Second, consider this non-PC phrase. One that men may use to describe a buddy’s romantic state in early relationship.

Are you pussy whipped?

With full respect to women, a woman’s ability to “pussy whip” a man is simultaneously her power to capture him.

And while an intoxicating spell, when a man is in this spell, he’s also forming an unhealthy initial relational attachment with his partner.

And in his early years – his 20’s in particular – it could lead to the long-term decision of marriage.

“She’s the one.

I love her.

She makes me happy.

I want to marry her”

Maybe that was you 10 or 20 years ago as a younger man and today you’re thinking… What happened? Where’d all that magic go?

I hate to say it. But it wasn’t magic. It was a script. An inner script of self-abandonment into your partner. A script setting the foundation for … yep, you guessed it… codependence.

To be whipped or codependent is to…

… place your self-esteem outside of yourself.

… feel like you have to caretake your partner.

… take on the emotional burdens of her upsets.

No disrespect to the whipped man. I was that man for many years in a 20-year marriage. So I know him well.

He’s not a bad guy. And he’s not somebody to be disparaged or made fun of.

Were you once this whipped guy?

Are you a codependent guy today?

What’s that mean for you moving forward?

In a nutshell, you’d know if you’re whipped or codependent because you’d be diminished when your wife or partner rejects you, tells you she’s disappointed in you, or in layman’s terms, has you feeling like she has you by the balls.

So what can you do about feeling like you’re at the mercy of your wife?

First, start to recognize the internal sensations, feelings, or thoughts that you have with her.

Begin to get familiar with those internal dynamics to rewire them.

Notice if you feel caught in her psychological or emotional web.

A sense of if she’s not happy, I can’t be happy.

A feeling of I don’t know where she ends and where I begin.

A thought of it kind of feels good to feel like I’m at her mercy.

All of that is enmeshment, another word for codependence.

And it can feel juicy and delicious and simultaneously imprisoning and destructive.

And to get free, you have to identify the internal dynamics within yourself, as ultimately it’s about you, not her.

Discover if you’re in patterns of codependence with your wife and how to get out of them in the video below.

Enmeshment and codependence are real stuff. We do them as a clumsy and unconscious attempt to heal early life wounds when we were enmeshed with our parents.

It’s extremely psychologically and emotionally unhealthy and will destroy a marriage until you know better.

Yet oddly enough, there is a kink, a good feeling in giving away your power to your wife or partner. It’s unconscious and paradoxical.

To escape from the trap of enmeshment, you need the courage to look at yourself and do the deeper work of relationship.

It begins with you brother. The gift and invitation in all this is to get free. Create the relationship you want.

Take the first step. Shoot me a quick email.

The post How Codependence Can Wreck Your Marriage appeared first on Stuart Motola.

My wife and I were in the kitchen, talking about what we should get my son for Christmas. She asked for my opinion.

I brought my A-game to the conversation. I listened and I was patient. Really tuned into her ideas. I offered what I thought were some solid suggestions. With little thought, she shot them all down.

She then proceeded to tell me that she was going to spend twice what I had proposed because I was being cheap and our son deserved more.

Does your wife ask for your opinion and then ignore it?

In the moment, I thought, Why are you even asking me for my opinion? What was the point of this conversation?

And so I resigned myself thinking, She doesn´t listen to me. She doesn´t value my opinion. She can never be wrong.

But I knew better than to speak those thoughts out loud. Dare I risk conflict with her? And especially during the holidays when I knew for the sake of my son, I had to be on my best behavior.

I remember that moment because it was then that I realized I was hiding out to avoid conflict. I didn´t have the guts or the skills to be honest with her. It gnawed at me. I hated the man I’d become. Needless to say, it was a rough holiday season.

Are you happy with the man you’ve become in your marriage?

In our twenties, I remember that my wife would listen. She was open to my thoughts and opinions. In fact, that was one of the things that I loved about her. She respected my intelligence. She loved my ideas when it came to the holidays.

