Speaker 1: This is Pod Popular Podcast for the People.
Speaker 2: The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
Speaker 3: The Great Love Debate.
Speaker 1: It's a great love de Hi. Get our everyone, It's
Speaker 1: Brian Howie.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Great Love Debate, the world's number one
Speaker 3: dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. We are back
Speaker 3: here in the Northeast Ohio UH, Pod Popular Podcasts, the
Speaker 3: People Lovely Studio. Here, I get sent a lot of
Speaker 3: things I've talked about that before. I get sent articles,
Speaker 3: I get sent blogs, I get sent podcast episodes, I
Speaker 3: get sent polls, and publicists reach out to me. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I get offered guests. Uh And recently I sort of
Speaker 3: had a perfect storm here. I knew I was going
Speaker 3: to be in Northeast Ohio at Pod Popular Podcast for
Speaker 3: the People recording an episode, and I got I had
Speaker 3: somebody reach out to me.
Speaker 1: She's a publicist from a.
Speaker 3: Publisher and said you, I get a guest for you.
Speaker 3: He's got a book coming out. And the first question
Speaker 3: I asked a publicist is where are they and she
Speaker 3: said Cleveland. I'm like, ah, there's a chance there's a
Speaker 3: bullseye there. I'm going to hit it. And then I said, well,
Speaker 3: who is it, And I'll get into who it is
Speaker 3: in a second. But fortuitously and coincidentally, this was somebody
Speaker 3: whose initial blog that brought him to fame was sent
Speaker 3: to me about three or four years ago, and I
Speaker 3: was fascinated by it, and I was going to do
Speaker 3: an episode on it without him in the house because
Speaker 3: I had so many questions about it and thoughts about it.
Speaker 3: And so, as luck would have it, he not only
Speaker 3: has this blog, but I'm going to get into the
Speaker 3: substance of it and minta. He has a new book
Speaker 3: coming out. It is called This Is How Your Marriage Ends.
Speaker 3: Just in time for the holiday season, Matthew Fray, how
Speaker 3: are you?
Speaker 1: I'm excellent, sir, how are you? Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for having me.
Speaker 3: I need to hear your whole story, but I'm gonna
Speaker 3: jump in sort of in the middle of your story.
Speaker 3: You decide to write a little bit of a falling
Speaker 3: on the sword, taking personal responsibility, self analysis, what happened?
Speaker 1: What went wrong? How can we do better?
Speaker 3: A lot of it in a blog called she Divorced
Speaker 3: Me because I left the dishes by the sink, and
Speaker 3: millions of people shared that reddit. Obviously, you always hope
Speaker 3: something would happen like that, I think, or where you're like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, no, no, no, it's you know, it
Speaker 3: was cathartic and it blew up.
Speaker 1: Well it's cool now, five years later after I'm adjusted
Speaker 1: to it. But back then this was like a big
Speaker 1: secret this like I write anonymously on the internet thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't want my dad to know. I didn't want
Speaker 1: my mom to know. I didn't want my friends to know.
Speaker 1: It was like secret stuff. And well I was only
Speaker 1: a handful of people because I don't know get into it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if we're gonna like psychoanalyze ourselves, I
Speaker 1: think it's like this guy shame living in our feelings thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we don't do when we're hanging out with like
Speaker 1: guy friends, either like kids or like yeah even today,
Speaker 1: you know, as like I'm a forty something. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: isn't the stuff that I talk about to say, feeling
Speaker 1: adult words. So I'm used to it now because it's
Speaker 1: been nearly nine years. But back then there was this big,
Speaker 1: like personal campaign to like shield everybody from it, right anyway,
Speaker 1: and then it sort of accidentally did the thing, and
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: Know that was a wild week or two or did
Speaker 3: you know that this one was somehow different from what you.
Speaker 1: Were writing, did you know? No, absolutely not. I Actually
Speaker 1: I don't think it's even in the vicinity of like
Speaker 1: my my best writing. I don't think any of my
Speaker 1: blogs or I don't writing. I don't know that they have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I've ever written well it. It
Speaker 1: does seem to be the perfect storm in the context
Speaker 1: of like this clickbaity headline. And it wasn't intentional. I
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to like con people to click it and
Speaker 1: read it. I swear right. It was if anybody did
Speaker 1: take the time to like read the blog and like
Speaker 1: all of the posts that preceded it, it was another
Speaker 1: attempt for me to use metaphor to communicate the idea
Speaker 1: that I tried to communicate in that in that blog post.
Speaker 3: How long did you write that from the time your
Speaker 3: marriage had ended? That published in the end of January
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. My marriage ended on April first, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: so not quite three years, so you had a little
Speaker 3: bit of a distance, sure, you know, a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, At what point did you did it dawn on
Speaker 3: you that leaving the kitchenes by this was the metaphor
Speaker 3: for everything else? Was this ges dating in your head
Speaker 3: or when day you woke up and you're like, aha,
Speaker 3: the glasses by the sink.
Speaker 1: I was trying to write as often as possible back then.
Speaker 1: I was writing close to daily, back in like twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and you know, the idea just occurred to me.
Speaker 1: That's so, it's a really awesome question because it's the
Speaker 1: nature of my work. Is the idea that we don't
Speaker 1: get to decide what matters to other people, and we
Speaker 1: try all the time. I'm shocked to which podcasts resonate
Speaker 1: with people around it. Yeah. We always want to tell
Speaker 1: people that they should or should not think or feel
Speaker 1: the things that they do. And that's fine, like mainstream society,
Speaker 1: although I think causes all sorts of issues, right, but
Speaker 1: it definitely harms our relationships. And once I like connected
Speaker 1: like those ideas, I don't know, it felt like this
Speaker 1: is the key thing that everyone does that they don't
Speaker 1: realize is really harmful while they're doing it very slowly.
Speaker 1: This isn't like, you know, we say something vile and
Speaker 1: like backhand to the person we love. This is this
Speaker 1: slow erosion of like trust and safety and connection and relationships?
Speaker 3: Is it the one thing again to this day, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if you think leaving the glasses by the
Speaker 3: sink on its own is.
Speaker 1: A big deal. I don't think so. I do it
Speaker 1: all the time, though, Right, She's like, she's wrong, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of.
Speaker 3: Little things add up to a big thing. Or it
Speaker 3: was more about I've said this before in the podcast.
Speaker 3: She doesn't want to be right, she just wants to
Speaker 3: be heard. And I think in her expression of that,
Speaker 3: and you either dismissing it, not thinking it was a
Speaker 3: big deal, or flat out ignoring it, she's not heard.
Speaker 3: And then she starts to think, well, how many other
Speaker 3: times am I not being heard here?
Speaker 1: Is that? Right? I think? So, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go off on a tangent that you don't want to,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna give it a shot. This all shows
Speaker 1: a tangent. You get to redirect me anytime you want,
Speaker 1: so I do. And I have for the last like
Speaker 1: threeish years three four years done coaching work. So I
Speaker 1: work with guys. They reach out to me voluntarily. I
Speaker 1: don't advertise, they come to me via the blog, and
Speaker 1: I hyper focus on two very specific ideas. I call
Speaker 1: them habits because I don't want people to feel defensive,
Speaker 1: as if they think what they're doing is bad. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's bad, right, I think, because we could
Speaker 1: have thirty different romantic partners and thirty different reactions to
Speaker 1: what we do totally agree.
Speaker 3: I say that all we know is what the last
Speaker 3: girl liked, and we probably found that out too late.
