You Can Have Control of Your Relationship Problems

Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them. Amen. Hello, and welcome to the Relax Mill. I'm your host, Brian, and I wanna say thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come in, sit down, have a listen to the show. And we are, this week, talking about well, you know okay. A lot of times, I will have a show idea, and I will take show ideas topic and show topics from everyday events.

And one gentleman that I've been talking to has been running into assortments of problems, and his problems to him are he's oblivious to them in a weird odd enough way. He's a young man, so he's he's a lot of it, I guess, would be from inexperience, and it was I was want to go in and talk about how you are your own worst enemy half the time, and it's because you do stuff and expect a different result.

And then you try it again, and you get the same result at in a disastrous outcome at the same time. I was I was at a point where I was getting a little bit frustrated because it was like, dude, come on. You've got to stop trying to blame everybody else for your problems

and the and the issues that you have in your life. And this is what I was kinda building on. And I let this I actually let this episode set for a couple of weeks because at first the first episode that I wrote out, I actually when I wrote the show notes out, it was honestly, you could tell I was frustrated. There was a lot of very sharp cutting comments out there, and I was like, okay, dude. We this isn't helping me. This isn't helping the the you men who are listening to this show.

And so I let it set, let my thoughts on everything kinda simmer, and this is what ended up boiling and boiling to the top. And because we do have control of our relationship problems. And sadly, men, this is the big problem that we always run into, is that we want to blame our wife for not wanting to improve herself. We are wanting our ourselves. We we point to our to other people as to why we can't get, say, ourselves in shape or accomplish whatever it is that we're wanting to accomplish.

Yet you do have control over a lot more than you want to. And the problem that we often run into is that we bring in our own suffering. We invite suffering into our lives. We wanna do we know those guys who they never have money. They're always complaining that they don't have any money. They can't get x, y, and or z taken care of because they don't have enough money. They ain't making enough money. They're making more money than they've ever made in their life, yet they don't have enough money.

And every time you see them, they've got something new on. Oh, I can't pay, I can't pay my electricity bill. It's too dang high. And they look down, and there's a $150 worth of sneaker on their feet. Man, I don't know. I can't afford gas to be able to, to get to work. You just spent $30 on a T shirt, man. How am I supposed to get anything done? I can't make enough money to to do anything. I can barely even pay attention.

Well, funny enough, I every time I see you, you've got a a Starbucks cup in your hand. Our problems are because of us, and more specifically, if you wanna get a lot more minute about it minute if you want or what. Our problems are because we aren't intentionally thinking about what we're doing. We walk through life. I believe Eckhart Tolle often talks about going through life asleep, and a lot of people, not just men, women too, humans as a whole, go through life asleep.

They don't apply a thought to what they're doing. We don't have enough money as they're buying that Starbucks. I'm flat broke spending $200 on a pair of sneakers, and I get why we build or why we spend that type of money on sneakers. Because we feel that we have we feel better because we've traded value for value, but then we all these are the same people wearing $200 sneakers who say corporations are just greedy. No. You're the one idiot who goes off and buys $200 sneakers.

If they couldn't sell $200 sneakers, sneakers would be $50 again, or they'd be a $100. And if they wouldn't come down on their price, you would wind up buying a different brand. And we run into this so many times. We complain and, I mean, society as a whole.

I grew up with the different, you know, different marital jokes about, you know, like, take my wife, please, or or, you know, just the fact that, you know, wedding cakes have, have been scientifically proven to reduce a woman's libido by 78%. You know? These are these are jokes that I've grown up with that have been in society for years years years, even generations. Yet the root of what that problem actually is is not that our wife is frigid.

It is not that our wife is this bitch that won't that won't do anything, just sits on the bed and and and and plays on her phone all day. No. The problem is it has nothing to do with your wife. The problem doesn't have anything to do with the circumstances in general, because you see, our thoughts create our emotions. We have this whole thing called the model.

I've mentioned it before, and I I love mentioning it as many times as I can. The model is a series of actions that happen because of a circumstance. We often wanna run around and say, our wife isn't doing anything. Our wife is, you know, just, stays at home, does nothing. The she comes home. The house is dirty, yadayadayada.

