I Give Everything For Us... So Why Am I Not Enough For Her?

In this raw and honest episode, we address tough questions about the challenges men face in long-term relationships. We dive into the emotional complexities that arise when men feel unnoticed and undervalued despite their best efforts. 

Host Don, with decades of experience working with men, shares insights and practical advice on improving relational intimacy, building better connections, and understanding mutual needs. 

Join us for an eye-opening discussion that's all about being honest and finding ways to grow stronger together as men and partners.

00:00 Introduction and Setting the Stage
01:16 The Struggles Men Face in Relationships
02:30 The Importance of Male Friendships
03:29 Understanding the Modern Man's Role
09:55 Empathy and Understanding Your Partner
14:27 Effective Communication and Honesty
15:41 Rekindling the Romance
17:33 Encouraging Quality Friendships for Your Partner
18:42 Conclusion and Community Invitation

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Transcript

0:01

All right guys. I'm gonna be honest. Today's episode is gonna be a little raw. We need to talk about something kind of tough for most of us as guys to be honest about, and that's what our relationships with our women look like. So whether you're married or you're in a long-term relationship with a girlfriend, there's probably some things that you have been feeling as a man in that relationship that are. Driving you crazy. We'll just be blunt about it, making life hard for you, but you're not always sure how to put words to it because it's just sort of this like underlying emotional kind of gut feeling, but it probably is affecting you on a day-to-day basis. And that's just sort of this idea of you feel like you are showing up in. Every way you possibly can for the sake of your relationship, for the sake of your family, for the sake of what the two of you have created together. And yet at times it feels like she barely even notices you. Like, aren't you doing all the right things and can't you get just a little bit of attention and respect from her? Why is it such a challenge? Okay. I talk to guys all the time where this is a thing. It feels like as men we're trying to do everything we possibly can to make these relationships work and to go well, we're giving all that we have to give, and yet our wives sometimes seem like they're more interested in their social media than they are in us. Are you feeling that way, guys? Is that resonating with you? If you're like the average man these days, I bet it probably is. Look, this is a hard topic, right? Because. I'm not in this game to try to badmouth our wives or our girlfriends. We're not really trying to throw anybody under the bus here, but we do need to be honest about the fact that this is a real problem. This is a real challenge for most guys in long-term relationships, and that's just because our world has gotten crazy. There's some factors that are really affecting the way that we do relationships these days, and when it is a problem, guys need to be able to find a place to be able to talk about it. And the challenge for most guys is they don't have anybody to talk to about it. Most guys have their most vulnerable conversations with their wives or their girlfriends, and so when the problem is with your relationship, who do you turn to to be able to talk about it? You probably don't have somebody. Well, we need to talk about it here today on the Manhood Tribe Show here at Manhood Tribes. My job as your host is to try to do a few things. I want to give you a clear vision of what it means to be a man. I wanna give you a clear challenge to build strong male friendships, and I want to show you a clear path for how you can do both things. My name's Don, and I've been working with men in a variety of contexts for a couple decades now. And mostly these are just things that I have learned over time and by developing close friendships with other guys who are dealing with some of the same things. So I'm just trying to kind of offer my insight and, and wisdom and experience as best I can to help all of us as men. Because I think it's tough these days being a guy. It is tough in the world that we live in because guys tend to be pretty isolated from other guys. And so we don't have a lot of places where we can be honest about the things that really are difficult for us. And this is one of the most difficult things that few of us actually have an opportunity to talk about it. So maybe I am for the first time ever giving you permission to actually be honest about this being a problem in your life, that you feel like you're doing everything that you know to do, to be effective as a husband or as a boyfriend, and you're not getting the reciprocal kind of attention affection. Intimacy, physical contact, sex. Let's be honest that you think that ought to come along with all of the ways that you are trying to show up in that relationship. You're, you're not a bad guy. You're not doing things wrong. You're not out cheating on her, you're not disrespecting her. You aren't like. Blowing up your relationship or your lives together in some crazy way. You're not dealing with some kind of like hidden addiction. You're not like, uh, sinking the family into financial ruin. Maybe you are doing some of those things. We're gonna talk about some of that on another episode, so hang tight if that is you. But for the most part, that's not where most guys are. They're trying to show up. You're trying to not