Speaker 1: Right. So there's two things. I believe a road trust
Speaker 1: relationships habitually, and I think it shows up and it
Speaker 1: shows up in every relationship that I encounter, in the
Speaker 1: work that I do, and it was certainly sort of
Speaker 1: like the heart and soul of the story of how
Speaker 1: my marriage ended. And the first habit is validation. My
Speaker 1: wife would try to communicate something was wrong, and I
Speaker 1: always responded in one of three ways. I would disagree
Speaker 1: with what she thought, I would disagree with what she felt,
Speaker 1: or I would be defensive. It wasn't that I thought
Speaker 1: I was superior and she had to do what I did.
Speaker 1: It was just the math result of my conversations with
Speaker 1: my wife, where if I disagree with you, your brain's wrong,
Speaker 1: your feelings are wrong, or regardless, I was justified to
Speaker 1: do what I do. And when you do that a
Speaker 1: few thousand times in a relationship, you would road trust
Speaker 1: to the point where a person doesn't. A person says,
Speaker 1: I can't count on you to participate effectively in making
Speaker 1: me feel better when life's hard. You're not a person
Speaker 1: I can come to. And so people start to like
Speaker 1: plan their exit strategies and relationships.
Speaker 3: But the fourth part of that that I think you
Speaker 3: must have done, because we all do this is sort
Speaker 3: of what about ism? You give me a hard time
Speaker 3: about this, but what about when you do that? Was
Speaker 3: that a factor too? That the most I do it.
Speaker 1: All the time, and I hear it all the time. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do that absolutely. I have so many guys that
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, I hear you, Matt. You want me
Speaker 1: to make like a change on behalf of my partner.
Speaker 1: But she's doing all these things that suck for me. Right,
Speaker 1: And I asked the guy yesterday, and I said, independent
Speaker 1: of like what she's doing or not doing, and independent
Speaker 1: of like how good or bad she makes you feel,
Speaker 1: how does that stop you from like trying something different
Speaker 1: just to see what happens next? And he sat quietly
Speaker 1: for like thirty seconds. Right, he doesn't want to do
Speaker 1: the work because it feels bad. She makes him feel bad, right,
Speaker 1: and I lived it, so I get it.
Speaker 3: And women, we're going to generalize here because I love
Speaker 3: to do that at a great love to be. They're
Speaker 3: very good at the smack on the nose, and they're
Speaker 3: not as good at the path on the nose. So
Speaker 3: we're very rarely positively reinforced in good behavior, and we
Speaker 3: are often negatively reinforced in bad behavior. So she probably
Speaker 3: and not she your wife, but any woman, we would
Speaker 3: probably hear the negative, Please don't do this, or I
Speaker 3: don't like when you do this. If equally the things
Speaker 3: we did write or if we did wash the glass
Speaker 3: and put it away, it would be not well you
Speaker 3: should know to do that. Well, I've only asked you
Speaker 3: to do that one hundred times where they either noticed
Speaker 3: the gesture or somehow reciprocated the effort of you doing that.
Speaker 3: And that doesn't always happen either way.
Speaker 1: Right. I can't remember exactly what my wife used to
Speaker 1: say to me, but it was this notion of like,
Speaker 1: you know what you want to like throw my clothes off,
Speaker 1: and like give you a cookie and tell you how
Speaker 1: great you are for doing this thing that like to me,
Speaker 1: feels so like you just should do it right. That
Speaker 1: was more or less her take. I'm certainly being hyperbolic
Speaker 1: about things she might have said.
Speaker 3: Did you try and write break down ever? Did you
Speaker 3: try and say why does this matter to you? And
Speaker 3: then say here's why it doesn't matter to me. Is
Speaker 3: there anything that negotiation doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: No, But that's a massive part of the work that
Speaker 1: I try to do with these guys. I'm like, instead
Speaker 1: of this auto invalidation of this other person with human
Speaker 1: disagree and I'm like, hm, I'm on your side as
Speaker 1: a human being. You're allowed to disagree, right. I don't
Speaker 1: think you should agree with your partner. I don't, right,
Speaker 1: But if you want to have a healthy relationship with them,
Speaker 1: the message can't be what you think and feel doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to me, So understand it. Seek to understand.
Speaker 3: Is it a game of whack a mole where you Okay,
Speaker 3: I got the glass thing right, and now she's going
Speaker 3: to move on to the next thing.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys think that, and so that thank you.
Speaker 1: It's the perfect.
Speaker 3: It's the perfect because if that's the only thing I'm
Speaker 3: doing wrong, I'm fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, Yeah. It's the perfect segue to habit number
Speaker 1: two in my work because I get all of these
Speaker 1: guys that are like, it's always something new. There's a
Speaker 1: thousand different things she has the same message about, and
Speaker 1: if I do this right or if I don't, it's
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter because there's always a new thing.
Speaker 1: And I try to gently reframe it. I'm like, no, guys,
Speaker 1: it's just one thing, and it is and it is
Speaker 1: this notion of the habit. I call it consideration, and
Speaker 1: it's a weird word. And you know, when I grew
Speaker 1: up here, the word considerate, I thought I just met deep, polite,
Speaker 1: well mannered consideration. I think about like this. I've had
Speaker 1: a million wives and girlfriends, hundreds, not millions come to
Speaker 1: me and say, Matt, I am married to somebody, so okay.
Speaker 1: In my life, there's me, there's my husband, there's my children,
Speaker 1: and we are all individually like variables in the math
Speaker 1: equation I used to make a decision. There is no
Speaker 1: choice I make, including like when to schedule a hair
Speaker 1: appointment that I don't factor in my husband's schedule, my
Speaker 1: husband's preferences, my kids, extracurricular activities, all of these things
Speaker 1: are constantly being like wide and judged and evaluated. And
Speaker 1: I do the best I can to not let a
Speaker 1: decision I make inadvertently harmony of them or force them
Speaker 1: to like have some sacrifice that they have to make
Speaker 1: on my behalf. Right, But I'm married to somebody who
Speaker 1: doesn't do that step. He doesn't do that work. It's
Speaker 1: just like him. And then the equals sign and then
Speaker 1: whatever choice he makes, and she's like, he's not mean,
Speaker 1: he's not bad, he's not trying to hurt me. But
Speaker 1: frequently there's evidence that he makes a decision that he
Speaker 1: just failed to consider what would happen to me, what
Speaker 1: would happen to the kids, what would happen to the
Speaker 1: family if he made that choice. It could be something
Speaker 1: relatively minor, like staying late at work and not communicating it.
Speaker 1: It could be something major, like buying something for one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. And so in that scenario, the wife
Speaker 1: and the mother says, the worst case scenario is that
Speaker 1: my husband thinks about me, that doesn't give a shit.
Speaker 1: He simply does not care what he does affects me. Adversely,
Speaker 1: and the best case scenario is that he didn't think
Speaker 1: about it. Like he didn't remember, he didn't think about
Speaker 1: me at all. I register like this infintestica, So like,
Speaker 1: here's what she thinks.
Speaker 3: I don't care is better than it doesn't even factor
Speaker 3: into my thinking in a way, right.
Speaker 1: Like my wife matters so little to me that I
Speaker 1: don't think the man thinks this or feels this, right,
Speaker 1: but heard like the narrative and her interpretation for the
Speaker 1: last five years, ten years, fifteen years of my relationship,
Speaker 1: it's evident that I do not like register enough in
Speaker 1: his daily life for him to remember that doing this
Speaker 1: will adversely affect me. Right, And then if I tell
Speaker 1: him about it, that invalidation thing always happens the thing
Speaker 1: you think, the thing you feel is wrong, or he'll
Speaker 1: defend himself.
Speaker 3: See, I think there's a way to do this both
Speaker 3: from the perspective of a man and from a woman
Speaker 3: that actually can make it fun. So let's just say
Speaker 3: most of my girlfriend issues stam around, like the bathroom
Speaker 3: I drip water all over the place, and the towels
Speaker 3: in the wrong place. I don't squeegee showers in places
Speaker 3: where that really bothers girls.
