When Does A Relationship End?

This is the relaxed The 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. Amen. Hello, and welcome to the relax Mail. I'm your host, Brian. I'm a certified men's coach who assists men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their life.

Those times when the relationship just isn't going right. The times that we struggle and stay up at night trying to figure out how do we get back to the the relationship that we used to have. And there's ways that we can do that. We can get back to having a happy, loving relationship. It just it takes a little bit of work. Hard things are worth it. You can do hard things. We can make it through

this little little struggle. It's just an obstacle. It's just a barrier, and we can overcome that problem. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today because one of the biggest problems that we always we will run into, and the one thing that a lot of of men struggle with is when the relationship ends. When that relationship has come to run all the path that it could and and it ends. And there's a lot of times we ignore those indicators, those little road signs along the way

saying that, hey. Something's on we're on the rocks. We're on the rocks. We've got problems. The road's getting rough here. Dude, there's a cliff coming up, and then we're we fly off the cliff and we're going, well, why didn't anybody tell me? Well, there's were clues out there. And a lot of times, we'd like to just ignore all those little clues. We want to ignore the the thought that, you know, our relationship isn't as

hunky dory as we think it is. And sometimes, once person will be a lot more aware of it than the other and may even try to talk about it, But the other side may not be very receptive, may be lost in their own problems.

And these are these are problem these are things that come along and we just have to step back and look at it and examine and understand a, why the relationship is failing, b, what's keeping use in that relationship still, even though you might be miserable, even though the your wife might be miserable. Both parties aren't happy. And so why why did that happen? Why did that fail? And there's a lot of clues to that from you dreading to go on going home and you fighting over stuff.

But then as the problems come along, maybe y'all are fighting over little stuff. Little the little things that you think are very insignificant, the t the tedious details of stuff. And your wife just thinks these are the most important things. This is the these are the hills she wants to die on. And for whatever reason, you wanna fight against her on one of those details are. And so you there's a lot of scarcity that builds up. There's a lot of a lot of of animosity that starts building and and

regret and resentment and everything else. All these other emotions start piling on top of each other, and the thoughts build and build, and we start refeeding that those those thoughts to to other thoughts so that we can get the the whole excuse as to why our life, it sucks, why our life needs to get better by getting rid of the person that we're married to. And it's 90% of all the problems that we have with our relationship are strictly because of our thoughts.

Now there's, like I said, there's 10% of that that's there are some things that are worthy of why of of getting a divorce, of getting splitting the relationship up, going your separate ways. But a lot of times, our clues, those little road signs I was talking about are things like dreading to go on home, fighting over the little stuff, entertaining the idea of a divorce.

I mean, how far how close are you to the to the cliff when you're going, you know, I'm kinda thinking probably be an alright thing if I gave up half my income and gave up my, you know, visitation with kids and all that. That's you've gotten yourself real close to that to that to that cliff and you're about to go over, but you're just kinda because you're entertaining the idea now. It's not just a a

well, maybe I should get a divorce. Maybe this is a mistake. No. No. No. And you instantly turn around and you're like, going to the tooth. No. I enjoy the this marriage way too much. When you start into entertaining the idea, that's a road sign that you

need to be perking your eyes up and perking years up and paying attention going, wait a minute. Minute. Something's going on here. When you have little to no sex, this is also part of the roommate syndrome. That whole roommate, the doldrums of marriage section where you have to grow. I've talked about it before on several other episodes.

You have to when you're in the in the doldrums of, marriage, that roommate syndrome where it's just you and your wife and y'all are just y'all sleep may still sleep in the same bed, but y'all are just kind of strangers passing in the hallway. Not much being said to each other. No loving glances. No, you know, no loving pat on the butt. Those are signs that the the connection is starting to crumble and it's crumbling fast. And when that connection completely severs,

you're you're at the end. You're you've hit that cliff. You're going off of it. When you start blaming the other person for your unhappiness And if you know anything about when it comes when I talk about people and their happiness, that other person can't make you happy. And you're just looking for excuses to blame the other person for your ill ease when you don't even allow or try to make time for the other person.

