What happens before Divorce

0:01Speaker 1:Look up with count all the things with beat it on the bottom all, Oh wow, is you You're my favorite view?

0:17Speaker 2:But that's nothing, and I am back. It's just me today, guys.

0:26Speaker 3:Peachas and I were both pretty sick yesterday, the day after fourth of July.

0:29Speaker 2:She's still not recovered, so she's gonna sit this one out.

0:33Speaker 3:You guys got me today, Just me me turn my light on back here, so it's official.

0:39Speaker 2:There we go.

0:40Speaker 3:I put together a document today this morning, and it stemmed from the conversation of seventy of divorces are initiated by women, and this is a great conversation to throw blame, to create all types of conflict and victim versus villain stories. And it allows us to blame shift so that we don't have to take responsibility for our actions. It's really easy for men to be like, fuck women. It's really easy for women to be like, our divorce rates are so high because men are fucking losers and like.

1:13Speaker 2:It creates a whole ass.

1:15Speaker 3:Ugliness around relationships, more specifically marriage than dating. But and I want to get into I got I got some things. This is This started off as like a thirty eight page document, so there's a lot to go through here. I'm gonna read some of it. I'll check them with the chat every once in a while. For those of you who don't know, I do record this lot. We record all the time live in front of our Patreon audience. We are trying to build our Patreon up. So if you're not a member of Patreon on and how you recommend you go over there and check that out. There's a whole lot of things that they get that the rest of the world doesn't. So if you haven't yet, go to patreon dot com forward slash to be better.

1:50Speaker 3:All right, So, divorce is one of those topics where almost everyone has already picked a side before conversation even begins. Some people immediately blame men, some immediately blame women, Some blame feminism, others blame the legal systems, some blame social media dating culture. The problem is that once we've decided who's guilty, we stop asking the real questions. One of the most talked about statistics and modern relationships is that nearly seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women. It's a number that's repeated constantly, but very few people stop to ask what it actually means. Does filing for divorce mean that someone caused the marriage to fail, Does it mean that they wanted the marriage to end, Does it mean that they wanted the spouse to be the problem, or does it simply mean that they were the one who finally signed the paperwork. Those are very different questions, and they're very often treated as if they're the same. Unfortunately, our culture doesn't have much patience for complicated answers. We like villains and victims. We like stories with a clear hero and a clear person to blame. We like headlines

2:52Speaker 3:that can be consumed in thirty seconds and reinforced with what we already believe. If you already think that men are the problem, this statistic becomes proof. If you already think that family courts are biased against men, again, this becomes proof. If you already think that marriages are outdated, this statistic again becomes proof. The same number gets used to support completely different conclusions because people tend to look for evidence that confirms the story that they're already telling themselves.

3:18Speaker 3:It's called confirmation bias. We don't start with the evidence and let it shape our conclusions. We start with the conclusions that we're looking for, and then we look for the evidence that supports that. The result is that we stop trying to understand what's actually happening and start trying to prove that we were right all along. The reality is is that relationships rarely collapse because of the event. They erode. Trust erodes, respect, friendships, communication, the willingness to repair erodes. And most people don't wake up one morning, look at their person line next to them, and suddenly decide they want a divorce. By the time someone files, the marriage has often been struggling for months, years, or even decades. Nobody ever just wakes up and goes, hey, I don't want this anymore. Get wrecked Like it's never the case. This is, like I said, a slow erosion over time. Long before anyone walks into a courthouse, thousands of conversations have already taken place, thousands of opportunities to reconnect have already been missed, thousands of small decisions, small disappointments,

4:17Speaker 3:moments of disconnection that have quietly moved people further apart. Divorce is often the final decision, but it's really the first sign that something's wrong. That's why I don't think the most important question is who filed. I think the better question is what happened long before anyone ever called an attorney, Because if we can understand what slowly destroys a marriage, we have a much better chance of preventing one from getting there in the first place. So I want to impact what the research actually says, where people tend to overreach with their conclusions, and what every couple, whether you're dating, married, separated, divorced, or even happily single, can learn from. This isn't about proving men or women are right. It's about understanding human behavior. Because if all we do is argue over who's to blame, we'll keep reducing the same outcomes.

5:02Speaker 2:Okay, so let's start with this.

5:04Speaker 3:The statistic itself, Yes, women initiate roughly seventy percent of divorces. That statistic has been replicated for decades, and at this point it's not even really debated anymore. The number itself isn't where the disagreement begins. The disagreement begins with what people think that number actually means. A lot of people hear women file for divorce and immediately translate translate that into women are good at ending marriages. Other people will hear the exact same statistic and conclude that men must be terrible husbands. The problem is that neither of those conclusions actually comes from the statistic itself. I didn't include a statistic in this document that I feel like I need to say just to get it out there. The highest divorce rates are in lesbian couples. The lowest is in gay couples. Men, right, And I feel the need to say that because this is not a matter of placing blame. I think that the statistics matter and it needs to be stated.

5:56Speaker 2:And that's it. So like this is again, it's not a blame thing. It's just.

6:01Speaker 3:Is it that women get sick of people faster and decide that it's not worth saving. Are they not willing to put in as much effort?

6:08Speaker 1:Like?

6:08Speaker 3:Are they are the court systems biased towards women so they get more in the event that they get a divorce? Like These are real questions that need to be asked and answered, and a lot of times they're not. So the statistic itself doesn't tell us why the marriage ended. It tells us who emotionally checked out first. It doesn't tell us who stopped trying. It doesn't tell us who became emotionally unavailable. It doesn't tell us whether there was infidelity, addiction, abuse, or years of unresolved resentment. It doesn't tell us whether two people simply grow part of our time. It tells us one thing. Who filed the paperwork.

6:41Speaker 2:That's it.