Speaker 1: That there's streaks on the show, I get.
Speaker 3: It all that that men are love sort of winning
Speaker 3: gaming culture. So if you gamify it in a way
Speaker 3: as a woman, say there are twenty things that bother
Speaker 3: him about you, that bother you about him, and let's
Speaker 3: say number one as he leaves the glasses by the sink,
Speaker 3: you tell him that, you focus on that, you get
Speaker 3: him to do that. Then when that's done, you do
Speaker 3: move on to the next thing that bothers you. And
Speaker 3: instead of making it seem like, oh my god, there's
Speaker 3: just another thing, I'm never gonna win this that he's like, okay,
Speaker 3: next challenge and you're a survivor, and he's like, all right,
Speaker 3: I won that one. Positively reforced on that. Let's move
Speaker 3: on to the next thing that you got to work on.
Speaker 3: And when you sort of get through this obstacle, course,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make you feel good for doing it. I
Speaker 3: don't think then in the relationship you probably are never
Speaker 3: going to run out of things to work on. But
Speaker 3: if you frame it all is sort of a game,
Speaker 3: a challenge, a quest to do this, I think guys
Speaker 3: would like that, and I think guys would get into
Speaker 3: that because that's the way our brain is sort of
Speaker 3: wired that it's like, all right, I'm so good at
Speaker 3: this one. Give me the next one that you don't
Speaker 3: like I do, as long as they are reasonable things,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: I get.
Speaker 3: I'm probably never gonna put the glasses away either, but
Speaker 3: if that makes her happy, and I understand that, if
Speaker 3: it makes her happy, I won't be reminded of all
Speaker 3: the time as I used to do it. I also
Speaker 3: don't need to be like, see look what I did
Speaker 3: every time before I get to the sea, Look what
Speaker 3: I did. I want you to see that I did it,
Speaker 3: and then be like, I love the glass thing. Now
Speaker 3: one more thing.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about your socks on the floor. And then
Speaker 1: he's going to be like, I can do this. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that has some value. I think that's possible.
Speaker 1: I love the gamifying idea, but I did want to
Speaker 1: reframe something that you just said because of the way
Speaker 1: that I think about it, and I think it's really
Speaker 1: important because I wouldn't do this work if I thought
Speaker 1: about it the way you phrased it, which is this
Speaker 1: notion of trying to make her happy. I am offended
Speaker 1: by the idea, not not macro, but like, yeah, in
Speaker 1: my personal life, over and over again, I was in
Speaker 1: my marriage offended by the notion that, like my wife's
Speaker 1: preferences should always went out of her mind, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's I thought that was bullshit. And I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do a thing just because like I want
Speaker 1: to do it one way, you want to do it
Speaker 1: another way, and then you just always win. And I'm
Speaker 1: a shit husband, Like if I don't do it your way,
Speaker 1: that's how I thought about it. I don't think about
Speaker 1: it that way anymore now. I think about it as
Speaker 1: the math result of something I do or don't do
Speaker 1: equals pain for my partner. So it's not that I
Speaker 1: wanted to make her happy. It's not that I don't
Speaker 1: want to make her happy.
Speaker 3: Trying to eliminate the floor and not the ceiling, your
Speaker 3: folks on what makes her not makes her unhappy?
Speaker 1: I'm saying walking into the kitchen and seeing a dish
Speaker 1: by the sink for the seventy fourth time after having
Speaker 1: and I mean like specifically seventy four conversations where she says, Matt, this,
Speaker 1: this bothers me, this upsets me, Like this feels bad,
Speaker 1: and I'm always like, well, shouldn't you know it piss off? Right?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm dismissing her emotion. It's not necessarily what
Speaker 1: I said, but that's the math result of what I said.
Speaker 1: I don't give a shit, right and I would keep
Speaker 1: doing it, or worse, maybe I would indicate that I
Speaker 1: value what she said. But then the evidence is that
Speaker 1: there's still a glass there, like the next day or
Speaker 1: the next week or the next month, and that you're
Speaker 1: guilty of the infraction. The pain. The pain is not
Speaker 1: the glass sitting by the sink. The pain is he
Speaker 1: refuses to consider me when he makes a decision, or
Speaker 1: he does consider me, and he chooses himself over me
Speaker 1: every time. And I mean that to me is why
Speaker 1: people eventually get this doesn't happen overnight. But did she
Speaker 1: ever have that conversation with you? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: So she didn't say, listen, it's more than about the glass,
Speaker 3: So it didn't. You know, I'm not saying the burden
Speaker 3: of communication is on her, but I'm saying that would
Speaker 3: that have made a difference to you in the at
Speaker 3: the time or where you were, Like if she said, listen,
Speaker 3: it's not the glass, it's that I don't feel heard
Speaker 3: and I don't feel considered. Would if she had said
Speaker 3: that in the right way would the glasses.
Speaker 1: Being the cupboard. The really sick part is that it
Speaker 1: probably would have taken some guy doing the work that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do to say it for me to
Speaker 1: get it. I hear it all the time, and I
Speaker 1: frankly I think people resent like that. I sometimes like
Speaker 1: connect with like boyfriends and husbands because they're like, I've
Speaker 1: been saying the same shit for like ten fifteen years,
Speaker 1: and like some divorce guy on the internet says it,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna like pay attention now. There is a
Speaker 1: feeling among many women, married women, wives, mothers that it
Speaker 1: takes a man to say a thing before their husbands
Speaker 1: will listen, and it I don't know, it's sort of oh,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, you know, and I've seen it.
Speaker 3: They are asking the questions and doing the work and
Speaker 3: they're a little more introspective than they ever have been.
Speaker 3: A long way to go, but more men are like, Okay,
Speaker 3: help me figure this puzzle out right, is a good thing.
Speaker 3: What were the conversations like, you know, not to get
Speaker 3: too deeply into the ending of your marriage, but where
Speaker 3: they're like you sensed the growing frustration, or it's one
Speaker 3: day she's like I don't want to do this anymore,
Speaker 3: and you know it had you had to work backwards
Speaker 3: and reverse engineer a figure out the glassest thing, like
Speaker 3: how does it end?
Speaker 1: And then how does the light bulb go off in
Speaker 1: your head about why so we lost her we lost
Speaker 1: her dad one day and it was pretty awful and
Speaker 1: it came out of nowhere. And then within maybe a
Speaker 1: month or two, sitting at the dinner table, she's like,
Speaker 1: this isn't fun conversation. By the way, she says, Matt,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I love you, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want to be married to you anymore.
Speaker 1: And instead of like taking that feedback and and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: what could I do to like be someone she wanted
Speaker 1: to be married to, which to me is the mature
Speaker 1: thing to do. In that moment, I felt sorry for myself.
Speaker 1: Tough to hear it was. Was it shocking? Yes, I
Speaker 1: felt sorry for myself. I made it about me. I said,
Speaker 1: this is my wife like abandoning me because breaking her
Speaker 1: promise to stay married to me for the rest of
Speaker 1: our lives. And so I moved into the guest room
Speaker 1: and whined, not necessarily to her, but like to my
Speaker 1: one or two friends. I felt comfortable talking to it
Speaker 1: about right, and eighteen months later she moved out. Okay,
Speaker 1: wisely in my estimation, what goes eighteen months? Are you
Speaker 1: trying to work? Are counseling for a year? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: no no, it's just the that was it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever been in a really ugly relationship,
Speaker 1: but it was like I hated Friday when like I'm
Speaker 1: at the office and it's almost five and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to go home for the weekend. That's when
Speaker 1: I knew my life was absolutely miserable. Is when I
Speaker 1: wasn't excited to like go home after work for a weekend.