Alright? And I get that can be frustrating to come home to a dirty house day after day after day, and to find and to see your wife sitting there on on the couch, and supper's not started, And you go later on that night after everything's done, dishes are clean, you've you cook supper, you put supper, up, you wash the put the dishes in the dishwasher, start at the dishwasher, and you go lay in bed and you start wanting to get a little frisky, and she's, no.

Not tonight. I'm too tired. And you're like, how are you being tired? You what have you done all day? These are things that we we think and we get upset about, but it's not even the fact that she sat around all day. She didn't do what you perceived to be nothing, and then turns around and says, no. I'm not in the mood for lovins. It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the thought that you have of those circumstances.

You came home. Your wife was still in her pajamas, sitting on the couch. You're making that mean something. You're making that mean something about you. Same thing is when with meal being non not cooked. What are you making a lack of a cooked meal mean to you and about you? You wanna have sex and your wife rejects that, saying she's too tired, even though you perceive that she hasn't done anything, And what do you make that mean to you and about you?

When you have that thought, when you pay attention, you understand what that thought is, that thought then you understand why you're getting angry about why you came home because you're you come home, see a dirty house, and your wife just sitting there, and you're having a thought, not not well, may not be necessarily this particular thought, but you're having the thought of she doesn't care, which gives you a sense of disempowerment, a sense of

she doesn't love me. So we're not going that's too vulnerable of a thought to have. So we turn to a different thought that is along the lines of, well, she's freaking lazy. I see she hasn't gotten off her butt today or something to that effect. That first thought is the root, what you're making her inactions mean about you. You're not worthy of her effort to, a, look nice, b, clean up the house, c, cook dinner, d, make love to you.

For you, none of that that's why that's what you're seeing. That's what you're thinking something along those lines, and so, yeah, you get grumpy. You get mad. You get you start trying to figure out why is what it is about you. Whenever I was going through the struggles of roommate syndrome, which lasted a good almost 15 years, of me just sitting in the in the the swamp, complaining that my pants were wet and dirty, not doing anything to improve it. I had

I beat myself up. I drove myself damn near freaking crazy, trying to figure out what it is that I'm doing wrong. Why am I not pleasing? This is one reason why you have male enhancement scam pills at the local convenience store. It isn't because the world is, needs men with a 10 inch ding dingling.

It's because men don't feel or or trying to figure out what is it that I'm doing wrong. Why does my wife not wanna have sex with me? What is why do I why am I not worthy of the love for my wife, the woman I'm committed to? And we keep bashing our heads into a brick wall without ever realizing the fact that we actually have control over ourselves. We have control over our thoughts, our actions, our feelings, and our our results.

Hell, there was a time I got so wound up about why my wife didn't wanna have sex, that I was trying to find ways of reducing my libido, going almost to the point of going, well, maybe I just maybe I am somebody who is I'm I'm tied into the wrong person. Maybe I've gotta either, a, leave her, leave the kids, which is something I don't wanna do. So if I don't wanna leave the family, then I guess I've gotta change something about myself.

Going as far as looking at, like, monkshood and and, and seeing if there was any other any other type of, you know, holistic form of let's kill the libido as much as we can. Because I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out why my wife didn't care about me, didn't care about sex. And it turned out that it branched out from several different aspects. 1, we weren't having the conversations we used to have. We weren't having the discussions that we used to have.

There's a lot of stuff we weren't doing that often led to sex. Now was there a lot of fights and a lot of snarky moments and words that were exchanged that would turn my wife off from having sex? Yeah. Yeah. And that, again, my fault. I'm the one who said those. I did not, that time, did not realize the 97% rule, but I eventually learned about the 97% rule. 97% of the stupid shit you really wanna say, don't say it. Just just bite your tongue, swallow the blood, carry on.

And so a lot of us guys, because we don't realize we are struggling the way we are, we know we're struggling. We just don't know who to point a finger at on the struggle and why we are suffering the way we're suffering, we wanna blame our wife. This is where so much of the divorces actually come from. This is where so many of the fights come from because we take a comment and we make it personal. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with what that per other person is feeling.

Our suffering comes from the fact that we we are trying to control other people because a lot and a lot of the guys like you who are listening to this show right now, you're possibly have tried to get your wife to start going on the the self improvement journey with you. And she's like, no. I don't no. She you may buy her a book, and I bought a couple of books that really pissed her off, pissed my wife off. Why? Well, because it wasn't it wasn't where she thought she was.