6:43Speaker 3:We have to be very careful not to ask data to answer questions that was never designed to answer. So think about it this way. Imagine two business partners. After years of declining revenue, unresolved conflict, poor communication, resentment, and failed attempts to save the company, one partner finally walks into the courthouse and dissolves the business. Who entted a partnership? Was it the person who filed who caused the business to fail?

7:07Speaker 2:You don't know.

7:07Speaker 3:None of that information's there. Maybe one partner stopped carrying their weight, maybe both of them did. Maybe they had different visions of the future. Maybe outside circumstances made the business unsustainable. You can't determine any of that by looking at who signed the final document. Marriage is no different. The divorce papers are often the final chapter of a story that has been unfolding for years, sometimes decades, and by the time someone files the relationship has usually experienced thousands of moments that never make it into the court records.

7:36Speaker 3:This is death by a thousand cuts. The conversations that never happened because someone didn't feel safe enough to bring them up. It's the conversations that happened when but weren't truly heard.

7:47Speaker 2:Got that.

7:48Speaker 3:It's the conversations that happened but weren't truly heard. It's the night someone cried themselves to sleep while the other person had no idea. It's the resentment that quietly accumulated because neither person knew how to repair it. It's the apologies that never came, the affection that slowly disappeared, the bids for connection that were ignored, the sacrifices that went unnoticed, and the loneliness that existed while two people were still sharing the same bed. The courthouse doesn't see any of that.

8:13Speaker 3:It simply records who walked through the door first. That's why I think we have to resist the temptation to weaponize the statistic. Statistics describe patterns, but don't explain people. They can tell us what happened across millions of marriages, but they cannot tell us what happened inside of yours. Every divorce has a story. Sometimes the spouse carries most of the responsibility. Sometimes both people contributed in different ways. Sometimes both were doing the best that they knew how, but neither had the skills to build a healthy marriage.

8:46Speaker 3:Sometimes one person checked out years before the other even realized the relationship was in trouble. Reality is messy, Human relationships are messy, and if we're serious about helping marriages survive, we have to become more interested in understanding the process than a sie blame. Blame might satisfy our emotions for a moment, but understanding it is what gives us the opportunity to do something differently, and if nothing changes, the same patterns will simply repeat themselves in your next relationships.

9:13Speaker 2:Let's see what's going on in the chat over here. He's not aware of those statistics.

9:19Speaker 3:Okay, marriage is not dating sounds obvious, right, But I don't think people slow down enough to really appreciate the difference. When you're dating, there's emotion, attachment, attraction, shared experiences, habits, memories, and expectations. If your marriage is healthy, it still has all of those things, but dating has an exit that is relatively simple compared to marriage. You can en the relationship, and while it might be painful and emotionally devastating, the structure surrounding it is usually much less complicated. Marriage changes the equation. Marriage isn't just two people saying I love you.

9:51Speaker 3:It's two people building a shared life that eventually starts to function as one. You become one flesh, You share bills, a home, routines, family systems, holidays, friendships, debt, and often children. You organize your future around each other. Your decisions are no longer just your own because your lives have become intertwined.

10:09Speaker 2:That means when a marriage.

10:10Speaker 3:Begins to fall apart, people aren't simply asking do I still love this person? They're asking a whole lot of other questions. What happens to the house, what happens to the kids? What about our finances? What will our families think? What will church think? What will our friends think? Who am I if this marriage ends? What will this cost me? Emotionally, financially and socially. These questions carry enormous weight, and they fundamentally change how people experience the relationship. This is why the research becomes really interesting to me. Stanford's sociologist, doctor Michael Rosenfield, studied more than two thousand heterosexual couples as part of the How Couples Meet and Stay Together Study.

10:50Speaker 3:One of his most interesting findings wasn't that women initiated roughly seventy percent of divorces. It was among the unmarried, dating and cohabiting couples. There was no statistically significant significant difference between men and women who chose to end the relationship. The gender gap emerged primarily once couples were married. So think about what that means. If the entire explanation were simply that men became such terrible partners, we would expect to see women ending dating relationships at much higher rates too, and we don't. The significant difference appears when marriage enters the picture. It tells us that we have to look deeper than simply blaming a gender. We have to look at what changes when two people move from dating into marriage.

11:36Speaker 3:And I think one of those biggest challenges is obligation. Right, We're now carrying a whole different load on our back than we were carrying when we were just having fun with all of this. Dating has expectations, and marriage has obligations, and they are not the same. When you're dating, most of what you do still feels like a choice. You're choosing to spend time together, You're choosing to invest, and choosing to stay. Marriage introduces responsible responsibility to your spouse, your family, your children, the life that you've now built together, and responsibility changes the psychological experience of a relationship. Human beings naturally enjoy what they freely choose, but when that same choice becomes begins to feel like duty, sacrifice, pressure, or obligation, something starts to shift. The relationship can begin to feel less like freedom and more like confinement. And I don't think that commitments the problem. I think that it means that relationship with commitment matters, right. I think that this is where many couples begin to struggle. The normal weight of commitment starts getting interrupted as evidence that

12:41Speaker 3:something must be wrong. Our ordinary discomfort that comes with sacrifice starts feeling like oppression. That natural friction that comes from building a life with another imperfect human beings starts sounding like I've lost myself.

12:54Speaker 2:Now.

12:55Speaker 3:Sometimes that's absolutely true. Sometimes that is absolutely the fucking truth. Sometimes someone really has lost themselves. Sometimes a marriage is abusive or controlling. Sometimes it's emotionally unsafe. Sometimes that shit's really over. Those realities exist, and they should never be minimized. But that's not every marriage story. Sometimes what people describe as harm is actually the cost of commitment. Sometimes what they call incompatibility is really emotional immaturity. Sometimes what they call losing themselves is actually grieving the fantasy that marriage would always feel like dating. That's a very difficult truth to accept because dating and marriage ask different things from us.