And some of these are are instances of where you had the wrong idea of what a marriage was. When you got married for the wrong reasons, you got married from maternal, material items, like getting married because that person's wealthy. No. Those are two reasons get married because you think this person's going to make you happy or you will be happy if you get married. No, man. You're not ever going to have joy in a marriage. Marriage cannot make you happy.

Being married to quote, unquote, missus Wright will never make you happy. If anything, marrying strictly because you think somebody else is going to make you happy is gonna make you so miserable. You're going to be misery overload if you think that other person is supposed to make you happy. If you think that person is the reason for your marriage to be great, no. The marriage becomes great because you are living your life to the fullest.

Your spouse is living their life to the fullest, and y'all are doing it arm and arm and and in and synchronization. But it's all about how your you're doing your stuff. You are an independent person. Your spouse is an independent person and y'all's marriage is an independent unity. When you don't have to spend every you know, you're not texting the person 6 times, an hour going, hey, what you doing? What you doing? Where you at? What's going on? Hey, need an affirmation from that other person.

You're when you stop at looking for that and you start being able to live your life on your terms with your wife, Oh, so much more adventure in life comes from the marriage itself. So let's start with the bad news. Let's say you've seen all this, it's happening, and you've decided, you know what? I might be wanting to end the relationship. So when does the relationship end? A relationship ends when

there is no connection. When you have no connection with that other person, you feel absolutely nothing to that for that other person, that might be a, like, a reason to in the relationship. But is that what was the reason why you lost that connection? That's the important part you wanna focus in on. And look at it with how is this what part of your, of you, that I'm saying this completely weird? Let's try that again. What was your part in that scenario? That sounds a lot better. There you go.

When you look at it and you take responsibility for your actions in that relationship, and you can accept why the spouse, your spouse, your wife is acting the way she is, you're going to be in a better place if and when the relationship does end. Now there's one point that I'm always for someone completely letting the relationship go, And that is when you experience one of the 3 a's. And if there's more than 1, again,

it's still. But when you experience at least 1 of 3 a's, those 3 a's are abuse, addictions, and affairs. These are because these just completely smash a a a person's trust. Now I use addiction kind of because we know what addiction is. I mean, abuse someone being abusive mentally, physically, emotionally, sexually, whatever. However, they're abusing you. And it's actually and you're actually being abused,

you yeah. You wanna get rid. You're not gonna have any trust that that person's gonna do anything good for you. Now the reason why I say it like I did is because, sadly, seen more people here recently decided to use abuse as the excuse. And, yeah, there's not really any example of abuse.

They just they they like to use it because people automatically wanna jump to the will jump to their defense. Oh, there you go. And be able to get more of the friends in their tribe to slide over to the to to the person who was abused. You know, they're the victim. They they get to play the victim. And so you just kinda have to handle those those instances and understand and agree and and not agree, but, appreciate the fact that the truth

always rises to the top. They will eventually figure out, oh, wait a minute. You didn't actually abuse anybody. Dear ex wife lied about it. And she you're you're gonna have some who just stick with that, with that story and hold on to it. Others will eventually get around to understanding, oh, wait a minute. That there was lies in there. There's inconsistencies in that story. And I'm not seeing the abuse that, that was claimed. Another one is, like I said, addiction.

And if you've heard anything of what I've said, you understand. Addiction is not a not actually a a real thing. What addiction what we've taken for addiction is you cannot control your habits. And when you can't control your habits and you're and you're starting to lie, you're breaking trust. So when you break those that that level of trust, there's no way that you're that unless you change and get rid of that habit and show to your spouse that, okay, I am not touching that habit anymore.

That coping mechanism that got out of control is now tucked away and sent and is gone. I'm not going to touch that coping mechanism ever ever again. That means you have to do a crap ton of work. Now are you willing to do that work? A lot of times people who are in the and again, I use the I'm using the word addiction because that's what everybody understands. It's not that I believe in that addiction is real because it's not. There's no such thing as an addiction.

