How do you maintain individual identities in a relationship?

This is the relaxed male, a show that comes to you each week, helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms. Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them. Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the Relax Mill. I'm your host, Brian, and we all wanna have better relationships with our wives.

And one of the big things that we struggle with is trying to make sure we cleave to that whole idea of the 2 become 1. And, sadly, so many of us become lost in that thought. We'll become we lose ourselves, essentially. We stop being the the men that our wife fell in love with because we are trying to appease our wife. We're trying to appease and be harmonious with our with our wives' thoughts and and actions and hurts and everything about her. We're trying to just fit into her world.

This is a problem that we run into way, way too much. You're not the man I I've married yada yada yada, you know, stuff like that. We hear this often when our wives are completely fed up with us. And this is a this is a big problem for a number of reasons, if anything, because we stop being true to ourselves.

And, yeah, sometimes we we are married to a woman who does kinda handpeck us and does want to shape us into her, what she thinks she she needs, which is, honestly, it's not a dig upon women, but it's never what they need. What women need is for us to be ourselves, to be our our own person. And so a lot of times, we lose our identities. And this is where the whole codependency thing in relationships

really starts to bloom up and become a huge problem. Because now all of a sudden, you're not your you you have to always be looking to your wife, and your wife is always looking over to you to make sure that everything's absolutely a okay and perfect in their world. You'll hear people say, well, I just need you to affirm the that I'm who I am. No, man. You don't need me. Your wife doesn't need you. My wife doesn't need me to affirm

anything. Well, I'll feel better. Yeah. You may feel a little bit better, but it's not it's a fleeting emotion because when you're able to affirm yourself, you're going to be able to maintain that the whole time you're you're around and interacting with other people. Because you see, codependency, wears people down. It wears a whole relationship out. Codependency is a a means of using the other person so that you feel better.

You are becoming a user, and your wife is becoming a user, and your you you're that's the only reason you're around each other so that the other that person feels nice, feels good. And the funny thing is is it's not even you that's making them feel nice. It's not even you that's making them feel affirmed and that they are a a person because you have no control over their emotions. You can't make them feel affirmed.

You could do everything you could in your power to assure and affirm their their thoughts and emotions, and it's still up to them to go, okay. Yeah. I agree. And what this actually turns out to be is everybody wants in a codependent relationship just wants the other person to go, you're being a good person. Even if you're being a complete and total asshole, you're being a good person. You're a good person. You don't think you're a good person, then you need to work on yourself.

You don't need your husband. You don't wives and husbands, you don't need your wife to to affirm that you're a good person, that you're a nice person, that you're hardworking, that you're worth whatever it is you think you need you need to be told you're worth. And this is where interdependent relationships come into play. That's a $5 word for we are individuals working together.

Now nice guys, I get it. You're scared crapless like right now, and you're like, but but I've gotta be no. You don't gotta anything. Alright? That's the first thing you need to know is you don't have to make your try to make your wife like you. You don't have to have your wife happy with you all the time.

As a matter of fact, it's good to have a couple good conflicts from time to time. I have a disagreement, to have an argument, feel that cortisol beat through your body because you know that something big and important is happening. Have your thoughts and and feelings shared, and at the same time, listen to what your wife has to say, and y'all come to a resolution. Because interdependent relationships

and they're not interdependent and differentiated. I'm getting the wrong word. Well, interdependency is is sorta good, but it's differentiated is actually the word that I was looking for. I looked at helps if you look at your show notes. But differentiated relationships are are where we are still a team, but we I am my, my own person. I have my own likes. I have my own style of doing things, and I have my own means of going through the day. My wife,

she has her own way of doing things. And whenever she gets irritated or she gets angry about something, if all of a sudden it's up to me to make sure she's happy, then in a codependent relationship, all of a sudden, I'm going in trying to do stuff to make her happy. Because if she's happy, that means our relationship's okay, and I can I can breathe easy? And instead, if you will have a differentiated relationship, Your wife gets angry. You're gonna be okay. You can let her be angry.

