Speaker 1: Look up with count all the things with beat it
Speaker 1: on the bottom all, Oh wow, is you You're my
Speaker 1: favorite view?
Speaker 2: But that's nothing, and I am back. It's just me today, guys.
Speaker 3: Peachas and I were both pretty sick yesterday, the day
Speaker 3: after fourth of July.
Speaker 2: She's still not recovered, so she's gonna sit this one out.
Speaker 3: You guys got me today, Just me me turn my
Speaker 3: light on back here, so it's official.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 3: I put together a document today this morning, and it
Speaker 3: stemmed from the conversation of seventy of divorces are initiated
Speaker 3: by women, and this is a great conversation to throw blame,
Speaker 3: to create all types of conflict and victim versus villain stories.
Speaker 3: And it allows us to blame shift so that we
Speaker 3: don't have to take responsibility for our actions. It's really
Speaker 3: easy for men to be like, fuck women. It's really
Speaker 3: easy for women to be like, our divorce rates are
Speaker 3: so high because men are fucking losers and like.
Speaker 2: It creates a whole ass.
Speaker 3: Ugliness around relationships, more specifically marriage than dating. But and
Speaker 3: I want to get into I got I got some things.
Speaker 3: This is This started off as like a thirty eight
Speaker 3: page document, so there's a lot to go through here.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna read some of it. I'll check them with
Speaker 3: the chat every once in a while. For those of
Speaker 3: you who don't know, I do record this lot. We
Speaker 3: record all the time live in front of our Patreon audience.
Speaker 3: We are trying to build our Patreon up. So if
Speaker 3: you're not a member of Patreon on and how you
Speaker 3: recommend you go over there and check that out. There's
Speaker 3: a whole lot of things that they get that the
Speaker 3: rest of the world doesn't. So if you haven't yet,
Speaker 3: go to patreon dot com forward slash to be better.
Speaker 3: All right, So, divorce is one of those topics where
Speaker 3: almost everyone has already picked a side before conversation even begins.
Speaker 3: Some people immediately blame men, some immediately blame women, Some
Speaker 3: blame feminism, others blame the legal systems, some blame social
Speaker 3: media dating culture. The problem is that once we've decided
Speaker 3: who's guilty, we stop asking the real questions. One of
Speaker 3: the most talked about statistics and modern relationships is that
Speaker 3: nearly seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women. It's
Speaker 3: a number that's repeated constantly, but very few people stop
Speaker 3: to ask what it actually means. Does filing for divorce
Speaker 3: mean that someone caused the marriage to fail, Does it
Speaker 3: mean that they wanted the marriage to end, Does it
Speaker 3: mean that they wanted the spouse to be the problem,
Speaker 3: or does it simply mean that they were the one
Speaker 3: who finally signed the paperwork. Those are very different questions,
Speaker 3: and they're very often treated as if they're the same. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: our culture doesn't have much patience for complicated answers. We
Speaker 3: like villains and victims. We like stories with a clear
Speaker 3: hero and a clear person to blame. We like headlines
Speaker 3: that can be consumed in thirty seconds and reinforced with
Speaker 3: what we already believe. If you already think that men
Speaker 3: are the problem, this statistic becomes proof. If you already
Speaker 3: think that family courts are biased against men, again, this
Speaker 3: becomes proof. If you already think that marriages are outdated,
Speaker 3: this statistic again becomes proof. The same number gets used
Speaker 3: to support completely different conclusions because people tend to look
Speaker 3: for evidence that confirms the story that they're already telling themselves.
Speaker 3: It's called confirmation bias. We don't start with the evidence
Speaker 3: and let it shape our conclusions. We start with the
Speaker 3: conclusions that we're looking for, and then we look for
Speaker 3: the evidence that supports that. The result is that we
Speaker 3: stop trying to understand what's actually happening and start trying
Speaker 3: to prove that we were right all along. The reality
Speaker 3: is is that relationships rarely collapse because of the event.
Speaker 3: They erode. Trust erodes, respect, friendships, communication, the willingness to
Speaker 3: repair erodes. And most people don't wake up one morning,
Speaker 3: look at their person line next to them, and suddenly
Speaker 3: decide they want a divorce. By the time someone files,
Speaker 3: the marriage has often been struggling for months, years, or
Speaker 3: even decades. Nobody ever just wakes up and goes, hey,
Speaker 3: I don't want this anymore. Get wrecked Like it's never
Speaker 3: the case. This is, like I said, a slow erosion
Speaker 3: over time. Long before anyone walks into a courthouse, thousands
Speaker 3: of conversations have already taken place, thousands of opportunities to
Speaker 3: reconnect have already been missed, thousands of small decisions, small disappointments,
Speaker 3: moments of disconnection that have quietly moved people further apart.
Speaker 3: Divorce is often the final decision, but it's really the
Speaker 3: first sign that something's wrong. That's why I don't think
Speaker 3: the most important question is who filed. I think the
Speaker 3: better question is what happened long before anyone ever called
Speaker 3: an attorney, Because if we can understand what slowly destroys
Speaker 3: a marriage, we have a much better chance of preventing
Speaker 3: one from getting there in the first place. So I
Speaker 3: want to impact what the research actually says, where people
Speaker 3: tend to overreach with their conclusions, and what every couple,
Speaker 3: whether you're dating, married, separated, divorced, or even happily single,
Speaker 3: can learn from. This isn't about proving men or women
Speaker 3: are right. It's about understanding human behavior. Because if all
Speaker 3: we do is argue over who's to blame, we'll keep
Speaker 3: reducing the same outcomes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's start with this.
Speaker 3: The statistic itself, Yes, women initiate roughly seventy percent of divorces.
Speaker 3: That statistic has been replicated for decades, and at this
Speaker 3: point it's not even really debated anymore. The number itself
Speaker 3: isn't where the disagreement begins. The disagreement begins with what
Speaker 3: people think that number actually means. A lot of people
Speaker 3: hear women file for divorce and immediately translate translate that
Speaker 3: into women are good at ending marriages. Other people will
Speaker 3: hear the exact same statistic and conclude that men must
Speaker 3: be terrible husbands. The problem is that neither of those
Speaker 3: conclusions actually comes from the statistic itself. I didn't include
Speaker 3: a statistic in this document that I feel like I
Speaker 3: need to say just to get it out there. The
Speaker 3: highest divorce rates are in lesbian couples. The lowest is
Speaker 3: in gay couples. Men, right, And I feel the need
Speaker 3: to say that because this is not a matter of
Speaker 3: placing blame. I think that the statistics matter and it
Speaker 3: needs to be stated.
Speaker 2: And that's it. So like this is again, it's not
Speaker 2: a blame thing. It's just.
Speaker 3: Is it that women get sick of people faster and
Speaker 3: decide that it's not worth saving. Are they not willing
Speaker 3: to put in as much effort?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Are they are the court systems biased towards women so
Speaker 3: they get more in the event that they get a divorce?
Speaker 3: Like These are real questions that need to be asked
Speaker 3: and answered, and a lot of times they're not. So
Speaker 3: the statistic itself doesn't tell us why the marriage ended.
Speaker 3: It tells us who emotionally checked out first. It doesn't
Speaker 3: tell us who stopped trying. It doesn't tell us who
Speaker 3: became emotionally unavailable. It doesn't tell us whether there was infidelity, addiction, abuse,
Speaker 3: or years of unresolved resentment. It doesn't tell us whether
Speaker 3: two people simply grow part of our time. It tells
Speaker 3: us one thing. Who filed the paperwork.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: We have to be very careful not to ask data
Speaker 3: to answer questions that was never designed to answer. So
Speaker 3: think about it this way. Imagine two business partners. After
Speaker 3: years of declining revenue, unresolved conflict, poor communication, resentment, and
Speaker 3: failed attempts to save the company, one partner finally walks
Speaker 3: into the courthouse and dissolves the business. Who entted a partnership?
