Is he being unreasonable or am I not seeing his point?

Hey Mils,

Out of curiosity, would you say your husband feels overwhelmed with life in general right now?

I could be totally wrong here, but when I read your description, I wondered if this is a guy who feels like he’s struggling with life yet can’t communicate that he feels like he’s failing and needs help.

When men feel like they’re “failing at life”, they can become quite unpleasant to deal with. It’s been said that men will express anger and criticism when they’re upset because that’s the only emotion they feel say to communicate. Men don’t feel safe to communicate fear, shame, defeat, etc.

If he’s feeling like he’s drowning, he probably won’t communicate it in that way. He doesn’t want you to worry, he doesn’t want you to think he’s a loser, he doesn’t want you to feel incapable.

Men instead tend to push people away when they’re feeling stressed so they have space to regroup and figure out a solution. That could be what’s happening here.

I have a suggestion or two, but let me know if I’m making sense here or if I’m totally off-track.

AngieBaby – oh wow, I don’t know how I flubbed that in my head.

The coffee must not have kicked in when I was writing back this morning! :)

Hey Mils,

In this answer, my goal is to give you a path to improve your relationship with him.

I want to point out that I’m not excusing his behavior or saying that anyone is to blame for it. I could talk about such things, but my impression is that you came here because you want your relationship to improve and you want to know how to do it.

So that’s what I’m going to discuss. It’s not to say I’m not aware of what’s happened that’s wrong or unfair, but rather, all that stuff is irrelevant if we can get your relationship to a better place.

What do I mean when I say a better place?

– He’s in a better mood and that good mood spills into the relationship (instead of a bad mood).
– Even when he’s upset, he treats you as someone on his team, not someone he blames or criticizes as somehow responsible.
– You feel that your relationship is growing deeper, more loving, more bonded.
– You feel like your relationship works and flows well. When there are problems you can work them out and end up in a better place than before. And when things are good, you are both so happy that neither of you even think about “the relationship” because it’s so obviously good you don’t need to think about it.

Sound good?

My impression is that’s where you want to be, so that’s all I’m going to speak to here.

So…

Let’s take a step back and do a thought experiment.

If you can (for just this moment with me), I want you to erase everything you think you know about men. Everything you’ve observed in your life, everything you’ve seen in shows/movies, everything you’ve seen on social media about men, common relationship advice…

Just for this moment, forget all of it so we have a blank slate.

There’s an emotion that drives all men.

Men can feel all the emotions, but this particular emotion is stronger than all the other emotions.

It determines his mood, it determines whether he feels good or not.

This “emotion” is his sense of whether he’s winning at life or failing at life.

Why is this important?

If a man feels like he’s “winning”, he feels the ultimate good mood. He’s happy, he’s enthusiastic, he’s motivated. He’s his best, strongest self. Usually that also means he’s generous, easy-going, loving, etc.

If he feels like he’s “losing”, he is living in agony. At every moment, he feels a powerful gnawing sense that life is painful and unhappy. He will feel ashamed, angry, sad, unmotivated, humiliated, weak, pathetic, etc.

And since men don’t feel like they can show their emotions (as they feel it telegraphs that they’re losing), it usually is only shown as anger or emotional withdrawal.

This is so important to understand: Men have all the emotions, but this emotion of winning/losing is so strong, it overpowers all other emotions.

In that way, it is really the only emotion to consider when dealing with a man. If you can support this “winning” emotion, it is the emotional gateway to everything with him: Deep connection, appreciation, love, inspiration, etc.

As far as a man is concerned, that’s really the only relationship that can work: A relationship with a woman that understands his primary emotional experience!

Why? Because whether you’re there or not, he has to deal with this emotion!

For the rest of his life, he needs to walk this line of figuring out how to live in a way where he feels he is “winning” in the ways that mean the most to him.

OK?

So that’s the background here that you must be aware of.

If this is the one thing you’re aware of, then you can get very far with men. And without understanding this fact about men, you could waste years trying to connect with a man and never hit the target.

It’s really that important.

I could say a lot more, but I want to just leave you with that for now.

I want you to really deeply consider what I said here.

Specifically, I want you to forget how you used to look at the previous arguments and instead look at it from this one easy perspective:

Everything a man says and does reflects how he currently feels about his “winning” at life.

If he’s upset, angry, sad, unpleasant, etc. it’s because he feels like he’s losing in his life in some meaningful way.

Regardless of what he’s saying to explain himself, you can be assured he’s in agony on the inside.

Instead of imagining that you have an interpersonal “relationship problem” that involves the two of you, I want you to experiment with imagining that he is having a personal problem with feeling like he’s losing at life.

This is just an experiment.

Just imagine that. Imagine you’re dealing with a man who’s heart is breaking every day under the weight of the world. He is burning in fear, stress, shame, humiliation, frustration… and on top of that, he can’t even express it because he feels that would make him even more of a loser (and thus, feel worse!).

Again, this is just an experiment.

But I want you to imagine it.

What kind of perspective does this give you? What kinds of ways might you talk to him instead (both when he’s being unpleasant but also when things are good)?

That’s what I want to leave you with for now.

I just put out a new product called The Missing Factor. I’m not here to advertise that per se, but I can tell you that I explain all the dynamics of how to connect with him through this emotion in that program, so you get past all his defensiveness and can “talk to his heart” whenever you are with him.

Hope that helps.

P.S. I will add one last thing: Sometimes when I talk about ways to improve the relationship, I’ll get comments about how the guy is behaving badly and asking if I’m suggesting that the woman should just put up with bad behavior.

My response is that I want to empower you with what really works. When I show you how to connect with a man and create love in an easy, targeted, effective way that really works, you have the power to choose.

That is, you know that you have the power to create love with any man you want and any relationship you want, so you don’t have to put up with anything you don’t want to.

That said, really, you wouldn’t be here asking this question if you didn’t want to improve this relationship you’re currently in. So I’m speaking to that.

In the bigger picture, I’m giving you the ultimate power and freedom to choose how you want your relationship to be. That’s possible because I show you what works to get the results you really want.

@Raven – Awesome, I’m glad. That’s a great way to phrase it, too.

I think you have a style that’s helpful to people here. It’s different than my approach, but I can see where you’re coming from and I appreciate that you hit things from a different angle.

In nearly all cases, I’ll go in with the assumption that if the OP tells me they want to make the relationship work (or that they’re asking about it), I’ll default to giving them the most effective path to making that happen IMO.

Now… if the OP reads it, follows it and then says, “That’s too much work” or “That’s not worth it”, that’s great. That gets them to choosing the kind of quality No you’re talking about here.

No argument from me here to either you or @Tammy, just talking shop with you for a minute since you both are forum OGs. :)