It's not anything about you. Your emotional be well-being is not affected by your wife's emotional well-being. Now do you still help her? Yeah. You could sit down and you can listen to what she's angry about, and I recommend you do that, actually. You sit down. Talk to her. Find out. Well, okay. So what is what are you angry? I'm too angry to talk about it. Oh, okay. Well, talk to me later then. And you go about your day, you can let that not bother you. You can accept the fact that, yeah,

the wife is a little pissed off right now. What does that mean? Means she's mad. Doesn't mean I'm mad. Doesn't mean my life has fallen apart. Though our brain often will wanna try to tell, especially if you're a nice guy. Your brain will go, hey. We, we've got, got some issues here. We need to need to get this corrected. So when it comes to a differentiated relationship, you know, there's there's a a set of of skills that you wanna be able to develop.

And to be able to have a good differentiated relationship, you're gonna need to know and have emotional independence. Again, your wife can be upset and pissed, and her being angry has no bearing upon your happiness. I'm I relinquished any and all rights to my wife's happiness, and I absolved her from any responsibility of making me happy. And that really confused the heck out of her for a while because all of a sudden, she's like, but how am I supposed to make you happy? You're not.

That's not her job. Her job is not to make me happy. My job is not even to make her happy. A lot of people, a lot in society have gotten that little t tidbit of information wrong. It's like, well, he doesn't make me happy. Well, he's not supposed to make you happy. She is not there to make sure that you have a grin on your face 247, 7 days a week. That's all on your shoulders. Because if you'll notice, you have a hard time trying to figure out what makes you happy.

So how is your wife supposed to know what makes you happy if you're struggling on trying to make yourself happy? That's where, again, you have to kind of get through and figure it out. You have have to be able to figure out and understand that your emotions are your emotions. Your wife's emotions are your wife's emotions. Another skill is is that you gotta know how to self regulate. Alright? Your wife is mad. She stomp around. How do you be okay with that? How do you regulate yourself

internally? Because you'll feel the the anxiety and the tension and the and the worry and the fear coursing throughout your body. And I've talked about how do you describe emotions because and that's one of the ways you come to understand what it is you're feeling. And so you know how to regulate the anxiety that you're feeling within you because your wife is pissed off. Well, alright. And a lot because when you just like that, if you see your wife's mad, you're like, well, alright.

Even me now, I still go, well, that sounds really freaking cold, dude. No. It's not cold. I'm just allowing, and I still have to have these these self discussions. I still have to do work through these problems because when my wife is mad and she's yelling at me, thinking that and attacking me because she thinks I'm the source of her discomfort, can I be self regulating enough to where I could sit

and listen to what she has to say, or do I have to run away and leave the conflict? Am I conflict avoiding avoidant? A lot of people would say, yeah, I am. I have stopped running so much. I it's still difficult for me, and it might be difficult for you. And if it's if it is, that's okay, man. You can be scared, nervous, uncertain in a time of conflict. And conflict is just not agreeing with each other. Alright?

Conflict is when your wife is is she's pissed off or when you're pissed off. Maybe your wife is just you know, she's promised for 4 weeks now that y'all were gonna have a whoopie. And every night that she makes she says y'all are gonna have whoopie, something comes up, and it's almost like she's do she's making, making the issues come up on purpose. I was like, what, dude? What do we what do you think? You can you can have those discussions

and be okay with what the results are. You can be okay with your wife becoming defensive. You can be okay and stay there and come to a resolution to the problem. Because when you have a resolution, you know your wife has been heard, and you know you have been heard, and y'all have come to an understanding with each other. It's scary. It's hard. It's can be a bit intense because it may get a little loud.