Speaker 1: I dreaded it because work was so much better. Are
Speaker 1: you asking why? When? How did you stop loving me
Speaker 1: and trying to work backwards? Are you?
Speaker 3: I would I would want to know the first ones
Speaker 3: to be like, well, how long have you been feeling
Speaker 3: its way?
Speaker 1: What changed? It wasn't mature enough.
Speaker 3: I just wasn't enough, which none of us are. This
Speaker 3: was about nine years ago, so I was like thirty
Speaker 3: two to thirty three. Uh huh, and I just didn't.
Speaker 1: Have it yet. It takes a while boys to grow up.
Speaker 1: It does, yes, sir, So I'm still working on it.
Speaker 1: I'm a thirteen year old where the same.
Speaker 3: Oh you girls out there thinking those two, those cute
Speaker 3: twenty six year old boys are the ones you want
Speaker 3: to marry.
Speaker 1: You don't wait till they get older. So and no,
Speaker 1: and you got it. I was really miserable after like
Speaker 1: the marriage ended, and you know, I got drank a
Speaker 1: lot to like numb it. And I called a therapist
Speaker 1: one night. I'd never talked to a therapist before. I
Speaker 1: just like did a phone a therapist thing, and she
Speaker 1: thought I should journal my feelings. Oh and I'm like
Speaker 1: all right, And then I just put it on the
Speaker 1: Internet instead of like doing the adult thing where I
Speaker 1: just like put it in an open so there was
Speaker 1: no like years of diaries in a drawer. It was
Speaker 1: just so okay. So April is like when we separated,
Speaker 1: and late June, I believe is when I started posting.
Speaker 1: So I'm not good at math. Was that threeish months? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it went from there, I mean, and then I
Speaker 1: just like therapeutically started writing the story of its art.
Speaker 1: It out as it was going to be this like
Speaker 1: dark comedy about being like this divorced thirty year old
Speaker 1: with a kid, trying to like date and stuffs. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be this like sardonic, like take on
Speaker 1: my life sucks and like here you get a front
Speaker 1: row seat to like all the things that happened next.
Speaker 1: But then people started paying attention, and then I got
Speaker 1: really serious about this notion of I felt I had
Speaker 1: a responsibility to like put positive things out in the
Speaker 1: world instead of what I was sort of doing, which
Speaker 1: was like adult sitcom stuff. At first. All right, I
Speaker 1: got a.
Speaker 3: Lot more to get into. We're here with Matt Frey.
Speaker 3: He's got a book coming out called This Is How
Speaker 3: a Marriage Ends. I gotta take a quick break because
Speaker 3: I might have to pay all money to an ex
Speaker 3: wife someday.
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this. And we are back.
Speaker 3: So you're writing and posting it? Where are you? Are
Speaker 3: you sending it to Hugh Post or you do you
Speaker 3: have your.
Speaker 1: Own blog site?
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
Speaker 1: I have a monitor, the precursor to substack. Are you
Speaker 1: doing that? I launched. I launched a blog on WordPress,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, no chance a human reads this.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sending it out. It very organically sort of
Speaker 1: like gained this following among the WordPress community, and then
Speaker 1: these WordPress people started shinging on social media with other people,
Speaker 1: and by the time Like the Dishes post came out,
Speaker 1: that's when I started getting like requests to have it
Speaker 1: be shared in all these other publication content. That's what
Speaker 1: I call it. I know it's.
Speaker 3: Have you gone back and read the earliest things? Are
Speaker 3: the earliest things you wrote recently.
Speaker 1: Not recently some of them because you don't want to
Speaker 1: or even think to do it. I don't think to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: Actually tell you what the way I think about things
Speaker 3: I would last seven years since doing the Great Love
Speaker 3: Debate has changed dramatically, mostly from hearing from men. I
Speaker 3: always have a pretty good handle I thought on the
Speaker 3: way the women thought, because I've been asking the questions
Speaker 3: and trying to figure out the women for a long
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 1: I always thought I'm a dude, I know the way
Speaker 1: guys think, and I was wrong.
Speaker 3: Just like women sometimes say like, you're not a woman,
Speaker 3: you don't understand. I'm like, you don't understand because you
Speaker 3: only know how you think, and you probably don't think
Speaker 3: to ask the questions of a lot of women.
Speaker 1: Same thing.
Speaker 3: I'm always like, well, this is the way guys feels
Speaker 3: and snowflakes. Everybody feels different, you know, a different way.
Speaker 3: So when did you realize the the dish's post was
Speaker 3: different and why it resonated.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I did.
Speaker 3: I just saw the math when Okay, but you must
Speaker 3: try and figure out because you're trying to duplicate that.
Speaker 1: Sure, you know, sure, I mean, I honestly think it was.
Speaker 1: I think the headline. I think the headline in and
Speaker 1: of itself is shocking. Yeah. And I think there are
Speaker 1: some people where leaving a dish by the sink is
Speaker 1: a genuine problem in the marriage. Yeah, And so they're like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, I can identify with this, and then they
Speaker 1: go read and then hopefully I haven't read it in
Speaker 1: a while, so I don't know, Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I actually put it in the book, wrote it. I
Speaker 1: rewrote like a better version of it, and I hope,
Speaker 1: like a more mature version, and and I hope it's
Speaker 1: better now. But that was, you know, nine months ago,
Speaker 1: and I did that. It's supposed to again be about
Speaker 1: this notion that pain happens, whether we think so or not,
Speaker 1: whether we think someone should feel hurt by something is
Speaker 1: not relevant to whether they do feel hurt by something,
Speaker 1: and if you can't succeed in anticipating what will hurt
Speaker 1: or not hurt somebody, they simply won't trust you to
Speaker 1: be their long term romantic partner. It's that simple. If
Speaker 1: you accidentally hurt them despite your intentions, they'll eventually go away.
Speaker 3: My first so here's my reaction to it, because I
Speaker 3: first read it when it first came out, and I
Speaker 3: read it again a couple of weeks ago when I
Speaker 3: knew you were coming on. My reaction at the time
Speaker 3: when I read it is like, no offense to your
Speaker 3: ex scie foot, What a bitch. If that's the only
Speaker 3: thing he's doing wrong, he must have been it must
Speaker 3: have been fine. My reaction reading it two weeks ago
Speaker 3: is a lot of girls are going to want.
Speaker 1: To date this guy.
Speaker 3: I looked at her before, you know your ex wife
Speaker 3: and her role in it. After this, I'm like, he's
Speaker 3: introspective and he's trying to do the work here. I
Speaker 3: bet you get a lot of women who were both like,
Speaker 3: she's too hard on you and you're awesome, right, you
Speaker 3: must get some some outreach.
Speaker 1: They will, but he's not over. But I know that's funny,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't been blogging regularly for a while
Speaker 1: ever since like this book thing happened and I really
Speaker 1: tried to dedicate and now I'm I don't know what
Speaker 1: my problem is, Like I'm not wasting it on the blog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book's the book's been done for a while and
Speaker 1: I really should be back to it. But when blogging
Speaker 1: was my sole focus and I was very like in
Speaker 1: that and getting to know like readers were getting to
Speaker 1: know me. It's a very personal project and I bet you,
Speaker 1: I bet you get it. But they feel people we
Speaker 1: don't want to say that. The thing we have in
Speaker 1: common is we're both selling hope around here. You know.
Speaker 3: I believe that is what we do, like like looking
Speaker 3: at things positively or how to change in a hopeful way.