Speaker 3: Was it the person who filed who caused the business
Speaker 3: to fail?
Speaker 2: You don't know.
Speaker 3: None of that information's there. Maybe one partner stopped carrying
Speaker 3: their weight, maybe both of them did. Maybe they had
Speaker 3: different visions of the future. Maybe outside circumstances made the
Speaker 3: business unsustainable. You can't determine any of that by looking
Speaker 3: at who signed the final document. Marriage is no different.
Speaker 3: The divorce papers are often the final chapter of a
Speaker 3: story that has been unfolding for years, sometimes decades, and
Speaker 3: by the time someone files the relationship has usually experienced
Speaker 3: thousands of moments that never make it into the court records.
Speaker 3: This is death by a thousand cuts. The conversations that
Speaker 3: never happened because someone didn't feel safe enough to bring
Speaker 3: them up. It's the conversations that happened when but weren't
Speaker 3: truly heard.
Speaker 2: Got that.
Speaker 3: It's the conversations that happened but weren't truly heard. It's
Speaker 3: the night someone cried themselves to sleep while the other
Speaker 3: person had no idea. It's the resentment that quietly accumulated
Speaker 3: because neither person knew how to repair it. It's the
Speaker 3: apologies that never came, the affection that slowly disappeared, the
Speaker 3: bids for connection that were ignored, the sacrifices that went unnoticed,
Speaker 3: and the loneliness that existed while two people were still
Speaker 3: sharing the same bed. The courthouse doesn't see any of that.
Speaker 3: It simply records who walked through the door first. That's
Speaker 3: why I think we have to resist the temptation to
Speaker 3: weaponize the statistic. Statistics describe patterns, but don't explain people.
Speaker 3: They can tell us what happened across millions of marriages,
Speaker 3: but they cannot tell us what happened inside of yours.
Speaker 3: Every divorce has a story. Sometimes the spouse carries most
Speaker 3: of the responsibility. Sometimes both people contributed in different ways.
Speaker 3: Sometimes both were doing the best that they knew how,
Speaker 3: but neither had the skills to build a healthy marriage.
Speaker 3: Sometimes one person checked out years before the other even
Speaker 3: realized the relationship was in trouble. Reality is messy, Human
Speaker 3: relationships are messy, and if we're serious about helping marriages survive,
Speaker 3: we have to become more interested in understanding the process
Speaker 3: than a sie blame. Blame might satisfy our emotions for
Speaker 3: a moment, but understanding it is what gives us the
Speaker 3: opportunity to do something differently, and if nothing changes, the
Speaker 3: same patterns will simply repeat themselves in your next relationships.
Speaker 2: Let's see what's going on in the chat over here.
Speaker 2: He's not aware of those statistics.
Speaker 3: Okay, marriage is not dating sounds obvious, right, But I
Speaker 3: don't think people slow down enough to really appreciate the difference.
Speaker 3: When you're dating, there's emotion, attachment, attraction, shared experiences, habits, memories,
Speaker 3: and expectations. If your marriage is healthy, it still has
Speaker 3: all of those things, but dating has an exit that
Speaker 3: is relatively simple compared to marriage. You can en the relationship,
Speaker 3: and while it might be painful and emotionally devastating, the
Speaker 3: structure surrounding it is usually much less complicated. Marriage changes
Speaker 3: the equation. Marriage isn't just two people saying I love you.
Speaker 3: It's two people building a shared life that eventually starts
Speaker 3: to function as one. You become one flesh, You share bills,
Speaker 3: a home, routines, family systems, holidays, friendships, debt, and often children.
Speaker 3: You organize your future around each other. Your decisions are
Speaker 3: no longer just your own because your lives have become intertwined.
Speaker 2: That means when a marriage.
Speaker 3: Begins to fall apart, people aren't simply asking do I
Speaker 3: still love this person? They're asking a whole lot of
Speaker 3: other questions. What happens to the house, what happens to
Speaker 3: the kids? What about our finances? What will our families think?
Speaker 3: What will church think? What will our friends think? Who
Speaker 3: am I if this marriage ends? What will this cost me? Emotionally,
Speaker 3: financially and socially. These questions carry enormous weight, and they
Speaker 3: fundamentally change how people experience the relationship. This is why
Speaker 3: the research becomes really interesting to me. Stanford's sociologist, doctor
Speaker 3: Michael Rosenfield, studied more than two thousand heterosexual couples as
Speaker 3: part of the How Couples Meet and Stay Together Study.
Speaker 3: One of his most interesting findings wasn't that women initiated
Speaker 3: roughly seventy percent of divorces. It was among the unmarried,
Speaker 3: dating and cohabiting couples. There was no statistically significant significant
Speaker 3: difference between men and women who chose to end the relationship.
Speaker 3: The gender gap emerged primarily once couples were married. So
Speaker 3: think about what that means. If the entire explanation were
Speaker 3: simply that men became such terrible partners, we would expect
Speaker 3: to see women ending dating relationships at much higher rates too,
Speaker 3: and we don't. The significant difference appears when marriage enters
Speaker 3: the picture. It tells us that we have to look
Speaker 3: deeper than simply blaming a gender. We have to look
Speaker 3: at what changes when two people move from dating into marriage.
Speaker 3: And I think one of those biggest challenges is obligation. Right,
Speaker 3: We're now carrying a whole different load on our back
Speaker 3: than we were carrying when we were just having fun
Speaker 3: with all of this. Dating has expectations, and marriage has obligations,
Speaker 3: and they are not the same. When you're dating, most
Speaker 3: of what you do still feels like a choice. You're
Speaker 3: choosing to spend time together, You're choosing to invest, and
Speaker 3: choosing to stay. Marriage introduces responsible responsibility to your spouse,
Speaker 3: your family, your children, the life that you've now built together,
Speaker 3: and responsibility changes the psychological experience of a relationship. Human
Speaker 3: beings naturally enjoy what they freely choose, but when that
Speaker 3: same choice becomes begins to feel like duty, sacrifice, pressure,
Speaker 3: or obligation, something starts to shift. The relationship can begin
Speaker 3: to feel less like freedom and more like confinement. And
Speaker 3: I don't think that commitments the problem. I think that
Speaker 3: it means that relationship with commitment matters, right. I think
Speaker 3: that this is where many couples begin to struggle. The
Speaker 3: normal weight of commitment starts getting interrupted as evidence that
Speaker 3: something must be wrong. Our ordinary discomfort that comes with
Speaker 3: sacrifice starts feeling like oppression. That natural friction that comes
Speaker 3: from building a life with another imperfect human beings starts
Speaker 3: sounding like I've lost myself.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Sometimes that's absolutely true. Sometimes that is absolutely the fucking truth.
Speaker 3: Sometimes someone really has lost themselves. Sometimes a marriage is
Speaker 3: abusive or controlling. Sometimes it's emotionally unsafe. Sometimes that shit's
Speaker 3: really over. Those realities exist, and they should never be minimized.
Speaker 3: But that's not every marriage story. Sometimes what people describe
Speaker 3: as harm is actually the cost of commitment. Sometimes what
Speaker 3: they call incompatibility is really emotional immaturity. Sometimes what they
Speaker 3: call losing themselves is actually grieving the fantasy that marriage
Speaker 3: would always feel like dating. That's a very difficult truth
Speaker 3: to accept because dating and marriage ask different things from us.
Speaker 3: Dating is largely about discovery. You're learning who this person is.
Speaker 3: You're asking yourself, do I enjoy being with them? Are
Speaker 3: we compatible? Can I see a future together? Where marriage
Speaker 3: is more of a construction, it's asking can we build
Speaker 3: something together when life gets hard? Can we do it
Speaker 3: when we're tired, when we're stressed raising children, when money
Speaker 3: is tight, when one of us loses a job, when
Speaker 3: our health changes, if we're grieving, if overwhelmed, when we
Speaker 3: disappoint each other, when we have flaws that neither one
Speaker 3: of us knew existed when we first fell in love.