13:36Speaker 3:Dating is largely about discovery. You're learning who this person is. You're asking yourself, do I enjoy being with them? Are we compatible? Can I see a future together? Where marriage is more of a construction, it's asking can we build something together when life gets hard? Can we do it when we're tired, when we're stressed raising children, when money is tight, when one of us loses a job, when our health changes, if we're grieving, if overwhelmed, when we disappoint each other, when we have flaws that neither one of us knew existed when we first fell in love.

14:08Speaker 3:Because marriage isn't about preserving the excitement of dating forever, It's about learning how to build a life that can withstand reality. That's why marriage isn't dating. It was never supposed to be. It asks more from us, and it demands more from us. And if we expect marriage to continue to feel like we're dating or in the dating phase without accepting the responsibilities that come with building a new life together, we're likely to mistake the normal weight of commitment for evidence that the relationship itself is broken.

14:37Speaker 3:We're going to get into some terminology and shit in a little bit, guy, So I know that this is kind of dry right now.

14:42Speaker 2:Just bear with me. I promise this has got some good information in it. I think this is.

14:46Speaker 3:Probably going to end up in the dating playlist along with I Versus You statements, because there's going to be a whole lot of scenarios in this document that's going to explain better ways to deliver things to your person. Marriage is one of the strongest mirrors that most people will never stand in front of. It shows you your ego, It shows you your selfishness, your wounds, where you still want love without responsibility, intimacy without sacrifice, and devotion without surrender.

15:14Speaker 3:But most people fail to see it, and then they fail to take accountability or course correct, because marriage does not just reveal whether you love someone, It reveals whether you have enough humility, maturity, and spiritual discipline to keep choosing love when that fantasy wears off. A lot of people are not leaving marriages because there's not love. They're leaving because they do not know what to do with the weight of commitment once love starts requiring sacrifice. So the language we use, one of the most interesting ideas that we came across while researching this topic, has very little to do with divorce itself, but with the language, because words that we choose don't just describe reality, they shape it. Psychologist Nick Haslam coined the term concept creep to describe what happens when psychological concept slowly expand beyond their original clinical definition. Words like trauma, abuse, gaslighting, toxic narcissist, emotional neglect, and even boundaries begin to stretch until they cover experience that they were never originally intended to describe. Now, before anyone misunderstands us, real abuse exists, real trauma, gaslighting,

16:22Speaker 3:all of that should exist. We've coached people who were genuinely manipulated, people who've lived in fear every single day, and people whose nervous systems were permanently altered by what they endured. Those experiences deserve to be taken seriously, and the language exists because those circumstances are real. The problem isn't that we have these words. The problem is that we've started using these words for just about everything. Think about how often you hear them today. A husband disagrees with his wife and suddenly he's gaslighting her. A wife forgets to techt back, text back, and now she's emotionally neglectful.

16:57Speaker 3:A boyfriend doesn't like his girlfriend's friends, and now he's controlling a girl from once more quality time and she's codependent. A spouse has flaws and suddenly they're a narcissist. You see what's starting to happen here. We're replacing observations with diagnosises. We've stopped describing behavior and started assigning identities. There's a massive difference between saying my husband interrupted me and saying my husband is emotionally abusive. Those aren't different ways of saying the same thing. They're completely different claims. One identifies a behavior, the other assigns an identity. One says we have a problem and the other says you are the problem.

17:38Speaker 3:Once we cross that line, something changes inside of the relationship, like you can't recover from that. When you start telling your part person that they're a narcissist, or that you know they gaslight you, or they're emotionally abusive because they interrupt you. When you guys are in a heated argument, you are changing the way that the person questions their own identity, and it becomes very problematic. Very few people know how to respond when being diagnosed by their spouse.

18:03Speaker 3:If my wife tells me I interrupted her, we can have a conversation. If she tells me I'm an abuse of narcissist who is gaslighting her, I'm no longer entering a conversation. It feels like I'm entering a courtroom or a battlefield where my primary objective is to defend myself. The goal is no longer understanding. The goal becomes proving my innocence. This is where communication begins to die. How can two people work through a problem when one of them feels they've already been convicted. It's even more difficult when these words have become so overused that they've drifted far from their original clinical meaning. Once every conflict becomes pathology.

18:39Speaker 3:There isn't much room left for ordinary human growth. We've watched this happen in coaching more times than we can count. A husband will say something insensitive, and instead of addressing the insensitive comment, the conversation becomes about emotional abuse. A wife becomes defensive, and instead of talking about defensiveness, she's labeled as a narcissist. Someone forgets an anniversary and instead of talking about the disappointment, they're suddenly emotionally unavailable. Everything gets escalated, everything becomes clinical, and in everything becomes permanent, and the possibility of growth starts to disappear. The tragedy is that people can grow. People can mature, they can become less defensive, they can learn empathy, they can improve their communication, become more emotionally available. But it is incredibly difficult for someone to grow if you've already decided that they are fundamentally broken. Language matters because language determines whether we see another person as capable of change. This is one of the reasons why we're such big fans of Alfred Adler. Adler was one of the founding figures of

19:40Speaker 3:modern psychology, alongside Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. But unlike Freud, who believed everyone was largely driven by their past, Adler believed we were primarily driven by the future that we were trying to create. He taught us that every behavior serves a purpose, and even when we're not consciously aware of ita asking what happened to this person? Adler encourages us to ask what is this behavior? Trying to accomplish that question changes the way that we see conflict, relationships, and even yourself. Adler understood something that many people miss.

20:14Speaker 3:Human beings don't simply react to life. We move towards goals, often without realizing it. Sometimes the goal is connection, Sometimes it's safety, sometimes it's significance. Sometimes it's simply about protecting our ego. We're going to get into the ego pretty hard here. If you call your spouse selfish, instead of asking why they're acting selfishly, you stop trying to understand them. When you label someone a narcissists, you stop looking for complexity, and you've stopped asking what fear they're protecting, what wound they're carrying, or what skill they're missing, And you've convinced yourself that you already know exactly who they are. This is a fucking problem. People are almost always more complicated than the labels that we assign to them. One of our biggest problems that we see in relationships today is that we've become incredible skilled at identifying pathology and our partner while becoming increasingly blind to our own. I'm gonna read that again because that's such a fucking prominent statement.