An addiction is actually a, an addict is actually a religious zealot and with the origin of the word. And so, no, it's not a it's not that you become addicted to food,

though technically, we are actually addicted to food if you really think about it because if you don't eat food, you're gonna die. You know? So we have to we are addicted to food. We are addicted to water, but that's on a that's a more of a tongue in cheek example. But when it comes to to, to like porn, food, food addiction, stress eating type of stuff, alcohol. Those are all actually just coping mechanisms. You have a an unpleasant

sensation within you. You have an emotion that keeps coming up that wants to live its life. And you keep saying, no. No. I'm not dealing with that. I refuse to deal with that emotion and you keep shoving it down. So to avoid having to feel that dis ease, that ill ease of of your of whatever's in your life, whatever happened in your past or whatever, the cause, it's easier to watch porn.

So if you're any if you're unhappy with, say, the level of sex you're having in your life, Maybe you expected that you and your wife were gonna have mad sex every, every day for the first 15 years of your marriage. That that it's a wonderful thought, but if you've got kids, that thought falls to the wayside really quick because unless you are being in very, very intentional with your time, your kids will

will take over your life. And when it comes to to nookie time, it's not gonna happen quite as much because, well, one, mom's exhausted. And if mom's out in the work out in, in the the employment world, she's gonna be doubly exhausted because she's taking care of the kid, also working and such such and coming home, have work, doing all that, and you're doing your stuff, but at the same time, she's going to have

multiple layers. Now some of those layers are put on to her by society and others layers are put on just strictly because that's what she thinks she has to do. Like work. She thinks she has to work She thinks she has to go out and climb the corporate ladder. And then she wonders why she's not happy. Well, she's not doing what she really wants to do, which is most of the time stay at home and be with be with the kids. Help watch you after the kids and that's that's work in itself.

And that's where a lot of people really struggle. And so to to face those types of of struggles, a lot of times when we fall apart, we also come into the 3rd, a. There's an affair. When the emotional connection is starting to fray, that connection, that's when somebody else of of either sex can slip into that into that connection and start really pulling the the the ends apart. Because we like the feeling of that, that lustful period of 1st, first dating each other.

We love the the excitement, the adrenaline, the oxytocin, the all that. That's just, you know, we're we've hit 11 on all the bars and we're, you know, all of a sudden, we we see the we see somebody else who actually acts like they're happy to see us instead of when we get home from from work and the wife is, like, frazzled because she's been messing with the kids all day. And it's just like, oh my god. The kids are are horrible. And just almost almost looks at you like these kids are your fault.

You know? I've had those looks and you do. You wanna internalize it so quickly and you're like, oh, but, well, I'm sorry. What can I do to help? And when we see somebody else who actually acts like they're happy to see us and they're interested in our problems and they're interested in having conversations with us, and they don't wanna just sit there and berate and harangue us all the time, all of a sudden, yeah. Holy smokes. Sally, the secretary looking kinda freaking hot right now.

It's not something that you really think of doing, but that emotion, those feel good emotions are so strong that you're like going, okay. Yeah. I'm gonna go go hang out with, Sally's secretary this weekend. I'm gonna say I've got a business trip I have to make. I'm gonna make that trip over to her house. It's not but then when you have violated that sacred trust, that relationship comes to an end. That is a reason to end that relationship.

Now another reason to end the relationship is actually when there is no more benefit to the relationship. Sometimes our relationships just come that they have ran their course. You've got friends in high school that you never talked to since the day after high school because their purpose came to an end. You've had buddies that you've come around to see and and, and to hang out with and,

you know, you come over there and it's just kinda there. And eventually you realize you don't go to your friend's house nearly as much. A lot of times, it's because we're freshly married and, hey, we've got too much time. We're we're having too much fun with our wife and our kids that we don't realize that we our relationships with our friends have ended. We are are your you become go wind up in one spot and your friend winds up in another.