Speaker 3: Because marriage isn't about preserving the excitement of dating forever,
Speaker 3: It's about learning how to build a life that can
Speaker 3: withstand reality. That's why marriage isn't dating. It was never
Speaker 3: supposed to be. It asks more from us, and it
Speaker 3: demands more from us. And if we expect marriage to
Speaker 3: continue to feel like we're dating or in the dating
Speaker 3: phase without accepting the responsibilities that come with building a
Speaker 3: new life together, we're likely to mistake the normal weight
Speaker 3: of commitment for evidence that the relationship itself is broken.
Speaker 3: We're going to get into some terminology and shit in
Speaker 3: a little bit, guy, So I know that this is
Speaker 3: kind of dry right now.
Speaker 2: Just bear with me. I promise this has got some
Speaker 2: good information in it. I think this is.
Speaker 3: Probably going to end up in the dating playlist along
Speaker 3: with I Versus You statements, because there's going to be
Speaker 3: a whole lot of scenarios in this document that's going
Speaker 3: to explain better ways to deliver things to your person.
Speaker 3: Marriage is one of the strongest mirrors that most people
Speaker 3: will never stand in front of. It shows you your ego,
Speaker 3: It shows you your selfishness, your wounds, where you still
Speaker 3: want love without responsibility, intimacy without sacrifice, and devotion without surrender.
Speaker 3: But most people fail to see it, and then they
Speaker 3: fail to take accountability or course correct, because marriage does
Speaker 3: not just reveal whether you love someone, It reveals whether
Speaker 3: you have enough humility, maturity, and spiritual discipline to keep
Speaker 3: choosing love when that fantasy wears off. A lot of
Speaker 3: people are not leaving marriages because there's not love. They're
Speaker 3: leaving because they do not know what to do with
Speaker 3: the weight of commitment once love starts requiring sacrifice. So
Speaker 3: the language we use, one of the most interesting ideas
Speaker 3: that we came across while researching this topic, has very
Speaker 3: little to do with divorce itself, but with the language,
Speaker 3: because words that we choose don't just describe reality, they
Speaker 3: shape it. Psychologist Nick Haslam coined the term concept creep
Speaker 3: to describe what happens when psychological concept slowly expand beyond
Speaker 3: their original clinical definition. Words like trauma, abuse, gaslighting, toxic narcissist,
Speaker 3: emotional neglect, and even boundaries begin to stretch until they
Speaker 3: cover experience that they were never originally intended to describe. Now,
Speaker 3: before anyone misunderstands us, real abuse exists, real trauma, gaslighting,
Speaker 3: all of that should exist. We've coached people who were
Speaker 3: genuinely manipulated, people who've lived in fear every single day,
Speaker 3: and people whose nervous systems were permanently altered by what
Speaker 3: they endured. Those experiences deserve to be taken seriously, and
Speaker 3: the language exists because those circumstances are real. The problem
Speaker 3: isn't that we have these words. The problem is that
Speaker 3: we've started using these words for just about everything. Think
Speaker 3: about how often you hear them today. A husband disagrees
Speaker 3: with his wife and suddenly he's gaslighting her. A wife
Speaker 3: forgets to techt back, text back, and now she's emotionally neglectful.
Speaker 3: A boyfriend doesn't like his girlfriend's friends, and now he's
Speaker 3: controlling a girl from once more quality time and she's codependent.
Speaker 3: A spouse has flaws and suddenly they're a narcissist. You
Speaker 3: see what's starting to happen here. We're replacing observations with diagnosises.
Speaker 3: We've stopped describing behavior and started assigning identities. There's a
Speaker 3: massive difference between saying my husband interrupted me and saying
Speaker 3: my husband is emotionally abusive. Those aren't different ways of
Speaker 3: saying the same thing. They're completely different claims. One identifies
Speaker 3: a behavior, the other assigns an identity. One says we
Speaker 3: have a problem and the other says you are the problem.
Speaker 3: Once we cross that line, something changes inside of the relationship,
Speaker 3: like you can't recover from that. When you start telling
Speaker 3: your part person that they're a narcissist, or that you
Speaker 3: know they gaslight you, or they're emotionally abusive because they
Speaker 3: interrupt you. When you guys are in a heated argument,
Speaker 3: you are changing the way that the person questions their
Speaker 3: own identity, and it becomes very problematic. Very few people
Speaker 3: know how to respond when being diagnosed by their spouse.
Speaker 3: If my wife tells me I interrupted her, we can
Speaker 3: have a conversation. If she tells me I'm an abuse
Speaker 3: of narcissist who is gaslighting her, I'm no longer entering
Speaker 3: a conversation. It feels like I'm entering a courtroom or
Speaker 3: a battlefield where my primary objective is to defend myself.
Speaker 3: The goal is no longer understanding. The goal becomes proving
Speaker 3: my innocence. This is where communication begins to die. How
Speaker 3: can two people work through a problem when one of
Speaker 3: them feels they've already been convicted. It's even more difficult
Speaker 3: when these words have become so overused that they've drifted
Speaker 3: far from their original clinical meaning. Once every conflict becomes pathology.
Speaker 3: There isn't much room left for ordinary human growth. We've
Speaker 3: watched this happen in coaching more times than we can count.
Speaker 3: A husband will say something insensitive, and instead of addressing
Speaker 3: the insensitive comment, the conversation becomes about emotional abuse. A
Speaker 3: wife becomes defensive, and instead of talking about defensiveness, she's
Speaker 3: labeled as a narcissist. Someone forgets an anniversary and instead
Speaker 3: of talking about the disappointment, they're suddenly emotionally unavailable. Everything
Speaker 3: gets escalated, everything becomes clinical, and in everything becomes permanent,
Speaker 3: and the possibility of growth starts to disappear. The tragedy
Speaker 3: is that people can grow. People can mature, they can
Speaker 3: become less defensive, they can learn empathy, they can improve
Speaker 3: their communication, become more emotionally available. But it is incredibly
Speaker 3: difficult for someone to grow if you've already decided that
Speaker 3: they are fundamentally broken. Language matters because language determines whether
Speaker 3: we see another person as capable of change. This is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why we're such big fans of
Speaker 3: Alfred Adler. Adler was one of the founding figures of
Speaker 3: modern psychology, alongside Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. But unlike Freud,
Speaker 3: who believed everyone was largely driven by their past, Adler
Speaker 3: believed we were primarily driven by the future that we
Speaker 3: were trying to create. He taught us that every behavior
Speaker 3: serves a purpose, and even when we're not consciously aware
Speaker 3: of ita asking what happened to this person? Adler encourages
Speaker 3: us to ask what is this behavior? Trying to accomplish
Speaker 3: that question changes the way that we see conflict, relationships,
Speaker 3: and even yourself. Adler understood something that many people miss.
Speaker 3: Human beings don't simply react to life. We move towards goals,
Speaker 3: often without realizing it. Sometimes the goal is connection, Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's safety, sometimes it's significance. Sometimes it's simply about protecting
Speaker 3: our ego. We're going to get into the ego pretty
Speaker 3: hard here. If you call your spouse selfish, instead of
Speaker 3: asking why they're acting selfishly, you stop trying to understand them.
Speaker 3: When you label someone a narcissists, you stop looking for complexity,
Speaker 3: and you've stopped asking what fear they're protecting, what wound
Speaker 3: they're carrying, or what skill they're missing, And you've convinced
Speaker 3: yourself that you already know exactly who they are. This
Speaker 3: is a fucking problem. People are almost always more complicated
Speaker 3: than the labels that we assign to them. One of
Speaker 3: our biggest problems that we see in relationships today is
Speaker 3: that we've become incredible skilled at identifying pathology and our
Speaker 3: partner while becoming increasingly blind to our own. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: read that again because that's such a fucking prominent statement.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest problems we see in relationships today
Speaker 3: is that we have become incredibly skilled at identifying the
Speaker 3: pathology and our partner while becoming increasingly blind to our own.
