Your Wife’s NOT Crazy [Why She Changes Overnight] | ft. Harry Kloser-Pitcher | EP 39

Do you feel like you're losing your marriage and you can't even explain why?

Her biology is running the show and you've been reacting to it blind.

Host Alessandro Frosali sits down with Harry Kloser-Pitcher, founder of She's Not Crazy, and what comes out of this conversation will change how you see every argument, every cold shoulder, and every moment she seemed like a completely different woman.

Harry called his wife irrational for years. Pulled away when she needed him most. Did everything wrong with the best intentions. Then she said enough. So he went and learned everything. And their arguments dropped by 90%.

This episode hands you the map: The female hormonal cycle, phase by phase, in plain language. What's actually happening when she flips.

Chapters:
00:02:18 - What hormones demand from men
00:06:02 - Calling her crazy without knowing it
00:06:45 - Why it actually feels logical
00:10:11 - Why men resist changing first
00:11:00 - The shift that fixes most problems
00:14:18 - Where “crazy” really comes from
00:17:34 - Why men chase and women choose
00:23:27 - The initiation men never had
00:26:00 - It’s not her fault it’s predictable
00:29:48 - Why you have to go first
00:32:17 - The drop men don’t understand
00:34:30 - Why fights suddenly appear
00:40:00 - Why safety changes everything
00:48:11 - When everything suddenly shifts

Learn why your instinct to fix it makes everything worse. Why she can go from wanting you one day to not being able to stand the sight of you the next and what that's really telling you.

Most men take this personally their entire marriage but you don't have to be one of them.

Press play and hear Harry break down every phase of the cycle with exactly what to do and what to never do. 

Connect with Harry: https://www.instagram.com/shesnotcrazyseries/

Download women’s cycle chart here: shesnotcrazy.co.uk

Become a Better Husband in Just Two Minutes a Week for Free: HERE

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. Always seek qualified guidance for your personal situation.

Views shared by Alessandro Frosali and his guests reflect their lived experiences and opinions. Every listener’s journey is unique, and no therapeutic relationship is created.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It can literally go from one day, I want you, give me a lot of sex, I think you're wonderful, I love you so much. The next day, I don't even want to see you. It's ironic that you're doing the worst thing possible. As a man, engaging with these topics, having conversations with our partners on these topics really makes your life better. Our arguments dropped by maybe 90%. Welcome to the podcast, Harry. Hey, thank you so much, Alessandro. Wonderful to be here. Enjoying the day. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I'm good. I'm good, man. I'm good. I what I what I love about what you do online, I I think I saw you. I saw you before we we reached out. I think you saw you you liked one of my videos and you wrote a comment on there. But I'd seen you already like the week or two before that. And one thing I love about you is you're very, very good at articulating about female biology. I think that's one thing that I see over and over again is that like I was just like, oh, you you get it in a way that also can help men understand. Because I think one thing that I try and do is I try and explain, but I've I've been cautious of the biology side. I know that it's a huge part of it, but I don't explain it because that's not my expertise. So when I saw you, I was like, ah, thank God we have a a man here who can actually articulate this and that's your light. And I love that. So thanks for being on today. And and I'm really looking forward to to talking about that biology with you because I think it's a piece for men. I think it's a real missing piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yeah, thank you for that. It's it's a massive missing piece. And it's a piece that um, you know, someone uh said something to me at one point that was like, well, you know, we learned this in school. Surely we'll learn this stuff in school. And I heard that and I was like, I tried to go back to like my school days, and I was like, I, yeah, I can remember we did learn that in school. Most of us, as 15-year-old boys sitting in the back saying, he said the word period. That was the extent of most of the learning. We kind of had this vague sense, women kind of have a cycle. There's this bleeding thing that happens, but that's about the extent of it. And and I and I want to put forward as well that of course, it's it's not only men. I've heard so many female doctors and research and specialists in these areas now talk about the fact that 50% of the women that they work with as well have very little real grounding in the hormonal milieu that we're walking in. And especially to top it off, for me, I was like, okay, considering the fact that we're swimming in these hormones, what does that ask of us relationally? What does that ask of us in terms of how we approach, especially as men? How do we approach these amazing women and beings in our lives, considering the fact that they're living something that that we will never experience?

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Yeah, that's really brilliant. I and I oh I cannot wait to get into it because I think I think this will I think this episode will be a little bit like a masterclass for for uh for the men. We're gonna deal with it like that. But before we jump into like the the practicalities of what people should learn, what they should avoid, everything like that. I would love to know how did you get into this? I mean, you're you're correct me if I'm wrong, it's a username, it's called She's Not Crazy series?