Speaker 1: I think is a good thing. You know, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: that sells well. I think if somebody listens to one
Speaker 1: hundred episodes with you, they feel a kinship with Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in the head is a powerful thing. People
Speaker 1: read one hundred articles from me, yeah, one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: words plus, I think they form a relationship with me.
Speaker 1: And so absolutely, in the eight nine years, I've had
Speaker 1: everything from marriage proposals to requests to meet, all the things.
Speaker 3: To guys saying you dick me. Man, my girlfriend read
Speaker 3: that and you put me in a bad spot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was there was some of that to be
Speaker 1: I don't I think they go like whine about it
Speaker 1: on Reddit or men's rights forums, and most of the
Speaker 1: feedback from guys has been positive and rights forums. That
Speaker 1: seems like a dark corner of the end, right God,
Speaker 1: because well, because the thing that I think, I well,
Speaker 1: when the Dish's posts came out, I think this is
Speaker 1: a really key concept. When the dishes posts came out,
Speaker 1: I was still doing this thing where I was. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a stretch to say my tone of voice
Speaker 1: blamed men for the state of relationships because they blamed
Speaker 1: me and then therefore blamed men. But I've really come
Speaker 1: off that idea. I believe strongly that the vast majority
Speaker 1: of guys in relationships do not intend harm. The key
Speaker 1: message is that harm can be caused independence of intentions,
Speaker 1: and then how you navigate that as it's happening in
Speaker 1: real time, you the guy with your partner, makes or
Speaker 1: breaks trust in the relationship. Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 3: So at what point where you're like, okay, it's book
Speaker 3: time on this stuff. When did you start writing the
Speaker 3: new book this is how your marriage ends?
Speaker 1: When did that? When you're like, Okay, I got an
Speaker 1: idea for a book, the New York Times reached out
Speaker 1: to me in January of twenty twenty today they could
Speaker 1: do a feature on you, and I'm like, awesome, never
Speaker 1: been in the New York Times. And then my world
Speaker 1: went crazy and it was so And then COVID happened
Speaker 1: in the United States like during that time, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, Okay, that's not happening, Like the Times isn't
Speaker 1: going to run the story. This is the biggest news
Speaker 1: story in mathematically and global history, Like nobody's going to
Speaker 1: give a shit about, right, some divorce guy. But it
Speaker 1: turned out people did give a shit because COVID exacerbated
Speaker 1: these problems, these dish by the sync problems and relationships
Speaker 1: because everybody was locked down together a good point, right,
Speaker 1: It like put a magnifying glass on these like so
Speaker 1: called like little things that adversely affect trust and relationships.
Speaker 1: And the Times recognized it and they're like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: running the story. And then they they ran it and
Speaker 1: the world changed. I was getting like TV offers and the.
Speaker 3: Time The Times reached out based on the dishes one
Speaker 3: or some of your other writing.
Speaker 1: What was the story I heard from Jancy Donn, the reporter,
Speaker 1: was that the New York Times parenting editors got together
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, are there any non mental health professional
Speaker 1: guys in the world that like know this conversation that
Speaker 1: we're trying to have right now? And Jancey raises her
Speaker 1: hand in this like editorial meeting and says, I actually
Speaker 1: know about one because she found that article while she
Speaker 1: was researching one of her books. So she reaches out
Speaker 1: to me. We have like a series of interviews. I
Speaker 1: actually do a coaching session with her husband. Another author
Speaker 1: is brilliant guy named Tom Vanderbilt. Amazing guy. But like
Speaker 1: we had a great, like two hour conversation, and anyway,
Speaker 1: Chancy leverages all of that to like write this story,
Speaker 1: and again everything just changed after that. The Times has
Speaker 1: enormous reach, and I didn't quite like realize what would happen.
Speaker 1: And so all of these like agents reached out to me,
Speaker 1: and all of these TV people reached out to me,
Speaker 1: and within a couple of weeks I had agents. I
Speaker 1: had and then a week or two after that, you know,
Speaker 1: Harper reached out with an offer to like make this book.
Speaker 1: I had already had a book proposal because I'd like
Speaker 1: so to answer your question, like most honestly a year
Speaker 1: or two later earlier, excuse me. I thought I had
Speaker 1: enough to put a book together, but it would have
Speaker 1: been a gross product as a self published or or
Speaker 1: like slopped together thing. This this ended up. I got
Speaker 1: put together with an incredible team like Harper that helped
Speaker 1: me make this the thing that I don't know, we'll
Speaker 1: find out next March. Right, people think of.
Speaker 3: It and not to, you know, bring myself into it.
Speaker 3: I get offers or people reach out to do books
Speaker 3: all the time. My worry about a book in the
Speaker 3: in the both personal journey space and the relationship space,
Speaker 3: is this world is evolving and moving so fast that
Speaker 3: I'm always paranoid that the book will be dated by
Speaker 3: six months. Either I don't think that way or anything,
Speaker 3: or the world doesn't work that way anymore.
Speaker 1: I gotta get over that. It's true.
Speaker 3: But that's why like podcasting, because I feel like I
Speaker 3: don't have to put a period on the sentence and
Speaker 3: make the conversation going so in the book, give me
Speaker 3: the the over the the overview of the book.
Speaker 1: The book I Hope is, I hope what it is
Speaker 1: is an infinitely better written and more mature version of
Speaker 1: like the blog collectively. So I did leverage like I
Speaker 1: in the blog as sub sections in chapters that were then,
Speaker 1: you know, written in a today when I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope and feel our more mature thoughts and more mature writing.
Speaker 1: The book is part memoir, part self help. I try
Speaker 1: to combine my personal story, the stories of clients that
Speaker 1: agreed to let me share some of their stories, just
Speaker 1: to try to like make points and make it really human.
Speaker 1: And then the ideas I discovered in my blogging years
Speaker 1: that helped me arrive at these conclusions I've arrived at.
Speaker 1: I sprinkle those in the book, and then I try
Speaker 1: to encapsulate the work that I'm doing and coaching, this
Speaker 1: work around forming new habits in order to restore trust
Speaker 1: and relationships in these really subtle, nuanced ways. So your
Speaker 1: curiosity drives a lot of the information. It's you asking
Speaker 1: why why did I do this? Why do we do this?
Speaker 1: Why does she react? That way drives everything right, It's
Speaker 1: that's what got the ball rolling. I don't know that
Speaker 1: the books asking a lot of questions. I'm I think
Speaker 1: the books answering those questions that I had right, and
Speaker 1: then people get to decide for themselves whether it's relevant
Speaker 1: to them. Do you get a lot of who are you?
Speaker 1: And what is your schooling on all this? Or whatever?
Speaker 1: Trust me, I get it. I did earlier than I
Speaker 1: do now. If you google things like my husband's an asshole?
Speaker 1: Or why does my wife hate me? Yeah, I come
Speaker 1: up like one or two for like all of those,
Speaker 1: And I think, for better or worse, it shouldn't give
Speaker 1: me credibility google results.
Speaker 3: I think it should because you're tapped into something that resonates.
Speaker 1: I say this all the time.
Speaker 3: Bill Belichick didn't play quarterback in the NFL doesn't mean
Speaker 3: he couldn't coach Tom Brady doesn't mean he's an understanding
Speaker 3: to figure it out. Trying to do the work on
Speaker 3: yourself and trying to push the conversation to new places
Speaker 3: has great value. And you can go to school for
Speaker 3: fifty years and never really understand how to do that.