And then in our thirties, something shifted. Our son was born. Like any new mom, she got anxious. Every time my son cried, her nervous system went into high alert.

That´s when I started orienting around her well-being. I wanted her to be ok. Being a good guy meant making sure my wife and son were ok.

But in the process, I started feeling like a second-class citizen in my own home. I started feeling like she always had to be right. She could never be wrong.

Can your partner rarely admit to being wrong?

It was as if my wife’s intelligence trumped mine – about everything.

Which school my son should go to. What we should do when he was misbehaving. Where we should buy his clothes. What we should do for the holidays.

And then it trickled over to us.

How I was not showing up for her. That I was working too much. That I didn’t help around the house. That she didn´t feel like I was on her team.

And over time, I just threw my hands up. I thought, I’m done arguing with this woman. It’s easier to just let her be right all the time.

Do you let your wife be right all the time?

Over time, it´s easy to feel like you have nothing to contribute after you’ve been shot down time and again for years.

Then one day, you realize you´ve lost who you are. You realize you have no opinions. You don´t care about what´s for dinner, what sofa gets bought, or what you do for the holidays.

And maybe like me, you even wake up, scared in the middle of the night, realizing, “I don´t know who I am anymore. This woman has dominated me, crushed the life out of me.”

Have you lost who you are in your marriage?

You may even ask yourself, Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life?

It’s a crossroads for a lot of guys. But we don´t realize it´s also a major opportunity for us to reclaim the self-confidence and courage that we´ve lost.

To rebuild our backbone. Reclaim our wants and needs. And cut through her emotionality with clarity.

Reject a world where she´s never wrong. And create one where your opinions matter.

To step into integrity and be the man you want to be in your marriage. To create kick-ass holidays where you don’t just feel like wallpaper.

That was the vision of who I wanted to be. The guy I wanted to model for my son.

And that´s the man I became. And you can too. Meet that man in the video below.

Are you choosing the status quo over aliveness in your marriage?

Every day that you hide, retreat, or withdraw in your relationship is a day that you betray yourself. You think it’s the status quo. You think it’s peace.

But silently you are deepening the roots of a marriage in which you play small.

At the end of the day, most of us guys want a few simple things in marriage. Trust, acceptance, connection, sex, and the ability to relax and love his wife.

And yet instead, most of us agree to a world where our wife can never be wrong.

Being a confident and capable man in your relationship is not as hard as it seems. Yes, it’s work. I won’t B.S. you.

But when you step in, make it a priority, and do it with a group of guys doing the same, it’s transformational and dare I say, even fun.

Do you want to make this the most fulfilling holiday season in years?

Get your relational chops tuned up just before the holidays.

Go into the holidays with clarity, confidence, and boldness, instead of just dragging yourself into the new year. Check out two ways below to do so.

One, if you´re on the brink of divorce, be the best man you can be for your kids and family this holiday season. In a quick chat by email or a call, I´ll help you stay strong this holiday season.

And second, if you´re committed to your marriage, check out The Men’s Relationship Tools and…

• Learn simple strategies for the holidays to be COOL & COLLECTED with your partner.
• Discover how not to TRIP UP when she wants to break the bank this holiday.
• Set yourself up to go into 2022 as a new you, a CONFIDENT & BOLD man in relationship.

The post It’s The Holidays & My Wife Can Never Be Wrong appeared first on Stuart Motola.

Just hearing all this makes my stomach cringe. To be married to a woman laden with problems is overwhelming for a guy.

Often his natural response is to take on the burden of her unhappiness and compound it by feeling like a failure if he can’t help her make things better.

Do you take on the burden of your wife’s problems?

An immature woman will blame a man for not perfectly supporting her or making things better.

A mature woman will take responsibility for her situation. She will notice her mindset, her attitude, and her projections.

Note, this is not easy and takes a lot of work to gain this level of maturity, for men and women.