SPEAKER_01 3:24

It it would have been just she's not crazy, but unfortunately that was taken by someone who took the username about 15 years ago and has like two posts. So I couldn't use that.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Well, just like somebody's taken Alessandra Frasali and has zero posts, and I'm like, wow, okay, Alessandra underscore Frasali then. There you go. So how did you even come up with the She's Not Crazy series? How did you get started in this? Where did this whole journey start for you?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

So I have been deeply interested in health, nutrition, hormones, mitochondria, energy, supplements, this sort of thing. I've been sort of a self-studying obsessive over these things for about 20 years or so. And it actually came from an initial experience I had in my early 20s where I felt extremely unmanly and not good about myself. And I convinced myself at the time that the way to feel manly and feel good about myself was to take a bunch of steroids and get stained some muscle. And that went horribly wrong. And I ended up crashing my testosterone into the dumps naturally. My testicles the size of raisins. It wasn't, it wasn't a good time. And I can still remember going to the doctor, and he said, Well, you're just, I think I was one point above the bottom of the range at the time. He said, Oh, you should be fine. So I had this experience of this gaslighting by doctors. It's like, well, you're somewhere in our range. That means you're fine. My personal experience at that point was deep depression, anxiety, crying at every small thing, triggered by everyone and everything around me, suicidality. There was uh there was a lot, and felt deeply alone in it, and even had from friends around me at times this kind of sense of what the fuck's wrong with you? Like, you know, perk up a bit, perk up a bit. Now, fast forward many years after having then done a degree in philosophy and been trying to work out these different kinds of biological functions over years, and I'm with my wife at that point and have children and have done many years of communication work. So we were both very into nonviolent communication. My wife is a Shane trainer, she works in therapeutic ways, she works with women, and myself, I did a lot of similar things too, including being a health coach. And despite all our many combined years of stills, we were still hitting shit and hitting shit and hitting shit. And one of those things that I would be doing to her would be something along the lines of, well, you fucking said this yesterday, and now you're fucking saying this today. That's just mad and you're crazy. Like it's just irrational. This makes no sense what you're saying. The kind of typical gaslighting without trying to gaslight, but still very much denying her lived reality.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

And we got to the point that we just it's a it's a really good, it's a really good thing there that you're you're mentioning. And I think a lot of men, by the way, uh get into this sort of space. I want to I want to make clear here when we say, you know, gash gaslighting by rationality, I I I a hundred percent agree with you. I want to make that clear. But the lived in experience of what it feels like in that moment is it doesn't because you have a frame of view, right? Your world sort of sits in this, like, to me, this is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

To me, it is crazy. And I think I think we're about to find out why, how you broadened that. But I just want to validate the men out there so that you don't shut this off and go, like, I understand that she does feel crazy in those moments because she did say one thing and is she is saying another thing, but it's not it's a bit more than the just the feeling, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

It's a hundred percent more than the feeling. And yeah, I and I appreciate you picking that up because it's it's what I was talking about in my email series and a few other things. It's like, of course, as a man who hasn't been taught certain things, who hasn't had certain things normalized, of course it feels fucking crazy. You know, as a man, we're kind of also conditioned to some sort of level to say stability, stability is normality. Stability is like this is when it's good, when it's stable, when it's consistent. And when something strays outside of that, we go, whoa, that must just be mad and irrational. Yeah. And we hit a time where she essentially said to me, and I want to own at this point, she was calling herself crazy at times too. It's like her own experience was almost like, I don't know why this goes on with me, and I'm suddenly here and there. And she hit a time at some point where she started to explore her own cycle and explore her own hormones and what's going on for her. And she hit then, Harry, you don't get to call me crazy anymore. That then really asked something of me. It's like, oh shit, I'm either gonna lose my wife and the mother of my children and everything that entails, or I can start looking at this and I can choose how I go forward. And essentially, my nerdy brain at that point was like, okay, I'm gonna start reading every female doctor, researcher, and scientist that I possibly can on that. Because actually I recognized that if I was gonna learn about these things, I need to learn about them from women. So it just went into that. And soon what started to happen is that as I started to come into this place of like, okay, this is going on for you. No wonder I find that crazy, but no wonder it's going on for you. It's it's actually perfectly rational that it goes on for you. And what happened was that instead of us running into these places, what we'd do is we would go into especially hallutial phase, second phase of the cycle before the period, and we would be going along hand in hand. Hey, we know this is happening. We know this is occurring, we know this is perfectly normal. I'm here, and it's okay. And as we started to do that, our arguments dropped by maybe 90%. And I would say that our relationship, our sex life, our playtime, and everything else is better now by a long shot after 11 years of marriage than it probably was even in the first first year, first two years.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

I think I think what you're touching on there is really, is really brilliant. I I see I see the patterns of this over and over again. There's this line that always men come at me with and go, like, but why doesn't she change? Why do I have to be the one that changes? Why do I have to be the one that changes? Right. It's like this, it's it's like on on a repeat. And I get it because I used to feel the same. But the funny thing is.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

You add that wonderful video, you add that wonderful video of men, it's your turn.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah, yeah. The the like it's it's it may not be your fault, but it is your is your turn. But the the thing is, I I I hear this and I go, well, when you actually accept the partner, right? When you accept your partner uh for who she is, interestingly enough, interestingly enough, a lot of these issues dissipate. You just even said your own experience then. 90% of issues dissipated. And you thought that all these issues were stemming from her. In actual fact, a lot of them, potentially up to 90%, stem from the inability to accept her for who she is, rather than there actually even being any issues. And and so then a lot of men go, but but but but but it's just like, no, but if you just I don't know, if you trained the muscle of letting go and and you know being on the same team, then then a lot of these things disappear. I love that. I love that for your story. So then tell me what happens next. You everything gets better, then do you do you all of a sudden start making reels? How did that go?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