Speaker 3: How have you changed, both in working with other people
Speaker 3: and in writing about this stuff? Are you a better
Speaker 3: candidate for a fifty year marriage than you were ten
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I always like to say that that I'm not
Speaker 1: a marriage advocate. I'm not out here trying to encourage
Speaker 1: people to reship advocate. Yes, what I want is for
Speaker 1: people to not fail in relationships that they honestly want
Speaker 1: to be in, because that, to me, is the real
Speaker 1: tragedy of marriage. It's like usually young people getting married
Speaker 1: on purpose, believing it's going to be forever. Almost nobody's
Speaker 1: getting married like I sure hope this sucks and we
Speaker 1: get divorced in six seven years. Nobody does that, and
Speaker 1: but then they learn the hard way, this like slow
Speaker 1: erosion that happens. And I believe I can explain for
Speaker 1: a lot of those people why it happens in a
Speaker 1: way that they'll like, that will resonate with them, in
Speaker 1: a way that won't feel like a dude with like
Speaker 1: patches on his like elbows from like a leather chair
Speaker 1: preaching like I'm just a guy that sucked a marriage.
Speaker 1: And I tell that story and I hopefully sprinkle in
Speaker 1: a little bit of wisdom too hard earned, and people
Speaker 1: decide for themselves that it sounds like their life. That's
Speaker 1: my favorite feedback is, Matt, do you have a camera
Speaker 1: in our kitchen. How do you know the conversations we have?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't you just statistically have the
Speaker 1: same ones I had? Right, because everybody has these conversations,
Speaker 1: and we don't talk about it at dinner parties, and
Speaker 1: we don't talk about it at family get togethers, so
Speaker 1: nobody knows we're all having this conversation. What has your
Speaker 1: ex wife had to say about She must know you're
Speaker 1: doing this. Yeah, so we don't talk about like the
Speaker 1: content very much. I can tell you I think we
Speaker 1: have an extraordinarily positive relationship. My son just did like
Speaker 1: placement testing for high school last weekend and we hung
Speaker 1: out for like three hours together. And that's not weird.
Speaker 1: We were doing that almost from the beginning, holiday pageants
Speaker 1: and stuff for the kid. Like there was a long
Speaker 1: time where parents at his school didn't know we weren't
Speaker 1: married because she and I were everything together, like on
Speaker 1: behalf of her son. So I think she has a
Speaker 1: lot of respect for the fact that I do consider
Speaker 1: her when I make decisions now as a co parenting partner.
Speaker 3: Right, But what was there? I think emotion you need
Speaker 3: to talk to you about this dishes thing. No, I
Speaker 3: think emotionally like she doesn't want to. And she's also
Speaker 3: been she's been in a long term relationship huh for
Speaker 3: a while now, Like that's.
Speaker 1: I bet he didn't leave the dishes by this thing.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know, right. She and I aren't like pals,
Speaker 1: like I think we care about it. You do their
Speaker 1: hard work, but we don't hang out and have drinks.
Speaker 1: And she's not like what am I in your book?
Speaker 1: She's not like I.
Speaker 3: I mean this sort of human nature you would be like,
Speaker 3: how much is I had an ex girlfriend write a
Speaker 3: book that I wasn't in and I was so mad
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: She's like, you just weren't irrelevant enough, And I was
Speaker 1: like what I would rather have her bash made? Oh
Speaker 1: that's hilarious, It's terrible. Yeah. I think that she feels
Speaker 1: a little bit vulnerable about that, and that she doesn't
Speaker 1: have control of that narrative. But I hope that she
Speaker 1: trusts me to advocate for her and to not write
Speaker 1: anything designed to do you want some forgiveness? Do you
Speaker 1: want some? You know what?
Speaker 3: I was not not there like I should have been either.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry it wasn't just you. Do you want that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Have you gotten that or do you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I probably want it. She's probably given me a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of it by virtue of how she treats me. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: But we never did the like really like mature adult,
Speaker 1: deep heart to heart about it, where we reconcile all
Speaker 1: of these past things. The work that I should have
Speaker 1: done to repair my marriage is what we would essentially
Speaker 1: have to do now in order to like do that.
Speaker 1: And and that's an intimate process that frankly almost feels
Speaker 1: inappropriate in the context of her relationship, right seriously, Like
Speaker 1: that's intimacy building. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the one everybody? I always say it starts
Speaker 3: with one step? What's the one step that most men
Speaker 3: can take that are in relationships? Because we spend two
Speaker 3: parts on this on this podcast a lot, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people that are in relationships that they
Speaker 3: need to get out of them, and the thing that's
Speaker 3: preventing for being a happy, the right relationship is that
Speaker 3: the fact they're.
Speaker 1: Stuck in the wrong one and then how to get
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 3: We spend a lot of time in the last year
Speaker 3: or two on there are a lot of relationships that
Speaker 3: would work out if they could either just have this
Speaker 3: conversation or just make that they break up for the
Speaker 3: wrong reasons and they could have made it, they should
Speaker 3: have made it.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 3: Those are the relationships of a regret. Because it dawns
Speaker 3: on you, what's the one step that men or either
Speaker 3: side could take. Either side like we're playing against each
Speaker 3: other like tomorrow, it's like just start here?
Speaker 1: Is there? One of those things I think for men
Speaker 1: and women is this will sound redundant on the guy side.
Speaker 1: Then I believe the number one relationship killer in the
Speaker 1: world is our habit of invalidating people when they say
Speaker 1: something's wrong. We don't think I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: invalidate her right now so I can win this argument
Speaker 1: or something. It's this very honest disagreement, this very honest
Speaker 1: confusion about how she could feel this way about this
Speaker 1: dish by the sink, because that seems insane to me,
Speaker 1: without recognizing that the math results of the conversation for
Speaker 1: her is if he doesn't agree with me, he implies
Speaker 1: I'm stupid, he implies I'm crazy, he implies I'm weak,
Speaker 1: or he defends himself. In any case, I can't trust
Speaker 1: him to not keep doing this thing that hurts me.
Speaker 1: I certainly can't trust him to like hear me and
Speaker 1: understand me. Therefore, I can't calculate that a year from now,
Speaker 1: five years from now, ten years from now is going
Speaker 1: to be a healthy relationship. I have to, like, I
Speaker 1: have to try to get him to get this right
Speaker 1: so they like up the.
Speaker 3: Emotion doesn't trust you, she doesn't feel safe, and the
Speaker 3: whole thing unravels.
Speaker 1: I don't know how familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of
Speaker 1: needs you are, but I leverage it and coaching all
Speaker 1: the time. It's without safety all you give a shit
Speaker 1: about safety If you don't have it, You don't care
Speaker 1: about the weather or your four oh one k or anything.
Speaker 1: If you're fundamentally unsafe because a bear's chasing you or
Speaker 1: some guy's got his hands around your neck, and a
Speaker 1: breach of trust unravels the safe absolutely and so and
Speaker 1: then level three of Maslow's pyramid is is community and
Speaker 1: connection and togetherness and all these things we do when
Speaker 1: we date and we have relationships. Most men try to
Speaker 1: connect with their partners up on this, like level three
Speaker 1: of the pyramid, what they really need to concentrate on
Speaker 1: is the restoration of safety. And then then their partner
Speaker 1: will want to sleep with them. Then their partner will
Speaker 1: want to go out to like movies and dinner and parties, and.
Speaker 3: That trust and that safety comes from being heard, feeling recognized,
Speaker 3: being relevant.
Speaker 1: And those things.
Speaker 3: You could be like, well, she just wants to be right,
Speaker 3: there's there's a little more nuance to that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't It feels counterintuitive because I was like, safety,
Speaker 1: I would never hurt you. Not only that, if like
Speaker 1: bad people were trying to do bad things to us,
Speaker 1: even though I'd be terrified, I'd still take the bullet
Speaker 1: for you, like I would, And I knew that I
Speaker 1: would do that. So I'm like, therefore, it's illogical for
Speaker 1: you to feel unsafe with me. And it was just
Speaker 1: me like not getting it. It was me not getting this,
Speaker 1: this this subtle notion of nuanced notion of safety where
Speaker 1: it's it's almost about like reliability more so than it
Speaker 1: is about like physical safety. I can't count on you.