Speaker 3: We know all the words, all the diagnosis is, we
Speaker 3: know all the red flags, but we have forgotten one
Speaker 3: of the most important relationship skills there is, and that
Speaker 3: is describing what happened without assigning someone else in identity.
Speaker 3: Instead of saying you're emotionally abusive, you can try saying
Speaker 3: when you raised your voice, I felt afraid. Instead of
Speaker 3: saying you're a narcissist, Try saying I don't feel heard.
Speaker 3: Instead of saying you're gaslighting me, try saying my experience
Speaker 3: feels dismissed. Those statements don't minimize your pain, they make
Speaker 3: it easier for someone else to actually hear it, because
Speaker 3: the reality is, every disagreement isn't abuse, Every mistake isn't trauma.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, Every selfish act isn't narcissism, Every misunderstanding isn't gaslighting.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's simply two imperfect people trying to love each
Speaker 3: other with what skills they were taught. When do you
Speaker 3: guys think about that? Most of us weren't taught how
Speaker 3: to navigate this world. We were raised by imperfect parents
Speaker 3: that didn't know how to fucking communicate, that screamed and
Speaker 3: yelled and punched holes in a wall or fucking punched
Speaker 3: each other, and that's what we grew up with. And
Speaker 3: we think that somehow, having a toxic relationship means that
Speaker 3: the person loves you and they're willing to fight for
Speaker 3: the relationship. That's not what's happening. You guys are fucking
Speaker 3: falling apart over there, trying to hold onto the idea
Speaker 3: of what something could be instead of seeing it for
Speaker 3: what it actually is. If we lose the ability to
Speaker 3: tell the difference, then every conflict becomes evidence that the
Speaker 3: relationship is broken, instead of an opportunity for both people
Speaker 3: to grow. The words, we choose either build a bridge
Speaker 3: or they build a wall. Every couple eventually has to
Speaker 3: decide what they're trying to build. Accountability has to exist
Speaker 3: on both sides. That sounds simple, but our culture sucks
Speaker 3: at it. We tend to swing from one extreme to
Speaker 3: the other. One side says men are the problem, the
Speaker 3: other side it's women. Other side it's women. But most
Speaker 3: relationships don't fail because the entire gender is broken. They
Speaker 3: fail because two imperfect people bring their wounds, expectations, ego, habits,
Speaker 3: blind spots, family patterns, communication issues, fear, and selfishness into
Speaker 3: the same house. Then they act surprised when eventually all
Speaker 3: that shit shows up. Men need accountability. There's no way
Speaker 3: around that. Men need to become better husbands, fathers, communicators,
Speaker 3: better listeners, better leaders. They need to become better at
Speaker 3: emotional regulation, better at repairing conflict, more present, and better
Speaker 3: at telling the truth. Butout without immediately becoming defensive. This
Speaker 3: is not an attack on men. That's part of growing up.
Speaker 3: If a man wants to honor the marriage and then
Speaker 3: he has to respect his wife, the trust of his children,
Speaker 3: and the responsibility that comes with leadership, then he has
Speaker 3: to accept the growth that comes with all of it.
Speaker 3: But that same standard applies both ways. Women are not
Speaker 3: exempt from growth. They're not exempt from ego, selfishness, emotional immaturity, manipulation, avoidance, contempt, dishonesty, resentment,
Speaker 3: or blame. Saying that shouldn't be controversial, it should be obvious.
Speaker 3: Accountability isn't a male responsibility or a female responsibility. It
Speaker 3: is the human responsibility. Every relationship has two people. That
Speaker 3: means every relationship has two nervous systems, to histories, two
Speaker 3: sets of wounds, to private logics, to egos trying to
Speaker 3: protect themselves. It also means that there are two people
Speaker 3: who can become completely convinced that they are right, and
Speaker 3: that's where relationships become dangerous. Most people don't walk into
Speaker 3: conflict thinking I'm the villain. They walk in believing that
Speaker 3: they're protecting themselves, that they think they're standing up for
Speaker 3: their needs, that they think that they're finally speaking their truth,
Speaker 3: or that they're refusing to let someone continue to hurt them.
Speaker 3: And sometimes that's exactly what's happening. Sometimes it's ego dressed
Speaker 3: up as empowerment. Sometimes it's avoidance dressed up as peace punishment.
Speaker 3: Dressed up as boundaries. Sometimes it's control dressed up as standards.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's fear dressed up as intuition, or pride dressed
Speaker 3: up as self respect. And that's why accountability matters so much,
Speaker 3: not because we need to shame our partner, but because
Speaker 3: we need to tell ourselves the truth before our own
Speaker 3: story becomes so convincing that we can no longer see
Speaker 3: ourselves clearly. We've coached enough couples to know that both
Speaker 3: people usually have a versions of events that makes perfect
Speaker 3: sense from inside their own mind. The husband has his story,
Speaker 3: the wife has hers, and both stories contain truth, but
Speaker 3: both stories also leave things out. Both stories make the
Speaker 3: person telling them seem a little more reasonable than they
Speaker 3: probably were. It's not unusual.
Speaker 2: It's human.
Speaker 3: That's your ego. It's why humility isn't optional in a marriage.
Speaker 3: If you can't honestly ask yourself, what am I contributing
Speaker 3: to this, then you're probably not ready to repair anything.
Speaker 3: You might be ready to win, you might be ready
Speaker 3: to leave. You might be ready to build a case
Speaker 3: against your spouse, but you are not ready to heal
Speaker 3: the relationship. Real accountability is not saying that everything is
Speaker 3: my fault. That's not accountability, that's self abandonment. Real accountability
Speaker 3: means refusing to let someone else's mistake become permission to
Speaker 3: ignore your own. Again, real accountability means refusing letting someone
Speaker 3: else's mistakes to become permission to ignore your own. And
Speaker 3: this is where most people get stuck. They're waiting for
Speaker 3: the other person to go first. I'll soften when he changes,
Speaker 3: I'll listen when she respects me. I'll apologize as when
Speaker 3: he admits what he did. I'll be more affectionates affectionate.
Speaker 3: I will be more affectionate when she stops criticizing me,
Speaker 3: And round and round it goes two people waiting, two
Speaker 3: people withholding the very thing that might begin the repair. Now,
Speaker 3: none of this means that you need to tolerate a
Speaker 3: be use, excuse manipulation, or remain in an unsafe relationship.
Speaker 3: That's not at all what I'm saying. What we are
Speaker 3: saying is that we should stop assuming that our own
Speaker 3: reactions are purely because we were hurt. Marriage has a
Speaker 3: way of exposing the places where we still want. Love
Speaker 3: without humility, connection without vulnerability, forgiveness without discomfort, leadership without responsibility,
Speaker 3: and standards without service. If neither person is willing to
Speaker 3: examine those things, then the relationship eventually becomes two wounded
Speaker 3: egos fighting for the same moral ground. And that's what
Speaker 3: destroys marriages. Not just conflict, not just stress, not just money,
Speaker 3: not sex, not parenting. Those things create pressure, yes, but
Speaker 3: pressure doesn't destroy marriages by themselves. What destroys it is
Speaker 3: when two people become so committed to their own innocence
Speaker 3: that neither one can tell the truth about themselves anymore.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Yes, men need accountability, absolutely, but women need it too,
Speaker 3: not less compassion, not less protection, not less dignity. Accountability
Speaker 3: because love without accountability becomes enable, and accountability without love
Speaker 3: becomes punishment, And a healthy marriage requires both.
Speaker 2: How you guys feeling about this so far?
Speaker 3: We're about to get into the ego seventy five people
Speaker 3: watching me read a document absolutely wild. I may leave
Speaker 3: this up as just your Patreon content. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'm gonna use this for an episode.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: You guys have to let me know if you think
Speaker 3: this should go live or not. Ego changes the story.