That came from this place I I I realized that what this really did. It sort of for me, coming from a communication background, the ultimate goal, I believe, of almost all forms of therapy to a point. I mean, you've got one kind of therapy that's like, okay, I get to know myself. But when it comes to therapy that supports communication, the ultimate real goal is how do I stop taking shit personally? Across, across the whole sphere, it's like, how do I go through life not taking things personally? Because if I'm not taking them personally, I'm separate, I'm in myself, I'm more grounded, I'm more stable. Everything that I do gets better. And that was the key thing that this work and this change did to me. It's like I take less stuff personally, therefore I'm less reactive of myself around everything. And the biggest thing that I started to go into then at that point, and the she's not crazy, it arose because when I started to do the looking into from this, it just had this sense of this knowledge matters. And coming at it from the biological level, I had years of my wife trying to say similar things to me. And there's a lot of stuff out in the more feminist world of, well, why can't you men just get on the emotional train? And you're you're kind of what often landed as the criticism is men are emotionally stunted. You're emotionally stunted because other you should be able to get on this train with us. And for a man, it was it didn't hit this logical place because I kept on going, well, I don't think we're emotionally stunted. I do think we have different hormones that mean we feel things in different ways, we experience the world in different ways. And the biological understanding appealed to this logical side of the brain. That was this root in for me. And that was a part that I was like, fuck, I need to tell more men about this, because perhaps that's going to appeal to more men's brains. And then the crazy part does. The crazy part was both about what I recognized I'd been saying to my wife, but then when you're going back into bloody history, I mean, you know the root of the word hysteria, I'm guessing. Uh no, tell me. So the root of the word hysteria comes from the ancient Greek hystera, or basically the madness of women due to their wandering wombs.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

So it's it's like the way we describe our root word for crazy is fucking crazy woman. The word estrogen comes from the Greek oystros. And oystros, you ever seen a cat in heat? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking wilds. That's where estrogen comes from. So we're literally, when we're talking about women and using the language in our day-to-day world, it's just like you're crazy. There's something messed up.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

So this is this is where my wife would jump in and say, Patr patriarchy, patriarchy, patriarchy. That's where her words are coming in for this. And you know, it's it's always interesting because I think for a lot for men, you know, like we we sort of sit and we don't really want to. I don't know. There's this kind of feeling I know I had. Let me speak about me first, and then we can open this up broader. I had this experience of going, like, I don't want to believe that there is this whole system, so to speak, that means that women have a lesser experience. Like I, I just was like, I like maybe that's just hysteria in itself, you know? Uh maybe that's just, you know, it's it's a conspiracy. And and the interesting thing is the more I actually try and understand things from my wife's perspective, the more I start seeing how the scales are nowhere near as like weighted on their sides as I had thought, or nowhere near as balanced as I had thought. I had experiences where, you know, I could see in the world, like we had even on our travel, two men in front of me literally had spoken out about either my wife's weight or like actually spoke like about her in front of her. Like, even one, both of them were German, funnily enough. Sorry to the German people out there. But another German man even was just like really said to her in German, like, almost called her crazy when she asked for a different alternative method at the screening in the airport, and um and then commented on her and and and like how sane she was. And she's interesting watching this. And I was like, that would never happen to a man. So there's obviously another extra label, layer like there's a layer to this which goes a little bit deeper. And you open it up even with our language. How deep do you think that layer goes? Because we spoke biology. The understanding of biology is one thing, right? But there seems to be a like not necessarily a system, but at least a societal difference that's going on as well, too.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

For me, society builds itself on top of biology. And let me explain what I mean by with that. It's like because I was often this whole patriarchy or male dominance of women. And I was often uncomfortable with the concept of, well, that's just how cultures have gone. And I was uncomfortable with it because this formed in culture all around the world, everywhere, at different times and different places, with people who had no connection to each other. So there was like, well, why did that happen? Surely you would have had more cultures that would have evolved with women on top. And when I say on top, I don't believe that matriarchy is the polar opposite of patriarchy. I believe that matriarchy broadly is child-focused and children focused in a way that matriarchy, patriarchy is individual wants focused and especially more towards men. So I started to question that. And looking into the biology around it, men's testosterone, you know, men, we're basically reacting to women. And if you look throughout the entire animal kingdom, the sex that bears the greatest cost of reproduction is the sex that the other sex competes for and responds to. You see this beautifully. You ever seen the birds of paradise? The the the type of plant? No, no. The birds of paradise are these amazing different species of birds. And the males form these incredible colors and patterns and long tail feathers, you know, this kind of feathers that would be shit for survival. And they spend years learning to dance and to build nests, all for the sake of a brief coupling with a rather dull-looking female. So, and this happened throughout the animal kingdom. The males and testosterone drive us towards acquiring status and acquiring strength in order to be more valuable towards women. Because men in the biological sphere aren't born with value like women are, we have to acquire that value. So you take that then in a small village culture of 150 people back 10,000 years ago, when men were initiated, when everyone knew each other, when the village elders were men and women sitting around and tracking everyone. And suddenly you expand that to a culture that no longer has initiation, no longer has elders that track each other, no longer keeps an eye on the young boys to track that they're treating everyone well and decently. And what you end up with is runaway domination. It goes into domination rather than service, protection, and devotion. And for me, fast forwarding at that point, you get something that looks like patriarchy, which is kind of domination, but run without the checks and balances of an initiation from a boy who is focused on this is what I want, to a man who is focused on this is what I'm needed for. And so fast forwarding to like the Germans making comments about your wife coming into these places, it then all this stuff that feels in some ways like almost natural because it's somewhere built into this underlying biology and then has been reinforced and reinforced and reinforced via culture for 10,000 years. Yeah. It's a tough thing to walk by. And it's also when you confront men with this, and it took me a while on this. It really did, because I don't want to reach out and point at men and say, fucking your fault. Because it's it's like I really hold we've been born into this, but it puts men, I think, up against a lot of shame when you start to speak to these places.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah, because we we we've got we're gonna like there's there's so many layers on that. Because what I notice is that we I look at growth and fixed mindsets here. I really look at like a lot of men, for some reason, believe that they like if they're a good man, it's it's directly tied to their character rather than their behavior. So if if somebody says like you you've done wrong or there's any shame or anything, they like bring themselves down into a pit of like worry and like I am a bad person. If if you have not, you know, noticed that your wife got hurt or something like that, or she says, Don't call me crazy, and you feel the pain of it and you go, fuck, I'm a bad man. And and the place is there because of this fixed mindset that that is attached to who I am, my state and who I am, like you just like it's it's I see this huge wall and this cloud that comes over. And I've been it, I feel that cloud, I know that cloud very well. But it's the simple thing knowing that there is a difference between who you are, if you've like being a good man or a man that displays good behavior. And I think we we can it like if if we can make that uncoupling, and I think that's what initiations did. You know, it helped us go, well, these are good behaviors to strive for, right? Rather than you are just inherently a bad man. And I think that's also the difficulty when we hear things like patriarchy and things like this, because often men will just go, all they hear is men are shit.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

