Why Being ‘Easygoing’ & 'Agreeable' Is Slowly Destroying Your Marriage l EP. 41 l

Breaking down one of the most dangerous traits holding nice guys back: being too agreeable.

You’ll learn why saying “I’m easy” or “whatever you want, babe” is eroding trust in your relationship, killing polarity, and costing you respect. More importantly, you’ll walk away with clear tools to lead with direction, set boundaries without being reactive, and reclaim the kind of grounded masculine presence your partner actually craves.

This one might sting — but if you feel it, that’s where your growth lives.

What we cover:
– The hidden cost of being too agreeable
– Why your wife doesn’t trust or respect you (even if she loves you)
– How to express your truth without being a tyrant
– 3 real tools to lead your family without apology
– The power of controlled anger & why you must be a capable threat

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Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:01.335)
This is the problem with being so agreeable and how it's killing your marriage.

Harrison Orr (00:13.825)
Welcome back to another episode of the Be Better podcast. I'm your host, Harrison and I've coached almost 500 guys to have more energy, more presence, more power so that they can lead their partners, lead their family, lead their business and lead themselves as sovereign masculine men. In this episode, I wanted to break down being agreeable as a man and why that is so detrimental. And I guess this stems from a piece of content I put out.

earlier in the week that has resonated with a hell of a lot of people so far. And I want to preface this. If you've been watching my content, obviously this is coming through the lens of being a nice guy, right? But if you haven't seen that yet, what I mean by being agreeable, or I should say, I mean being too agreeable, right? Being agreeable at times is not an issue. It's only when being agreeable,

is at the expense of your values, your standards, it goes against something else in you, or you're doing it as part of a covert contract. We're agreeing with someone or with the group because we're trying to get something in return that we have not communicated. And so Robert Glover talks about covert contracts as doing something for someone else.

and a lot of nice guys will do this in relationships especially, we will be nice to this person, we will do things, we will go out of our way, we will make sacrifices, but we will not ask for a single thing. Yet, we will have expectations.

Harrison Orr (02:32.417)
that they will do something in return for us. It's often if I do these things for my wife, for my family, that they will love me, they will respect me, they will do these things in return. If I do the chores and look after the kids, then it will increase the intimacy in my relationship. My wife will wanna sleep with me more. If I help her to stress less and take everything off her plate, if I do more, more, more, if I make more money, if I provide more, then...

We will have more sex, we will have a better relationship, we will have all these things, all these needs met that I am too afraid to communicate.

And so that's a bit of a background because when we look at, I guess that ties into why we are being agreeable in the first place. If you're like me and many other nice guys, we were taught or raised to be polite, to be nice, to be kind, to not be a bother, not be a problem.

And we also would take it, well, I guess I'll talk from personal experience here. I used to take it personally. If someone disagreed with me, if someone had a differing thought, opinion, belief to me, even, well, I no matter how they communicated with it, sorry, no matter how they communicated that, I would take it personally. Like it was a personal attack on me, like they were shutting me down, like they thought I was an idiot, like,

you know, let your overthinking mind run a million miles an hour with that thread. Not fun, by the way, if you haven't done that before. And so in my mind, subconsciously, I was thinking, well, I don't like to be disagreed with. I don't like someone else to be different to what I've voiced. And so therefore, I'm not going to do that to them. Because I don't know about you, but I was always raised, treat other people the way that you would like to be treated. Right?

Harrison Orr (04:35.307)
which also plays into the nice guy behavior. Because again, if I'm nice for these people, if I do this for them, because I'm treating them the way I would like to be treated, there's that expectation again. Of if I do this for them, then they'll do it for me. The problem is we haven't communicated that.

then being agreeable to this degree, how that impacts that level of trust, that level of respect. Let's start with trust first. And this is in any relationship, not just marriage. If we know that person is always gonna say yes, if they're always going to agree, if they will go with the flow no matter what, they're easy going.

then that person is somewhat weak. They're untrustworthy, right? Because if I know that they're just gonna agree with me, then by default, I know that they'll never be able to tell me what they really think or how they really feel. And then I can't really trust what they say because I don't know if they're being genuine or if they're just saying yes because they don't know how to say no.

and secretly they're thinking, this guy's a fucking idiot, this, that, and then going in bad mouthing me, talking shit behind my back to friends or other people. So it becomes very, it creates a very unstable relationship because you can't be trusted, which is fair, right? It all, that also impacts our confidence. It impacts our ability to

follow through with what we say that we're going to do because we don't even trust ourself. Because we agree and to everybody else, we're so easy going in everything that we do, then...