To be honest, many of my clients are in a relationship with an immature woman. And to be clear, this doesn’t mean she’s to blame for your relationship problems.

What’s more important to look at is how you enable her immaturity and take it on as your problem to solve.

Do you enable immature behavior in your wife?

Enabling happens in many different ways, such as fixing, pleasing, rescuing. Anything that you would do to try to “make her better.”

I know this dynamic firsthand as it’s been my own personal dynamic in relationship. As a coach, I can go into classic fixer behavior.

But the problem is that when I do the fixer bit, my partner becomes a burden to me, to such an extent that I can lose my shit and want to push the eject button.

And then I become untrustworthy.

If you’re acting from a compensating behavior such as a pleaser, fixer, or rescuer, you’re taking a burden onto yourself which is unsustainable. Until you recognize that, you’ll blame her for being the problem.

What’s your compensating behavior in your relationship?

All these behaviors are a burden to you and they get even further compounded when you use a self-talk script of “I failed her.”

You can’t be powerful in relationship when you feel overwhelmed and burdened.

The first step to taking back your power is noticing your compensating behaviors and how they further compound your relationship challenges.

So the compensating behavior is not about her, it’s about you trying to heal a deep wound within yourself – be it neglect, abandonment, or some other form of abuse.

Noticing hooks and triggers is the start of you owning your shit and taking charge of it, instead of dumping it onto her with blame or judgment.

The next step is standing side-by-side with your partner, listening and loving, without offering too much advice, if any.

This means listening to her problems without taking it on as your problem but staying compassionate.

Do you want to let go of the burdens in your relationship?

Check out the video below for three quick tips on how to diminish the burden so that you can be in your power to create the marriage you want.

Let’s face it, we’re in a relationship to experience a richer and bigger life. If we feel burdened, weighted, or stressed frequently, our relationship suffers.

We are not achieving the mission of a bigger, richer life with a partner.

Note, this is different than the immature expectation of being completed or made whole by a partner.

This is a form of codependence and causes unhealthy relational dynamics.

How can you get healthy in your relationship today?

Take the first step and let’s have a quick chat.

A guaranteed, powerful conversation to help you get the upper hand on your partner’s verbose ways. I’d be honored to hear from you.

And to be clear, talking with me is just an honest, real conversation between two guys. No sales pitch. To get started, shoot me a quick email.

Lastly for the men who aren’t ready to talk 1:1 and still want to transform their marriage, try out the Men’s Relationship Tools for free.

It’s also a great way to get to know me and see if my coaching style is a fit for you.

The post Get Past The Burden Of Feeling Like A Failure To Her appeared first on Stuart Motola.

“I don’t spend enough time with the kids.

“She doesn’t feel like I’m on her team.

“It’s endless. Sometimes I wonder why she even stays married to me,” Jack says.

Does your wife complain about you?

“Why does she stay married to you? Have you asked her?” I say.

Jack takes a deep breath. He shakes his head.

“It’s a bit embarrassing to say,” he says.

“Trust me, I’ve heard just about everything,” I reply.

“Because…” he says. “… of the kids.”

“And you take that personally?”

“Of course I do. I’m just a shelf item in her world. A slot holder for her to keep our family together.”

Do you feel like a pawn in your partner’s world?

“Jack,” I say. “I want to tell you something. It’s something most of us miss when we are feeling victimized. You have a choice.”

“Say more,” he says.

“You can either be in ‘poor me’ land or you can start to see your wife’s complaints about the dishes and time with your kids as feedback.”

“Ok,” Jack says.

I have his full attention.

I tell Jack how in her complaints, his wife has given him the operating manual on how to be in a happy marriage with her.

Do you want the operating manual on your partner for a fulfilling marriage?

If so, discover how to transform her complaints into your marching orders for a happy marriage, in the video below.

“Jack,” I say. “This doesn’t just mean roll over and do whatever she asks of you. That would be inauthentic.”