And the cloud comes back rather than, hey, men, there are actually some behaviors that we need to change. And I think that's why it Needs to come from men to come in to initiate. That's why I do the the retreats and things like that is because I I it's it's initiation is required back in this world.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And and and the interesting thing with initiation is I So I'm a big fan, I don't know whether you would have heard of them the work of Stephen Jenkinson and Martin Prechtel. So being into the initiation field, Stephen Jenkinson, the book Come of Age, is one of the greatest books, I think, that has been written in our time. Martin Prechtel, the smell of rain on dust, when it comes to these kinds of things, it's a lot of grief work, history work, and also initiation sort of work. And the whole idea around initiation is also partly the initiation, partly the having of mentors, of having good role models around. I know that it's like what I do in my life and with my children is I try and reach out, okay, what are the cool people that I can put my son in front of? You know, what we found is an amazing jujitsu master who he goes to. That's one of our roots. And most of us most of us are missing that. I sure as hell did when I was younger. And I think one of the roots that many men actually have for a form of initiation, though it fucking hurts to acknowledge it, is a strong good woman. And and the having of children and the being a father that even if we don't have, you know, I'm acknowledging the path that you're walking now and you're walking it having done initiation work, which is like already there, but the having of these little incredible bundles of both joy and fucking frustration that that help you realize this piece of like, oh, I am needed for something, like solidly needed. And that's a big transformative process for me, a big initiatory process.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

Oh, Harry, we could talk about initiation forever. I feel like that's but that's not what we're here for on this podcast. We'll we'll set up another whole podcast just for that. Let's get straight into now. Because every every man that's listening to this, if you've Joni just jumped on here, you know, I've got other podcasts about rites of passage, I would go listen to that. Or if future Harry and I were going to have another conversation about it. But what I want Harry on here is I think it'll be really good. What are the things that men don't know about women's biology that they should know? I feel like this is fundamental.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

What are the things that men don't know that they should know?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

And no shame, men, if you don't know this. This is like, this is your chance for a non-judgment learn learning time.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

The biggest thing that I had to learn is it's not your fault. It just happens and it's just normal. It's repetitive, it's fucking cyclical, it's plannable, and the more that you speak about it and that you learn about it, and that you acknowledge it and talk to your partner about it, the easier your life will become. Solidly. I promise you that. Especially when, as a man, you make the first move on that, and she gets a sense of someone is coming to her and saying, Hey, I've listened to this person or I've read this book about female biology. Fucking hell, you go through this shit. Can you tell me about your? I want to know you better. What can we do together to make your life and our lives better in this? What support is best for you at this point? And for the guys that like the sort of incentive-driven nature of it, because I acknowledge that human beings are incentive-driven creatures, I get more sex to it this way. I get a wife who praises me more often, who acknowledge me, acknowledges me more often, who goes out of our way for me more often. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

I think, I think, I think one thing that, you know, I want to touch on from what you said, you know, from my experience, women, specifically wives, and you know, from everything that I've seen in my experience is that there is a level of priority that needs to be given, right, to wives within within life. I even like I built this little priority wheel that it's like you you have a life ship, you know, which is your immediate family, which is you, your wife, and kids under 18. And, you know, then you've got probably work that comes in to fuel that, and then you've got extended family, and you it goes on, you know, like this this priority wheel. But if we talk about being prioritized and your words were were brilliant there, you know, to learn about your wife, that is showing, like, I also see that women are like really big on actions, not words. So if you're gonna say, no, no, no, but I really do care about your biology, I do care about your biology, and then it comes back around like a steam train and nothing got fucking changed and everything it was exactly the same, she would look at that as proof that you don't care. She would look at that as proof of lack of priority. And so it's it's you gotta come around and realize as a man, if you want an incentive to to, or if you want a reality check, let's not even take incentive here, reality check. In my opinion, if you don't take steps forward, then technically you don't care. As hard as that sounds.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

