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