3 Things Every Man Needs to Know About His Marriage (That Nobody Talks About) l EP. 85 l

  This episode is for you if: You're a high-performing man who's nailing it at work but going home to a marriage that feels like walking on eggshells. You're not a bad guy — but something's off and you can't quite name it. This is where you start. 

 If your marriage feels like you're living with a roommate, you can't figure out why she's distant, reactive or not interested — this episode is going to change the way you see everything. 

Most men are trying to fix their marriage by fixing their marriage. That's the mistake. 

In this episode, Harrison breaks down the three core pillars that every man needs to understand if he wants to lead his marriage out of disconnection — and none of them require your wife to do a single thing first.  

What You'll Learn: 

🔹 Pillar 1 — Know Yourself First Why your wife's behaviour is almost always a mirror of how you're showing up — and how understanding your own patterns, triggers and protective parts is the foundation of every lasting change at home. 

🔹 Pillar 2 — Masculine & Feminine Dynamics The real reason polarity dies in a marriage, why she's stressed, resentful and closed off — and what it actually means to lead your relationship (hint: it has nothing to do with being controlling). 

🔹 Pillar 3 — Macro Agreements The one conversation most couples never have that would eliminate 80% of their arguments. How to get on the same team so you're fighting the problem together — not each other.  

Also in this episode: 

• Why slapping a label on your wife ("she's avoidant", "she's a narcissist") is keeping you stuck
• The truth about why she pushes back when you try to lead — and what it actually means
• Harrison's personal story of the hardest thing his wife ever said to him — and how he handled it differently than he would have years ago
• Why changing yourself is terrifying — and the fear nobody talks about: what if she doesn't love the new me?

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If you’re a business owner or high-performing man whose life is stable on paper — but your marriage feels flat, your presence at home feels off, or you’re tired of trying harder without real depth or connection click below to apply for coaching.

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Want to know exactly how you're showing up in the marriage, contributing to the state it's in and importantly what you can do about it? (without her having to even know)
Take the Husband Performance Score in less than 4 minutes, get your personal profile & roadmap to start changing tonight

https://harrisonorr.com.au/husband-performance-quiz-574846 

Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:01.078)
If you want to unfuck your marriage, need to understand these three core pillars.

Harrison Orr (00:09.87)
You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harrison Norr. I help successful men stop losing their shit at home, evolve out of the nice guy traits and start leading the people they love, starting with themselves. So let's rip in. Today, I want to walk you through the three core areas that most men don't even know exist when it comes to their relationship. And when you can understand and implement these three core pillars,

it will make your marriage so much easier. You will understand your marriage and the dynamics of it yourself and your wife so much more that when your marriage is in a state that you maybe don't desire, you can actually troubleshoot it. You actually can pinpoint, this is why we're feeling this way. This is why we're treating each other this way, or this is why we're in this state that we don't wanna be in. And then you flip it.

And so this is what we need to do about it. And these are, not knowing about these is so common in so many of the men that I not only work with, but even speak to just throughout my journey. And I can relate to that because I never had any clue of this before I started any of this work myself, not just in terms of coaching, mean, personally, I had no idea why my relationship was in the state that it was in.

I didn't know why my wife wasn't this relaxed, sexual, feminine being that would just throw herself at me every second day like other people seem to have. And I just, didn't get it until I eventually realized that most of her behavior was in response to the way that I was showing up. And so when I actually started to look in the mirror and then change the way that I was showing up, change the parts of me, the nice guy traits, the nervous system,

reactivity, dysregulation that I was experiencing, then everything started to change. And that's the power in this journey. Like so many people end up going to couples therapy or marriage counseling and all these things. The problem with that is it assumes that the marriage is the problem. Most of the time, the marriage is not the problem. The two key components that come together to make the marriage are the things that need the work. And so,

Harrison Orr (02:37.515)
If you're the man that takes ownership of his half and how he's showing up and recognizes that he needs to be the one to change first, he needs to be the one to set the example, and he's the one that can lead not just himself, her, the entire household and marriage out of the state that it's in, you're in the right place. So the first and most critical point, pillar, if you will, of this is understanding yourself.

And I know this is going to sound cliche to a lot of people or just wishy washy to people to just kind of brush this work off. But truly being able to understand yourself, understand your patterns, your traits, how you were showing up the way that you're showing up, why you're showing up the way that you are and what consequences or repercussions that is having on the way that your wife shows up on the energy of the household and how that is contributing to the state that it's in.

Because when you start to understand that we all have these parts of us that show up, that protect us from certain things, that treat others certain ways, that show up in certain ways, especially in a relationship.