only be the provider and the stability for your family, right? You're, you're working a full-time job, you're bringing home a paycheck that either helps or entirely pays the bills for your family, but you're also trying to be the. Emotional and relational support of your family. You're showing up with your kids. You're present at activities and family events. You are relationally dialed in and checked in to the things that are going on in your home. You have real conversations with your wife or girlfriend where you talk about real things. It's not just details and it's not just grunts. Your shared time doesn't amount to just watching some. You know, binge TV together, you actually have real conversations and real relationships. You're, you're trying to be emotionally present, maybe in some ways that, you know, that guys haven't always done very well at. You're actually trying to do those things. You're showing up, you're leading, you're moving forward in your life. You're trying to be a success in your career. You're trying to set goals and plans for your relationship and for your family long term. You, you're doing all the things that you think you know you're supposed to be doing, and you're, you're trying to do them in the right way. I. You're carrying a load at home. You're helping out with the chores. You're not leaving everything to her. When women talk about the mental load that they have to carry because they have to manage all of the family tasks and all of the home tasks at the same time and go to work, you're stepping in. You're saying, Hey, let me take some of that off your plate. Let me do some of those things for you. How can I help out? You're a, you're a present. Man, you're showing up, and yet that's not translating into your relationship getting better. In fact, it may be getting worse. It may be feeling like she's just becoming more and more distant from you. You're losing her to things like social media or binge tv. You're losing her to the stress of her job that she's working. You're losing her in all the ways that. You think really would matter to you. You don't have the same kind of fun, lighthearted conversations that you maybe once had when you were dating or early on in your relationship, especially if you now have kids. A lot of that kind of just like sheer joy and lightheartedness seems to just have disappeared from your relationship. You don't see her really like carving out time to want to be with you or to be interested in the things that you are interested in. The way that she maybe once was, even if you're trying to do something like date night, it can feel like your date night sort of just devolves into talking about the details of the family and she doesn't really bring up things that seem to matter to her heart or ask you about things that matter to your heart. And maybe especially the sex just seems to have kind of evaporated. There's really like not a whole lot going on in that department, and especially not if you don't initiate it. And so it leaves you feeling like it's one more thing that you want, that if you're gonna get it, you have to make it happen. Where is she showing up in those things? Where is she in terms of coming through for you in the ways that would really matter to you? It feels like if you're gonna get your needs met, you have to be the one pushing for it, and that's not really what a relationship is supposed to be about. We're supposed to be mutually meeting each other's needs and coming through for each other, not solely just trying to get what we want from the other person. Okay, so I'm hoping I'm painting a picture that sounds or looks a little bit like what you're dealing with in your relationship with your wife or girlfriend. Now here's the problem as men, because in our world today we are pretty disconnected from other men. Most of us don't have a place to be able to talk about all of that. And so what do we tend to do? Well, we just retreat inward about it. We obviously don't feel like we can talk to our wife or our girlfriend very much about our problem because it kind of feels like she's the problem. But when we don't talk about it, what do we do? We get bitter, we get angry, we get frustrated, we get passive aggressive. We get really aggressive. We get all kinds of things that can start to just sort of bubble up in other ways that not only are affecting us, but start to have an effect on our relationship as well. And so as it feels like the relationship begins to spiral, we men might react in some ways that kind of create a catch 22 situation. It's like the relationship is spiraling. And so we react in negative ways and those negative reactions do harm to the relationship, and the relationship keeps spiraling downward. And then we react in even more negative ways, and you get the picture, it's just a downward spiral from there. I. So what are we gonna do about all this? What as guys can we do to be able to address what's happening in our relationships with our women there? How can we begin to recover some of the, the real intimacy? And when I use the word. Intimacy. I'm not just talking about sex, like when I mean sex. I'll just say sex. When I say intimacy, I mean the whole picture there. Not just physical intimacy, but emotional, relational intimacy as well. That there's companionship, that there's joy, that there's affection, that there's just fun times together doing things that you both like doing or even just doing something that the other one likes doing for the sake of enjoying that person doing