He nods.

“What it means instead is to get clear on what she wants. Get curious, get more information from your wife, and ask questions.

“Can you tell me why dishes in the sink bother you so much?

“How much time would you like to see me spending with the kids each week?

“Have a strong spine and don’t just fold at her complaints.

“She’s counting on you to be strong in the face of her complaints. And yes, even if it’s been going on for 10 years.

“This is your chance, Jack. To step up and change things for the better.”

Over the course of several conversations with me for the next 2 months, Jack steps up.

He develops a strong spine with his wife’s complaints and tunes into her feedback. And what do you know, her complaints diminish.

Do you want to diminish your wife’s complaints?

Change happened for Jack because he stayed in action. He didn’t just say, I understand, and that’s enough.

Instead, he showed up and kept showing up. To confront his old unconscious destructive “poor me” behavioral patterns.

He noticed when he was going down the self-pity hole and instead, called forth a stronger and more capable version of himself.

I always say to a client, it’s not just on me to create the change you seek in your relationship. It’s a 200% arrangement. My 100% and yours. That’s how change happens.

Are you ready to show up fully to transform your wife’s complaints into a happy and fulfilling marriage?

If so, let’s have a quick chat.

A quick chat is a guaranteed, powerful conversation to give you meaningful insights on how to create the marriage you want.

And to be clear, talking with me is just an honest conversation, keeping it real.

I’d be honored to hear from you. Move into action and shoot me a quick email.

And for the men who aren’t ready for 1:1 coaching and still want to transform their marriage, check out the Men’s Relationship Tools. Reply “MRS Yes” to try it out and join your first call for free.

The post How To Deal With Her Complaints appeared first on Stuart Motola.

You work hard in your career. You try to be good to your kids.

But over time, you and your wife drift apart. And in time, you lose her. You essentially become roommates.

Do you feel like roommates with your wife?

No man means for this to happen. But like a garden untended to, connection with your wife withers over the years.

With the demands of parenting, work, and daily functioning, a man’s marriage easily falls through the cracks.

And often he knows it’s happening, but he keeps his head up and hopes for the best. Maybe he goes to therapy or couples counseling but often with little success.

Have you fixed your marriage through counseling?

And then, a pattern of getting through the days emerges. Coping mechanisms develop.

Be it pot, porn, alcohol, workaholism, or self-imposed mental scripts that say… “Suck it up, man. She’s busy. Don’t be such a wimp.”

Like many married men I’ve worked with over the last 15 years, maybe you feel like your wife’s last priority, behind the kids, her job, and the house.

You go from being a king to a peripheral prince. Your wife attaches to the kids and no longer needs you the way she once did.

But unlike her, you want more – more connection, more sex, more intimacy.

And if you really go there, it breaks your heart. It’s almost intolerable.

Marriage was supposed to be happily ever after. Or so you thought way back then. But it rarely turns out that way.

Do you feel like you’ve lost your wife?

In the space of losing your wife, she starts getting emotional and even inconsistent. It seems as if she’s under a spell of emotions at times.

You want to know what you did wrong, what you could do better. You’re a good guy. You want to make things right for her.

But she says…

“You should just know.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you time and again.”

And you hear the words. But nothing makes sense. You’re at a loss for what to do.

Does your wife seem cold or irrational?

If so, this unconscious thing happens. You start to turn away from her. It isn’t on purpose, but you try to find a way through.

You seek other ways to be happy – be it more golf, more time with the kids, more work. Any way to experience a sense of value.

There is little value with her. And it’s like being stranded on a deserted island. Your emotions start to turn on you – resentment, anger, bitterness, or just apathy.

Do you feel undervalued by your wife?

Often a man assumes that his wife’s irrationality or lack of consistency is because of him.

He doesn’t know what’s happened. Why he’s lost his wife. How his marriage has gotten to such a tough place.

How do you make sense of it all?