I love I love that. And it comes down to the work of the philosopher Alain de Botton, who speaks on love in a way that no one else sees. Not only is he a fantastic philosopher on love, but he is one of the funniest guys to watch. So it's almost like watching a stand-up comedy show when you watch his videos. And he says that romanticism killed love because we had this idea that everyone is perfect, and when we meet the one, it will be the one, and everything is happily ever after. And it killed the real capacity to love and to stay together long term because real love is two fucked-up individuals coming together and creating work and challenge and growth, and that it is ongoing, and that it never ends. It is just the work and the labor of love. And that being said, it's like, so I would say that this is why it's so often important. You said that for a woman she needs to see these actions. And this is part of the reason why for me it is important that the man be the one to take the first step. That she sees, if she it's it's like if she has to tell you, fucking get off your ass and go learn about my fucking biology, which half of the time she's not even aware of to a massive degree, and then you kind of meander along, that's not going to do much. But if she has someone who's actively saying, I just read the fucking book, The Period Brain, oh my God, in your second phase of the cycle, progesterone is rising, and every single safety mechanism in your brain that is there for the very rational, real reason of you are going through this phase of reproduction, which means that you have to be more aware, you have to be more sensitive, you have to track safety issues, you have to track signals, you are gonna be more open to the things I say, to the things I do, and the same shit that a few days ago you might have just been like, oh, that's okay. I don't like it, but it's okay. And now it's like fucking get those socks off the floor. Because it's now a safety thing, when you can go to her and say, I just read about this stuff. What can we do together? That's a big difference.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Or I've just read the stuff and I have some ideas on what we can do together, you know. Uh that's the other part. You know, and it can be so simple. We have some ideas. It's initiative, you know, like yeah. You can have like everything already planned. So go for it. It can be so simple.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Well, you know, some of the pieces can be really simple. Some of the pieces, so me and my wife, we have up on the wall, uh, downstairs in the kitchen, we have this like um we have a circular drawn cycle chart. The kids see this as well. So the kids engage with all of this, and uh, she's got it all written out in German because she's Austrian. And she she's chosen to label the, you know, she's got spring, her inner spring. So after after the period's done, follicular phase, she's got her ovulation, diet like high sexual phase, she's got her uh luteal phase, uh, which she separates into two. So deep autumn is where everything's really crashing. And to give men out there a bit of perspective on what that means by crashing, for a man, we have a 24-hour cycle kind of thing. We wake up in the morning, testosterone's at its highest, we go to bed at night, it's at its lowest. About a 15% drop. So enough to cause us to be a bit more tired, a bit less motivated, but not enough to actually cause any issues. For an average woman, it's between a 50 to 85% drop in her testosterone and estrogen going into that second phase. It's like that's a horrific thing to feel that. So she has labeled that phase as her evil witch phase. And the kids know when the peg is, when the peg is set on that level, they're like, Mom's gonna be more sensitive, mom is gonna feel worse, mom is going to be, she's the sounds are gonna be really tough for her, mom might feel a bit teary, you know, what you know. So it's like it's holding all those things, not with a sense of these hormones, and because of this, she now has carte blanche to treat anyone however she wants, but so that we're going into it with a hey, we're alongside, we've got you. Exactly. We know this is the thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

I mean, that's a it's a fucking beautiful thing. If you think about it this way, you're a team. You're like, I I always bring it back to this. You're all a team. And if you're all teammates, right, she is that is a part of your team. Regardless of anything, her hormones are a part of the whole team. And so you can separate yourself and go, oh, fucking hormones again. Oh, what a crazy bitch. But that is separating yourself from the team and making it an enemy. It's putting that into that position. And if you had that same thing, you wouldn't want that for you. You would want to have it as understood as a team, right? And so it's coming back into this team thinking with that. I find it beautiful. I wanted to touch on something and I wanted to actually get your thoughts on this. So, firstly, we're gonna have to, at some point in this podcast, go through each of the phases because I'm pretty sure there's still some men on my podcast who haven't actually gone through each of those phases. So it'd be really good to touch on them. So we'll we'll I've got to put a pin in that, touch on the stages. But I want to hear your thoughts on like I know my wife, she she has PCOS. And so her like her ovulation phase is not uh highly sexual phase. It's it's that's actually if she would have put it on the evil witch phase, it would be on the ovulation. And then she her period would be more low and like maybe more depressive sort of side, right? But the the ovulation is is different. So I also wanted to put a caveat here going as we start learning more about the hormones, it's not that every woman's also the same in that. There are also some underlying things underneath it that if I know with my wife, because I had a very similar experience to you. There was a moment where my wife said, You never call me crazy again. Or yeah, like that's that's one thing that you never ever say. But even if you read up, it doesn't then mean that your wife is making up this shit. There is always underlying biology underneath. Yeah. And these are symbols and signs for you, not like reasons or proof of her being bad toward you, I think.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Would you would you agree with that? I'd 100% agree with that. It's like the main the main thing I I end up I had this tagged on at one point. There was uh biology not blame. And that was the main piece in there. It's like these are perfectly normal, perfectly rational. And that that's the that that was the key part that really changed for me in engaging. So if there's any one book that I recommend to men, like read one book, it's The Period Brain by Dr. Sarah Hill, which I'm also very excited because I'll be doing a live with her. She's like my fucking hero in this space, and I'll be doing a live with her first of May. Because that she really walks through the evolutionary biology of it and really explains why it's it's like it's more rational than men's physiology in many ways because it's so because it's so cyclical. Now, of course, you take out what is individual, and that's why all this reading and learning is just a route to a conversation with your partner. Hey, I'm aware this happens in this way with many women's biology. Tell me about yours. How do you feel in this phase? How do you feel in that phase? So it's I don't want men to go away with a concept of, oh, I can just draw out this 28-day thing and I know exactly how to behave at this point, this point, this point, because it will shift with different people. And then someone's a collaborative birth control pill.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