Harrison Orr (06:33.087)
If we say we're gonna do something, we neglect it. We forget about it. We're like, it doesn't matter. And so for me, confidence is coming from the ability to say I'm gonna do something and going and doing it. Even small things like washing up the plate in the sink through to bigger things from having hard conversations and taking bigger, riskier moves and needing to back myself in situations that I haven't been in before.

Harrison Orr (07:00.683)
Confidence starts with those little things and it requires trust. Trust in my word, trust in myself, which as a nice guy, we have given that power to everybody else around us. We've given that power to our wife, to our kids, to people at work, to tell us that we are good enough, that we are worthy enough based on our actions, based on what we do for other people.

And then the problem with the nice guy behavior is when that doesn't work, instead of thinking, hey, this approach may not be getting me the results that I want, we go into overdrive. We think, well, that hasn't got the result. So I must, I have to be even nicer. I have to sacrifice even more. I have to be even more easygoing, even more agreeable.

And then so it creates even more distance in our relationship, even less trust, it carries even bigger issues because we've just doubled down on the thing that is not working.

And that's probably the hardest frame to break for a lot of nice guys. It definitely was for me, is breaking that pattern of what I've been doing has not been working. I need to do something else. Which is hard when you're raised that way. Cause then your mind goes to the other way of like, that mean I'm, if being polite's not working, does that mean I have to be rude? If doing all this isn't working, does that mean I have to be arrogant or I have to be an asshole?

Like if nice isn't getting me what I want, do I have to go that way? And I definitely went too far that way. Like I've shared before, when I started to learn to say no and realize that I needed to set boundaries, I was very harsh in doing that. Excuse me. And I was very strict on that. But like a typical nice guy, I hadn't communicated what I was doing. I hadn't communicated that boundary before I enforced it.

Harrison Orr (09:11.177)
I hadn't communicated why I was saying no. I wasn't communicating that from a grounded, present, calm place. It was still reactive, still passive aggressive.

And that's where being so easy going as a nice guy lets us down. We think that if we don't make an issue, if we're just happy to go with whatever, that we'll be likable, but we'll get forgotten. We'll get used and abused and we'll get resentful and we get frustrated and angry. And then we wonder why.

why being agreeable isn't working, why being easy going isn't working. And so if that's resonating with you, I wanna give you a few frames that have really helped me, things that you can actually implement literally today that have helped me shift out of that space. And so a lot of this is going to be, the inverse of what's causing the problem, but in a way that is grounded, is balanced, is...

in control, right? We're in control of our self and our boundaries and what we're doing here. We're not forcing them onto other people, right? And so the first practice, the first thing that you can change, and this can start nice and simple, is start leading with direction. Think about all the times that you say things like, I don't know, I don't care, babe, whatever you want, I'm easy.

It's up to you completely negating that leadership and giving back that control and that decisiveness to our partner, asking them to be the masculine because we don't want to choose because we're afraid that we'll choose, we'll get it wrong, we'll get rejected. They won't love us. They'll leave, we'll die in some catastrophic event through rejection. But hopefully you can realize that that's not gonna happen. So instead of...

Harrison Orr (11:21.909)
I don't care, babe, whatever you want. Have a decision, pick an option. And now you don't need to take that to the grave. That doesn't have to be the hill that you die on, essentially, in that decision, but make a decision.

start with little things, like literally as that example. Anytime she asks you what you want for dinner or what you want for a meal or what you wanna do on the weekend, pick something and run with it.

Pro tip, if you can be even more on the front foot, instead of waiting for her to come to you and ask that question, take that initiative and say, hey babe, I'm feeling like getting tired for dinner. How does that feel for you? Or I'd like to go and do this on the weekend. How does that feel for you? See how I've provided direction, I've provided an option. I haven't said, what do you think? Masculine is thinking, feminine is feeling.