Speaker 3: Ego is far more intelligent than most people realize. It
Speaker 3: rarely convinces us with obvious lies. Instead, it convinces us
Speaker 3: with believable ones. It doesn't just lie, it edits. It
Speaker 3: rewrites history. It changes the meaning of events. It leaves
Speaker 3: out the details that don't support your position and highlights
Speaker 3: the one that it does. It minimizes our responsibility while
Speaker 3: magnifying everyone else's. And before long, we're no longer remembering
Speaker 3: what actually happened. We're remembering the version of the story
Speaker 3: that protects who we believe ourselves to be. And that's
Speaker 3: what your ego does. I'm gonna pause for a minute
Speaker 3: and go off script for just a second.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 3: This is one of those things that, like, it is
Speaker 3: so fucking important to remember that your perception of the
Speaker 3: world is the stories that we tell ourselves. And when
Speaker 3: you tell when you're having a conversation with somebody and
Speaker 3: they're telling you what happened in their marriage is the
Speaker 3: first time, it's a very rough form. You're not getting
Speaker 3: all of the information. If you hear it a second
Speaker 3: time or a third time. Every time that story is told,
Speaker 3: a little more truth comes out, and you get a
Speaker 3: little bit more information, and you realize that the original
Speaker 3: story was manipulated because they were speaking through a lens
Speaker 3: of hurt. Right, it's a negativity bias, and as this continues,
Speaker 3: we craft the story that fits our ego to make
Speaker 3: us not feel like a loser or a piece of shit,
Speaker 3: or like we're the villain. It's a lot easier to
Speaker 3: be the victim and feel like pity me. Everybody hug me,
Speaker 3: versus everybody shun me because I was an asshole and
Speaker 3: said some fucked up shit or I did something really
Speaker 3: wrong in my marriage. That's your ego protecting itself because
Speaker 3: we have an idea of who we're supposed to be. Right,
Speaker 3: nobody looks in the mirror and thinks that we are
Speaker 3: this flawed, broken individual. Deep down, we know that, but
Speaker 3: we we also believe that we're inherently good people. We
Speaker 3: believe that we deserve love and that we should have
Speaker 3: good relationships. And there's a whole lot of self preservation
Speaker 3: that falls into this, and it's the truth of it.
Speaker 3: So make it go live. We're half up then promo Patreon. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Most people think that ego is arrogance. Sometimes it is,
Speaker 3: but more often ego is self protection. It protects our identity,
Speaker 3: our pride, our sense of significance, and it protects us
Speaker 3: from shame. It protects us from having to admit that
Speaker 3: maybe we were wrong, maybe we overreacted, or maybe we
Speaker 3: hurt someone we love. That's where Adler's work becomes so valuable.
Speaker 3: Adler believe that behind every story there serves a purpose.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest purposes is our behavior. It serves
Speaker 3: as protecting our sense of significance. Nobody wants to see
Speaker 3: themselves as selfish, nobody wants to believe they're the difficult one,
Speaker 3: and no one wants to admit that they hurt the
Speaker 3: person they love, So the mind starts making adjustments. You
Speaker 3: hear things like I only yelled because she wouldn't listen
Speaker 3: to me, or I shut down because he kept criticizing me.
Speaker 3: I lied because I knew they would overreact. I cheated
Speaker 3: because I wasn't getting my needs met. I left because
Speaker 3: they gave me no choice. You see what's happening here.
Speaker 3: The story keeps moving responsibility from thing to thing to thing.
Speaker 3: Now that doesn't automatically mean that the other person is innocent.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they absolutely contributed to the problem. Sometimes they cause
Speaker 3: tremendous amounts of pain, But ego has a remarkable ability
Speaker 3: to convince us that our behavior was simply a reaction
Speaker 3: to theirs, and it quietly removes our agency and replaces
Speaker 3: it with justification. Very few people wake up one morning
Speaker 3: and decide to become the villain in their own marriage. Instead,
Speaker 3: they slowly become the hero of their own story. And
Speaker 3: every story needs a villain. And that's where relationships begin
Speaker 3: to fall apart. When the ego is dry, everything gets
Speaker 3: filtered through protection. A disagreement feels like disrespect. A correction
Speaker 3: feels like a criticism, a request feels like control, a
Speaker 3: boundary feels like a rejection, a compromise feels like losing.
Speaker 3: Constructive feedback feels like a personal attack, and your spouse's
Speaker 3: frustration feels like condemnation. Every silence starts to feel intentional.
Speaker 3: And in all of this, the events haven't changed your
Speaker 3: interpretation has. We've watched couples argue about the exact same conversation,
Speaker 3: and afterwards both people genuinely believed that they were the
Speaker 3: one trying to save the relationship. Neither of them was lying,
Speaker 3: neither of them was intentionally manipulating the story. They were
Speaker 3: simply experiencing the same moment through two completely different lenses.
Speaker 3: We have talked about this over and over and over again, guys.
Speaker 3: This is why your memory is such an unreliable witness
Speaker 3: to emotional conflict. I know that you guys have been
Speaker 3: in an argument with somebody and said you said, and
Speaker 3: they're like, I didn't fucking say that. Well, that's what
Speaker 3: I heard, that's what you heard. And sometimes that's really
Speaker 3: what's going on, that's not gaslighting. Sometimes we hear through
Speaker 3: our hurt, we hear through our emotions, We hear through
Speaker 3: what we think is happening because it drives that narrative
Speaker 3: and like we need to defend ourselves and now we're
Speaker 3: going to battle, and like, that's a lot of fucking problem.
Speaker 3: We don't remember events like security cameras. We remember them
Speaker 3: like storytellers. We organize experiences into narratives that make sense
Speaker 3: to us. The problem is that story can feel completely
Speaker 3: true without being completely accurate. That's why humility is one
Speaker 3: of the most valuable qualities that a person can bring
Speaker 3: into a relationship. Humility doesn't mean assuming you're wrong. It
Speaker 3: means accepting that your perspective is incomplete. Again, humility does
Speaker 3: not mean assuming you are wrong. It means accepting that
Speaker 3: your perspective is incomplete. It means acknowledging that there are
Speaker 3: details that you might not see because you're standing inside
Speaker 3: of your own lived experience. We've had couples tell us
Speaker 3: the exact same story from two completely different perspectives. One
Speaker 3: says she never appreciates anything I do. The other says
Speaker 3: he only helps when I beg him. Neither statement tells
Speaker 3: the whole story, but both reveal how each person experiences
Speaker 3: the relationship. One of the most simplest, most powerful questions
Speaker 3: that you can ask yourself is what else could be true?
Speaker 3: That question interrupts your ego and it creates just enough
Speaker 3: space for another person to exist. Maybe your spouse wasn't
Speaker 3: trying to disrespect you. Maybe they were overwhelmed. Maybe they
Speaker 3: weren't trying to reject you. They just genuinely didn't understand.
Speaker 2: What you needed.
Speaker 3: Maybe they weren't trying to control you they were afraid.
Speaker 3: Maybe they weren't withdrawing because they stopped loving you. Maybe
Speaker 3: they withdrew because they believe nothing that they said mattered anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the point isn't to excuse bad behavior. The point is
Speaker 3: to slow down before assigning motive, because one of the
Speaker 3: fastest ways to destroy trust is to become certain that
Speaker 3: you know why someone else did what they did. Behavior
Speaker 3: is observable and tent is almost always an assumption, and
Speaker 3: that's why it's so important to separate the two. Instead
Speaker 3: of saying you were trying to hurt me, maybe you
Speaker 3: should ask help me understand what was happening in that
Speaker 3: moment for you. Instead of saying you don't care, you
Speaker 3: can ask what were you hoping would happen when you
Speaker 3: made that decision. The questions don't guarantee agreement, but they
Speaker 3: make understanding possible. Before you ask who hurt me? There's
Speaker 3: another question worth asking first? What is the story that
Speaker 3: I'm telling myself? Not because your story is necessarily wrong,
Speaker 3: but because if you never question your own story, your
Speaker 3: ego will happily finish writing it for you. And once
Speaker 3: your ego becomes the author, your growth will absolutely stop.