It may get a little bit where things are, people are are waving hands. Not gonna not not out striking. I mean, that's where you have become you have lost any of the any of the battle if you start trying to become course. When you stop trying to communicate and you're start start trying to make your wife, you know, do what you want her to do, that's not a that's not a conflict area. You have done sided. You're going to avoid conflict

by being the bully. You're being the being the, the Billy Badass, and you're just gonna kinda show up, be a jerk. And if you aren't could aren't aware of what you're doing, you can become a an abuser. When a guy loses his sense of ability to, to have a good conversation and to have good conflict skills, might wind up trying to bow up to his girlfriend or bow up to his wife.

And right then and there, you've you've thrown away your man card. Now another skill that you wanna have to be able to have these differentiated relationships is also just having healthy boundaries. Knowing that you don't do this, and you're able to set boundaries. It's like, no. I'm at work. You don't need to be showing up at work just to see if I'm here.

Alright? We're here. We're here. If you're, you know, if you listen to last week's show, you you know, a guy was having problems with his, with his wife who was not trusting him at all because he was been an addict. Well, there's a lot of women who show up, especially younger women, like, in the twenties or so. They wanna just show up and hang out at the at at work with their boyfriend.

That's where his boyfriend has to stand up, put his reattach his his testicles, tell his tell his girlfriend and or wife and go out. You can't be here. Go hang out at the house. Go talk to your girlfriends. Go do something. You can't be here and be okay with, again, with emotional independence. Let her have her emotions. You have your emotions. And again, the 3rd 4th skill is maintaining the ability to have good conflict

resolution. Being able to have a conflict, have discussions, have intent maybe even to intense discussions, and to be able to resolve that problem. When you have those four skills, you can you're gonna have a good differentiated relationship. So and a lot of people still may not fully understand what this what I'm talking about. But a a good example of of a differentiated relationship would be a a good healthy differentiated relationship would be to go

say you're you got off of work. You're coming home, and you sit down on the couch. A lot of times, our wife, who is who may are to be home, comes in and all of a sudden, she starts just throwing tasks, throwing talking, and yada yada yada. I just wanna share the her her day with you. Want you to share your day with her. Us guys, we don't we're not a big sharer of of our days when we first get here. It takes us a little bit to downshift from business as usual to home life

so that we and so we have to a lot of guys want to unwind. They want to to, to change hats, so to speak. And we've all heard different stories of, I think, Will Rogers was one who would, he actually had a cowboy hat that he had sitting on a, hung up on a tree. I think it was a tree or, on a post at the gate of his house.

And when he'd come home, he would take his, work hat off, just hanging on there, grab his home hat, put it on, and that was him physically changing and shifting from work to home. And some guys, they do the the driveway unwind. They just stop, spend 15, 20 minutes in the car, in the driveway, just getting themselves shifted after fighting, you know, traffic and all that, fighting and getting home from there. A differentiated relationship, the wife understands.

Hubby's gonna come home, and he's gonna sit down and give him 30 minutes. Doesn't mean that life is terrible. Doesn't mean that he doesn't wanna see her. Doesn't even mean that he doesn't love her. It just means he's got to just unwind for a second. And wife can take that without taking it personally, thinking, oh, he just doesn't want he, you know, he doesn't wanna see me. He doesn't care about me. He's, oh, yada yada yada. What whatever, you know, boo hoo, self pity.

I'm a victim type of thought that you're she's having. Guys, again, our wife rejects us. If we are in a codependent, she rejects us. All of a sudden, it's, oh, she's frigid. She doesn't love me. She what is it? Do I not have a big enough dick? What, you know, we start going down this circle of let's how what's wrong? Why is it what's wrong with me? Nothing. Your wife may actually have a headache. That or she may just not be able to get in this sexy mood right now.

That doesn't have to do anything with you. You are not the center of the universe in their world. It would be nice as you were. I understand. I get it. I would love to be the center of my family's universe, but I'm not. I am the family its itself is the center of the universe. I'm just one of the planets that circles around the around along with my daughter, my son, my wife, and the dogs. Can't forget rain. Rain the Danes gotta be our own damn planet. You know?