Remember that. So literally in the language that you use, we'll tell her mind and body where to go. Do I go to the head to think, to be masculine? Or do I go to the heart, to the body to feel? What am I feeling about that option? The more we can do, provide that level of direction and allow her to just stay in her feeling, in her feminine, the more we will be able to restore that polarity to the relationship. And so start with, like I said, those smaller decisions.

and then you can start leading from there, taking on bigger decisions too. And this is not dictatorship, right? I used to think that by leading in this way, it was tyrannical. It was controlling, it was manipulative, was ironic though, right? Coming from a nice guy. And it was all those things. And it was something that I didn't wanna be.

Harrison Orr (13:16.315)
Now I know how wrong I was in thinking that way. And so initially you will get some pushback in taking the initiative or the lead in some of these areas. Not so much with dinner, right? But in other areas of life, you might initially get some pushback. In the past, I have definitely taken that personally.

Right? You feel like you're already going out of your comfort zone to lead, to make a decision, to be proactive here. And then you get some pushback. You're already out of your comfort zone and then you get hit with some conflict to deal with on top of that, know, quote unquote conflict. And as a nice guy, we kind of go into overdrive like, I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready to take on conflict and leadership at the same time. But it's fine. Just breathe and expect it.

expect there to be some pushback or some challenge because up until now there has been no proof of you being able to lead. There has been no proof or no reason for her to allow you to lead and feel safe in that. And that's fine. This is where we start to create that proof. If in that challenge you get reactive, you blow up, say, fine, fuck it, whatever you want, I just tried to do this. Okay, cool.

That just proves her point that you are not ready to lead, that you are not worth trusting yet.

And so expect the challenge. Breathe.

Harrison Orr (14:56.765)
slow exhale, bring yourself back to your body, stay calm, stay grounded and navigate that.

Even if you end up going with her suggestion, it doesn't mean that you haven't led. It doesn't mean that you've been emasculated. Like I definitely used to feel when I got challenged on some of these things. Not at all. You're still coming to a joint decision. Cause even if she, again, you flip the roles, she agrees. She's like, yeah, sounds good. does exactly what you've been doing this entire time. And she begrudgingly goes along to whatever your suggestion was. You wouldn't feel good about that, would you?

Even if she said like, well, I didn't really feel like it, but I knew you wanted it. So I just went along with it. That doesn't really sit right, does it? It doesn't feel nice. Cause you want them to enjoy the meal, enjoy the experience and whatever you're to do as well, right? You'd want them to be honest. See how that's hypocritical of what we've been doing this whole time. Funny that.

Harrison Orr (16:02.613)
And so number two, if you wanna stop being easygoing, stop being agreeable, stop doing all these kinds of things and actually be trusted and respected, we've gotta learn to have hard conversations. We've gotta learn to not avoid conflict. And again, as a nice guy, we used to think that we believe that conflict is the end of the world. You don't wanna be confrontational, you don't wanna cause conflict, don't wanna cause an argument because it's rude, it's disrespectful, things will blow up, you'll end a marriage, end a business, end a...

like friendship, whatever it is, the amount of times that I personally and through the guys that I've coached have had a hard conversation.

Harrison Orr (16:44.735)
and come out stronger is more, drastically more than the amount of hard conversations I've had and seen that have weakened the relationship. Again, the polar opposite to what we think will happen. We think that the conflict and the argument will weaken the relationship and then if we're already feeling disconnected and distant, then we're just one straw away from, one argument away from the whole thing blowing up and ending.

there will be so much more truth, trust, respect, connection, strength in that relationship, in your ability to have hard conversations.