And your actions of showing each other that there is love is by speaking with it with each other. Exactly. And normalizing it. Yeah, and normalizing it. I always get the I always get the question from men. I think I even made a post about this last night. Get the question from men going, like, why don't we have sex more? Why don't we have sex more? And I'm just like, a much more beneficial question would not be why don't we have sex, but rather, why can't we get to a space where we can openly talk about conversations like sex? Because underneath that, you will find hormones. Underneath that, you will find defensiveness patterns, underneath that you will find reactivity to hormones, you'll find all of these things, and eventually you'll be able to talk about sex. And you actually probably find the reason for it. But I think this is one of those major things. It's like we we as men, we kind of could just go to the the result of it rather than looking what's underneath. And I I think it would be so much more beneficial for us to go what's underneath rather than the results.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

And and and the cre and the safety that that then creates as well. And that makes such a difference because if there's an S thing that I've learned about women's nervous systems, is that if you help a woman to feel safe with you, her openness to any other kind of connection is gonna skyrocket. And and I do know very much, I think my wife told me this was just a few weeks ago, and she was in her late luteur phase, and I I I I I forget right now the exact thing that happened, but she was doing something, or she was having this internal collapse and feeling triggered about something. And what I turned to her and said is just like, it's okay. I'm here, I love you, I've got you, I'm alongside. And she she just then remarked later that day again, like, fuck, when you do that in my lowest phase, the level of trust and safety it creates in me is colossal. And that you do it, it's like that one time will create a sense of safety that lasts for two months.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

Yeah, and ironically, it's that that's the time when men are most scared and they're taking it most personally, and they're choosing to spend the most time away.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

And which I get. It's like it's it's without without going through all this stuff, it's not that I don't fucking understand it.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Not that we don't get it, it feels confusing. Ironic, it's ironic that you're doing the worst thing possible. Yeah, yeah. Ironic that you're doing the worst thing possible when she needs you the most and she is the most evil witch, so to speak, or as one man even said on my retreat, miserable cunt, and I was like, whoa, okay, he's like, Wow, oh god.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Uh but but the interest just wait, the interesting thing for that, you say miserable cunt, and it's like um our experience. So my wife would say that since we go into these phases with her knowing that I am there, she actively has less issues. It's like because her whole nervous system knows it's okay. It's okay for me to be however I am.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

She's got a she's got a man that's not gonna run away from her. She's got a man that's not gonna that's actually going to accept her at her worst. And I think if you think about it from that side, like it's the most that that is something that creates safety for someone that is vulnerable in her emotions and her hormones in that moment, that is it's gonna create safety. Not somebody that's not gonna accept you, gonna avoid you. And and then, you know, I guess men always get this whole thing of like, but why is it about my defensiveness rather than her hormones? Why can't you just fix that side? And ironically, by fixing the defensiveness from it, there's nothing to fix, right? There's actually nothing to fix from her on that. It's just her. I love that look. Which I do appreciate.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

That's hard for men. That's hard for men. We're so tuned into fixing.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

That actually might even be the biggest uh that's the biggest challenge that men have to face here, is to not fix this.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

And that you you are allowed to validate her emotions in the moment. And don't get me wrong, I am not claiming to be perfect at this. I still fuck up at various points. I I never call her crazy or irrational or anything like that anymore, but I do at various points still fuck up. And I do my best to go back as soon as I can and say, fuck, I'm really sorry. I did not, I did not hold what was going on for you in that moment. Um, but it's like the capacity to validate the emotion and what she is feeling and thinking, and that doesn't mean that you agree with everything she's saying. And my experience time and time. So I had yesterday, I was in a bit of a tizzy. I was nervous. I was she wanted some stuff put away in the attic. I had a live that was coming up. I was gonna be nervous before lives, and she wanted something done, and I was like, Well, there's no fucking point in doing this. I don't want to do it this way. And she was getting more and more like round up. She'd even try to say, Look, I'm I'm at this point, I'm not feeling very good. I recognize this has been too much for me. And I basically said, Well, can't you fucking own your own choices? You made a choice to not do this. It wasn't cool. And I managed to go back later and say, Look, I'm really sorry. I was extra nervous. I did not hold you in that moment. That is my bad. And very often, when I am able to validate what goes on for her and come back to that, she is very often able to a bit later come back and say, that was an overreaction. I'm really sorry. It's what was going on for me. And every time, every time that I manage to go validate, she manages to come back and say, that was an overreaction, and I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

That's great. That's really great. Harry, I'd love men. Let's have a little cheat sheet for a most generic cycle. The what happens in each phase. Just for men that have never heard it before. What happens in each phase? What should each man look out for? Things that they should avoid or do within each cycle. Let's get a little cheat sheet for each cycle.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