Same thing happens with other relationships, with your marital relationship. Sometimes, if you're not being intentional, there your emotion you're you're gonna wind up being in 2 different places and that relationship then comes to an end. And if you can do that in a very mature way without being emotionally buried in your own head, You can actually walk through a relay walk away from a relationship and both y'all have are better for it.

But when there's no bill or benefit in the relationship anymore, that means that there's been too much damage done. The fighting, the backstabbing that y'all done during these times of of survival. And that's what you're looking at it as is all of a sudden your wife is attacking you because you didn't pay a bill. And so you attack back and y'all are stabbing each other with with words. Eventually, the thoughts that those words created become so much that you don't wanna be around them anymore.

Now that doesn't mean that this the damage is irreversible. It's very much still reversible, but a lot of times a lot of people today, they leave relationships because there's too much damage. The emotional tank has run completely dry is another reason where you're not getting any type of emotional input. And it's not that you can receive any emotional input from her, but you're not seeing the the actions that help you think of the of the feeling of being loved.

When they're when y'all are apart from each other and there is nothing going on, y'all have and you are a lot of times when your emotional tank is running completely empty, you're grabbing you're getting your your emotional, gas, tank filled up from somebody else. Look to back over to the affair. There's no communication. Y'all aren't talking. Alright? There's an when you there's no communication going on, it's not going you're not going to fix the marriage until y'all start talking again.

Another reason for benefit for the relationship, or when there's no example of when there's no benefit. I gotta learn how to read my notes sometime to to the relationship anymore. Expectations are too high. Well, she's should be bringing me, you know, dinner on the on the, on the, in in the lazy boy every day at 6 o'clock, no matter what, dressed to, dressed in in to the nines. And and as soon as the kids go to bed, boom, wallah, she's she's naked. She's ready to go to town.

Those expectations are too dang high, and no one's gonna be able to meet them. You wouldn't even be able to meet your own expectations. But you also realize that you, you have when you start finding yourself looking to the past is another thing. Well, I remember when she used to be good. Well, that's just building resentment. If you can't drop any of that, if you can't let any of that go, then, yeah, your relationship is coming to an end

and things are not gonna be fun. They're going to be a lot of resentment, a lot of aggravation, a lot of anger that comes into play. So why? When would you fight for your relationship? When would you hold on to that relationship? Instead of just letting it go, just turning your back on it and going, alright, you take everything. I'm just going I'm going on my own little way. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go live in another state because I think it'd be a lot more fun. Well, that is a

an interesting question. And because when do you want to hold on to the marriage means you have to be paying attention to what's going on around you. When you are both willing to work on y'all both realize not just 1, but both of you realize things are falling apart. Things are creaking. They're crumbling around you. Those communication lines of communications that used to be there all the time are spotty at best. How do you hold

onto that relationship? How do you build that relationship back up? You have to do that by first learning to talk again, start communicating, just anything. You can build that relationship back. You just have to start having intentional conversations, but know why you're leaving. Because if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, you're not going to fix anything.

If you're wanting to leave because you think, because you think money money problems, they're just not gonna make ever make enough money. Well, no one's ever gonna make it. What is enough money? Most people don't even think of what enough money even means. So there's stomp stomping around going, well, I think I need to have or they come up with some absurd I think I need to be get be receiving, you know, $10,000 a month for, for allowance.

It's like, no. Even if I was making, you know, $1,000,000 a year, $10,000 a month in allowance is is no. If you want $10,000 a month for you to just spend willy nilly, then go find something that earns that allows you to earn $10,000 a month. If you're wanting somebody to provide food, you know, your financial expenses to

you, then the marriage is gonna fall apart because that stream of money is not always gonna come streaming in. And most people argue about money because there's a lack of trust. If you're not willing to to sit down, and this is one thing that when it comes to to to a relationship, you've gotta have that trust. You gotta have that power. They gotta have that that cohesion. That's the word I'm looking for, cohesion that I, you know, when it's time to sit down and it's time to do the bills,