Harrison Orr (17:26.039)
in that ability to stay grounded, stay present, listen to understand, not just to respond. So as they're talking, you're already thinking about, oh, well, that's fucked, I didn't do that, well, this and that, and you're already formulating your response. You're not here, you've already lost at that point. Again, this conflict isn't about winning or losing, it's about

understanding the other person's point of view. Because if there's a difference, okay, there might be some information that I have not been privy to yet, that might change my perspective. And if that's an opportunity for me to learn and increase the accuracy of my perspective or my reality, because I now have new information, then that's wonderful. But if I'm stubborn,

stuck in my perspective of the world and my arrogance and thinking that I know everything and that my way is the only way and that everyone else who disagrees with that is wrong, then we're never gonna have a constructive conversation. And the conversations that we do have are gonna get weaker and weaker and weaker because the other person is gonna start to recognize, well, if I bring up anything that disagrees with him, it always ends in a fight. I can't be fucked to have a fight right now. I can't be bothered. I don't wanna go down that route. So I'll just shut up and say nothing. I will just not even bite.

and then you just sit there in meek silence or shallow level conversations.

Again, how many times have you had those thoughts too? Of it's not, don't want to, I don't want to have an argument. I don't have a fight. I can't be bothered dreaming right now. So I'll just shut up.

Harrison Orr (19:11.945)
It is a mature and a high level of...

Harrison Orr (19:25.911)
Hello? you okay? The HCF one?

Harrison Orr (19:50.583)
Can you make sure you're trying to work?

Harrison Orr (23:21.504)
you

Harrison Orr (23:36.375)
Sorry, I just got interrupted by a call. Where were we? Hard conversations, staying grounded, staying present, because our ability, here we go, our ability to have those hard conversations is going to dictate the strength of our relationship and the depth of our relationship too. Not just romantically with our wife or our partner, but with our friends, with our business, either associates or, you know,

employees or not necessarily employees, but the people that we're in business with. The other co-founders, the other directors, if you're that structure of business is going to be determined by how you can have those hard conversations. And again, this comes back to how well you can regulate yourself, how well you can regulate your nervous system, how well you can regulate your emotions, how present you can be in those stressful times.

and then have a constructive conversation in not taking things personally, in taking them as somebody else's truth.

and then being able to navigate through that, which is a very mature approach and it's a hard thing to do, especially for guys like us who have avoided these things our entire life. But again, I can promise you, if you can lean into those things, your relationship will get so much easier. You'll get so much more connection, so much more depth, so much more intimacy when you can lean into these things.

And like everything, it's my view that it starts with ourself, right? When you know that there's things that trigger you, when there's these things that push you into that dysregulated state, that's work we need to do. A lot of guys will maybe hear this and think, okay, I need to go to couples therapy or my wife needs to be doing this or she shouldn't say that or she should do more of this. Cool, I'm not here for those guys. I'm not here to play the blame game. I'm not here for victims. If that's the space that you're in, sorry, prior to that,

Harrison Orr (25:43.681)
where you get triggered, where you get dysregulated. Awesome. Work on yourself first. Own all of all of those traits. All those things that trigger you, fucking own them. Because the reason that you get triggered is because there's an element of truth to it that you believe. Like they, know deep down that if there's something triggering you when she's quote unquote nagging about something, it's because you know that you haven't done it when you said you would.

We often justify things, we get defensive, we get passive aggressive, all the fucking things. Awesome, that's for you. A mature man can own those things, but even better, being proactive. If you do the things that you said you would at the time you said you would, like being impeccable with your word, you won't even have those. You won't even have those conversations because you'll have done it.

So be impeccable with your word, lean into those hard conversations as points of conflict with a grounded present state, regulate yourself and see how that communication, that connection changes from there.

Harrison Orr (27:00.639)
Another point is we think being agreeable is even attractive, right? We think that we're doing the right thing. If we, if we're easy going, if we agree to whatever they want, that it makes sense that they would, they would like being around us, right? They would like, they would give us things in return. They'd like to do things with us because, I know that he'll let me do whatever I want. I can always have my way. When in fact, that's not what people want at all. They want to know that they can.

trust someone to say what they really think. They want to know that, okay, I may not like what he has to say, but fuck I respect him for having his truth and standing up for his values and his standards, what he stands for. Because if we don't know what we stand for, we'll fall for everything. We say yes to everything, we agree to everything, we're just easy going because we stand for nothing. We don't have an opinion, we don't have a...

Stance we don't have values that we stand for that we would fight for Think about that as as a description of someone. They were easygoing. They'll just go with the flow. They didn't really care for much. They wouldn't argue with anything They wouldn't really fight you on anything. They would always just say yes and go with the flow and tell you what you wanted to hear They're always always down it's like That person sounds meek and weak

and kind of manipulative and backstabbing kind of as well because you're like, fuck man, if you just bend to everybody and you stand for nothing, then.

can't trust you.