something that they enjoy. Where is all that? How do we recover those things? Okay. I think one of the things that we have to start with is really being able to pay attention to what is going on in our wives world. What's going on in the world of our woman, to be able to know why is she handling things the way that she's handling things. And one of the things that I think we need to learn to be empathetic about as men. Is that for all of the ways that we feel like we're dealing with some of these problems where we're carrying more than we ever have had to, as men, we're doing more than we've ever been expected to as men. The same is also true for them as women. I. They are not only being expected to, uh, show up as they once have as nurturers and homemakers and loving and supporting wives, okay? All of that has been true in previous generations, but now they're also expected to show up as workers. Most women in a home are expected to have a job these days because we all kind of need two incomes to be able to make life work, and they're expected to manage not just the home details, but all of the family details as well. So not just chores and kind of keeping things together around the house, but like everything that the family is doing at every point in time and a massive calendar of events and who needs to be where, when, and how to get. People to all the places that they need to go. All of those details have to live in her head as well as just the responsibilities of running a household and keeping everyone clothed and fed and clean and all of that kind of stuff. Sure. Guys, help out with some of those things, and if you're not, you should, but. Doing those things. She probably owns most of them or feels like she's supposed to own most of them, and even if she doesn't, she might feel guilty about the fact that she doesn't own them because other women do. And so she's probably falling behind there in some ways for not being able to do all of that. The point is she's feeling probably just as exhausted as you are. She's feeling like the load that she has to carry is far more than she's actually capable of carrying. Now one of the differences there for men and women is that women actually talk about these things with, with each other. Men tend to isolate and stay disconnected and to just deal with it, you know, internally by blowing up. But women tend to talk about it. They just don't always talk about it in ways that are helpful. If you check out what women watch on social media very often it's a lot of complaining about the men in their lives. It's complaining about how they think we're not helping out enough, or we're not empathetic enough, or we're not aware of their mental load, or we're not seeing things the way that they see things. And so in a lot of ways, women turn to social media or to their friends who are having those same kinds of conversations as their form of empathy. It's the one place where they feel like they're actually seen and understood. That's not okay. Our wives, our girlfriends, need to feel like that we see them and that we understand them. And so part of what might be needed is here is for you to begin to help your wife understand that you see her before she's ever gonna see you. You need to see her. One of my old mentors used to always say, in terms of giving marriage advice, he would say, seek first to understand, then to be understood. And this is so hard. This is hard for men and women, but for us as guys in particular, when we are in pain, all that we want to do is throw that pain at someone else until they pay attention to us. And where we probably need to start is in figuring out how do we pay attention to our wives Pain. How do we pay attention to what's going on for her and helping her feel seen in our relationship that we know how much she's carrying, we understand the load that she's responsible for. We appreciate all the ways that she tries to do all the things for us and for our family. Even just expressing some of that and the empathy that comes along with it can really open some doors for her to be able to be honest and to start to see you, to start to be able to pay attention to what's going on with you more because she doesn't feel like she has to just do all of her stuff on her own and by herself. She knows that you've got her back and you're paying attention to those kinds of things with her, and she feels like. You're a safe place to be able to talk about those kinds of things. That she can be honest when things are feeling too hard. She can come to you and ask for help, and she's not gonna be just met with anger or resistance or bitterness, but actually with a loving and supportive husband or partner who is trying to be able to show up for her in all the ways that he can. The second thing is that once you've done some of that, you actually do need to start being honest with her about what's going on with you. You need to start talking about the ways that maybe you don't feel seen or some of the ways that you wish she were more engaged, or even the dreaded conversations about, Hey, I wish that you were on social media less, or, I wish that we were having sex more frequently. Like whatever the things that you're really wishing were would happen in your relationship. It's time to start being honest about them. You are going to have to open up and to let her know some of the things that you want because her world is so full, just like yours is that it's hard for her to intuitively grasp the things that you want and need. Women by