21:11Speaker 3:One of the biggest problems we see in relationships today is that we have become incredibly skilled at identifying the pathology and our partner while becoming increasingly blind to our own. We know all the words, all the diagnosis is, we know all the red flags, but we have forgotten one of the most important relationship skills there is, and that is describing what happened without assigning someone else in identity. Instead of saying you're emotionally abusive, you can try saying when you raised your voice, I felt afraid. Instead of saying you're a narcissist, Try saying I don't feel heard.

21:46Speaker 3:Instead of saying you're gaslighting me, try saying my experience feels dismissed. Those statements don't minimize your pain, they make it easier for someone else to actually hear it, because the reality is, every disagreement isn't abuse, Every mistake isn't trauma. Excuse me, Every selfish act isn't narcissism, Every misunderstanding isn't gaslighting. Sometimes it's simply two imperfect people trying to love each other with what skills they were taught. When do you guys think about that? Most of us weren't taught how to navigate this world. We were raised by imperfect parents that didn't know how to fucking communicate, that screamed and yelled and punched holes in a wall or fucking punched each other, and that's what we grew up with. And we think that somehow, having a toxic relationship means that the person loves you and they're willing to fight for the relationship. That's not what's happening. You guys are fucking falling apart over there, trying to hold onto the idea of what something could be instead of seeing it for what it actually is. If we lose the ability to tell the difference, then every conflict becomes evidence that the

22:52Speaker 3:relationship is broken, instead of an opportunity for both people to grow. The words, we choose either build a bridge or they build a wall. Every couple eventually has to decide what they're trying to build. Accountability has to exist on both sides. That sounds simple, but our culture sucks at it. We tend to swing from one extreme to the other. One side says men are the problem, the other side it's women. Other side it's women. But most relationships don't fail because the entire gender is broken. They fail because two imperfect people bring their wounds, expectations, ego, habits, blind spots, family patterns, communication issues, fear, and selfishness into the same house. Then they act surprised when eventually all that shit shows up. Men need accountability. There's no way around that. Men need to become better husbands, fathers, communicators, better listeners, better leaders. They need to become better at emotional regulation, better at repairing conflict, more present, and better at telling the truth. Butout without immediately becoming defensive. This is not an attack on men. That's part of growing up.

24:00Speaker 3:If a man wants to honor the marriage and then he has to respect his wife, the trust of his children, and the responsibility that comes with leadership, then he has to accept the growth that comes with all of it. But that same standard applies both ways. Women are not exempt from growth. They're not exempt from ego, selfishness, emotional immaturity, manipulation, avoidance, contempt, dishonesty, resentment, or blame. Saying that shouldn't be controversial, it should be obvious.

24:24Speaker 3:Accountability isn't a male responsibility or a female responsibility. It is the human responsibility. Every relationship has two people. That means every relationship has two nervous systems, to histories, two sets of wounds, to private logics, to egos trying to protect themselves. It also means that there are two people who can become completely convinced that they are right, and that's where relationships become dangerous. Most people don't walk into conflict thinking I'm the villain. They walk in believing that they're protecting themselves, that they think they're standing up for their needs, that they think that they're finally speaking their truth, or that they're refusing to let someone continue to hurt them.

25:04Speaker 3:And sometimes that's exactly what's happening. Sometimes it's ego dressed up as empowerment. Sometimes it's avoidance dressed up as peace punishment. Dressed up as boundaries. Sometimes it's control dressed up as standards. Sometimes it's fear dressed up as intuition, or pride dressed up as self respect. And that's why accountability matters so much, not because we need to shame our partner, but because we need to tell ourselves the truth before our own story becomes so convincing that we can no longer see ourselves clearly. We've coached enough couples to know that both people usually have a versions of events that makes perfect sense from inside their own mind. The husband has his story, the wife has hers, and both stories contain truth, but both stories also leave things out. Both stories make the person telling them seem a little more reasonable than they probably were. It's not unusual.

25:54Speaker 2:It's human.

25:54Speaker 3:That's your ego. It's why humility isn't optional in a marriage. If you can't honestly ask yourself, what am I contributing to this, then you're probably not ready to repair anything. You might be ready to win, you might be ready to leave. You might be ready to build a case against your spouse, but you are not ready to heal the relationship. Real accountability is not saying that everything is my fault. That's not accountability, that's self abandonment. Real accountability means refusing to let someone else's mistake become permission to ignore your own. Again, real accountability means refusing letting someone else's mistakes to become permission to ignore your own. And this is where most people get stuck. They're waiting for the other person to go first. I'll soften when he changes, I'll listen when she respects me. I'll apologize as when he admits what he did. I'll be more affectionates affectionate.

26:49Speaker 3:I will be more affectionate when she stops criticizing me, And round and round it goes two people waiting, two people withholding the very thing that might begin the repair. Now, none of this means that you need to tolerate a be use, excuse manipulation, or remain in an unsafe relationship. That's not at all what I'm saying. What we are saying is that we should stop assuming that our own reactions are purely because we were hurt. Marriage has a way of exposing the places where we still want. Love without humility, connection without vulnerability, forgiveness without discomfort, leadership without responsibility, and standards without service. If neither person is willing to examine those things, then the relationship eventually becomes two wounded egos fighting for the same moral ground. And that's what destroys marriages. Not just conflict, not just stress, not just money, not sex, not parenting. Those things create pressure, yes, but pressure doesn't destroy marriages by themselves. What destroys it is when two people become so committed to their own innocence that neither one can tell the truth about themselves anymore.

27:49Speaker 2:So.

27:49Speaker 3:Yes, men need accountability, absolutely, but women need it too, not less compassion, not less protection, not less dignity. Accountability because love without accountability becomes enable, and accountability without love becomes punishment, And a healthy marriage requires both.