Harrison Orr (28:44.949)
I remember hearing, who was this? It wasn't Jeff Bezos, no. It was someone else who was extremely successful. And they were saying how the more successful you get, the harder it is to find genuine people, genuine friends. Because often when you get to that level of status, these traits that we're talking about, this agreeableness and telling people what they wanna hear gets

amplified by the people that are around you because they want to try even harder to be liked by you because again they're manipulated they think oh if he likes me then I'll get invited to his house to his parties get surrounded with his networks I'll get business opportunities I'll get like all these things forgetting that there's a fucking person dude that you're communicating with we're just seeing the benefits of being you know in proximity with this person and they were saying that the more

these people and this obviously doesn't apply to the people who are still full of themselves and have their ego so high above the clouds. But for genuine people, they get to that point and they fucking want to hear no. They want to be told that their idea is wrong or that it's stupid or like be challenged on things because they don't get that from people because they have so many brown noses.

and so many people like amplified nice guys even more than usual. And so there, another way to stand out, to be remembered, to be respected, if I can tell you truth, start with yourself and then you'll get better at doing that. Next one, you lead, you ask for permission instead of leading with clarity and decisiveness. Again, we're always asking permission. would this be okay? Do you mind if I do this? Can I do this?

If they say no. Okay. Okay. No worries. No worries. Just thought I'd ask anyway.

Harrison Orr (30:49.207)
aesthetic.

Harrison Orr (30:52.617)
Again, it's how we ask. not being direct and we're not being control if we're not being tyrannical.

Knowing what you want, how to get it, how to ask for it, is a strong leadership quality. So instead of asking for permission for everything.

Go and do it. Say what you're going to do and then go and action it. If it is something that you need your partners or someone to buy in again, hey, babe, I'm gonna go do this. How does that feel for you?

Harrison Orr (31:32.413)
super easy way to get them on board so they know what's happening again without asking for permission, but you're getting that acknowledgement from them as well.

Harrison Orr (31:46.357)
And the last one, if we're easygoing, we're agreeable, we're often emotionally unstable to a point, right? We're great at suppressing those emotions and we call it, some people will call it regulation, some people will call it control, but suppressing those emotions is, I guess, a false term as well, especially if later on those things just erupt.

erupt like a volcano all over the place. And then we bring up all that past crap with it. It's just that one little issue that takes...

that brings everything from the past back up. Well, you don't do this and you did this and last week you did this and you said that and this, that and that and everything fucking comes out. It's like we've opened the floodgates and all the shit that you've been holding onto that you thought you had let go or you had regulated yourself through or whatever is still sitting there because you haven't come to terms with it.

And so you bottle things up, you smile through that resentment and she knows those people know.

One thing that I'm working through at the moment in my quest for being better, stepping more, stepping up in this area of my life is expressing the full range of my emotions, of my masculinity. Because I used to think that, yeah, just like I explained, that cool, you don't...

Harrison Orr (33:28.407)
feel or express those things, you suppress them, you kind of regulate, know, breathe them away and all that kind of stuff. But we're stopping them ourselves from feeling those things.

We are supposed to feel those things for a reason. And so it's not.

trying to act like we don't feel those things because again, if you don't see anyone other than the one mood they're in the whole time, you get suspicious. You're like, are you even like, are you delusional? Because you're human. have, we have ups and downs. have highs, lows, in-betweens, all the things. How are you not expressing them? What are you doing with this? Where are you really? If I can't see this, I can't relate to you if you don't have any of these emotions, if you're not here.

And one of the things that has been interesting in my journey is the expression of anger, which anger is an interesting one, especially as nice guys, right? Because again, we're told that anger is bad. Anger is aggression. Aggression is not good. You suppress that shit. You don't have that thing that's bad, right? And finally, we suppress that until we can't take it anymore. And that's exactly what comes out, that anger, that frustration, that rage, but in an unhealthy way.

in an unregulated way, in an uncontrolled way. It's like when you watch a drunk teenager punch holes in the walls because his girlfriend was sitting on another guy's lap or hugged another guy or whatever it is, right? Completely unhinged.