It's where I thought she was. And so that's where a lot we can we often cause fights, even meaningful. Meaning, we're coming at it from a loving place, and we still will make fights. But it's not because of what? The circumstances. The circumstances are always neutral. They are not good nor are they bad. They are not positive nor are they negative until you apply a thought to it. And you can control circumstances to a point because of your actions,

because you can only control 2 things. You can control your thought, you control your action, and that is all you actually can control. So when your wife gets upset, you can make that mean something personally. And when she gets mad at you because of something and you take it personally, well, you're going to lash back. But yet the circumstance that your wife is mad at you, you still have full control of your faculties.

You have the ability to decide, we're going to I'm gonna listen to her complain. I'm not gonna say anything. I'm gonna come at this problem through the prism of understanding, of calm, of of no panic. And when you're able to do that, you really shake up the paradigm. But till you start taking control of this your actions, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, your results, you're just gonna live a very unintentional life. You're gonna go through life sleeping still.

You're gonna look at circumstances, and you think you can move them. You're gonna bash right into a mountain thinking that you're you can move it, and you can't move that mountain. You're going to scream at an elephant thinking that you can hurt its feelings. There are more circumstances that you can't control than circumstances than you can, and all of the pain in your life comes from the thoughts that you have about those circumstances.

When you look at different points in your life, the painful ones, yeah, they're not fun, but we often find out that they are needed. And those needed pain points come when we accept the fact that, yeah, we're gonna have to deal with this pain. And the pain doesn't come from the event itself. It just comes from, the fact that we are resisting that pain. We are resisting the what we make the circumstance mean.

Our wife doesn't love us, and so we start to become obsessed and start spinning out over the fact of, why does our wife not love us just because she didn't have sex with us? Well, why does she not have sex with you? Maybe she's got problems that she hasn't expressed to you, and that's a good example. How many times have you gone through had been told a certain piece a bit of information. You had an event occur. Say, oh, my wife is leaving me, and you have sorrow or

or anger. Say you got angry. Oh, okay. Let's do something where you got angry because that the anger is one of those funny emotions. It's actually a bodyguard for fear. And so say your your best friend just called you up and said there his wife is moving out or has kicked him out. And you start to react, oh my gosh. You know, you know, you're getting angry at at at circumstance. You're getting angry at her, and then you got a little bit more information about why she kicked him out.

And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, wait a minute. You changed your mind. All of a sudden, you had a different set of beliefs. You had a different thought about why about the actual change of what the what was actually happening. You got more information, and all of a sudden, that more information, you come to find out, oh, he was seeing a girl he had a girlfriend on the side. Well, yeah, you can understand why his wife would be upset and would kick him out of the house.

Everything we have that causes pain, suffering, fear, uncertainty, disempowerment, whatever emotion that you deem uncomfortable and you feel happens because of a thought. So you wanna start paying attention to what is it that you make an event mean. And ask yourself, what are you making that circum that thought, that event, that circumstance mean about you?

We can say what it means to you also. That's that's also also a good thing to do, but the more important one is what are you making it mean about you? And understand that your brain's going to try to paden the blow with an I don't know. Because if you I don't if you don't know, then how are you supposed to answer the question? Because you don't know. You know?

Right? You don't know. So it that's the end of the line. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm ignorant. So so it's it there's no no no other thing to be talking about because, you know, I don't know. What if you did know? Because you do know. It's inside your head. You have the reasons why. You just have to cut through the line of I don't know BS and examine what you're making

the circumstance mean about you. Your wife doesn't wanna have sex. What does that what do you make that mean about you? You get home and the house is disaster. What are you making that mean about you? Your best friend didn't invite you to a trip. What are you making that mean about you? It sounds selfish. And, yeah, it is because we are all we all have our favorite radio station of wwfi FM, wii FM. That's it. W what in it for me? We are always looking out for number numero uno.

We do good things so that we feel good about ourselves. We help others because we feel good about it. You wouldn't help somebody out if it made you feel like crap. That's why victims don't get don't get respect because they do not appreciate what they're getting. They get helped out, and then they're back in the swill again hoping that you'll rescue them once more because you just start to realize there's no good feeling in having to constantly, repeatedly

rescue the same person over and over again. It becomes a flipping burden, becomes a pain in the butt. So what do you make everything mean about you? Look at that particular question. Examine that question. At any time you find yourself getting angry or self righteous or just darn it. Yeah. I'm I'm irked now. What is that what are you making that event, that circumstance mean about you?