28:05Speaker 2:How you guys feeling about this so far?

28:08Speaker 3:We're about to get into the ego seventy five people watching me read a document absolutely wild. I may leave this up as just your Patreon content. I don't know if I'm gonna use this for an episode.

28:19Speaker 2:I don't know.

28:19Speaker 3:You guys have to let me know if you think this should go live or not. Ego changes the story. Ego is far more intelligent than most people realize. It rarely convinces us with obvious lies. Instead, it convinces us with believable ones. It doesn't just lie, it edits. It rewrites history. It changes the meaning of events. It leaves out the details that don't support your position and highlights the one that it does. It minimizes our responsibility while magnifying everyone else's. And before long, we're no longer remembering what actually happened. We're remembering the version of the story that protects who we believe ourselves to be. And that's what your ego does. I'm gonna pause for a minute and go off script for just a second.

28:58Speaker 2:Guys.

28:59Speaker 3:This is one of those things that, like, it is so fucking important to remember that your perception of the world is the stories that we tell ourselves. And when you tell when you're having a conversation with somebody and they're telling you what happened in their marriage is the first time, it's a very rough form. You're not getting all of the information. If you hear it a second time or a third time. Every time that story is told, a little more truth comes out, and you get a little bit more information, and you realize that the original story was manipulated because they were speaking through a lens of hurt. Right, it's a negativity bias, and as this continues, we craft the story that fits our ego to make us not feel like a loser or a piece of shit, or like we're the villain. It's a lot easier to be the victim and feel like pity me. Everybody hug me, versus everybody shun me because I was an asshole and said some fucked up shit or I did something really wrong in my marriage. That's your ego protecting itself because we have an idea of who we're supposed to be. Right, nobody looks in the mirror and thinks that we are

29:56Speaker 3:this flawed, broken individual. Deep down, we know that, but we we also believe that we're inherently good people. We believe that we deserve love and that we should have good relationships. And there's a whole lot of self preservation that falls into this, and it's the truth of it. So make it go live. We're half up then promo Patreon. Yeah, maybe that's a good idea.

30:20Speaker 2:Okay.

30:21Speaker 3:Most people think that ego is arrogance. Sometimes it is, but more often ego is self protection. It protects our identity, our pride, our sense of significance, and it protects us from shame. It protects us from having to admit that maybe we were wrong, maybe we overreacted, or maybe we hurt someone we love. That's where Adler's work becomes so valuable. Adler believe that behind every story there serves a purpose. One of the greatest purposes is our behavior. It serves as protecting our sense of significance. Nobody wants to see themselves as selfish, nobody wants to believe they're the difficult one, and no one wants to admit that they hurt the person they love, So the mind starts making adjustments. You hear things like I only yelled because she wouldn't listen to me, or I shut down because he kept criticizing me.

31:11Speaker 3:I lied because I knew they would overreact. I cheated because I wasn't getting my needs met. I left because they gave me no choice. You see what's happening here. The story keeps moving responsibility from thing to thing to thing. Now that doesn't automatically mean that the other person is innocent. Sometimes they absolutely contributed to the problem. Sometimes they cause tremendous amounts of pain, But ego has a remarkable ability to convince us that our behavior was simply a reaction to theirs, and it quietly removes our agency and replaces it with justification. Very few people wake up one morning and decide to become the villain in their own marriage. Instead, they slowly become the hero of their own story. And every story needs a villain. And that's where relationships begin to fall apart. When the ego is dry, everything gets filtered through protection. A disagreement feels like disrespect. A correction feels like a criticism, a request feels like control, a boundary feels like a rejection, a compromise feels like losing.

32:12Speaker 3:Constructive feedback feels like a personal attack, and your spouse's frustration feels like condemnation. Every silence starts to feel intentional. And in all of this, the events haven't changed your interpretation has. We've watched couples argue about the exact same conversation, and afterwards both people genuinely believed that they were the one trying to save the relationship. Neither of them was lying, neither of them was intentionally manipulating the story. They were simply experiencing the same moment through two completely different lenses.

32:42Speaker 3:We have talked about this over and over and over again, guys. This is why your memory is such an unreliable witness to emotional conflict. I know that you guys have been in an argument with somebody and said you said, and they're like, I didn't fucking say that. Well, that's what I heard, that's what you heard. And sometimes that's really what's going on, that's not gaslighting. Sometimes we hear through our hurt, we hear through our emotions, We hear through what we think is happening because it drives that narrative and like we need to defend ourselves and now we're going to battle, and like, that's a lot of fucking problem.

33:16Speaker 3:We don't remember events like security cameras. We remember them like storytellers. We organize experiences into narratives that make sense to us. The problem is that story can feel completely true without being completely accurate. That's why humility is one of the most valuable qualities that a person can bring into a relationship. Humility doesn't mean assuming you're wrong. It means accepting that your perspective is incomplete. Again, humility does not mean assuming you are wrong. It means accepting that your perspective is incomplete. It means acknowledging that there are details that you might not see because you're standing inside of your own lived experience. We've had couples tell us the exact same story from two completely different perspectives. One says she never appreciates anything I do. The other says he only helps when I beg him. Neither statement tells the whole story, but both reveal how each person experiences the relationship. One of the most simplest, most powerful questions that you can ask yourself is what else could be true?

34:21Speaker 3:That question interrupts your ego and it creates just enough space for another person to exist. Maybe your spouse wasn't trying to disrespect you. Maybe they were overwhelmed. Maybe they weren't trying to reject you. They just genuinely didn't understand.

34:36Speaker 2:What you needed.