The way that you are showing up in your relationship, the things that you accept, the things that you tolerate are often what was modeled to you by your parents. And now there's heaps of people that may love that, may work for them, but a lot of people, doesn't. Like if your parents were never, like never modeled to you, how to have a disagreement, how to treat each other, how to...

even just be intimate and show and experience and receive love, then it's gonna feel very foreign to you because it hasn't been modeled. And until you start to do some of this parts work in understanding yourself, then it's going to be really confusing for one and I dare say even unattainable because it won't make sense. So when we can understand the parts of ourself that show up,

Harrison Orr (04:49.951)
it makes it so much easier to then navigate and change these. And then the extension of this, which is very important, is we can understand the parts of our part.

we can understand the parts of her that are showing up to protect her from certain things. And then when we can understand that, we change the way that we handle things, right? Not from a manipulative standpoint, but in the same way that when you can tell the difference between your son having or your child having a tantrum versus having a, or just a lack of emotional regulation.

you handle it differently. If you can see that your child is lacking emotional regulation and this is your cue to be able to help them co-regulate and help them regulate their own nervous system, you would act differently. You would sit with them, you'd help them breathe, you'd help them process this emotion that is too big for their tiny little nervous system at this point, and you just help them navigate it. You don't punish them, you don't tell them they're bad, you don't tell them to just suck it up. You handle it very differently.

than if this child is being defiant.

Well, at least I hope most of us would. And so when we can understand how our partner is showing up, it makes it so much easier for us to then navigate this. And when we have a deeper understanding of ourself, we have a deeper understanding of them. And that's how this connection is built. That's the fundamentals of a relationship, of a marriage, is being able to understand each other much deeper than just...

Harrison Orr (06:32.002)
the logistics, just the words, just like the surface level stuff. But so many people don't go on this journey to understand themselves and how they're showing up and just get stuck in the minutia that doesn't really matter and wonder why they feel like roommates and wonder why nothing ever lands and everybody feels misunderstood. Because if you don't do this work for yourself, you're not gonna be able to see it in them.

Harrison Orr (07:01.154)
The depth to which we can understand and love ourself is the depth to which we can understand and love anybody else.

not just our partner, but anybody. And it makes it so much easier to not take things personally, to navigate situations, to be the one that leads, that provides the reassurance and the acknowledgement and does the things that the healthy masculine man is there to provide in a functional marriage and household even.

Harrison Orr (07:39.992)
but just by understanding your own parts, owning those, updating those, changing those, if you haven't already, you will be so surprised by what impact that has on the household, by what impact that has on her as well.

So understanding yourself and actually doing the work, right? Not just having labels. I've seen so many people that spoken to so many people that the first thing you ask them about their marriage or relationship and they come out with, well I'm married to a something avoidant or distant thing and like all these fucking labels and narcissist and whatever. It's like that instantly tells me that you take zero accountability and responsibility for your relationship.

the fact that the first thing that you say about your relationship is you slap a fat, ugly label on your wife.

saying that's all her fault. Well, the relationship is in this state because she's this and she's that.

will either own your stuff and both of you change or take responsibility for your life and fucking leave. One of the two.

Harrison Orr (08:58.67)
And so this work is doing, sorry, this process is actually doing the work too, not just understanding the mechanics of why you are the way you are and like your patterns and your traits, but actually changing them, changing the way that you actually show up. Because no amount of information or knowledge will change the landscape in your emotional relationships and the connection at home. It actually takes changing those patterns, changing those behaviors, changing those parts of you.

And that moves us on to point number two, which is an extension, slight nuance of those parts. It's understanding masculine and feminine.

the dynamics, the needs, the differences, like understanding what your role is in the relationship and understanding your partner to a greater degree. So the parts work, know, understanding yourself, understanding yourself and the parts, and then by extension, your partner and your parts, that's like the individuality, if you will, of each other. The masculine and the feminine is more about

I don't wanna say the biology, but the DNA essentially of each of you, assuming that you being the man are a naturally masculine leaning man and she's a naturally feminine leaning woman. But understanding how they each function differently.

because I don't think that's up for argument that they function differently. Men desire things that women don't so much desire and they value things that women don't really value and the opposite is true for women. That's why we have different ways of treating each other. Women can often just talk about something and they feel better. They don't need a solution.