In the video below, discover how to get your head back into the game of your marriage with an irrational or distant wife.

The days are long and the years are short, it’s often said.

Don’t be the guy who wakes up one day, and says, how did I get here?

Or even worse, how do I get out of here?

Can you afford to wait years to create the marriage you want?

If not, up your marital game today. Let’s have a quick chat. A guaranteed, powerful conversation to give you meaningful insights on how to create the marriage you want.

I’d be honored to hear from you. And to be clear, talking with me is just an honest, real conversation between two guys. No sales pitch. To get started, shoot me a quick email

Lastly for the men who aren’t ready to talk 1:1 and still want to transform their marriage, try out the Men’s Relationship Tools for free. It’s also a great way to see what I can offer you.

The post How To Stay Married To An Irrational Wife appeared first on Stuart Motola.

I hear a lot of men saying things like…

I fear her anger.

Or, I fear I’ll never be enough for her.

I also hear, I fear she’ll never want to have sex again.

I fear that if I try to talk about it, she’s gonna blow up at me.

Do you have fears in your relationship?

Fear is a tough one because often it’s not just the fear that’s the problem. But on top of that is fearing fear.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Immortal words of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It speaks to the fact that what’s more challenging than fear itself is how we relate to fear.

Most of us don’t even know that we have a relationship with fear. By relationship, I mean an orientation, a way we choose its impact on us.

What’s your relationship with fear?

When you don’t know, it’s easy to project your fears onto your partner.

That sounds like “It’s her fault, she never…”

On the flip side, it’s easy to spiral internally with fear.

That sounds like, “I’ll never be happy with her. I’ll never get the love I want. I’ll never have the sex life I seek.”

What if instead of projecting or spiraling, fear worked for you?

That would be a game-changer. You would understand fear’s true purpose in your relationship and your life.

Fear would be an ally and helper.

Or, a protector.

It would even provide you with meaningful value.

In the video below, learn through an experiential exercise how to transform fear from an enemy into a helper that just wants the best for you.

What do you fear in your life? Or relationship?

When fear brings you to your knees, it’s hard to imagine anything but the threat fear brings.

But in the bigger context of your internal system, fear is merely reacting to an empty throne.

An empty throne is when a man has no center, no King, no understanding of what he’s playing for in his life.

Fear challenges you to find your center, to re-throne your King. And it’s from your center that you can turn the key to transforming fear into the ally it really is.

Stop fearing fear. Be it with your wife or your job. Your kids or your life.

Take the first step. Let’s have a quick chat.

A guaranteed, powerful conversation to give you meaningful insights on how to re-take the throne of your life and make your fears work for you.

And to be clear, talking means no sales job, just an honest conversation between two guys keeping it real.

I’d be honored to hear from you. Even the first small step to shoot me a quick email is an act of courage.

The post #1 Way To Overcome Your Fear Of Your Marriage Blowing Up appeared first on Stuart Motola.

“I want all the wonderful things that she wants. In fact, I love providing for her. But damn if…”

He pauses, thinks.

“Ok, fine, she’s made it clear, I need to show up better. I need to provide emotionally for her as well as physically.”

Robert looks away.

“But I don’t understand a few things.

“Recently, I tried to do what she asked of me, to help her out around the house, to be more present for her.

“I even fixed the back door that hasn’t been shutting correctly. Granted, it took me a month.

“Still, I’m putting a lot of skin in the game these days. But man, she’s still like an ice queen.”

Do you experience your wife as cold and distant?

Maybe you even feel like you’re trying to show up more, be more caring, communicate better.

And yet still she’s distant and disinterested in you. With increased efforts, it’s easy to get resentful – she doesn’t see I’m trying.

As a result, you might blow up every once in a while, like Robert, wanting to take a hatchet to the ice.

Do you get frustrated when your partner doesn’t see your efforts to show up better?