default, tend to be much better at this as than men are, but with the amount of anxiety that they're carrying over all of the things that they have to do, it's not surprising that she might. You know, have less of you on her radar because she's just got so many things on her radar all at once. So help her. Don't be afraid to ask for what it is that you're needing or to talk about the things that you wish were true in your relationship that maybe once were and don't feel like they are today. How could you get back to some of those places? One of the best ways that I try to, uh, counsel guys on doing this better is if you do have something like a date night, try to make it an actual date. Think about the ways that you had dates when you were dating. You probably didn't talk about the things that you talk about on your dates now, if you're like, a lot of guys date night kind of tends to devolve into just let's talk about the. Details of what's going on with the family calendar. Like where do I need to be? When and what's going on here and what are we planning for this event that's coming up, and how much is this bill gonna cost and how are we gonna pay for that? And you know, what sports are our kids involved in and who needs to be at what game? There's just, there's a thousand details that go into all of those kinds of things. And if we're not careful what little time we have with our wife or our girlfriend gets taken up by those kinds of things. Now, that's not what you talked about when you were dating. You talked about each other. You talked about the things that you were interested in. You talked about the things that you were enjoying. You talked about the things that you wanted to be able to enjoy, but maybe didn't feel like you had time for at the moment, and how you'd like to have time for those things. And then as a boyfriend who cared about your girlfriend, you probably. Try to figure out a way, like, how can I make that happen for her? How could I give her that gift or create some space for her in her life so that she could enjoy those kinds of things? Recapture your dating life with your wife or your girlfriend. Carve out that time and try to really set some limits and encourage her to do the same, and just say, Hey, when we go out on these dates, I really would like our conversations to be about us and about the things that we are enjoying and enjoying about each other, and not just about details. You may need to plan a separate time in the week to have a detailed conversation, to just look at family calendars, to look at plans and bills and all of the things that go into just managing your household, and that's okay. Set up a separate time to do that, but try to make dating time really about the two of you and restoring your relational connection there. Another thing that you might be able to help your wife with, as I've encouraged you to do for yourself is that you might wanna help her be able to build some close female friends. Now, this is one you may have to. Tread carefully on, but if your wife is disconnected from good female friends in the same way that you are disconnected from good male friends, that might be something to encourage her towards. Could she join a small group at church? Can she connect with some of the moms of, uh, kids in your kids' class? Can she do some things that might help her be able to get around other good quality? Women friends and where you have to be careful that careful there is that she doesn't just need to hang out with the neighborhood gossips who are just gonna complain about the men in their lives, right? That's not helpful for her. It certainly isn't helpful for you and it's not productive. It's not a good use of anybody's time. But if you can help her get around quality friendships, that can give her a place to be able to talk about the things that are important to her and hear from other women who might be able to help. All of those things are gonna go a long way towards restoring some of the intimacy in your relationship with your wife or girlfriend. Okay. I think we've covered this from a lot of angles. I've tried to give you a few just kind of tips of advice of things to be able to handle, but the important thing is there, look guys, this is a real problem. This is a real issue, and it does take some specific steps to try to be able to address it. If this content has been helpful for you, I would ask that you would like this video and subscribe to the channel where we're gonna keep talking about these kinds of things. I would also ask you to consider joining our Manhood Tribe's community, where you're gonna find other guys who are interested in the same kinds of things that you're hearing about here on this channel and can help each other out as we explore and navigate what it looks like to be a man, how to get better in those things. How to grow in our faith as men who follow Jesus. And also how to develop close friendships with other like-minded men. Just go to manhood tribes.com/community and you can sign up for the list to find out when our community opens, and you can be a part of it there. All right, I wanna leave you here by encouraging you to comment on this video below. I. And the question that I would ask is, what's one thing that you wish your wife or girlfriend saw about you? What is something that you wish that she noticed about you at the moment? Leave that comment below and I will engage with you as I can, and I look forward to talking to you next time here on the Manhood Tribes Channel. I'll see you then.