34:37Speaker 3:Maybe they weren't trying to control you they were afraid. Maybe they weren't withdrawing because they stopped loving you. Maybe they withdrew because they believe nothing that they said mattered anymore. Yeah, the point isn't to excuse bad behavior. The point is to slow down before assigning motive, because one of the fastest ways to destroy trust is to become certain that you know why someone else did what they did. Behavior is observable and tent is almost always an assumption, and that's why it's so important to separate the two. Instead of saying you were trying to hurt me, maybe you should ask help me understand what was happening in that moment for you. Instead of saying you don't care, you can ask what were you hoping would happen when you made that decision. The questions don't guarantee agreement, but they make understanding possible. Before you ask who hurt me? There's another question worth asking first? What is the story that I'm telling myself? Not because your story is necessarily wrong, but because if you never question your own story, your ego will happily finish writing it for you. And once

35:45Speaker 3:your ego becomes the author, your growth will absolutely stop. All right, So more on Alfred Adler. You guys already know that I'm a big, big fan of Adlerian psychology, peaches, and I went down a rabbit hole of this dude after reading The Courage to Be Dislike And if you haven't read that, book. I highly highly suggest that you read it. You can listen to it on an audiobook in a day. It's a very short book, but it is a phenomenal, phenomenal read. I actually enjoy the audiobook better because it's two different voices versus you know, my own voice in my head, trying to read from two different perspectives.

36:17Speaker 3:Adler believed that human beings are not pushed by their past. We're also pulled by purpose. Your childhood matters, your wounds matter, history, those experience shape us in profound ways. But Adler argued that we can't fully understand a person by only asking what happened to them. We also have to ask what is their behavior trying to accomplish? What is their motive in all of this? That question will change your perspective. Behaviors aren't random. Anger has a purpose, withdraw has a purpose. Blame, defensiveness, victimhood, control, and even silence all serve a purpose. Sometimes anger protects us from shame, Blame protects us from guilt, withdraw protects us from rejection, control protects us from fear, criticism protects us from feeling powerless, And sometimes victimhood protects us from accountability.

37:09Speaker 3:That doesn't mean that someone is consciously thinking I'm going to manipulate this situation. Most of the time, they're not. Most of the time, they're not being calculated at all. They're protecting themselves. And there's a difference. A person can be sincere and still be wrong. A person can be genuinely hurt and still avoid responsibility. A person can feel completely justified and still be acting from ego. That's what makes relationships so difficult. Both people usually believe that their behavior makes sense, and from inside their own story, it absolutely fucking does. The husband who shuts down may genuinely believe he's keeping the peace. The wife who criticizes make honestly believe that she's trying to create a positive change.

37:52Speaker 3:The partner who lashs out may feel like they're finally standing up for themselves. The person who leaves may believe that they have no other choice. The problem is that if we never question the purpose behind our behavior, we start calling it truth where it may be protection. This is where self awareness is essential, guys. This is self mastery. When you're able to pull yourself out of your cognitive bias or your negativity bias, and you are able to really look at the situation and realize that, like sometimes, it's not about placing blame, it's about understanding the situation differently.

38:24Speaker 3:Your life is going to get better because you're no longer trying to live life in a black and white right or wrong, because life is not like that. There's always three sides to a story. So until you understand what your behavior is doing for you, you'll keep repeating it. If anger helps you avoid vulnerability, you'll keep getting angry. If blame helps you avoid guilt, you'll keep blaming. If shutting down helps you avoid conflict, you're going to keep shutting down. If victimhood helps you avoid ownership, you'll find ways to be the victim. This is why people say that I victim blame. Eventually you just don't have a reaction anymore. You have an identity. You become the angry one, the wounded one, the misunderstood one, the person who's always had to defend themselves, the one who never feels heard, the one who believes that they're always trying harder than everyone else. And once that identity forms, growth becomes threatened because growth requires letting go of the story that has been protecting you. This is why Adler's work is so powerful to us. He encourages us to ask better questions,

39:22Speaker 3:not just what did my partner do? But what am I getting from telling the story this way? Not just why am I angry? But why does my anger allow me to avoid feeling? Not just why do I keep blaming them? But what would I have to face if I stopped? Those are uncomfortable questions. There are also questions most people don't want to answer, because if I stop blaming you, I may have to look at myself. If I stop calling every uncomfortable feeling harm, I may have to admit that some of what I'm experienced is simply discomfort that comes with growth. If I stop saying you made me this way, I may have to take responsibility for the person I've become. That doesn't mean that the other person is innocent. It means that their behavior does not erase your responsibility for your own. This is where so many couples get stuck. They confuse explanations with excuses. Yes, your spouse hurt you, Yes, your childhood shaped you, your nervous system learned ways to protect you. And yes, your past may explain why you react the way that you do, but the explanation is not permission. At some point, every adult has to ask themselves a different question. Is this

40:33Speaker 3:behavior still protecting me? Or is it now destroying the very thing I claim I want? Because sometimes the strategy that helped you survive earlier in life becomes the strategy that slowly destroys your marriage. The wall that protected you from getting hurt also keeps you from being loved. The anger that stop people from walking over you now keeps your spouse from getting close. The independence that helped you survive chaos now makes healthy partnership feel threatening. The story that once gave you strength eventually becomes the cage you refuse to leave. That's why self awareness matters, not so we can spend our lives endlessly analyzing ourselves, but so that we can interrupt the pattern before it becomes our new identity. Adler leaves us with one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves, and again, that question is what is the goal of this behavior? If I yell, what am I trying to accomplish? If I shut down, what am I trying to avoid? If I blame, what am I refusing to feel? If I keep telling this story, what identity am I protecting?

41:36Speaker 2:Guys?

41:37Speaker 3:Those are not easy questions, right. That is a whole lot of internal like shadow workshit. That is a lot of ugly and being honest with yourself. And these are this is why you journal. This is why you put your thoughts to paper and read them and reevaluate them and try to find better ways to they say things before you have conflict. Right, honest questions are what changes relationships. All right, So the next section of this is called before divorce. Before divorce, I think there is one question that every couple needs to ask. Have you exhausted growth?