“Somewhere, somehow, I lost her, I know I was working too much, and yet even with all that I’m trying to do better, it’s like I can’t get her back.”

Unknowingly, Robert is stepping on a land mine. It’s the same one I see a lot of men step on.

He approaches his relationship like it’s a door repair job.

And I don’t blame him. It’s what he knows, what pays off at work and in other areas of his life – fix problems and get rewarded for solutions.

But it is one of three ways that guys like Robert lose their wives.

What Robert has missed is that marriages require something else. Something less goal-oriented, less contrived, and less manipulative.

In the video below I speak to the two other ways I commonly see guys lose their wives.

What will it take to win your wife back?

Check out the video to discover simple steps to get her back.

Is your marriage really worth saving? Or do you just fear being alone?

I ask because your wife will know the difference. You know how women are. They often see things that we can’t. It’s like this voodoo skill of theirs.

You can’t just fake it or go through a pre-written script. It’s got to be real, from the heart.

For Robert, that took a few months. Like a lot of guys, he was head. He didn’t even know what was in his heart.

Working together, we changed that. And that was a game-changer for his wife, who was hungry for her husband’s heart.

It was then that she could chill out and warm up, finally.

Are you seeking to win your wife back?

If so, take that first step and let’s have a quick chat.

A guaranteed, powerful conversation to give you meaningful insights on how to reconnect with your wife and build a better marriage.

And to be clear, talking with me is just an honest conversation between two guys keeping it real to explore how you can move ahead in your relationship.

I’d be honored to hear from you. Move into action and shoot me a quick email.

The post 3 Ways You Lose Your Wife & How To Get Her Back appeared first on Stuart Motola.

Feeling quite desperate and overwhelmed with everything in my life – from running my business, helping run a household, raising a son, and all the other stuff that comes with it.

I knew I was depleted. I had lost a lot of energy in my relationship with my wife. We would go from brief moments of energized closeness to long desert spans of disconnection and mere functioning.

I remember asking myself…

How long can I make this last?

I was questioning the life I was living.

I had little in the tank with my wife after many attempts to heal the rifts between us, through therapy, counseling, or workshops.

The work we did on our marriage was mostly hail mary attempts, instead of committed, sustained efforts.

We just couldn’t seem to get on top of things to keep a strong connection. She struggled with a lot of chronic illnesses. I struggled with trying to hold up so much, so she could rest and heal.

I was in that classic scenario of burning the candle at both ends. Running hard to maintain a reality – work, family, marriage – that seemed to have no reprieve from stress or effort in sight.

It’s one thing to know relationship is hard work. It’s another to feel like it’s a mountain crushing you.

How can I keep going like this?

I often woke up, thinking this.

I wanted more love, trust, connection, sex, and yet it seemed like my wife and I were distant planets orbiting one another in separate galaxies, missing each other again and again.

And with the pain of it all, it was easy to hide out in the daily functioning of life, instead of making each other a priority and really taking command of our marriage. I really wanted that but it didn’t seem like it was a priority for her.

As I questioned the future of our coupledom, I began to get clarity that our future would be decided, not by some mysterious fate or hail mary attempt to make things better.

Nor would it be decided on how she received me. I already had a ton of data on that.

But instead, I got clarity of the future of our relationship through a simple question that I knew was critical for me to answer. And that simply was…

How much more work do I want to put into this marriage?

With that, came also… what do I have left in the tank?

Once I knew the answer, I got clear of how much more effort I was willing to put into the marriage.

I got clear on what I was willing to do to make the marriage work.

And what I was not willing to do. 

Where I still had skin in the game.

And where I was done.

Are you clear on how much work you’re willing to put into your relationship?

If not, you’re likely spinning in endless hypothetical scenarios in your mind.

If I do A, maybe she’ll do B. Or if I do C, maybe she’ll do D. It’s enough to drive a guy nuts. And it typically leaves him more confused than clear.