Speaker 3: All right, So more on Alfred Adler. You guys already
Speaker 3: know that I'm a big, big fan of Adlerian psychology, peaches,
Speaker 3: and I went down a rabbit hole of this dude
Speaker 3: after reading The Courage to Be Dislike And if you
Speaker 3: haven't read that, book. I highly highly suggest that you
Speaker 3: read it. You can listen to it on an audiobook in
Speaker 3: a day. It's a very short book, but it is
Speaker 3: a phenomenal, phenomenal read. I actually enjoy the audiobook better
Speaker 3: because it's two different voices versus you know, my own
Speaker 3: voice in my head, trying to read from two different perspectives.
Speaker 3: Adler believed that human beings are not pushed by their past.
Speaker 3: We're also pulled by purpose. Your childhood matters, your wounds matter, history,
Speaker 3: those experience shape us in profound ways. But Adler argued
Speaker 3: that we can't fully understand a person by only asking
Speaker 3: what happened to them. We also have to ask what
Speaker 3: is their behavior trying to accomplish? What is their motive
Speaker 3: in all of this? That question will change your perspective.
Speaker 3: Behaviors aren't random. Anger has a purpose, withdraw has a purpose. Blame, defensiveness, victimhood, control,
Speaker 3: and even silence all serve a purpose. Sometimes anger protects
Speaker 3: us from shame, Blame protects us from guilt, withdraw protects
Speaker 3: us from rejection, control protects us from fear, criticism protects
Speaker 3: us from feeling powerless, And sometimes victimhood protects us from accountability.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that someone is consciously thinking I'm going
Speaker 3: to manipulate this situation. Most of the time, they're not.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, they're not being calculated at all.
Speaker 3: They're protecting themselves. And there's a difference. A person can
Speaker 3: be sincere and still be wrong. A person can be
Speaker 3: genuinely hurt and still avoid responsibility. A person can feel
Speaker 3: completely justified and still be acting from ego. That's what
Speaker 3: makes relationships so difficult. Both people usually believe that their
Speaker 3: behavior makes sense, and from inside their own story, it
Speaker 3: absolutely fucking does. The husband who shuts down may genuinely
Speaker 3: believe he's keeping the peace. The wife who criticizes make
Speaker 3: honestly believe that she's trying to create a positive change.
Speaker 3: The partner who lashs out may feel like they're finally
Speaker 3: standing up for themselves. The person who leaves may believe
Speaker 3: that they have no other choice. The problem is that
Speaker 3: if we never question the purpose behind our behavior, we
Speaker 3: start calling it truth where it may be protection. This
Speaker 3: is where self awareness is essential, guys. This is self mastery.
Speaker 3: When you're able to pull yourself out of your cognitive
Speaker 3: bias or your negativity bias, and you are able to
Speaker 3: really look at the situation and realize that, like sometimes,
Speaker 3: it's not about placing blame, it's about understanding the situation differently.
Speaker 3: Your life is going to get better because you're no
Speaker 3: longer trying to live life in a black and white
Speaker 3: right or wrong, because life is not like that. There's
Speaker 3: always three sides to a story. So until you understand
Speaker 3: what your behavior is doing for you, you'll keep repeating it.
Speaker 3: If anger helps you avoid vulnerability, you'll keep getting angry.
Speaker 3: If blame helps you avoid guilt, you'll keep blaming. If
Speaker 3: shutting down helps you avoid conflict, you're going to keep
Speaker 3: shutting down. If victimhood helps you avoid ownership, you'll find
Speaker 3: ways to be the victim. This is why people say
Speaker 3: that I victim blame. Eventually you just don't have a
Speaker 3: reaction anymore. You have an identity. You become the angry one,
Speaker 3: the wounded one, the misunderstood one, the person who's always
Speaker 3: had to defend themselves, the one who never feels heard,
Speaker 3: the one who believes that they're always trying harder than
Speaker 3: everyone else. And once that identity forms, growth becomes threatened
Speaker 3: because growth requires letting go of the story that has
Speaker 3: been protecting you. This is why Adler's work is so
Speaker 3: powerful to us. He encourages us to ask better questions,
Speaker 3: not just what did my partner do? But what am
Speaker 3: I getting from telling the story this way? Not just
Speaker 3: why am I angry? But why does my anger allow
Speaker 3: me to avoid feeling? Not just why do I keep
Speaker 3: blaming them? But what would I have to face if
Speaker 3: I stopped? Those are uncomfortable questions. There are also questions
Speaker 3: most people don't want to answer, because if I stop
Speaker 3: blaming you, I may have to look at myself. If
Speaker 3: I stop calling every uncomfortable feeling harm, I may have
Speaker 3: to admit that some of what I'm experienced is simply
Speaker 3: discomfort that comes with growth. If I stop saying you
Speaker 3: made me this way, I may have to take responsibility
Speaker 3: for the person I've become. That doesn't mean that the
Speaker 3: other person is innocent. It means that their behavior does
Speaker 3: not erase your responsibility for your own. This is where
Speaker 3: so many couples get stuck. They confuse explanations with excuses. Yes,
Speaker 3: your spouse hurt you, Yes, your childhood shaped you, your
Speaker 3: nervous system learned ways to protect you. And yes, your
Speaker 3: past may explain why you react the way that you do,
Speaker 3: but the explanation is not permission. At some point, every
Speaker 3: adult has to ask themselves a different question. Is this
Speaker 3: behavior still protecting me? Or is it now destroying the
Speaker 3: very thing I claim I want? Because sometimes the strategy
Speaker 3: that helped you survive earlier in life becomes the strategy
Speaker 3: that slowly destroys your marriage. The wall that protected you
Speaker 3: from getting hurt also keeps you from being loved. The
Speaker 3: anger that stop people from walking over you now keeps
Speaker 3: your spouse from getting close. The independence that helped you
Speaker 3: survive chaos now makes healthy partnership feel threatening. The story
Speaker 3: that once gave you strength eventually becomes the cage you
Speaker 3: refuse to leave. That's why self awareness matters, not so
Speaker 3: we can spend our lives endlessly analyzing ourselves, but so
Speaker 3: that we can interrupt the pattern before it becomes our
Speaker 3: new identity. Adler leaves us with one of the most
Speaker 3: important questions that we can ask ourselves, and again, that
Speaker 3: question is what is the goal of this behavior? If
Speaker 3: I yell, what am I trying to accomplish? If I
Speaker 3: shut down, what am I trying to avoid? If I blame,
Speaker 3: what am I refusing to feel? If I keep telling
Speaker 3: this story, what identity am I protecting?
Speaker 2: Guys?
Speaker 3: Those are not easy questions, right. That is a whole
Speaker 3: lot of internal like shadow workshit. That is a lot
Speaker 3: of ugly and being honest with yourself. And these are
Speaker 3: this is why you journal. This is why you put
Speaker 3: your thoughts to paper and read them and reevaluate them
Speaker 3: and try to find better ways to they say things
Speaker 3: before you have conflict. Right, honest questions are what changes relationships.
Speaker 3: All right, So the next section of this is called
Speaker 3: before divorce. Before divorce, I think there is one question
Speaker 3: that every couple needs to ask. Have you exhausted growth?
Speaker 3: Not your patients, not your arguments, not exhausted the threats,
Speaker 3: the silent treatments, or complaining to your friends growth? Have
Speaker 3: you both actually grown as far as you're willing to grow,
Speaker 3: a lot of couples say we tried everything, But when
Speaker 3: you ask what everything means? What they often describe as
Speaker 3: having the same fight over and over and over again
Speaker 3: for fucking years. A lot of that isn't trying everything.