So she's gotta be a center of attention. But it's in a differentiated relationship, it's okay. Something happens. We're not gonna take it personally. It's just wife being wife. Hubby being hubby. You can even start applying that to your kids, and your kids will be the kids. That's just Jayden. Oh, that's just Alexis. Oh, that's just Sam. Those are just the kids being the kids, man, and that's alright.

When you're allowing people to when you're not running up to, your child, especially your child and not trying to fix it to get them stop pouting because you have a problem with them pouting. They're, 1, they're just gonna stop pouting as much, and, 2, they're gonna start embracing life a lot more because they're gonna realize, oh, well, no one cares about my emotions except for me, and that's good. You wanna do that and you wanna create circumstances that allows other people to have

the thoughts. But if they don't have the thoughts, that's fine. You can't control your wife's emotions because you have emotional independence. She has her thoughts. She has her her own thoughts, emotions, actions, results. You have your thoughts, emotions, actions, results, and then y'all come together and y'all, as a married couple, have your have unified thoughts, emotions, actions, results.

So how say if you're not a in, differentiated relationship with your wife right now, how do you get to the how do you get into the point to where you can actually start having a differentiated relationship? Well, first off, you wanna work on those four skills again. You wanna make sure that you have the emotional independence and self, self regulating skills. I had to think of being word again. Make sure you have those healthy boundaries and and the ability to resolve conflict.

And then if you're a nice guy, you gotta stop being the nice guy. And no nice guys, it does not mean that you're that all of a sudden turns you into a jerk. Alright? Remember, you've heard me say it once. I'll say it a 1000 more times. A nice guy and a jerk are two sides of the same asshole. So let's stop being the asshole. Alright? Because us guys, us nice guys, when we see that our wife is upset, we want to control that emotional being. And that means we're throwing any boundary

out the window because, you know, we don't care about the boundaries because our wife is upset. And if we don't get her into a better emotional mood, we're gonna die. It's often what we think. But how do you actually build emotional independence? By paying attention to your thoughts is the big one. Work through the models. When you have something happen where you're kind of you know, it's something you feel an emotional response, that's when you need to stop. Grab your notebook

and start writing down doing a thought download. Write all those thoughts down, and then start modeling through those. Model the thought of my wife hates me. We're never gonna get married again or never gonna stay married. We're gonna get a divorce. She's going to find a better man. She's gonna you know, we have all these down. So we choose 1. She doesn't, she doesn't love me anymore. Alright? That's your thought. Alright? Wife is appears to be upset is the is the circumstance.

The thought is my wife doesn't love me anymore. Emotion, feeling, you would end up putting something like, sorrow, anxiety, you know, something along those lines. This we'll put down anxiety. Well, if you're anxious because of that, you're going to try to fix the problem. And we know

what happens when we fix the problem. We try to fix our wife or fix the problem. It's going to irritate our wife even more because you're not letting her have her emotions. You're trying to control her emotions. You're trying to control the sir the situation, and you can't. And so you end up irritating, pissing off your wife even more, which makes her even angrier, which means she's gonna yell at you more, and you're going into this vicious cycle. So

you have to change the thought. My wife is angry. Does she she doesn't love me anymore. If you say if you find that, best question in the world to ask is, well, is that really true? Does my wife really not love me anymore? Because she didn't love you, she would've left. Alright? And so how do you work on self regulating? Same way. Pay attention to what your thoughts are. You're self regulating your emotions.