You haven't got a big load of stuff. Maybe what I'll also do at the end of this is I did design a little uh cycle chart. And maybe by the end of this, I can send you along the cycle chart and you're welcome, or you can put my uh the back of the. I'll put the link straight to it in the description. Okay, there you go. We'll do that. So the first phase that you've got is essentially the bleeding. A lot of people think that the phase ends at a different point, but it begins with the bleeding. And the bleeding is obviously where she first begins to bleed. And as a you know, this is the phase I think most men are often actually quite at home with because it's such a visceral, visible thing. You are fucking bleeding. It's like it's right there in front of you. And we're aware that often there needs a level of tenderness, a level of showing up. It maybe she needs to sleep more. She's recovering and her hormones are at their very lowest, but they're starting to build back up. So it's like it's that basic care and tenderness and just being there for. And often that's as simple as presence and not running the hell away. Obviously, probably one of the worst times for the most most women to start asking for sex around that time. And that's not every woman. I have met women in my life who love sex during their periods, but it's it's not the norm. So when the period then stops, you come into a follicular phase. And follicular phase, you like to think of that as it's internal springtime. It's like things are waking up. Progesterone is really low, the hormone progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, because most people forget that women also actually have higher levels of testosterone than they do estrogen. Estrogen binds very tightly. So she's coming into her spring. That's often when she's starting to become outgoing, wanting to see people more, more creative, more alive. Often ideas are springing out. So it's like my experiences just after the period has finished, in that next week is often the best time to have tough conversations or or to have conversations about her cycle. It's like coming at that point and saying, Hey, I've been learning about this. Can we talk about this? Because how is this for you? Often that will get better receptions during those times. And that's often the good time to start taking her out. It's often, and I want to bring this piece in because my experience with my wife, we had a conversation at one point. It was like, well, I'm I'm I'm trying to care for you in the luteur phase. I'm trying to care for you in the period phase. When can I, if I need an internal collapse as a man, when's the best time for me to do that? And she found it's like that early follicular phase. If I, if I, God forbid, need to do some crying, some processing, if I need some care and some backup, it's like that works really well often during that phase. So that phase will last through to around about day 14. And in that, like three, four days beforehand, and on day 14-ish for the average woman, that's when you hit ovulation. That's when she's uh fertile, when baby making can happen. And that is often the time when a woman is at her most sexual. And when I say most sexual, I do not mean gotta want to go out and fuck anything that moves, but sexual for the man, for the partnership that she is in and with. So receptivity to sex, play, fun, you know, just very outgoing. It's like go to the theme park on those days and then go have your sexy fun at a lovely hotel in the evening or whatever else it happens to be. But also, it's like when I think about it in terms of my wife, it's like that's when these ideas that are often building uh really come into fruition. They've built in the follicular phase, you get to the those kind of ovulatory days and really creating, pushing forward business ideas and doing stuff together at this point, especially if your projects, me and my wife, she's a florist and we have a flower garden together. So it's like we do a lot of that. Then a woman will hit ovulation and her estrogen and testosterone will crash off by about 50 to 85 percent. So often you get the day just after ovulation, many women will feel horrific for a day or two. And that's a time that often a lot of fights will suddenly happen at that point, was my experience. And that's why it can be so rocky for a man and confusing for a man, because it can literally go from one day, I want you, give me a lot of sex, I think you're wonderful, I love you so much. The next day, I don't even want to see you. Everything that you do, please stop breathing, and it can go that quickly.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

So my wife throws her hand onto my mouth and closes it and goes, breathe through your nose. Suck.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it all of a sudden, all those little things that might have been annoying, slightly annoying for her in the days before, are now like DEF CON, DEF CON 4, and it's really going up. So those, that's the time for me. We try to have a conversation about this in the days leading up to that. It's like, I'm aware this is about to happen. You're aware this is gonna happen. We're here, we're together, and we hold it with as much tenderness as we can. And myself as a partner, in those days, I try my best to track it and try to remind myself it's not about me. It's not about me, it's not about me in those moments. And I look for the things that I can actively show up doing that show her I'm here.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

Well, ironically, it's also, I mean, it's funny when you say it's not about you, but it might be the point where the veil is the thinnest. So she might actually what I mean by that is like sometimes she will make it about you because I get questions about this all the time, going like, but why all of a sudden now, like you said it earlier, why is she now upset about the socks on the floor? Right. So two weeks ago she wasn't upset about the socks on the floor, now she's like fucking upset about the socks on the floor, and she's upset about the pattern of the socks on the floor over and over again. And then men would go, but like her standards change. And I I say that the veil is thinnest here because essentially it's not that she just makes up a new standard. I just think at this point, now everything that actually was really important to her, she doesn't have any, she doesn't have anything stopping her from saying it.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