To get more clarity on if your relationship will last, check out the video below where I take you deeper into knowing where you’re in and where you’re out.

Most guys I know want their relationship to last.

They don’t want to give up on their partner. They don’t want to feel like a failure, especially when they’re married with kids and shared assets on the line.

But still they have thoughts of throwing in the towel, trying to imagine another life.

How do you really know when you’re done in a relationship?

It’s a huge decision and one made so much less stressful when you begin to access your inner clarity and authority.

Once you have that clarity, then you can begin to move toward an action plan. You can be fully aligned on where you’re willing to step in and what you want moving forward.

To help you get your clarity, let’s have a quick chat. A guaranteed, powerful conversation to help you get the upper hand in your marriage.

And to be clear, talking means no sales job, just an honest conversation between two guys keeping it real.

I’d be honored to hear from you. Even the first small step to shoot me a quick email is a huge act of courage.

The post Will My Relationship Last? appeared first on Stuart Motola.

And while he has a sense of what it means to be more “manly,” he wonders, how the hell can I be more manly when she’s stepping on my throat?

If he tries to get her off of him, things seem to just get worse. “Then, she really gets escalated,” he says. He’s confused.

He feels stuck and alone. He doesn’t feel comfortable talking to friends or family about it, fearing he’ll be burdening them with his problems. He’s not so sure what to do.

Are you struggling to know what to do about your marriage challenges?

So like many guys, William fills out a form on a coach’s website, figuring he has little to lose since the guy on the other end of the form doesn’t know much about him. And who knows, maybe he’ll even find some direction.

When a man has no one to talk to about his relationship challenges without fear of being weak, he creates a dangerous dynamic for himself and his relationship.

Heck, even just saying a sentence to a stranger on a machine helps with that lonely all-bottled-up feeling. This was true for William.

I get his form via email and I reply, asking him to elaborate further on the dynamic between him and his wife. In an exchange of several emails, he tells me his story.

Having coached men in challenged marriages for the last 15 years, I have a strong sense of what he’s going through. I went through it myself.

In his final email, he says he wants to jump on a Zoom call. On the scheduled day, I crank up the Zoom interface. He appears.

There’s a moment of intrigue for me, knowing his story but having no visual or auditory cues on him.

I honor a man’s courage to show up on an initial call with me. It’s brave for him to trust me, a stranger, with his story.

I see William as a man walking with courage and vulnerability at the same time.

After asking him some questions, I get to really understand his world, and then by the end of the call, turn it over to him to see if and what kind of action he wants to step into.

Somewhere in the middle of the call, I ask him a critical question that gives me a great sense of the world he’s living in. His response is what I see from 60% or more of the men I talk with.

I ask William, “Do you have friends or family members with whom you can share your marital problems?”

He scans his mental Rolodex of family members, siblings, friends, and others, and shakes his head.

Do you have others you can talk with about your relationship challenges without fear of burden or judgment?

“Ok,” I say, without judgment, just empathy.

Whether he knows it or not, when a man has no one to talk to about his problems besides his wife, he puts a huge burden on her.

William feels this. It’s part of why he’s reaching out to me. Still, the thought of sharing his challenges with others besides some stranger feels threatening. It might crack his wall of projected strength.

And yet to be an empowered relational man, that wall must be cracked. Over time, it becomes a healthy boundary instead—a place where he can honor his need for safety and his desire for strength.

But in the absence of safety or strength, both go into shadow. A dark place where neither is in strong supply. And his wife feels the absences.

Learn more about how to avoid this dangerous dynamic with your wife in the video below.

Going it alone in his life, William thought, was natural or “it’s just what we men do.”

He knew he was fortunate to have a wife with whom he could share his challenges. But he also acknowledged that when they were in conflict, she was no longer available to him, and then he had no one.

When a man isolates to just his partner for his emotional needs, he’s in what I call the “man cage.”

The danger of the “man cage” is that it can cause serious loneliness and isolation for a man, and at worst, suicidal thoughts.

