my thing. So we're gonna write down the list. And we're not comparing. Well, I've got 13 things and you've got 12 things, but this one's hard and we're not doing that. Then on that list, You just go and put a star across to the things you actually don't like to do. Maybe you got stuck being the parent that takes their kids to the dentist and you hate the smell of the gas at the dentist. You just hate it. And somehow that became the thing you do. And you just strike a line through it. And so you look at her list and she looks at your list and you go, you hate the dentist? I didn't know that. You always go to the dentist. You go, yeah, I hate the smell. I think it's terrible. She's like, I don't mind that at all. And then you can just go. Are you serious? She's like, yeah, I thought you liked going to the dentist. And it could be that simple where you just flip flop. Okay, cool. I'll do every doctor's appointment and you do every dentist appointment. And then you've solved that problem. Or it could be you go down this list and you realize that there's some things that your wife does not like doing that she's currently doing. And then you look at the list and go, I don't want to do that either. Like say you hate cleaning toilets. She goes, And then you say, you know what? I bet we could hire someone to do this. I bet there's a service out there somewhere, you know, called a house cleaner that will come once a week and do this. you can completely get rid of the problem. And I know financially that's not, that's not for everybody, but if you can make your relationship better and improve your relationship and they have more time to spend doing things you enjoy, more time to spend with each other, and you could see it as truly as an investment. then do that. Like how much would you spend to have a good relationship with your wife? What, what could you, how much money would it be worth if your wife was full of energy, energetic, and happy to see you when you came home, as opposed to being tired and, and exhausted and all the things and not happy. And this, this can be hard that, you know, spending money on things like that. can seem wasteful because yeah, she could do it or you could do it, but what is it worth? And I've had to, you I grew up in a household where my mom and dad did everything. We never had a house cleaner ever. In fact, my mom was a house cleaner for a while. Like that is not something we did. And for a long time, I don't think I could have afforded to have a house cleaner. And in our situation, we don't need one because I have free time when I'm not working, I'm home and I can do that. But I could right now, if I needed to spend a hundred bucks a month. have someone come in once and just kind of help get us ahead. That's a doable thing. So think about it. Could you take off something off your list and subcontract it out? You hate cutting the grass? And your wife loves to have a nice, beautiful yard, but she doesn't want to cut the grass either? Hire it out. Just have that conversation. Now, I said this could be dangerous because I don't want it to turn into like, I've got a long list, you have a short list, take something off my plate and let's be fair. This goes to my second point and this is really this is really the point. This is really what I want you to get at If you can remove the idea that the relationship and the tasks that you have to do need to be fair And you can get to the point where you could see yourself as an extremely Giving person and you're doing extra you're doing more than your wife because you can and you want to because you love her That's a big step There's a lot of talk with alpha males. I'm an alpha male or beta male. If you get on Instagram, there's some really douchey dudes that are like, I'm an alpha male, dating multiple women at the same time, driving fast cars, can't stay in relationship, whatever. To me, that's not alpha. That's a fake masculinity. I think a true alpha male... is the guy that takes care of his wife, takes care of his spouse, takes care of the woman that he promised to and does more than she does. I think that's being helpful if you want to use those terms. To go, yeah, it's not fair. I do way more for my wife because I love her and I'm going to be extraordinarily generous with my time, with my effort. And this can be hard because sometimes we feel like we're getting walked on. Maybe you are acting like that and wife is, for lack of a better word, taking advantage of that and doesn't do a lot, maybe. I work with guys that say, man, my wife is lazy. Like I get home from a 24 hour shift, the house is dirty, the kids haven't even bathed, there's dishes in the sink. And that can be hard. And maybe that's not the way your mom was and you don't understand that. But what if you just said, okay, cool, I'm gonna go to work. When I get home, I'm gonna give her big hug, tell her it's nice to see her. And then I'm going to do the extra stuff. We think of a relationship as 50-50. But what if you just said, I'm gonna do 80, because I can, or 60 because I can, and I'm gonna do it I'm gonna be happy. And I'm going to treat my wife like someone that I love and I promise to take care of, because you did, you know? You did do that. You promised to love and to cherish, whether she's having good days or bad days. That's what you promised to do. So go be the alpha, man. Step up and go above and beyond what is normal. Be abnormal. Don't be like your friends. that come home and demand that there's food on the table. If there's not, because your wife didn't feel like it, go cook some food, man up. I don't want you to get walked on, right? I don't want you to be taken advantage of. And I don't want you to be like this comfortable place of weakness when you do this. Because I don't think that's attractive. I don't think a woman's going to be attracted to someone that's just letting her, if you let your wife walk all over you, I don't think that's attractive to them. And it's a weird It's a weird dynamic there. But just being willing to be overly generous is very alpha. It's very manly. I got this. I got it. Cool. You don't feel like cooking today? I'm cooking today. You didn't feel like cleaning today? I'm cleaning today and I'm doing it because I love you and I'm going to go above and beyond. And maybe you've never done this. Maybe you feel like you grew up in a relationship with your your side of parents and it was very transactional, very 50-50. Well, you you got to go. You just left and you went to Target for an hour. So now I'm going to go to the gym because I earned I earned an hour because you were gone for an hour. It's very transactional. You know, I'm going to go hit golf balls for an hour. And I want you to go do all that. I want you to have fun. I want you to go out with your friends. I want your life to be good. But what if you came at this whole train of thought for the point of being just truly generous? Generous with your time, with your effort, with your money. And I think if you're married to a good person, and I don't think you would have married a bad person, I don't see how it's possible for them to not reciprocate. For them not to feel that generosity and then to do that for you. But I think when you're in a transactional relationship, someone has to be the one that steps up and goes more and stops, keeps in track. And you could have this conversation with your wife saying, you know what? I see this, I feel like I've tried to make things fair and I'm not gonna make things fair anymore. I just want you to know that I'm gonna try to go above and beyond and I'm doing this because I love you. So if you have an exhaust and you don't do the laundry, now I'm not gonna fold the clothes the same way you are. The towels are gonna get put in the wrong spot. I don't do the laundry a lot of the times because I don't know where my kids clothes go. I get them. I could put them all away, but it's not the exact, you know, they got drawers and I just don't know that, but I can. And I'm going to if my wife needs me to do that. And that's my encouragement for you. One, figure out maybe there's some things you could take off your plate and some things you could take off her plate and flip-flop responsibilities. Two, maybe you could hire those out, know, spend the money, invest on a housekeeper or a law maintenance person or something like that. And three, if you can't do those things and you still feel like you have this, step up. Be generous. Be overwhelming generous. Be the alpha male. Be the guy that when your wife hangs out with your girlfriends, she just brags on you because of all the things you do. And I think it's worth an experiment, right? Try it for a month. Try it for 60 days and see what happens. If you need help figuring out how to do that, please reach out. My email is danny at dannydumas.com. would love to talk to you. I've been having some really great conversations with guys. Appreciate the feedback and look forward to more episodes. Again, we're going to move on past relationships for at least a little bit and talk a little bit about fitness, talk a little bit about mindset and yeah, and you know, creating a life that's awesome. So my name is David Dumas and this is the Earn It Title podcast and I will talk to you later. Bye. it.