It's like the safety mechanisms are kicked in. The veil being thinner, which makes a lot of sense and it's a good way to to think about it. It's like everything is still everything was still there before. Yeah. Um, but now her brain is cued for those. That that now now those things have turned from an annoyance to a threat. And biologically speaking, perfectly reasonable. Like perfectly reasonable because because we come back to that thing now where it's like as men, we have one job when it comes to reproduction. We have to, we have to fuck, and that's it. Women have two. They have to get horny and sexy, and they have to bear children. So it's a completely different hormonal setup. One of those is keyed in for safety, threat detection, protection, integration, and hibernation, really. It's like it's a completely different job. So at that point, it's almost like her whole system goes into I need to build a fucking nest and I need it to be a safe, well-protected nest.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Yeah, and it's it's interesting because if you really like look at the things that she's upset about or the things that she gets annoyed about, and you try and understand it, you start understanding that there is a yeah, there's a reason for it, you know, and and like I I even look at sometimes I want to find like a really good behavior that that validates this. Sometimes when it comes to like priority, you know, I I think let's say men will uh prioritize what the world thinks versus her wife. I mean, what versus his wife, or you know, spend too much time at work, or you know, let his mother or someone else, you know, give him opinions or things like this. And and you start going, but like why do I need to choose my wife over this? You know, and and in those moments for her, she is going to the most vulnerable thing that she will ever do. You know, her body will like to to have a kids. And it makes sense that for that, she needs to know that she has a man that will prioritize her. She needs to know that she will be protected, she needs to know that. And she might not be able, and this is the I think this is the crux of it. And I love you for saying this earlier. She won't be able to articulate that because she herself hasn't been taught that. Yeah. Not mentally, that is body, body instinct. It's like this biological instinct that comes through. And and the more we can understand that, I I I think even Jordan Peterson actually has a really good line about this. He speaks about we as men can actually help her articulate her arguments. And yeah. If we get to that point, we we it's very beneficial for us to articulate our wives' arguments so that we can actually understand it and get to the point.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Well, I often I've spoken about it in terms of like you can think of the validating during this point of I'm not agreeing with you, but I'm doing my best to strongman what you're saying. I'm doing my best to sorry, not strongman, steel man. I'm steel manning your arguments. It's like, oh, you feel like this right now. No, no wonder. No wonder. Given what's happening in your home owner, given what's happening, given what you're trying to protect, this is why you feel the way you feel.

unknown 52:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

Get it? Yeah. And then through that, you she can find it, and then that's the thing. It's like it's this, you know, she has an instinct that something is wrong, and usually there is. And she might say the wrong words, but you find the like steel man it, find the layers of it, and you might actually find that it is something else that you are you were avoiding. And it's actually a really good process to come through. It's a really good process to come through.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

The really interesting point that comes in here in this luteal phase, as it's called, because uh a few guys have talked about like sex during the luteal phase, and there's some really interesting stuff biologically that goes on here, which is that often the more connected she feels to her partner, the more she feels like you're there, like you've got a good connection, the less sex she will want, which I found a really interesting piece. If she feels like she has a man who is not so present, not so with her, she will be more likely to reach out for sex because that is a way of trying to keep him there and keep him connected. Whereas if she's like, I know that you're there, I feel you there, it's not that it's not that women won't want sex at all at that point, but they they don't have that same need for it. That's what the with the studies were saying. Sarah Hill, what Dr. Sarah Hill was talking about, these studies. And it was like, if I feel really connected to my man, I don't need sex from him, I just want him there. As my protector, as my as my as my like as my as my team member.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Man, Harry, we could start a whole new bloody podcast on then talking about like then from the man, because I know what the line would be like, but then but I want sex. But then there's a whole idea of like, but why do you want sex? Do you want it for release or do you want it for connection and love? And then we start going down a whole nother route because often what I will see is that this want for sex, this one for sex, is actually more of a conditioning because that is how you have regulated yourself. And you don't want to quote unquote cheat by using releasing through porn or releasing through any other external person. So you want it with your wife because that is how you've learned and trained to regulate yourself rather than actually what you actually want with your wife for connection and love. So I I think I think there's a lot of things. I wanted to say that just because I I didn't want that to be at the end of your podcast, somebody to go, yeah, but I want sex. It's like I think there's still more to discover here. There's still more to discover for for men.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Yeah. There's a lot more too. It's beautiful. So so men can actually download that, they can download that chart directly in the description below. I'll have the link there for you. Okay. Super.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Yeah, I'll put I'll I'll I'll send that to you afterwards. But it's basically it's my page where it's just sheathnotcrazy.co.uk. Um, and in there I've got my kind of free email series, I've got uh the free cycle chart, I've got a paramenopause kind of chart concept that I put together as well. Just for like something visual that people can have so that it stays in the memory and it can be blown up on the wall. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

That's absolutely brilliant. I think also your wife needs to sell this at-home chart for the kids to know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

That was one of the ideas. That's that's an idea. I am still dealing with the fact when I started the channel, I knew that it mattered. I knew that it was important. And I was like, ah, I'll probably have 10,000 followers maybe in a year or two. I was I was not expecting the level of takeoff that happened in three months. So I'm still uh we're we're still on like, oh, what do we do? And it's just should we do merch? Should we do other things? So we're still like dancing with all those pieces at the moment, but but eventually cycle charts will be up everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

I love it. I love your mission, Harry. Every way that they can connect with you will be down in the description. But is there anything we've missed today that you would love to say to the audience? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

It's about mists. It's maybe it's a reiteration of that basic message, which for me is like as a man, engaging with these topics, having conversations with our partners on these topics, directly makes your life better. Directly gets you more of what you want, directly improves your wife's life or your partner's life and your life, and can take less than you think it's gonna take. It's and of course, you know, there's gonna be other platforms and other places, and you you can you can learn more and more, and it's always a growth. And for for me, like this as a route to not taking it personally uh made such a colossal impact in my life. Huge. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 57:15

Thank you so much for joining today, Harry.

SPEAKER_01 57:17

Thank you so much. Really appreciated the time, Alessandra. Hope to do it again sometime and we can have a proper tete around initiation.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

I think this is at my one of my favorite episodes, so we definitely will. That's the episode. That's all I got for you today. Just want you to remember you're not alone in this. Make sure you subscribe to stay connected, of course, and comment your win, you know, because every time a man sees other men winning, I don't feel alone anymore. And I love that. Tools are in the show notes, starting with the better husband in two-minute emails. Let's build this together. I'll see you next week.