Did you know that 60% of individuals reporting loneliness are married? And of that number, 80% are men.

Just by contacting me, William broke out of his “man cage.” In a few months, he broke even further out by joining with other men holding courage and vulnerability at the same time.

And that had huge dividends for him to show up more confidently in his marriage, to gently pull his wife’s foot off of his throat to breathe again, and create the loving marriage he wanted.

Are you ready to expand your support system to create the marriage you want?

If so, take the first step. Join a group of men tackling their relationship challenges head, online every Tuesday at 12pm ET on the Men’s Relationship Tools calls.

First call is free. Reach out via email to get a zoom link.

The post Avoid This Dangerous Dynamic With Your Wife appeared first on Stuart Motola.

What a great thing – be it climbing the corporate ladder, pursuing her spiritual journey, or living in her freedom and autonomy.

At its best, the new landscape offers a woman many options in her life.

At its worst, she uses her independence to disconnect from her male partner.

She keeps him at a distance.

And at its most damaging, she dominates or abuses him.

Does your wife or partner dominate you?

If so, you may not have explicitly linked her independence to her disconnection from you.

But chances are you feel it inside of you. You feel it from her tone of voice, her unwillingness to get close to you.

Her behavior says, “I don’t need you.”

At worst, like many of my clients, your partner denies that you have any significant utility or purpose in her life.

And denying a man of his utility or purpose is a massive stripping of his power.

Does your wife or partner deny your value to her?

As men, we get our greatest relational value by knowing our worth to our partner.

Knowing we have purpose, worth, utility.

Knowing we are serving her and the family well.

Typically we do that through providing financially.

And yet it may not be recognized or fully valued by her.

Are you honored for what you contribute?

My client Jim worked a full-time executive job providing abundantly for his family.

And yet his wife consistently told him how he did not measure up, how he had no value in the family with his sons.

“You don’t know how to talk to the boys.”

“They don’t see you as an equal to me.”

“Nor do you show up for me emotionally.”

Jim was lost, confused.

“How’s that possible? I’m doing more and more everyday with my boys, with the house, with her. And still it’s never enough for her.”

Jim was desperate to show his worth to his wife.

And unfortunately that desperation only further affirmed his wife’s beliefs that he was not enough for her.

Do you feel like you’re not enough for your wife or partner?

If so, own this experience. Be honest with yourself that likely you could do better, could show up more.

But DO NOT put yourself at her mercy.

DO NOT put yourself in a one-down position with her.

A position where you can easily be dominated by her.

Do you feel one-down or dominated by your wife?

If so, in the video below learn three levels at which you can regain your power to turn around a “not enough” dynamic in your relationship.

For those short on time, I’ll give you a few headlines.

The first level is tactical… learning your self-worth, being able to set healthy boundaries.

Identifying your wants and needs to speak them relationally instead of transactionally (“if you do A then I’ll do B”).

The second level is… knowing what your emotions are telling you; this happens through two gateways.

The cognitive gateway to emotions extracts the memo an emotion seeks to communicate to you – i.e. fear is about safety, anger is about protection, joy is about love.

The heart gateway is… to feel emotions in your heart without falling apart, building resilience with fear and anger, knowing discomfort vs danger.

The third level is somatic… in the body, the energy behind the emotion and thoughts.

The natural intuitive intelligence of your animal body that western civilization has cut us off from.

Reclaim these three levels to stop being dominated or sidelined in your marriage or relationship.

Take the first step like Jim did. Shoot me a quick email.

Stay Strong & Be Relational,
Stu

P.S. Not ready to send an email?

Don’t isolate. Join a band of relational warriors – a small group of men – meeting online every Tuesday at 12pm ET on the Men’s Relationship Tools calls.

First call is free. Reply to get a zoom link.

The post 3 Ways To Stop Being Dominated By Your Wife appeared first on Stuart Motola.