How do you regulate your emotions? You have to change your thoughts. Accept the fact that you're going 1st off well, putting the cart before the horse on that one. 1st off, accept the fact that you're feeling whatever it is. You're feeling the anxiety? Boom. Alright. Allow the anxiety to be felt. Do not resist feeling the emotion. The moment you start resisting is the more is where you're gonna cause more suffering in your life. Alright? So stop first off, you're anxious

the because your wife is angry at you or the wife is angry. Not necessarily at you. She's just angry. Allow that allow that anxiety to be felt. It's gonna be a minute and a half, 2 minutes tops. Alright? It's not that long of a of a sensation. Alright? They don't last very long. Just sit there, look at it, examine it, you know, that type of thing, where are you feeling it within your body? Map out your your emotion. Give it a name, anxiety, fears, uncertainty, whatever it is.

Give that lay that information out and then pay attention to what how strong of the emotion is being felt. As you're mapping through this, you're gonna all of a sudden realize this thing, oh, well, it's not, I I really can't describe it now. I can't really feel it now. Okay. You've gone through the process. You let that emotion run. So now you can actually examine the thought that created that emotion. Oh, she doesn't love me anymore. Is that really true? Start asking yourself that. Ask start

posing questions to yourself. It sounds weird. We always joke about people talking to themselves, but it's the ones who are walking down the street actively loudly. Like, I don't know. We we should you know? Should we be going to, go to the grocery store? Yeah. We should be going to the grocery store. Those are the types of people, yeah, you wanna stay away from. But we always have a thought is nothing more than a sentence in our mind. So have sentences in your mind. My wife doesn't like me.

Is that really true? Is that an honest to goodness true thought, or is that just something that our brain came up so that we would worry about our wife? It's 1 or the other. 1 or the other. You really think she doesn't love you? Okay. What are the thoughts you're having about that? What, quote, unquote, evidence? And the reason why I say evidence is because 9 times out of 10, that evidence that you have is just another thought about that.

She yells at me all the time. Well, if you were to go to your wife and go, do you yell him all the time? She would probably say no. I yell at him at least once a day, but that's not all the time. And you ought to ask him why he gets yelled at. All the time is not all the time. And talking passionately. I mean, me and my wife, we have this discussion all the time. We get ourselves, into a discussion, and it's and

I'll be talking about something. I'll be talking about something, you know, and it's just but we've got to get this. And she will say, don't yell at me. I wasn't yelling. I was talking with a lot of passion, but I I've and I've as an asshole, it's a couple times where I've I went ahead and I yelled, this is yelling. Thinking that was going to give her a good reference as to what yelling really is Does not do that. Just word of advice. That doesn't work. Alright. So don't don't don't do that.

But you have to be able to learn how to self regulate, And the only way you can do that is by paying attention to the thoughts that create the emotions. Practice boundaries too, man. When you practice your boundaries, setting boundaries, holding boundaries, because once you once you create a boundary, you have to uphold it because your wife, out of human nature, will try to see how far you can stretch that boundary.

Look at our kids. Our kids do it every day. It's like you can't go into the basement. 1st step. Okay. Don't go don't try going down the basement. You're gonna give us a paddle. Alright. Go down 2 steps. Oh. Oh. Oh, dad didn't give me a swap for 2 steps. What her you know, what is your definition of the basement versus theirs? Is it on the steps, or is it one you step foot at the bottom of the basement? And then the final one is the toughest one, especially, again, especially for us nice guys.

That is being able to resolve conflicts and have a real strong sense of conflict intimacy. When you do that, you can start having an interdependent life. Oh, not interdependent, differentiated life. See, I'm still stuck on, interdependent. We'll we'll talk, more about interdependency, here in a couple weeks. How about that? So it is possible, and you can have a strong, wonderful, beautiful relationship when you start being able to differentiate

between you 2. And your wife, she may be codependent, so she's going to struggle with this. And you're gonna have to be okay with that and help guide her through her her her, codependency. There's times that she's gonna want you're gonna have to sit, and you're gonna have to do a lot of of intimate discussions and and thoughts. And she's gonna get angry because you're not on the same page as she is, and that's okay. Let her rage against the dying of the light because

it's not a good night thing. It's not, hey. We're done. It's no. You have you get to live your life the way you wanna live your life. We're okay. Yes. We are 1. We all always check-in with each other because I love you, but you also have your own life. And I want you to live your life completely because I love you,

And this shows up, a lot. Again, 1st of the year, I'm reading again, Atlas Shrugged, and to see, when, Dagny Taggart winds up in Gold's Gulch, and they're talking about how everybody operates and works and the sharing of their their philosophies and stuff. You see the interdependencies. They let the children just be feral children. It's amazing. No one's told those children, you're not gonna be able to do that.