Because the moment you're able to ask that, the sooner you can actually come up with a really good answer, and then you get to start changing the the the thought. Because all of a sudden, if you're like if you think, well, because she doesn't love me. Well, is that really true? Is that really, really true, or is that just the the hurt feelings talking? The is that just the thought that she doesn't love you because she's still say hanging around? You say I love you. She says I love you back.

So what type of proof do you need that she actually does love you? Well, it'd be no. You would like to have sex because sex feels really freaking awesome, and it does release the oxytocin hormones, the bonding hormones, the hormone that lets you fall in love and lets you know that you're loved. Yes. It does, but that's just a chemical in the brain. There's other ways of getting that oxytocin bump. It may not be as powerful and bang like like a good orgasm does, but there are other ways.

Sitting next to your wife, setting shoulder to shoulder, putting your hand on her lap, holding hands, wrapping her up in your arms. No sex involved, but yet you will still get that oxytocin. So wanna ask yourself, why does she do what she's do what she does? Why did she take your hand off her boob? Why did she go off and and tell you not tonight she's got a headache for the 7th night in a row? That was something growing up. 1st getting, 1st being married to my wife.

She had a headache so often, I actually was talking to neurologists trying to figure out what in the hell was going on until a very smart and very caring and understanding doctor Kummel I talked to said, well, that's just a wife's way of saying she is not interested in that. And that's kind of the start of where the whole women don't like sex thought, theory came from. Do they like sex? Yes. They do.

But there is it doesn't hold as high of a importance in their life as it does to men because that we are physical beings while women are more mental beings. I was just gonna sleep mental, and I was like, no. No. You mental man. You know? So so you have to to go and stop taking everything she does and making it personal.

Because when we do that, we start punishing ourselves. We get start getting angry because she they did something we don't like, and so we're gonna punish them, and so we get into a fight, which breaks apart the whole the whole sense of connection that we want. So to punish the other person, we're punishing ourselves. We know our wives love to do that, and, us, guys, we do the same damn thing. We just do it in a different way.

But we know many times where the we went out and had a went out and talked to with friends, came home a little, came home drunk, not just even a little drunk. We came home plowed and wanted to get get cozy with the wife, and she said, no. I'm mad at you. Use sex as a weapon. It happens. But what you make that punishment mean is one thing, but the at the same time, she is punishing herself. She's punishing keeping herself from the ability of having intimate connection

because she's mad at you. I'm gonna teach him. I'm not gonna give him hugs, kisses, or sex. And then 3, 4, 5 years of that down the road, all of a sudden, she's like, he never love hugs or kisses me no more. Well, it's cause you won't

let him. Guys would do the same thing. We get mad at our wife, so what do we do? We go out into the go out and instead of building connection, building up that connection that we want, we storm off into the garage and go tinker on a car or we do this or that or we go out, we get drunk, we take we get mad and punish ourselves by tearing apart our connections. We destroy the intimacy that we need to have Instead of

of going off and going, well, fine. I'm gonna show her. I'm gonna teach her blah blah blah. What do we need to do is we need to actually lean into the intimacy that we need. You wanna have more sex? Then give her a reason to want to be sexual with you. Work on all those different intimacies that are out there. Got a whole list. They'll be listed in the in the show notes of the other intimacies, the 10 other intimacies that are in there besides or 9 others besides for physical.

Yeah, man. I get it. I love sex as much as you do. Sex feels good. It's great. It's amazing. This is why we get ourselves tied in a knot and wrapped around the axle around porn. We'll stop trying to pursue our girlfriend because we can look at a virtual girl get boned by some other dude. Again, we're punishing ourselves. Well, if I can't have sex, I'm gonna at least see somebody else have it. Alright. Well, fine. Watch somebody else have it, beat off, and guess what you're not having?

You're not having sex. You're having a distant second to a good vaginal orgasm from your wife. You're punishing yourself with the thoughts that you're having, that you're going to get you're gonna get back at her, or she's gonna get back at you. And so you're gonna get back at her and buy back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And the thing is is y'all both of y'all, all of us, honestly, need to give up our manual.

And if you don't know what a manual is, a manual is a set of instructions that we have for anybody around us to have them may if they follow these rules, we will feel better about ourselves. This is how you make sure I'm happy is is what that means. And the problem that we have with that manual is that people don't care about it. The only person that the manual is really important to is you.