42:10Speaker 3:Not your patients, not your arguments, not exhausted the threats, the silent treatments, or complaining to your friends growth? Have you both actually grown as far as you're willing to grow, a lot of couples say we tried everything, But when you ask what everything means? What they often describe as having the same fight over and over and over again for fucking years. A lot of that isn't trying everything. That's repeating the same pattern until both people become so exhausted they refuse to continue. Trying everything means trying something different.

42:46Speaker 3:Sometimes that shit means going to therapy. I know a lot of you guys don't want to do that shit. A lot of you guys can't afford it. Sometimes it means going to a church counselor sometimes it means having a conversation with somebody in your life that's been married for eighty fucking years. Right, Like, there's other tools out there that you're refusing to get and to utilize. So this is not trying everything. This is repeating the same pattern until both people become too exhausted to continue. Trying everything means something very different. It means you looked at yourself.

43:14Speaker 3:It means you asked hard questions. It means you stopped making your partner the only problem. It means you learned how to receive love, not just how you prefer.

43:22Speaker 2:To give it.

43:22Speaker 3:It means you learned how they receive love, not just how you prefer to give it. It means you learned how they experience respect, not just what respect looks like through your eyes. It also means you become easier to live with, easier to talk with, easier to approach, to be honest with, to repair with. Because the truth is, some people are simply too difficult.

43:47Speaker 2:To be married to.

43:50Speaker 3:Doesn't make them evil, It makes them difficult. Some people are defensive, They're critical, They're dismissive or emotionally cold. Some are explosive. Some avoid very difficult conversation. Some become controlling. Some are passive aggressive. Some have always had the some have always had the need to be right. Some always see themselves as the one who has hurt. Some keep the score instead of extending grace. If no one is willing to say these things out loud, nothing's going to change.

44:17Speaker 3:One of the most important questions you can ask yourself before ending your marriage is have I become someone my spouse can safely tell the truth to. Have I become someone my spouse can safely tell the truth to. If the answer to that is no, then you may not actually know the full condition.

44:36Speaker 2:Of your marriage.

44:38Speaker 3:You may only know the version your spouse feels safe enough to show you. Let that sink in, Guys, A lot of people believe that their partners stopped communicating. And sometimes they did, but sometimes they stopped because every attempt turned into punishment. Every concern became a debate, every complaint was met with defensiveness, every vulnerable moment was thrown back at them. So before saying they never tell me anything, ask yourself what happens when they do. That's growth, not simply demanding honesty, but becoming someone who can receive it.

45:12Speaker 3:Another question I would ask every couple is have you owned your side without requiring your partner to go first. This is where so many relationships become stuck. I'll change when they change. I'll listen when they stop attacking me. I'll soften when they show me the respect I deserve. I'll be affectionate when they stop criticizing. I'll apologize when they admit what they did first. Sounds fair, right, even sounds reasonable, But in practice it creates a standoff two people waiting for the other person to become safe.

45:41Speaker 2:Enough to love.

45:43Speaker 3:That is how marriage slowly dies while both people continue believing that they are completely justified. Real accountability is having the courage to own your part even when the other person hasn't owned theirs. That doesn't mean taking all of the blame. It means it doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior. It does doesn't mean becoming a doormat. It means refusing to let someone else's failure becomes permission for your own. Marriage isn't maintained by winning arguments. It's maintained by two people who remain teachable. Teachable does not mean weak. It means you can hear something uncomfortable without immediately defending yourself.

46:18Speaker 3:It means saying, I didn't see it that way. I understand why that hurt you. I thought I was helping, but I can see how that came across as controlling. It means being willing to admit I've spent so much time asking you to change that I stopped looking at myself. That kind of humility doesn't solve every problem, but it does open the door to repair. A marriage can survive conflict, It can survive difficult seasons and disappointment. It can survive financial hardship, parenting struggles, grief, stress, sexual frustration, and even seasons where both people feel emotionally distant. What it usually cannot survive is two people who refuse to be corrected.

46:58Speaker 3:When both people become unteachable, the marriage has nowhere left to go. Every problem becomes evidence, every conversation becomes a trial, Mistakes become ammunition, apologies become questioned or gets questioned I should say, attempt to repair gets rejected because it's too late. The goal is no longer connection. The goal becomes being proven right, and once being right matters more than being close, the relationship is already in serious trouble. So before divorce, you need to ask yourself honestly, have we exhausted all avenues of growth? Have we actually learned each other? Have we changed anything about the way that we show up in conflict? Have we taken responsibility for the patterns that keep repeating? Have we sought help from someone willing to challenge both of us instead of simply validating one of us.

47:45Speaker 3:This is why you fucking guys don't go to your friend groups and bitch and complain about your fucking partner, because what's gonna happen is they're gonna go, oh, no, girl, you right, or your man's gon be like, I can't believe that, bitch.

47:56Speaker 2:You can't do that.

47:57Speaker 3:When when people have a side they feel they need to take, you're going to get a whole lot of negativity fed back into your fucking mind and nothing's going to change. It's going to reinforce the bias that you've already been telling yourself and now you have a whole lot of new ammunition to throw at your partner. They didn't know that was coming, like, can't do that shit, guys, can't do that shit. Have we practiced new behaviors long enough for trust to begin rebuilding? Have we stopped trying to win and start trying to understand? Because if the answers no, then maybe we're not done. Maybe you're just tired, and tired is real. Sometimes that's the reality is shit, guys, But tired shouldn't always get the final vote. Sometimes being tired means the relationship is actually over. Sometimes it means that the way that you've been doing the relationship is over.