They've told the children, try it, and you and your wife and your marriage can also grow, flourish, and become better when y'all have each other to turn to when you have problems. Not for affirmations, but just for and not even so much emotional support, but just so that you have a shoulder that you can cry on. That's when life becomes better. That's when life becomes awesome. And you end up having a a marriage that your friends are talking about. That's what I want from you.

And if you're interested in having a marriage that, that is worth talking about, recommend giving coaching a try. I am offering free coaching right now. This is kinda wild. It's it's free. You not no. There's not gonna be any, any bells or whistles at the end. It's just free coaching. It's we sit down. We'll talk for about an hour, and I will coach your face off. The best as best I could think of it. We should we will coach, and it's I'm not gonna be I've only got an hour, so there's a

there's a lot of I'm not gonna be the gentle giant or anything like that. I'm just going I'm going to I'm gonna lay it out on the line for you so you understand what direction we can go, how life can become better, coach you through whatever the circumstance is. So all we so if this is something you're interested in trying, I would recommend going to relaxmail.comforward/ try coaching, all one word, and schedule a free coaching session.

And from there, you can decide, hey. I kinda like that or, you know, not really that that much into it. But, also, if you are I am going to be I'm starting up here pretty quick. The Brotherhood of Men, it's gonna be a group coaching sessions, that, we'll end up meeting about once a week. And I would like, to if you're interested in doing that, I would recommend you shoot me an email. You can do that over at brian with a [email protected].

I'm thinking I'll also just change in the, information the email over to, info at relax mail because I don't have that yet. So who knows? Maybe that's what I'll start in the might be on I think I'm gonna go ahead and add that to the to do list. Is create info at relax mail dot com. And, yeah. So there's me thinking on the fly. So but, yeah, one other point of business that I wanna make sure I mentioned before I let you go, I am running a survey. I would love to hear what you think of this show.

Good, bad, the ugly, all any of it. You like it? You hate it? This is your hate list? And beautiful. I'm glad that I've had that much influence on you that you love to hate you hate this show. So if you want to, I would kindly please go to relax mail.comforward/survey, and leave your thoughts. Not it's not gonna take long. It's not a 2 hour survey or anything like that. You know? If whether if this show was like this, would you be more you know, nothing like that. It's your thoughts

and who you are. And, we'll, and we'll we'll get a, we'll get a a chance to make this show even better because I've been able to hear from you. Wanna help the show become the best show around? There you go. Let's go to relax mail.comforward/survey. That is, again, relax mail.comforward/survey. If you got a question again, just ask go over to to relaxmail.comforward/[email protected]. And, guys, if you anything in this show resonated with you, please go to,

go share this, episode out on Facebook. I was gonna say TikTok, but at the moment, at the recording of this show, TikTok is gone. It is no longer around. It's bye bye. It's, we're gonna have to wait and see what, what our esteemed president see if he can do something and, and allow the gates to open up again. But until that happens, I'm not on TikTok, but I'm everywhere else.

So but you can share and tag me in it. Like I said, I'm I'm everywhere. I'm at relax the the relax mail at, on Facebook, relax mail just about everywhere else. And, and so, yeah, tag me in the, in your post, and I'd love to be a part of, part of your part of your world. So, anyhow, guys, I'm gonna let you go. Thanks again for listening. Y'all take care. Till next week. Bye.