Harrison Orr (10:55.5)
For a man, the first thing that he wants to do is provide a solution because we're action solution-based creatures and we like momentum, we like movement, we like action. That's how we solve things. And so understanding each other on this level makes it incredibly...

sorry, significantly easier to understand your role in the healthy relationship and then being able to meet the needs of your partner when you understand what that is. And this starts with leading. I had some guy in my comments the other day, you know, trying to argue that the woman has to surrender first. The woman has to be, you know, the...

the one to change for she needs to soften and relax and surrender to her man. And then he is able to lead. And he started quoting a bunch of Bible references and whatnot. But I just thought it's quite ironic. And it doesn't even make sense linguistically, because if you are the leader, you lead, you lead by example, you are the first one to do something.

if she has to change first, by definition, you are the follower. Funnily enough. So as the leader, being the man, get to make the change first. We get to become grounded, our shit, hold our space, provide direction, and allow or invite our partner into that space. Now it's worth getting...

clear on the difference between leadership and dictatorship. So many people have seen also, you know, commenting like, you know, nobody needs to lead in a relationship. It's not a dictatorship. It's not, it's tyrannical. It's like, all these things like it's you've missed the point. They cannot, if there is no leader to some extent, you both sit around twiddling your thumbs and doing fucking nothing. Even in the smallest instance, just the

Harrison Orr (13:05.046)
What do you want to do? Like, do you want to do this today? Providing that option, that direction is the smallest possible thing that you can do. And so if no one is doing that, well, we wouldn't get anywhere. And so it's worth it. If that's something that you've experienced, a hesitation in this, what are the connections that you have with some of these labels of being a leader, making decisions, being masculine? Like if you have a hesitation towards any of these.

What is the connotation that you've assumed? What connection have you made about having that trait and it being not good? So many people who have associated being masculine with Andrew Tate, with being a misogynist, with being like all these negative things. If you're a leader, you're a dictator. If you are confident, you're arrogant, like all these negative things and it doesn't serve you.

So if you have this story that you've been telling yourself, you have some of these negative connotations, I implore you to look into those a little bit deeper because until you address those and no longer have those negative feelings towards those traits or behaviors, there'll always be an ick or a resistance to doing anything about it.

Harrison Orr (14:31.81)
But back to the topic. So understanding the masculine and feminine, right? Understanding the differences so that you can understand how your partner functions on a deeper level, one that they may not even have been able to put two words into, right? They may have, your partner may have said, I just want you to...

to take more charge. I want you to lead, I want you to decide. I want you to plan something. want you to take control. Maybe she's talking about the bedroom, maybe she's talking about weekend plans, but you can test this by actually just going and making those plans. Making those plans, say, babe, this is what I want you to wear, this is what I want you to be ready, I've got this plan for us, let's go. And now, yes, you're gonna get some pushback.

especially women that have prided themselves on being independent and aren't used to you leading, there's going to be some challenge. I need to know the plans, you need to tell me or are you sure? Like, what about this? What about that? And don't see those as a...

a challenge in the negative sense. See those as an opportunity for you to prove that you are capable of leading. To prove that you can indeed handle it, that you've got it sorted, you've got it organized, that it's all swayed that she can relax. And at first, maybe she's gonna want to hold those reins with you a little bit, because she's not gonna be sure, because you haven't proven your ability to do this in the past. But that in itself is an opportunity to prove that.

in those moments, if you throw it back to her, I don't know, whatever you want, up to you, I don't care, fine, I was just trying to do this, like, you retreat again, that's telling her, he wasn't ready, I was right to challenge him. Don't give him the reins, allow him to lead just yet because he clearly can't handle it at the slightest bit of pushback, let alone if we had some other external deviation of the plan, how the hell will he handle that if he can't even handle me just?

Harrison Orr (16:33.738)
one offhanded compliment, comment, I should say.

Harrison Orr (16:41.592)
So we understand ourself. When we understand ourself, it makes it so much easier to interact with our partner, to understand them and to go back and forth, right? To understand why they feel the way that they do, why they think what they think, what they want out of this and everything. It makes communication as a whole significantly more effective. And you can apply that to literally every communication, not just with your partner. So understanding yourself first and foremost.

Second one was understanding masculine and feminine dynamics, needs, traits, all those things. Because if there's an imbalance, if you haven't been deciding, you haven't been leading, someone has to. So she's probably had to step into her masculine frame to lead that. And either you've stayed in your masculinity, your butt heads, or you've had to retreat into your feminine to keep some form of balance. That's why there's no desire.

That's why there's no polarity because people are in their opposite poles. For us to be, to create healthy desire, healthy attraction, the natural flow of a relationship and a household. We want to be in our natural poles, which for a man is his masculine, for a woman is her feminine. When we're each in those spaces, where the into the yang type energy, everything flows.