48:43Speaker 3:Those are not the same thing. So a lot of marriages don't need two new people. They need two people willing to become new within the marriage they already have. That's the real question. Not are we hurt? Of course you are. Nobody wants to be in conflict with their person. Not are we frustrated? Of course you are. This shit's hard sometimes, Not have we failed each other? You probably have. The real question is are we still willing to grow? Because as long as both people are still willing to grow, there is something left to work with. But when one or both people decide that they're finished being taught, finishing, finished taking ownership, finished examining themselves, and finished becoming easier to love, that's when the relationship begins to run out of road, and for many couples, that's long before the divorce papers are ever filed. Final thoughts. I don't think this conversation is really about women filing more often. That's the statistic that everyone gets and everyone is arguing about.

49:41Speaker 3:I don't think that's the real issue. The deeper issue is that many of us have become far better at building a case against our partner than we have at examining ourselves. We know how to explain what they did wrong. We know how to describe why they failed us. We know how to list the ways that they disappointed us. We know how to tell a story in a way that makes our pain and our responsibility in this situation seem smaller. What we're far less skilled at is asking what did I contribute? That question changes everything. It takes away the simplicity of blame and forces us to look at the parts of the story we usually edited out, the moments that we were cold, the times that we became defensive, the affection that we withheld, the truth that we avoided, the apology that we never gave, the resentment that we continued feeding, the effort that quietly stopped making, while still expecting the other person to keep trying. That's where the work begins, not improving that men are the problem or that women are the problem, but in becoming honest enough to recognize how human beings slowly damage the

50:40Speaker 3:relationships when they stop growing. Marriage rarely dies all at once. It dies when two people stop being students of each other. It dies when correction feels like an attack, when accountability feels like shame. It dies when every attempt to repair feels pointless. It dies when being right becomes more important than being close. So whether you're married, dating, or separated or happily single, the lesson is the same. Stay humble enough to question your own story, Stay steady enough to hear your partner's pain without immediately defending yourself. Stay honest enough to recognize that your hurt has turned into punishment.

51:14Speaker 3:Stay mature enough to understand that your feelings are real, but they are not always complete truth. And never become so certain of your own innocence that you stop growing. The moment growth ends, the relationship starts running out a road said that earlier. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, a relationship can survive conflict, disappointment. It can survive difficult seasons, financial stress, parenting struggles, grief, and moments where both people feel disconnected. What it cannot survive long is two people who refuse to become getting better. Before we wrap this up, I want to come back to something that is very important in all of this, and that's the language language that we use. Words don't just communicate what we're experiencing. They shape what we're capable of seeing.

51:57Speaker 3:If every disappointment becomes trauma, if every cell helfish moment becomes narcissism, if every misunderstanding becomes gaslighting, if every difficult season is toxic, then we've removed the space for the ordinary human to grow. Not saying that these things don't exist, they absolutely do. Some people have experienced horrific abuse, some people have experienced real manipulation, some have lived through genuine trauma. The words matter because the experiences are real, But words lose their power when we use them for everything. If every conflict is abuse, then what are we going to call actual abuse? If every uncomfortable emotion is trauma, what are we going to call real trauma? If every selfish act makes someone a narcissist, then we've stopped describing behavior and started condemning people. And once we start condemning people, we've usually stopped believing that they can change. I think one of the healthiest questions that we can ask ourselves in the middle conflict is am I describing what happened?

52:55Speaker 3:Or am I signing an identity I felt dismissed? Is very very different than your emotionally abusive you hurt me? Is very different than you're a narcissist. One describes an experience, the other tells someone who they are. One leaves room for ownership, the other often leaves people defending themselves instead of listening. The goal of a healthy communication isn't to use big words. It's to be that it's to use the most accurate description. Because accuracy creates understanding. Exaggeration creates distance.

53:26Speaker 3:The stronger the accusation, the more certain you'd be, you better be. So before using a word that permanently defines one's character, you need to ask yourself, is this the most accurate description of what happened? Or is this simply the strongest word I can find to describe how I feel.

53:42Speaker 2:Those are not always the same thing.

53:45Speaker 3:If more couples learn how to describe their pain without diagnosing their partner, there would be more conversations ownership, repair, and understanding. Maybe there would be fewer people sitting across from a divorce attorney wondering how they got there. At the end of the day, marriages are built on one conversation at a time. They're also destroyed the same way. So choose words that repair. So choose words that make repair possible, not just words that make your case stronger.

54:10Speaker 3:Almost made it to an hour, got to that document pretty quick. That's my document, guys, Guys. I hope that this document gave you, guys some perspective. Peaches and I have been working on ways to make the podcast better. We want to change the direction of what we do. We don't want to just read emails all the time. We want to give you, guys, information that you otherwise wouldn't get, and we want to make you think for yourselves. We want to remove the negativity bias that comes from social expectations and all the bullshit that you hear on social media because it's not real. The internet is an illusion.

54:45Speaker 3:The clicks and all of the fucking nonsense that you see on there, and most influence are fake as fuck, Like there's not a sincerity behind them. They're doing shit to make money collect views, Like at the end of the day, it's a dollar for them. It's not about really changing the world. And you can see it in the way that people jump from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing in their content. Nobody's consistent because they're chasing numbers, and I guess and in a way we kind of are too, because we're trying to change the podcast in a way that's going to actually help you change your fucking life.

55:14Speaker 2:It's really easy to be miserable.

55:16Speaker 3:It's easy to blame people, it's easy to hate, it's easy to fucking be the victim. It's really fucking hard to take accountability, raise your hand and be like I did that shit, and like at the time, that was the best information that I had or I didn't know any better, and it doesn't make it okay, but that's what happened, and I have more information now and I'm working on becoming better, and that's the point of the podcast, to be better. You know, we both had really fucked up lives and Peaches and I have come a long way and we're still learning and growing and evolving. And as we do these things and we learn these new things, the goal is to pass that shit off so that you can pass it off and we can continue to change the fucking world. So normally we tell you to be the author of your own life. Today I'm going to tell you to be the change that you wish to see in the world, because if you don't do it, who's going to. With that being said, guys, thanks for being here. We love you, love and light, and we'll see you guys on the next one. Have a good day, everybody,