Hey, babe. Come on. Sit down. Let's do the bills. You sit down. You do the bills. You'll talk it out. Why is the why do we need to have, you know, you know, a1000, $1500 worth of worth of food this month? Well, because we've got, thanksgiving's coming. I'm trying to get everything together, trying to get the the turkey while it's cheap and just get it frozen and and get the

this and, you know, we always do brisket the day after, thanksgiving. So So I wanna I gotta buy the buy, spend a $100 on a on a big enough brisket for everyone and yada yada. And we start breaking it out and we talk about it. When you talk through and you can go, alright. Well, we've got the budget. We're, you know, at the sadly, this, this month was was short. We still we've got we've overdone it by $500. What do we do now? And you have to sit there and work on it

and and pick away. It's like, alright. Well, my mad money's I'll give up half my mad money and you and she'll give up half her mad money and y'all can work it out. But to think that money is a reason to break up a relationship isn't a reason. Stop getting out of your head. Stop being in survival mode with survive, with the scarcity mindset, And you'll find that money is not a big problem.

If you think but one of the big problems that we have as men will have, well, actually both sexes, men and women, we run into. So we think that if we divorce from this person, our life will suddenly, boom, come a 1000 times better, and it won't. It's not gonna become better because that marriage did not affect your happiness or your anger or your whatever emotional be state you're in that you don't like about it is from you. And you go on right into another relationship

is going to just have that same problem. Why do you think you keep running into the same horrible you have friends who run into this quote, unquote same type of guy. It's amazing. How many guys do you, you know, do out there seem to run into the same crazy chick? It's always, oh, she's just a she's a psycho chick, ma'am. Blah blah blah. You know, you're always talking these friends of yours were always talking crap about. If you step back and really look, you'll see what the problem is.

It's not necessarily that the women are batshit crazy. It's actually the fact that there's one common denominator in that whole thing. It's your friend. He just found an excuse that worked for the past 13 times. And so he's like, yeah. Yeah. All all women are crazy. No, man. You're just the one who keeps keeps pulling the same crap every time, and no one wants to play that game.

Your life will not become better until you can accept the splitting of that relationship with an actual with with love. You can walk away from that relationship and still love your wife completely and be at ease, and it is possible, and to be at ease. It's not that it's gonna be it's not gonna hurt because, no, it will hurt, but you're not going to sit there and be stalking her. Oh, what's she doing now? Where's she at? Where's she running? Oh, it's she's a human. She's a grown woman.

She's doing what she wants to do, but she's ruining her life. That's not your problem, is it? That's not on you at all. And this is what if you can keep from taking on her life's responsibilities on your hands, you can have a good life. You can walk away from the relationship. You can have an amicable split, And you could actually be amicable enough to where if your ex wife so y'all did have a divorce. Your you have a your ex wife got married. What if she actually brought you into the wedding?

You invited you to be a part of the wedding, be a wedding guest on her side. That's unheard of. So for a lot of people, yeah, it is. It's all very unheard of, but you have to to be able to leave the relationship with emotional adulthood can allow you to do that. You are a grown up. She's a grown up. Y'all can do your own grown up stuff and not blame each other for the for your own because it's not your fault. It's not her fault. It's y'all y'all had your own problems.

If you think that you're gonna be leaving a relationship and you're gonna teach them a lesson, then you're not going to you're not gonna have a a good reason to leave because you're thinking you're teaching them a lesson, and they're gonna go off and and have a grant have a time of their life. Or at least that's how you're gonna look at it. Oh, well, she's supposed to be miserable. According to who? You.

So when does a relationship end? A relationship ends either because you've chose it to for it to or because you were so unintentional that it chose for you.

Intentional thought, intentional actions, living life with intention, knowing where you're going, knowing what steps you wanna make to make your life better, knowing what steps you want to make to make your marriage better, to know what steps you can make to help your kids have a good life, not the best life, because you really don't wanna give your kids the best life. You want your kids to struggle a bit. Let them get used to struggling.