And it takes them, it takes consistency in showing up in that space to allow that. So highly recommend you can go read books like David Dator's The Way of the Superior Man. Incredible book.

about this touches on this doesn't go super deep into the feminine from memory it's mostly focused on the man as the name suggests but starts to introduce a lot of the themes of masculine feminine understanding how it shows up understanding how to lead and all the things that we've covered already and then the third piece which is where we finally come into joint notice how the first two layers of creating this

Harrison Orr (18:49.262)
know, unfucking your marriage or, you know, creating this level of relationship actually have nothing to do with your partner in the sense that they do not need to be involved. It's just the understanding, the recognition, the change, the growth of you, all your work and what you can then bring to the relationship. Now level three is where we actually come together.

And so many of the guys that I talked to don't have this and that's why they bicker and they fight on so many arguments that just could be completely avoided. And that's having macro agreements. Like macro agreements for the relationship that transcend any argument, any piece of contention, any topic, any situation. Like they are the agreements, they are the connections that...

our marriage thrives on that if all else fails, we come back to the, to this agreement. We come back to this acknowledgement of yes, this is where we have common ground and then we can go down in NLP. It's referred to as, you know, chunking down. you go up, you do parts integration is the

framework that they use, you go all way to the top, what's the common agreement between these two people? And then you work your way down until you get to a point of contention because it's so much easier to navigate that when you realize that we both want the same thing. And that's what we're getting at here. These macro agreements need to be things like, first of all, if your relationship is on the rocks or people are threatening the relationship or things like that, it's that we still fucking love each other.

Can we at least get that as an agreement? Amazing. Do we trust each other? Amazing. What is the life that we are creating? Because if you want to live in a homestead out in the country with a self-sufficient property and she's like, nah, fuck that. I want to live in an apartment in the city. Very different directions.

Harrison Orr (20:51.052)
And it's going to come out in other ways in the schools that you pick for your kids. If you send them to school, the jobs that you pick, the locations of things like it's going to filter down into a lot of other things and actually create a lot of resentment because naturally you're going to want to tilt towards out in the country, those type of aligned actions, behaviors, lifestyle, and she's going to inch towards the city. And it's going to bring you guys further and further apart because you're trying to get to a certain destination, which

is opposed to what your partner wants. can even be, another macro agreement can even be the type of parents that you wanna be. The way that you parent your kids, how you punish them, how you interrupt their patterns or their behaviors, like how you correct them, that's a better phrase than punish. And so that you guys are always the united front.

One of the best frames that implementations I heard this was Alex Ormosi who used this in terms of how people can take things the wrong way, take things a different way. And a lot of the men that I talked to, they maybe they take something their wife has said or insinuated personally.

They get upset, they defend it, they create an issue out of it, and it happens both ways, right? The intention versus how it was received was off. And when you think about what that's assuming, like what is the assumption I have about my partner for me to take it this way? Well, if I take her comments as, I take them personally, I take offense to them, I'm upset by them,

That's also assuming that, or insinuating that my partner intentionally wanted to upset me, intentionally wanted to make me feel bad and hurt me and is the type of person that would do that to someone that they love and she doesn't care about me, she doesn't care about my feelings, she was intentionally all these things. Is that really how you feel about your partner? And for some people, the shocking thing is they'll say yes.

Harrison Orr (23:09.218)
Like, well, my partner is this and she doesn't consider me, she doesn't understand me. like, have this every time, anytime there's, you they don't answer their calls or there's some issues, they go into the worst possible scenario. She didn't answer her call, so she's out, she's cheating on me, she's lying to me, she's doing all these things, or this happened. So, you know, go into worst case scenario. like an element of that is...

your patterns coming up because you're insecure about these things. But it's being projected onto her in a way that is not helpful for the marriage. And it may actually have nothing to do with anything that she's done, but it's an insecurity that you've projected onto her and she's just the mirror right now. But it still doesn't change the fact that you have these underlying feelings towards her that are creating more of a distance in the marriage. So it's not helpful. So that's where, go back to point number one.

Understand your own patterns and own your own shit so that your stuff is not a projection onto them and they seem like the bad guy But it's actually your shit to own But when we have these macro agreements, so going back to what Agostro Mose said, it's If if you can take what I said two ways Take it the take it the good way Understand that I didn't mean to upset you that I meant it the good way

Maybe I was little short, maybe I had a rough day, maybe I was focused on something else. Just know that I love you, that we're on the same team, that we're working through this together, that like all these macro agreements. And then when it comes to the actual thing that's at hand, it's so much easier to then navigate both of you because you're on the same fucking team. Like it's you and her on the same side of the table versus the issue, the thing over there.

because you can notice in the way that people fight or they argue, as soon as the comments or the conversation turns personal and it's no longer about the specific issue, it's gone.

