034: See Before You Solve

Our daughter has changed costumes three times in the last five days , so we've been rolling with that and Halloween has a special place in our story , and by our I mean mine and Brenda's story . We met on Halloween in Vale .

You can picture Ski Town Bar on Halloween , our mid-twenties Pretty different scene than what our Halloween is going to look like this year with kids . But yeah , we met on Halloween . I was Marty McFly , brenda was Green Grapes . Everyone wants to know what we were . My Marty McFly costume was spot on .

Brenda doesn't even really know about Back to the Future at that point and she still got the costume , so that says something . Yeah , I'm not going to get into it too much , but I think one important thing to note is that I have caught Brenda up on the importance of Back to the Future and that's one of my favorite movies One , two and Three .

You can kind of debate . If Three was good , but I think it wrapped up the series really well . Okay , this is part two of our three-part series on relationships , and I said this last time . I'm going to use the words wife and marriage , but the concepts apply to any kind of partnership .

Whatever type of relationship you're in , use the information , the strategies that I'm going to share for your situation . I'm in this workout group called F3 , and it's actually more than a workout group .

There's a leadership component to it and the leadership program that they have is really dialed and there's some funny words in it and sometimes it's confusing , but the content , how they bring you through the leadership journey to being a virtuous leader is what they call .

It is pretty solid and the first part is getting yourself right physically , mentally , understanding yourself , making sure you're fit , ready to take on the day .

The second part that we work on is our relationship with our wife , and they have this concentrica it's what they call it and you can picture it target , like an archery target , and in the middle of that target is our relationship with our wife , and then the next relationships are our kids , and then outside of that is work , and then community .

Community might go first , then work ? I don't really know . But the most important thing is wife is in the center and that relationship , the quality of it , ripples out into the rest of our life . So this is a relationship we really wanna work on and that's why we're doing three episodes on it .

And how we communicate in our relationship is going to make a big difference in the success and the health of the relationship . And last week we talked about how to care . When we wanna communicate that we love our wife , that we care for our wife , are we doing it in a way that lands with them ? And we talked about love languages .

You don't have to go back and listen or have heard that episode to hear what I'm gonna talk about today . But that was a communication thing . And this week we're gonna talk about something else that breaks down in communication . And why we break down in communication is usually how our brain works on default .

So by default , most guys don't think they're good at communicating and a lot goes unsaid because of that . We'll hold a lot in our brain , we'll hold a lot of emotions in our body without trying to communicate them out to our wife . That's one reason why we break down in communication because we don't communicate .

Another reason is that we make a lot of assumptions and we're in a relationship that we've been in for many years . We've been through multiple situations that are very similar . We've had conversations over and over that are very similar . So we assume that our wife is gonna feel or think a certain way about a scenario .

So , for example , a lot of husbands have wives that struggle with their relationship with their in-laws , so the husband's parents .

So anytime there's a conversation to be had about planning something with the husband's family , the husband comes into that conversation with all the past baggage of these are difficult conversations , because she doesn't like hanging out with these people and she would rather be doing something else .

And how am I gonna navigate this conversation , all of those thoughts and assumptions ? When a husband brings that to the table , he's gonna start off on this defensive side and he needs to get ahead and he needs to prove something or finagle this , and you're not on the same team In that situation .

So our assumptions that our brain makes , that our brain holds on to , can get in the way of communicating well , and one of the assumptions that the brain likes to make a lot is that we need to solve our wife's problem or our wife's issue . So the problem with that is that if we go right into solving mode , it doesn't work .

We're not going to solve the issue in the moment . And if you go back and listen to episode number five , I talk about how guys go into fix-it mode . So it's a good episode to listen to again . But a big thing here is that when we solve right away , we think our solution , we got it , we know what they should do .

99% of the time it's not the solution that our wife is going to need , and it's the same for us .

If we come home from work and we're pissed off about something that happened with an email and an employee whatever and our wife right away says , well , next time you could email this way , or maybe you should have emailed it this way and dives right into trying to fix not helpful , that's not what we want to hear in the moment .

So it's the same thing with our wife . When we try to solve right away , it disconnects us from our wife , and I said this in the last episode . People want to be seen and they want to be heard . So today we're going to talk about seeing before we solve , and an example is this one guy I was talking to . His wife missed a soccer game for his daughter .