When they turn 16, don't buy them a new car. Don't buy them a car, actually. Be do the do the 401 dad payment plan. They come up with 50% of the car. You come up with 50 percent of the car, and, by George, all of a sudden, look at that. You got yourself a really freaking cool car. Yeah. Dad helped out a bit. But you your your you got to, teach your child a a valuable lesson

all because you have an intentional thought. Your relationships, when you're intentional and you're not running off of emotional reactions, you're actually responding to a circumstance, not reacting, your life will become better. Your marriage will become better. Any all of this, even actually with the 3 a's can become better. The abuse one is the toughest one. If it's a true abuse that's happening. If it's being done by a narcissist, narcissist can actually get help.

A narcissist can become a happy, healthy human being without trying to gaslight everybody and and play double play tricks on on each on playing sides against each other. And believe it or not, nurse there are few far fewer narcissists out there than people wanna admit.

Because you go to any divorce site, every, divorce Facebook group. Everyone in there is a freaking narcissist according to the according to the folks talking. And then when you call them out, well, you're just a narcissist. You know? So it's like, holy crap, man. What am I, you know, what am I supposed to do? Nothing. You can't. You live your life with your intentions.

Intentionally live life. Let them ex express what your expectations are. If you have any expectations, you may be living a 100 zero, principle, and that's great if you can. Yet some of us still will have an expectation from time to time. I expect to at least have have sex at least once a month. Let's at least get have that. We can have that, that life, that marriage that we want. We can have the life with our wife standing beside us, conquering worlds after worlds, but it

takes work. It's not anything easy. Never said it was gonna be easy. You don't want easy, actually. You want worth it. Is the work worth it? Is your marriage saving your marriage, bringing your marriage all the way around, worth it to you, worth it to your kids, worth it to your wife? If so, beautiful. Awesome. Take the next step, man. Go to relax mail.comforward/coachingoffer. Fill that out. I'll send you a a, an invite to a, to schedule a a Zoom call,

and we'll get to know each other. We'll see how we can work together. Can we work together? If we can, awesome. Well, we can do a 3 month coaching session. Right now, I've got, I've got a couple of positions still open. And with that, it's $300 for a 3 month coaching session. And when you get to the end of it, you'll start seeing, oh, hey, I can,

we can we can help go this direction. We can start living life with intentionality. We can start getting out of our heads and thinking that we're the victim in all this and actually grab the our life by the by the the wheel and actually control it ourselves. We can have that good life with a little simple 3 month coaching plan. That's all $300. That's 95% off. If you're interested, again, relaxedmail.com forward slash coaching offer.

And with that, guys, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Y'all take care. Y'all have a wonderful rest of your rest of your day, and, we will see y'all next Thursday. If anything on this show resonated with you, it struck a chord, Share it out. Share it with your friends, your family on Facebook, Twitter, x, Mastodon, tribal, wherever you go, wherever it is you like have a social media group that you love to talk to people about.

Share this with them. Share this this this episode, this podcast itself, all of our podcast, episodes have our podcast platforms, apps. That's the word I'm looking for. I'm getting old. Podcast apps have a share button. Hit that share button. You can share it as a text message. Share it to Facebook. Like I said, Instagram, Twitter. Any book, any of the places that you know you have a friend who could benefit from hearing this. If they were struggling in their marriage,

this may be the key to let them know, alright. I'm gonna I've gotta change my life. I've gotta change who I am. And so that this relationship, this marriage will stick and be around for the long haul. So you can have that marriage that you want and that will inspire your kids to to go off, get married, and live life to their fullest. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you again for listening. Y'all take care. Y'all have a great rest of the week. And till next,

next Sunday, we're gonna start doing this. It's Sunday, 11 o'clock AM. If you wanna listen, go watch live, I'll be over on YouTube. That'll be, over at youtube.com/atrelax the relaxed mail, or you can, listen on a podcasting app of choice. That would be over at podcasting dot or podcasting2.org. I knew that one right. Podcasting2, the number 2, dotorg/apps. And in there are modern podcasting apps that allows you to hear this podcast

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