Harrison Orr (25:15.874)
Check out, conversation is gone. It's no longer two adults talking about an event right now. It's two little boys and girls projecting their shit at each other and their protective parts coming out to protect each other from being abandoned, from losing love, from being kicked out, rejected, embarrassed, all the things. And it's no longer constructive. So having those agreements.

will make navigating any issue significantly easier and decision significantly easier and life so much easier.

especially when you have to have some of the hard conversations. Like especially when you have to bring something up to your partner, maybe about you, maybe about some of their behavior, maybe about things that are going on. When you can set the frame, like the pre-frame, essentially before you have this conversation, that we love each other, that we're here to help each other, that we're on the same team.

Harrison Orr (26:25.056)
it makes it so much easier to hear someone's truth.

Harrison Orr (26:32.438)
Like there was a point end of last year where I was taking a different approach with some of my content and some of my wife's friends had been in her ear about the content and they were feeling it was very Andrew Tate energy. They felt I was bullying men, I was speaking down to men and

rereading some of the posts, like, I can totally see why you feel that way. I can totally see how if you're not the man that I'm speaking to and this isn't your lived experience that it can be interpreted that way. I can totally see that. But at the time, my wife said to me, she's like, if you...

If you keep going down this road and you become this person, I don't know if I'm going to love that version of you.

And that's really fucking hard to hear. Like that's hard to hear when you feel like you're doing the right thing. You feel like you're living in alignment with your mission, with what you need to do for yourself, for your time on this earth, for your family. And then that gets challenged on, and you might lose someone. That's a hard situation to sit with.

Harrison Orr (28:04.664)
But because, I should say, in a previous version of me would have been upset by that. Would have maybe deflected it, maybe argued it. But instead I was able to actually get curious about what she was talking about specifically. Like what posts, what language, what are you afraid I will turn into if this is the...

the path that I go on, like what are you afraid of happening exactly and what parts of that don't you think you will love? Because being real, that's one of the hardest parts of this journey that not a lot of people consciously recognize that if they change, will my partner still love me? Like yes, the way that we're showing up and the way that things are happening right now aren't ideal, but if I don't show up like this.

If I don't people please, if I actually say what I want and I set boundaries and I start to lead and she doesn't have to have this power, this leadership, you know, make all the decisions. Is she going to be relieved and fall back into her natural feminine and be like, thank God you're here, I've been waiting years for this. Or is she gonna dig in harder? Is she, does she like this? Like, is she going to feel like she doesn't have a place and then wanna leave or want this from somebody else?

That's a very real fucking concern for a lot of people because it's like, if I change, there's no guarantee that it will change for the better.

scary part of this journey.

Harrison Orr (29:48.739)
So now, if you're not happy with your relationship or you know it can be better in some capacity and you recognize that you are.

a key player in changing this, that you have to change first. Look through these three core areas of how well do you understand yourself and your patterns? Like look in the mirror every time there's a point of disconnection or distance or something that doesn't get resolved. Look in the fucking mirror of what part of me is showing up? What do I need to own? What do I need to change in these moments? How can I understand my wife better? Understanding yourself to a greater degree will help you to understand her better.

understanding masculine and feminine, understanding where your wife has to step into her masculine and the disconnected that creates. She becomes more stressed. She becomes maybe resentful and frustrated. She's not open to your touch. She's not open to intimacy anymore and what divide that creates. So now you start to understand that. And then getting clear on the macro agreements.

What do you love each other? Do you trust each other? What kind of relationship do you want to have in the future? What do you want life to look like? Your lifestyle to look like where you live, the type of parents that you are, the type of kids that you raise, getting clear on all these things. So it's unified and like beautiful. We're all working towards the same thing, the same lifestyle with each other. Now we can just trickle down and everything else is fucking snickle fritz compared to the bigger stuff.

But if you're still not sure, if you're not sure how you're showing up, you're not sure what needs to change exactly, I have something for you. In the show notes below this, I've attached a link to the husband performance score. It's 12 questions. It'll take you about three to four minutes and...

Harrison Orr (31:37.422)
upon answering these, will give you a personalized profile and roadmap on exactly what you need to change based on where you're at and what's happening in your relationship that don't require her to do a single thing. You can start taking action on this literally today as soon as you implement it and start to see the results. It will give you that blueprint on what to do, the layers of change and everything you need to understand how you're showing up and how that's contributing to the state of the marriage and then importantly, what you can do about it.

my gift to you because that's something that I wish I had all those years ago when I had no idea what was wrong. And then even once I figured out what it was, my cool, what do I do about it? Here you go. So with that, don't be sorry, beep it up. I'll see you guys next time.