Speaker 1: I know that I can't because my data sample is large.
Speaker 1: You always do the same thing. Five more years of this,
Speaker 1: I won't even be myself anymore and leave. So he
Speaker 1: talked about the other side, which it's funny. I don't
Speaker 1: want to like pit like men and women against each other.
Speaker 1: And I don't really think like that Jerry Springer show.
Speaker 1: But what I do think women should do, and there's
Speaker 1: almost no way they can because they're usually young when
Speaker 1: this happens is just more vigil only enforced boundaries. So
Speaker 1: something feels bad, they communicate it to their partner. Their
Speaker 1: partner does the invalidation thing. I wish they'd say, this
Speaker 1: is intolerable, you will do this forever. They don't psychically
Speaker 1: know that seven years from now it'll end their marriage.
Speaker 1: They just don't know because they're young, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I love this person, and you know, maybe he'll change
Speaker 1: and wake up tomorrow and hope that the dishes will
Speaker 1: be put away. But maybe even more important because that's
Speaker 1: evidence of he considers me when he makes decisions. I
Speaker 1: want to make it clear that I don't think it's
Speaker 1: literally about the dish. It's evidence metaphor's yes, sir, it's
Speaker 1: evidence that he hears me, understands me, and cares enough
Speaker 1: to do a thing on my behalf.
Speaker 3: Huh So again, just to clarify, so that step is
Speaker 3: what Step one is what for a man?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think of it like a habit. I don't know,
Speaker 1: do we have time to get into it? Sure? All right?
Speaker 1: So I always talk about this monster under the bed thing.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things in coaching. It's my
Speaker 1: favorite scenario. It's the idea that helped me overcome my
Speaker 1: tendency to try to convince somebody that they're wrong. When
Speaker 1: do they think or feel differently than me, very specifically
Speaker 1: a romantic partner guilty, guilty of that for the purpose
Speaker 1: of trust. And so I have a thirteen year old son,
Speaker 1: but I like to think about him when he was
Speaker 1: like four or five, and he might have woken up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night crying hysterically because he's
Speaker 1: afraid of a monster heading under his bed. I'm a dad,
Speaker 1: and I can open the door, and I can walk
Speaker 1: in the room, and I can evaluate the situation. He's
Speaker 1: crying because he's afraid of a monster into the bed,
Speaker 1: and my brain says, there's no monster under the bed.
Speaker 1: The reason he's crying is asinine, right, this is an overreaction.
Speaker 1: And on my default setting, I'll say that to him.
Speaker 1: I'll say, dude, there's no mind of the bed. I
Speaker 1: need you to calm down. Nothing's wrong. Everything's okay, And
Speaker 1: if I was maybe like watching Monday night football or something,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, dude, I do not have time to deal
Speaker 1: with invisible monsters right now. You should know better. Toughen up,
Speaker 1: go to sleep. Everything's fine, and I leave, And I
Speaker 1: think there's really important ideas in that scenario. I'm right,
Speaker 1: there was a judge in the room. Judges like Dad's right, right.
Speaker 1: I love him intensely. It's my favorite person, so the
Speaker 1: love's not in question, and I would never hurt him
Speaker 1: on purpose. I would never like plot a strategy to
Speaker 1: like hurt my son. But I think the math result
Speaker 1: of that conversation is my son's still afraid. He's still crying,
Speaker 1: but now he's alone in the dark, and he just
Speaker 1: learned that when Dad doesn't think the thing I care
Speaker 1: about matters, he abandons me.
Speaker 3: So rather than trying to convince him there's no monster,
Speaker 3: it's to figure out why he feels there's a monster.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to participate effectively in bringing
Speaker 1: restoring safety, and that to me, is the mission in
Speaker 1: our adult relationships too. So the other half of this
Speaker 1: like monster into the bed scenario is I walk in
Speaker 1: the room the person I want to be today. I
Speaker 1: want to walk in the room. I want to hug
Speaker 1: my son. I don't want to be like dude, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a monster under there, but you're scared,
Speaker 1: and I've been scared before, and that is a terrible
Speaker 1: like feeling to have it. And I'm really sorry that
Speaker 1: you're afraid right now, So like, let's work on that.
Speaker 1: Turn the light on, we can look under the bed together,
Speaker 1: make sure there's no monster. And I'm not going anywhere, buddy,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay here until you know your bedrooms safe,
Speaker 1: your house is safe, and that most importantly, whenever something's wrong,
Speaker 1: you can call mom, you can call dad. Right, We're
Speaker 1: gonna show up for you. And even if we can't
Speaker 1: fix what's wrong, you never have to fight your battles alone. Right,
Speaker 1: even though my son, hypothetically in the scenario was wrong
Speaker 1: about the thing, and even though he was acting in
Speaker 1: a manner that was sort of like mathematically incongruent with
Speaker 1: this non existent threat, trying to win the battle of
Speaker 1: ideas with him equals loss of trust and loss of
Speaker 1: safety in the relationship. Working on this notion of recognizing
Speaker 1: that my son feels awful about something and trying to
Speaker 1: participate lovingly and effectively restoring safety and trust. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make him feel better A and B improve the
Speaker 1: quality of our relationship, and I can do that. I
Speaker 1: want to make it clear that I don't think like
Speaker 1: an angry wife is equal to like vulnerable crying child
Speaker 1: or a monster under that in the in the context
Speaker 1: of like how you react in real time, our brains
Speaker 1: calculate those two emotions differently, but I do think mechanically
Speaker 1: it's the same. Our brain says, the thing you think
Speaker 1: is a problem isn't a problem, or the or the
Speaker 1: way you're acting is disproportionate to the thing that happened.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna now try to convince you in this
Speaker 1: like battle of ideas, and I think the math results
Speaker 1: the same as when we abandon the kid to cry
Speaker 1: alone in the dark. And I always say this, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make it sound like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: compare our partners to children. They're not. Our partners aren't
Speaker 1: in this metaphor. We just us are. And we have
Speaker 1: a choice. And so if we can habitually choose to
Speaker 1: restore safety instead of habitually choose to try to convinces
Speaker 1: the hurt person that they shouldn't be hurt. If we
Speaker 1: can do that over and over again, we can build
Speaker 1: that habit, we can always have trust on our relationships.
Speaker 1: And so I know that's an extraordinarily long way of saying,
Speaker 1: but that's step one to me. That's what every guy
Speaker 1: could do in his relationship that I think and the
Speaker 1: average heterosexual relationship would benefit him tremendously.
Speaker 3: And the important thing is it's it's a step that
Speaker 3: everybody is capable of taking. You can argue whether or
Speaker 3: not that will be effective, or you can argue well
Speaker 3: or not so that's gonna work, or it's something you
Speaker 3: are capable of going down that path and seeing where
Speaker 3: that leads.
Speaker 1: It's a choice. And I'm saying, when you don't do that,
Speaker 1: that's when the conflict pattern starts. That's when you don't
Speaker 1: see me, you don't hear me, you don't love me,
Speaker 1: you don't care about me. That is the reaction to
Speaker 1: us failing to recognize pain and then participate effectively in it.
Speaker 3: All right, we're gonna let you plug your book again
Speaker 3: in a second. But if you have heard this podcast before,
Speaker 3: we play something called worst Date or first date, so
Speaker 3: you can think back before your marriage, you can think
Speaker 3: back since your marriage, you can think about out of
Speaker 3: your marriage. All you want, you have to give us
Speaker 3: either the worst date you've ever been on or the
Speaker 3: greatest first date you've ever been on. I don't care
Speaker 3: what happened to these relationship after the first date, worst
Speaker 3: date or first date?