Harrison Orr (35:03.719)
That is the type of aggression that is not great, that is scary for full feminine, because they're like, well, if you can't control it, how do I know that's not going to be directed at me at one stage?

But for them to be able to see us express our anger in a controlled and healthy way.

which might literally be, they may not necessarily have to see it, but excusing yourself, feel yourself getting that frustration, that anger. Okay, I can feel myself becoming extremely dysregulated. I need to excuse myself. I'll be back in 10 minutes once I've regained control and I'm calm again. If I haven't, I will come and let you know, and then I will disappear again until I have got this under wraps. Okay, and then you do what you need to. You punch the bed, you scream into the pillow, you do whatever.

practice you need to do to get that out and then you return. Now, she knows that you have the capability of that emotion, of that anger, of that aggression, of that frustration. She also knows that you have it under control, that you are not going to let that out, directed at her and put her or your kids in danger. And so in the process of...

expressing and having control of the full spectrum of our emotions and our masculinity, part of that is letting them see that, but know that we've got it under wraps. And it's knowing when to use these things. Because think about how much safer is she gonna feel if she knows that you can access that and you will access that when you need to. So if someone's threatening her or your kids that you can turn that on,

Harrison Orr (36:56.267)
and step into that state, because you need to, because your family needs you to. As opposed to someone that is so unthreatening, they can't even access that if they need to in that state. And here's a side piece for why it is good to be seen as a threat, as a man, physically, financially, resourcefully, mentally, like in all the possible senses of the word.

Harrison Orr (37:29.003)
They interviewed one of the most notorious pedophiles. Like this guy was like kidnapping kids and raping them and like all sorts of messed up shit. Even killing them too. And they asked him, how did you pick your victims? Like there was nothing correlated. They weren't a specific race, a specific age, a specific like gender even like.

that was so broad they couldn't find out like how he decided on his targets. And he said, I wasn't even looking at the kid. I looked at the dad.

And if he wasn't a threat, I knew I could get away with it.

Harrison Orr (38:20.534)
Let that sink in.

a child molesterer, molester, abductor, rapist, murderer was judging what kid he was going to take as his victim based on how threatening he thought the dad was.

Harrison Orr (38:44.395)
Fucking well.

Again, being a threat is having it under wraps, but knowing how to access this.

again that builds that trust, that safety by you being in control of this.

And so you regulate your emotions, you regulate your nervous system, you start to have your boundaries, say, like set those boundaries, sorry, you say no when you mean it, but communicate it in a...

calm and grounded way in an effective communicative way rather than directive, rather than passive aggressive or reactive. When we start to do these things, not only do we feel better about ourselves, we gain that power, that control back. And we feel that we are now creating that space for others to feel safe around us, for others to feel certain.

Harrison Orr (39:47.723)
and that they can relax around us because they know dad's got it. Husband's got it. He's got it. I know that when that guy's in the room and that guy's on my team, I can, I feel fucking safe. I feel certain. I feel confident because he's here.

That's the energy that we want to bring.

Harrison Orr (40:12.064)
And so a bit of a dump there today, but I hope that has been helpful. If you're someone that thought easygoing, that thought being agreeable, that thought being a nice guy was a virtue, was a trait worth being proud of and part of who you've been up until this point, I hope this probably triggers you a little bit because trigger is where the truth is and where our lesson and our change needs to happen. And so if that's case, I hope it's done that, but I hope.

you've been able to abstract some of the lessons, some of the action items that you can go and implement now to start making gradual change on this now that you've got a better understanding of why those things aren't getting you the results that you would have liked. And then on the flip side, what you can go and do today about them. And if you want to go even deeper into this, if you want a framework as to how to step out of this nice guy into that man that is

grounded in his presence, in his power, in his sovereignty who emulates all the things we just spoke about, then I'm a master class called the Masculine Reset, July 16 in Australia. So probably the day before for those of you in America on the other side of the globe, but in the link down below, you can register, sign up for that. It's absolutely free. So if you're coming along to that, I will see you there. Otherwise, I hope you've enjoyed the episode.

Don't be sorry, be better. See you then.