Speaker 3: That's repeating the same pattern until both people become so
Speaker 3: exhausted they refuse to continue. Trying everything means trying something different.
Speaker 3: Sometimes that shit means going to therapy. I know a
Speaker 3: lot of you guys don't want to do that shit.
Speaker 3: A lot of you guys can't afford it. Sometimes it
Speaker 3: means going to a church counselor sometimes it means having
Speaker 3: a conversation with somebody in your life that's been married
Speaker 3: for eighty fucking years. Right, Like, there's other tools out
Speaker 3: there that you're refusing to get and to utilize. So
Speaker 3: this is not trying everything. This is repeating the same
Speaker 3: pattern until both people become too exhausted to continue. Trying
Speaker 3: everything means something very different. It means you looked at yourself.
Speaker 3: It means you asked hard questions. It means you stopped
Speaker 3: making your partner the only problem. It means you learned
Speaker 3: how to receive love, not just how you prefer.
Speaker 2: To give it.
Speaker 3: It means you learned how they receive love, not just
Speaker 3: how you prefer to give it. It means you learned
Speaker 3: how they experience respect, not just what respect looks like
Speaker 3: through your eyes. It also means you become easier to
Speaker 3: live with, easier to talk with, easier to approach, to
Speaker 3: be honest with, to repair with. Because the truth is,
Speaker 3: some people are simply too difficult.
Speaker 2: To be married to.
Speaker 3: Doesn't make them evil, It makes them difficult. Some people
Speaker 3: are defensive, They're critical, They're dismissive or emotionally cold. Some
Speaker 3: are explosive. Some avoid very difficult conversation. Some become controlling.
Speaker 3: Some are passive aggressive. Some have always had the some
Speaker 3: have always had the need to be right. Some always
Speaker 3: see themselves as the one who has hurt. Some keep
Speaker 3: the score instead of extending grace. If no one is
Speaker 3: willing to say these things out loud, nothing's going to change.
Speaker 3: One of the most important questions you can ask yourself
Speaker 3: before ending your marriage is have I become someone my
Speaker 3: spouse can safely tell the truth to. Have I become
Speaker 3: someone my spouse can safely tell the truth to. If
Speaker 3: the answer to that is no, then you may not
Speaker 3: actually know the full condition.
Speaker 2: Of your marriage.
Speaker 3: You may only know the version your spouse feels safe
Speaker 3: enough to show you. Let that sink in, Guys, A
Speaker 3: lot of people believe that their partners stopped communicating. And
Speaker 3: sometimes they did, but sometimes they stopped because every attempt
Speaker 3: turned into punishment. Every concern became a debate, every complaint
Speaker 3: was met with defensiveness, every vulnerable moment was thrown back
Speaker 3: at them. So before saying they never tell me anything,
Speaker 3: ask yourself what happens when they do. That's growth, not
Speaker 3: simply demanding honesty, but becoming someone who can receive it.
Speaker 3: Another question I would ask every couple is have you
Speaker 3: owned your side without requiring your partner to go first.
Speaker 3: This is where so many relationships become stuck. I'll change
Speaker 3: when they change. I'll listen when they stop attacking me.
Speaker 3: I'll soften when they show me the respect I deserve.
Speaker 3: I'll be affectionate when they stop criticizing. I'll apologize when
Speaker 3: they admit what they did first. Sounds fair, right, even
Speaker 3: sounds reasonable, But in practice it creates a standoff two
Speaker 3: people waiting for the other person to become safe.
Speaker 2: Enough to love.
Speaker 3: That is how marriage slowly dies while both people continue
Speaker 3: believing that they are completely justified. Real accountability is having
Speaker 3: the courage to own your part even when the other
Speaker 3: person hasn't owned theirs. That doesn't mean taking all of
Speaker 3: the blame. It means it doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior.
Speaker 3: It does doesn't mean becoming a doormat. It means refusing
Speaker 3: to let someone else's failure becomes permission for your own.
Speaker 3: Marriage isn't maintained by winning arguments. It's maintained by two
Speaker 3: people who remain teachable. Teachable does not mean weak. It
Speaker 3: means you can hear something uncomfortable without immediately defending yourself.
Speaker 3: It means saying, I didn't see it that way. I
Speaker 3: understand why that hurt you. I thought I was helping,
Speaker 3: but I can see how that came across as controlling.
Speaker 3: It means being willing to admit I've spent so much
Speaker 3: time asking you to change that I stopped looking at myself.
Speaker 3: That kind of humility doesn't solve every problem, but it
Speaker 3: does open the door to repair. A marriage can survive conflict,
Speaker 3: It can survive difficult seasons and disappointment. It can survive
Speaker 3: financial hardship, parenting struggles, grief, stress, sexual frustration, and even
Speaker 3: seasons where both people feel emotionally distant. What it usually
Speaker 3: cannot survive is two people who refuse to be corrected.
Speaker 3: When both people become unteachable, the marriage has nowhere left
Speaker 3: to go. Every problem becomes evidence, every conversation becomes a trial,
Speaker 3: Mistakes become ammunition, apologies become questioned or gets questioned I
Speaker 3: should say, attempt to repair gets rejected because it's too late.
Speaker 3: The goal is no longer connection. The goal becomes being
Speaker 3: proven right, and once being right matters more than being close,
Speaker 3: the relationship is already in serious trouble. So before divorce,
Speaker 3: you need to ask yourself honestly, have we exhausted all
Speaker 3: avenues of growth? Have we actually learned each other? Have
Speaker 3: we changed anything about the way that we show up
Speaker 3: in conflict? Have we taken responsibility for the patterns that
Speaker 3: keep repeating? Have we sought help from someone willing to
Speaker 3: challenge both of us instead of simply validating one of us.
Speaker 3: This is why you fucking guys don't go to your
Speaker 3: friend groups and bitch and complain about your fucking partner,
Speaker 3: because what's gonna happen is they're gonna go, oh, no, girl,
Speaker 3: you right, or your man's gon be like, I can't
Speaker 3: believe that, bitch.
Speaker 2: You can't do that.
Speaker 3: When when people have a side they feel they need
Speaker 3: to take, you're going to get a whole lot of
Speaker 3: negativity fed back into your fucking mind and nothing's going
Speaker 3: to change. It's going to reinforce the bias that you've
Speaker 3: already been telling yourself and now you have a whole
Speaker 3: lot of new ammunition to throw at your partner. They
Speaker 3: didn't know that was coming, like, can't do that shit, guys,
Speaker 3: can't do that shit. Have we practiced new behaviors long
Speaker 3: enough for trust to begin rebuilding? Have we stopped trying
Speaker 3: to win and start trying to understand? Because if the
Speaker 3: answers no, then maybe we're not done. Maybe you're just tired,
Speaker 3: and tired is real. Sometimes that's the reality is shit, guys,
Speaker 3: But tired shouldn't always get the final vote. Sometimes being
Speaker 3: tired means the relationship is actually over. Sometimes it means
Speaker 3: that the way that you've been doing the relationship is over.
Speaker 3: Those are not the same thing. So a lot of
Speaker 3: marriages don't need two new people. They need two people
Speaker 3: willing to become new within the marriage they already have.
Speaker 3: That's the real question. Not are we hurt? Of course
Speaker 3: you are. Nobody wants to be in conflict with their person.
Speaker 3: Not are we frustrated? Of course you are. This shit's
Speaker 3: hard sometimes, Not have we failed each other? You probably have.
Speaker 3: The real question is are we still willing to grow?
