If She's Testing You, Here's What's Really Happening

In this segment of The Tony Bova Show, we explore a crucial moment where I had to hold my ground in a relationship to prevent further disconnection and frustration. This decision was vital for my personal development and overall mental health. Understanding when to assert yourself can be key to fostering healthier relationships.

Take Tony & Sabrina's FREE Respect Assessment To See Where You Stand HERE: https://respectgains.com

Explore Tony’s Breakthrough Blueprint and Community here: https://tonyjbova.com

⸻

Connect with Tony:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyjbova/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tonyjbova

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyjbova/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Whether you think I'm right or wrong for how I did that, it was important for me because I knew that if I allowed her to continue to do that, that my life and my relationship with her was going to continue to have a lot of disconnection and frustration. I wasn't willing to do that again. And so I knew I needed to hold my ground on that one. The Tony Bova show, built by pain, designed for freedom. Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like she's testing you? Like she can't let go of something. And then all of a sudden you get into a fight and you're frustrated. Like, how did I get here? This one's gonna be for you. I want to tell you about how to hold your ground and what's be on the other side of that, what's on the other side of the uncomfortability of that is what the moment that you're avoiding. I'm gonna tell you about a story that happened between Sabrina and I about six months ago, where I kicked her out of my house actually, because of how she was showing up in our relationship. And it was probably a really small moment where you might have thought I was an asshole for doing it, but I'm gonna tell you why I did it and I'm gonna tell you what you need to do, the three things you need to do in order for you to be able to hold your ground and be able to change the trajectory of your relationship. Now, before I do that, if you've been following me for a while, you've seen my stuff, hit that subscribe button so that you can continue to get this content. I'm gonna be continuing to share experiences from my life as working as a homicide detective and also all of the personal things that I screwed up along the way so that you don't have to. And we're gonna dive right into it. So it was, I was working on a project one night, and Sabrina came up to me, and they're, you know, I have three kids, then none of them, none of them are hers, and she helps me with the kids a lot. And the reason why you would think I'm an asshole is because I had to put her in her place because of that situation, because I was working on this project. We have an agreement about this, and she's already agreed to the arrangement that we had. And as I was working on this project, she started to have a lot of anxiety around what was happening with the kids. And because I was so focused on what I was doing, I had shared with her, I said, honey, that you need to not worry about that right now. That's that's not something that needs to be dealt with at the moment. But she couldn't let it go. And so she started to pester me about it and where I had to get really direct with her and be like, you need to let this go now. Now, that wasn't at the point when I decided I needed her to leave, but it happened later. So after everybody went to bed, after everything was settled, she brought it up again. And we ended up up having this conversation, and she kept picking at me in that conversation to the point where I started to feel frustrated for the first time in probably a couple of years, especially with her. The moment I felt that I paused the conversation, I left, and I went down to the basement. And as I was down at the basement, I realized why am I down here when she had crossed a boundary of mine. And I walked upstairs, I said, honey, I need you to leave right now. And she was livid, absolutely livid. She was so pissed. She'd never been kicked out before because of her behavior. And the reason why I bring that up is because most guys put her on a pedestal. Like she's dated millionaires, everybody worshipped her, and she's never had the experience of a man holding his frame or his boundaries with her. Whether you think I'm right or wrong for how I did that, it was important for me because I knew that if I allowed her to continue to do that, that my life and my relationship with her was going to continue to have a lot of disconnection and frustration. And I already been divorced. I already been through two other significant relationships at that point, one with another child, that I wasn't willing to do that again. And so I knew I needed to hold my ground on that one. So I'm gonna teach you the three things that you can do right now that are gonna help you be able to hold your ground inside of your relationship. The first one being you have to take a pause. So what is happening is your nervous system is being dig deregulated in that process, and you need to pause so that you can become aware and you can become conscious of what's happening. So if you're starting to feel as though you're going to react or snap in that moment, you need to pause. And what you're doing is you're being patient with yourself. You need to be patient with yourself in that process. Uh, it takes a while for you to reprogram and rewire your nervous system. So being patient is the best thing that you can do for yourself. The second thing I want you to do is after you pause, I want you to ask yourself, if I keep allowing this, where will I be 10 years from now? And the reason that's so important is we need to understand the cost of what our decisions are. If we're not saying no to something, we have to know that it's going down a direction that we might not want it to go down. And if we're not comfortable with that direction, we need to do something about it. We need to take action. And the third thing, and the most controversial thing that you're probably gonna be like, it's so hard for me to do, is I need you to be selfish. Now, I'm not saying this from a place of uh that selfishness is always the right answer because there's a lot of guys out there that are extremely selfish that aren't they're only thinking of themselves. But if you're the good man that I know you are, you're a high performer, you want to take care of people, you're growth-minded, then selfishness is not natural for you. Uh, because good men aren't selfish, they're servants. And you have to you have to take an ice pick and just stab that that dove inside of you just for a moment, to be a little bit selfish so that you can actually give yourself everything that you need so that you can show up as the best version. Uh, you know, it's such a cliche to talk about the airplane analogy of like putting your oxygen mask on first, but it's so true in life that you need to be able to fill your cup before that you fill anybody else's. So going through these three things, pausing, being patient with yourself, asking yourself questions, especially this one is this how much, what's this gonna cost me over the next 10 years? And then being selfish, taking care of yourself, going to the gym, uh, making sure your nutrition's dialed in, making sure that you're not allowing disperspect to come over and over and over again. And by doing that, it's gonna create enough space for you to start to make different decisions. You have to start out small before you can start to make those big leaps. Now, if this was at all helpful for you, I want you to hit that subscribe button. Subscribe to my channel, listen to my episodes. And I want to remind you of this that greatness requires defiance.