Your manual is very important to you. Well, boss wouldn't give me the give me the job that I wanted, so screw him. First off, you didn't tell the boss you wanted the wanted that job. Yeah, dude. No. You hinted at it. You kinda was like, well, it'd be kinda not you were kinda mealy mouthed. You were wishy washy about it. You really wanted the wanted that position. You wanted that, that that project. You would have gone off and said, hey, boss. I would

I'd like to have that. I think I would like to have the responsibility. I believe I'm well, I'm in a position to be able to help that, that that widget be properly built and and sold. I don't know. I'm just I'm I'm winging it, and I'm sucking at it. But any either way, we don't when it comes to our manual, we don't share with other people, 1. And when we do share and people don't follow us, we get really bent out of shape. But the thing is is you really don't wanna control another person.

They're not going they're gonna come up with a better way to have you be feel loved than through your own own manual. I like to have sex every night. Well, yeah, I would too. But at the same time, I would you rather have your wife just lay like a a limp dishrag? Because, well, you said you wanted to have sex every night. Oh, okay. Here. You have have the sex that you want. Or would you rather have have her showed up to bed fully willing and desiring to have sex with you?

Well, can't she have both? Well, technically, yeah. She could actually have sex every night with you and do it willingly, but that has to be her decision. That has to be something that she wants to do. That's her thought because, remember, you can only control your thoughts, your actions. You can't control your wife's thoughts or her actions. You can't make her think she wants to be horny.

What you can do is you can create the circumstances that will lead that could, not will, could lead her to want to have sex with you. Being there, being caring, listening to what she's saying, not for not fixing what she's saying, but hearing what she's saying, that is where that emotional support that she's always complaining about, women always want us to have just want them to emotionally support us. What that means is they want you to hear them talk about their day.

That's how they get emotional support. It's not you standing there go patting them on the back going, yeah. You're right. You should be should be mad or you should be happy or you should be horny or you should be whatever. It's yeah. That's just sitting there, listening, a craze occasionally grunting, nodding your head, and affirming the fact that you've actually heard what they talked about.

You do that, and they're going she's going to have a better response to your, you know, to your advances. When you feed the emotional well, when you provide circumstances that allows her to fall in love with you and to feel love, then she will have and then she's going to have a better opportunity to show that she's loved. Till you do that, y'all are both just gonna bounce off of each other. You're gonna walk around being pissed off the world because you're pissed off the world,

not because the world did anything wrong to you. It's just that you are angry, and you want to stop feeling angry. The way you stop feeling angry is you change your thoughts. You give up the manual. You start setting up circumstances so that the other people in your life feel the love that you want to feel. And if you wanna know how to be able to do all that, then hit me up. I can help you have a better relationship, help you get out of your own way so your relationship can actually thrive.

And it's not gonna cost you anything. It's just try out and see what coaching is about. Just free coaching session. Full hour. You set up a time. We'll we'll get together. We yabber it out, hammer it out, and let you know what hear what you have to say, and coach you through whatever that problem is. You can have that free coaching. It's amazing. I think everyone likes having coaching after they experience the first round of coaching. So come by.

Let's talk it out. Let's see what coaching is, is and see that it's not as frou frou or as as fruity as you would think it is because it's actually a good thing to to have. We used to call it mentoring, actually. It's just gotten a more updated, boujee sounding word like life coach. Get a coach. You know? It's somebody you pay to talk to so that they can act so that you actually have the better ideas. So if you would like help on being able to do that, then

you can go to relax mail.comforward/trycoaching, all one word, and that will take you over to my, my scheduling, site. You can schedule up and schedule a a time where we could, sit down and just have a good conversation. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thanks very much for listening. So, guys, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. If this or anything that was mentioned on this, show rang a bell, share it out on Facebook, Mastodon,

Instagram, wherever it is that you you have a group of guys that you're talking to and let them know, hey. There is a show out there that's all about the men. All about helping men become better men in their relationships. Because when we become better men, our wives become better. Our lives become better. Our kids become better because we're no longer stomping around being these moody moody dudes that are just all grump grumbly and and and pissy.

We actually know why we're being angry, why we're pissed off, and we know how to change that. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thanks so much for listening. Y'all take care. Catch y'all next week.