Speaker 3: Because as long as both people are still willing to grow,
Speaker 3: there is something left to work with. But when one
Speaker 3: or both people decide that they're finished being taught, finishing,
Speaker 3: finished taking ownership, finished examining themselves, and finished becoming easier
Speaker 3: to love, that's when the relationship begins to run out
Speaker 3: of road, and for many couples, that's long before the
Speaker 3: divorce papers are ever filed. Final thoughts. I don't think
Speaker 3: this conversation is really about women filing more often. That's
Speaker 3: the statistic that everyone gets and everyone is arguing about.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's the real issue. The deeper issue
Speaker 3: is that many of us have become far better at
Speaker 3: building a case against our partner than we have at
Speaker 3: examining ourselves. We know how to explain what they did wrong.
Speaker 3: We know how to describe why they failed us. We
Speaker 3: know how to list the ways that they disappointed us.
Speaker 3: We know how to tell a story in a way
Speaker 3: that makes our pain and our responsibility in this situation
Speaker 3: seem smaller. What we're far less skilled at is asking
Speaker 3: what did I contribute? That question changes everything. It takes
Speaker 3: away the simplicity of blame and forces us to look
Speaker 3: at the parts of the story we usually edited out,
Speaker 3: the moments that we were cold, the times that we
Speaker 3: became defensive, the affection that we withheld, the truth that
Speaker 3: we avoided, the apology that we never gave, the resentment
Speaker 3: that we continued feeding, the effort that quietly stopped making,
Speaker 3: while still expecting the other person to keep trying. That's
Speaker 3: where the work begins, not improving that men are the
Speaker 3: problem or that women are the problem, but in becoming
Speaker 3: honest enough to recognize how human beings slowly damage the
Speaker 3: relationships when they stop growing. Marriage rarely dies all at once.
Speaker 3: It dies when two people stop being students of each other.
Speaker 3: It dies when correction feels like an attack, when accountability
Speaker 3: feels like shame. It dies when every attempt to repair
Speaker 3: feels pointless. It dies when being right becomes more important
Speaker 3: than being close. So whether you're married, dating, or separated
Speaker 3: or happily single, the lesson is the same. Stay humble
Speaker 3: enough to question your own story, Stay steady enough to
Speaker 3: hear your partner's pain without immediately defending yourself. Stay honest
Speaker 3: enough to recognize that your hurt has turned into punishment.
Speaker 3: Stay mature enough to understand that your feelings are real,
Speaker 3: but they are not always complete truth. And never become
Speaker 3: so certain of your own innocence that you stop growing.
Speaker 3: The moment growth ends, the relationship starts running out a
Speaker 3: road said that earlier. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
Speaker 3: but eventually, a relationship can survive conflict, disappointment. It can
Speaker 3: survive difficult seasons, financial stress, parenting struggles, grief, and moments
Speaker 3: where both people feel disconnected. What it cannot survive long
Speaker 3: is two people who refuse to become getting better. Before
Speaker 3: we wrap this up, I want to come back to
Speaker 3: something that is very important in all of this, and
Speaker 3: that's the language language that we use. Words don't just
Speaker 3: communicate what we're experiencing. They shape what we're capable of seeing.
Speaker 3: If every disappointment becomes trauma, if every cell helfish moment
Speaker 3: becomes narcissism, if every misunderstanding becomes gaslighting, if every difficult
Speaker 3: season is toxic, then we've removed the space for the
Speaker 3: ordinary human to grow. Not saying that these things don't exist,
Speaker 3: they absolutely do. Some people have experienced horrific abuse, some
Speaker 3: people have experienced real manipulation, some have lived through genuine trauma.
Speaker 3: The words matter because the experiences are real, But words
Speaker 3: lose their power when we use them for everything. If
Speaker 3: every conflict is abuse, then what are we going to
Speaker 3: call actual abuse? If every uncomfortable emotion is trauma, what
Speaker 3: are we going to call real trauma? If every selfish
Speaker 3: act makes someone a narcissist, then we've stopped describing behavior
Speaker 3: and started condemning people. And once we start condemning people,
Speaker 3: we've usually stopped believing that they can change. I think
Speaker 3: one of the healthiest questions that we can ask ourselves
Speaker 3: in the middle conflict is am I describing what happened?
Speaker 3: Or am I signing an identity I felt dismissed? Is
Speaker 3: very very different than your emotionally abusive you hurt me?
Speaker 3: Is very different than you're a narcissist. One describes an experience,
Speaker 3: the other tells someone who they are. One leaves room
Speaker 3: for ownership, the other often leaves people defending themselves instead
Speaker 3: of listening. The goal of a healthy communication isn't to
Speaker 3: use big words. It's to be that it's to use
Speaker 3: the most accurate description. Because accuracy creates understanding. Exaggeration creates distance.
Speaker 3: The stronger the accusation, the more certain you'd be, you
Speaker 3: better be. So before using a word that permanently defines
Speaker 3: one's character, you need to ask yourself, is this the
Speaker 3: most accurate description of what happened? Or is this simply
Speaker 3: the strongest word I can find to describe how I feel.
Speaker 2: Those are not always the same thing.
Speaker 3: If more couples learn how to describe their pain without
Speaker 3: diagnosing their partner, there would be more conversations ownership, repair,
Speaker 3: and understanding. Maybe there would be fewer people sitting across
Speaker 3: from a divorce attorney wondering how they got there. At
Speaker 3: the end of the day, marriages are built on one
Speaker 3: conversation at a time. They're also destroyed the same way.
Speaker 3: So choose words that repair. So choose words that make
Speaker 3: repair possible, not just words that make your case stronger.
Speaker 3: Almost made it to an hour, got to that document
Speaker 3: pretty quick. That's my document, guys, Guys. I hope that
Speaker 3: this document gave you, guys some perspective. Peaches and I
Speaker 3: have been working on ways to make the podcast better.
Speaker 3: We want to change the direction of what we do.
Speaker 3: We don't want to just read emails all the time.
Speaker 3: We want to give you, guys, information that you otherwise
Speaker 3: wouldn't get, and we want to make you think for yourselves.
Speaker 3: We want to remove the negativity bias that comes from
Speaker 3: social expectations and all the bullshit that you hear on
Speaker 3: social media because it's not real. The internet is an illusion.
Speaker 3: The clicks and all of the fucking nonsense that you
Speaker 3: see on there, and most influence are fake as fuck,
Speaker 3: Like there's not a sincerity behind them. They're doing shit
Speaker 3: to make money collect views, Like at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, it's a dollar for them. It's not about
Speaker 3: really changing the world. And you can see it in
Speaker 3: the way that people jump from thing to thing to
Speaker 3: thing to thing to thing in their content. Nobody's consistent
Speaker 3: because they're chasing numbers, and I guess and in a
Speaker 3: way we kind of are too, because we're trying to
Speaker 3: change the podcast in a way that's going to actually
Speaker 3: help you change your fucking life.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to be miserable.
Speaker 3: It's easy to blame people, it's easy to hate, it's
Speaker 3: easy to fucking be the victim. It's really fucking hard
Speaker 3: to take accountability, raise your hand and be like I
Speaker 3: did that shit, and like at the time, that was
Speaker 3: the best information that I had or I didn't know
Speaker 3: any better, and it doesn't make it okay, but that's
Speaker 3: what happened, and I have more information now and I'm
Speaker 3: working on becoming better, and that's the point of the podcast,
Speaker 3: to be better. You know, we both had really fucked
Speaker 3: up lives and Peaches and I have come a long
Speaker 3: way and we're still learning and growing and evolving. And
Speaker 3: as we do these things and we learn these new things,
Speaker 3: the goal is to pass that shit off so that
Speaker 3: you can pass it off and we can continue to
Speaker 3: change the fucking world. So normally we tell you to
Speaker 3: be the author of your own life. Today I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you to be the change that you wish
Speaker 3: to see in the world, because if you don't do it,
Speaker 3: who's going to. With that being said, guys, thanks for
Speaker 3: being here. We love you, love and light, and we'll
Speaker 3: see you guys on the next one. Have a good day, everybody,