Speaker 1: Your choice? All right, first date? Okay, so help here?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well no, it was early, right, It was
Speaker 1: like the right when the blog was like getting started.
Speaker 1: It was the first maybe month or two of blogging,
Speaker 1: and I am doing I'm trying online dating for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, you know, I'm coming out
Speaker 1: of a twelve thirteen year relationship. And she's gorgeous. She's
Speaker 1: this hearing specialist, and I'm like her. And so we
Speaker 1: agree to meet at this like Mexican restaurant, which should
Speaker 1: have been a sign, right, like nothing's happening after the
Speaker 1: Mexican filver. And We're sitting there and I'm getting to
Speaker 1: know where, and I'm excited that she's this like lovely,
Speaker 1: highly accomplished, highly intelligent person, but then like she seemed
Speaker 1: anything but so We've got the National Park here, and
Speaker 1: she grew up in a town adjacent to the National Park,
Speaker 1: and she's like, what do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 1: Like one of the things I like to do is
Speaker 1: go like hiker bike in the National Park because I've
Speaker 1: never heard of it, Like she never heard of it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, she you grew up in this town.
Speaker 3: She's a hearing specialist, so yeah.
Speaker 1: But but my least favorite part was the guy comes like,
Speaker 1: would you like table side guacamoal? Yeah, and sure, let's
Speaker 1: have tableside guacamolele And he's like, so what can I
Speaker 1: do anything like custom for you guys? And he goes,
Speaker 1: you know, would you like anything change? And she says,
Speaker 1: I want you to double all the ingredients. She wanted
Speaker 1: him to double the garlic, the double the yeah, well
Speaker 1: the like onion and like the jalapino, and I'm like
Speaker 1: double all that shit, Like I it was either like
Speaker 1: a sign that was like that was her like genius
Speaker 1: way of saying, you know, you and I are never
Speaker 1: going to be a thing, or like I don't want
Speaker 1: to because this is how we're gonna feel after this, right.
Speaker 1: But what I interpret it as between the like park thing,
Speaker 1: where she again was like thirty something it had never
Speaker 1: heard the national park she lives adjacent to, or doubling
Speaker 1: all the ingredients in guacamole, very specific type of hearings.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the shittiest, and I was
Speaker 1: so excited because I don't know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: was just like out with like this like lovely person
Speaker 1: because like this feels hope. Was she right? Did you
Speaker 1: try the guacamoles? Am I say bad word? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can say fuck. I'm so sorry. It was the shittiest
Speaker 1: guacamole ever ever. But you have to respect that that's
Speaker 1: what she likes in her guacamole. You know you're not
Speaker 1: wrong if I if I wanted to have a trusting
Speaker 1: relationship with her, you couldn't trust her taste in guacamole
Speaker 1: or national parks. It's quirky at best. I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of bad dans, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I may not like somebody or they might not like me,
Speaker 1: but we tend to like coexist in like a really
Speaker 1: positive way. When do you tell your dates that you
Speaker 1: you do this well? I haven't had any first like
Speaker 1: dates for like a while, Like I do sort of
Speaker 1: like see somebody regularly, but I don't really talk about
Speaker 1: it very much because you don't. I'm like pretty private
Speaker 1: if they're not, like, let me read what you're working on.
Speaker 1: But no, no, she's like, no, she's on board and
Speaker 1: was like participated in like reading the book as I
Speaker 1: was writing it and providing feedback. No. I well, and
Speaker 1: so I'm forty two. I'll be forty three in March,
Speaker 1: right around the time the book comes out, And I
Speaker 1: do think the things I have to say resonate with
Speaker 1: Most of the people that I meet are have either
Speaker 1: had like shitty dating relationships or they're usually divorced, right,
Speaker 1: and over the last nine years of sharing my work
Speaker 1: and my like how I think about my marriage, they're like,
Speaker 1: that would have been a game changer for me if
Speaker 1: like my husband would have done that work or even now,
Speaker 1: it'd be so cathartic if he at least did what
Speaker 1: you're doing instead of like doubling down on like everything
Speaker 1: was my fault.
Speaker 3: Yeah, guys, the ladies like it when you do the
Speaker 3: work and vulnerability shows a lot of strength that they
Speaker 3: also like it makes them feel safe.
Speaker 1: Plug the work, plug the book, plug it all all right.
Speaker 1: So the book is called This Is How You're maege Ends.
Speaker 1: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships comes out in North
Speaker 1: America on March twenty second next year, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: And we're in a bunch of other countries too, But
Speaker 1: I don't know that that matters.
Speaker 3: It does matter. We have the number two podcast in Malta.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, we're charts in like seventy five countries.
Speaker 1: You're badass. So when the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy,
Speaker 1: We've been very blessed to get some international deals, so
Speaker 1: we're going to be in other places too. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of those are coming out, like the following
Speaker 1: month in April. I'm pretty excited about it. I say,
Speaker 1: want to go back and read blogs you don't want
Speaker 1: to read. Hope people like it. Well, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: there because I'm not gonna go do anything about it.
Speaker 1: So if anybody wants to see what like the more
Speaker 1: moronic version of me, if that's even possible. Yeah, was
Speaker 1: saying in thirteen fourteen fifteen, that can go do that
Speaker 1: at the blogs called must be this Tall to Ride,
Speaker 1: just must be this Tall to Ride dot com. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a nod to like me being short and
Speaker 1: I'm about five nine And when I got on my
Speaker 1: dating sites right after my marriage ended, all these women,
Speaker 1: even if they were like five two five three, were like,
Speaker 1: he must be like six to one, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: are you shitting me? Yeah, like I didn't know you not.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was short until I got divorced.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, holy shit on absoute title for a
Speaker 1: book too.
Speaker 3: We have dove in ad infinitum to the to that
Speaker 3: particular issue around here drives me nuts. Women have got
Speaker 3: to get over that. They they think every guy is
Speaker 3: six to one, and really, like eleven percent of men
Speaker 3: are six one.
Speaker 1: They just think and and.
Speaker 3: It's a problem, so good for you, and props for
Speaker 3: owning your five nine ers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm not insensitive about it anymore. That was
Speaker 1: like a traumatic experience for me and I actually, I
Speaker 1: think people are allowed to be attracted to whatever. I
Speaker 1: don't want somebody to tell me that I have to
Speaker 1: like somebody that weighs a certain amount or that you know,
Speaker 1: I want to be attracted to whoever I'm attracted to.
Speaker 3: Organically, people are attracted to stuff that hasn't worked out
Speaker 3: for them in the past.
Speaker 1: I'm not I look at it. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: a healthy relationship choice, but this like sort of organic.
Speaker 1: This is what looks good to me. I am way
Speaker 1: over this, Matt. Is it my cup of tea? They
Speaker 1: don't have to like me.
Speaker 3: Well that's I hope you sell a lot of books
Speaker 3: and then you can stand on your wallet and then
Speaker 3: you're six to one.
Speaker 1: That'd be fun.
Speaker 3: There you go, this was fun. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Matthew Fray. Everybody as far as
Speaker 3: us like, share, subscribe, and please review this podcast.
Speaker 1: Reviews mean a lot in.
Speaker 3: The podcasting ecosystem. Shoot us an email, Great Love Debate
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com if you have any questions for
Speaker 3: me or Matt or anything else, because, as always at
Speaker 3: the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love.
Speaker 1: See you next time.
Speaker 2: The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
Speaker 3: Great Love Debate.
Speaker 1: It's a Great Love Debate.