She had to work and she wasn't able to make it . And later that night she was just telling him how she was bummed about it and his first reaction was to fix the problem . Oh well , one , you don't have to be too worried about it . It wasn't that important of a game . I don't think she noticed .

There'll be so many other games coming up and next time you can delegate work or here's another option of so you don't have to work on a Saturday . And when he goes right there to help the wife not feel disappointed anymore , it doesn't go well .

The conversation doesn't go in a direction that connects them more , and this happens with so many guys , and I coach guys on this one-on-one all the time and when we're in groups we talk about it and commiserate with each other about it . Why do we have this innate desire to solve really quickly ?

And one guy even said when my wife tells me that something's wrong , it sounds like a cry for help and there's a big , maybe primal , part of us that doesn't want our wife to feel an uncomfortable emotion . They're having a hard time with something and we're a dude and we want to fix it right away .

It's our quick reaction and it's something that doesn't create the relationship that we want . We want to start seeing before we solve . Two years ago , I was doing my year-end review . So every year I do a year-end review , I look back over the past 365 days and then I also look forward . What do I wanna keep doing ?

What do I wanna change to create a better year than the year I just had ? And when I was doing this two years ago , one of the last questions I asked myself is what story do I wanna start believing this year ?

And my story was it's okay for Brenda to be unhappy sometimes and it sounds kind of funny , but that's the story I wanted to tell myself , because the year before , brenda's mom had some health issues .

She was going through some work stuff that was difficult for her , and this story allowed me to let Brenda have uncomfortable emotions of frustration , of sadness , of disappointment , and giving her that space , I could see her before I solved any of that stuff . Some of it was stuff I really couldn't solve .

I was there to be an ear and to be that person that validated the emotions that she was feeling . So how do we do it ? How do we see before we solve ? Our first reaction in any situation is usually an emotional reaction from our subconscious . Our subconscious is all about being automatic . It's about being efficient .

It's taking past evidence and using it to predict what's about to happen to us . So in this case we have the temptation to solve our emotional subconscious reaction . When our wife is speaking to us about something that's a problem in her life , our emotional reaction is to solve .

So the first thing we have to do if we're trying to get better at communicating and wanting to see before we solve , is to get really aware of the urge to solve . And that urge can feel like your jaw wanting to open and words wanting to come out of your mouth . It is noticing in your brain that I wanna fix this , that there's something wrong .

First step , being aware of that and stopping yourself in the conversation and just letting there be silence . That's the first step to seeing , is noticing yourself wanting to solve , then stopping that . And then what is seeing mean ?

It means listening , and I don't know what grade your kids are in , but my daughter's in kindergarten and she's practicing whole body listening . So we listen with our ears . We listen with our eyes by making eye contact .

We listen with our body , by keeping our body still and maybe facing who we're talking to , and maybe there's other parts of whole body listening . But the point is that all your focus is on your wife . If you want to see somebody , you put your focus there and you can ask questions and you use words like I get it . You validate their experience .

If we loop back to the example of the guy's wife that was disappointed for missing the soccer game , he went right into solve mode telling her that it wasn't that big of a deal and telling her how she might fix it later the next time , seeing his wife in that moment would have been staying quiet and just acknowledging that she was disappointed and saying back to

her I get it , yeah , it wasn't that big of a game , but I understand it was a nice day out and you would have liked to have been there and you probably didn't want to work instead that kind of sucks . I'm sorry you missed it . That's validating her experience , her experience of disappointment . You're seeing her . This takes some practice .

You can work on it .

The first thing is becoming aware of all that's happening inside of you , becoming aware of that urge to solve and slowing that down and listening .

Something that's worked really well for me is , if Brenda and I are talking and she presents something to me that she's having a hard time with , I'll just ask do you want to commiserate here and just want an ear to listen , or is this something you want to solve and work through ?

Asking that question upfront it helps , it creates this evolution in our relationship , because that's the big thing . This is a big one for guys . They try to solve before they see . Our relationship , the way it was when we were married , isn't the same as it is when we have kids .

Our relationship is going to keep evolving and if our relationship is going to evolve , we need to evolve along with it .

As a guy learning to allow our wife to have some uncomfortable emotions , see her , connect with her and then work together to solve on it , I want to say it's a game changer or it's really powerful , but the bottom line is it's just what it takes to create a solid relationship and a successful relationship . Try it out , guys . Try to see before you solve .

I'm going to catch you on the next week's episode to wrap up this three-part series on relationships .