Today’s post is about how to approach what seems like impossible problems. It starts with a man, Simon, sharing his frustration about his marriage, followed by my thoughts on how to help him see the problem in solvable terms.
His words: I thought I’d met the love of my life. Initially, everything felt perfect, and I never doubted for a second that we’d grow old together. But 15 years later, it’s all changed. I can feel her slipping away, and I don’t know why.
At first, it was little things; she’d complain about how I did something and point out where I’d gone wrong. It wasn’t very pleasant, but I thought ignoring it would improve it – it didn’t.
Then, over time, it became constant. Every conversation ended with me being told I had failed her in some way. And no matter what happens or whose fault it is, she’s never wrong ever!
There’s no way I can ever get it right for her and all I can say is that I’m sorry. I can’t remember the last time she said she was sorry. It’s always on me.
I am so confused; I rarely drink, I don’t smoke, I’ve never had an affair. All I do is go to work. What does she want from me?
So I asked her, “What can I do? How can we fix this?” But she never seems to have an answer. There’s no solution to the problems she presents. There are just more accusations, more things I’m doing wrong. And when I push for something, anything, that we can work on, she just gets more upset. It’s like she doesn’t want to fix it; she just wants me to feel like I’m failing, and it’s miserable.
She doesn’t even know how much this is tearing me up inside. When she attacks me, I just sit there in silence, listening, letting it all pile on.
Every now and then, I get angry, not because I want to, but because the frustration gets the better of me. I try to keep it in, but it slips out. I hate it when that happens because it never helps.
It only upsets her more and makes me feel more like the bad guy.
I know I’m failing, but nothing I do makes a difference. I’ve tried everything. She keeps threatening to leave me but never does.
It’s like she’s waiting for me to do something, but I have no idea what. So, I go to work daily, trying to put it out of my mind. Work has become the only place I feel I’m still doing something right.
But even that’s not right now. She complains that I’m working too much and never home. She tells me that I don’t care about her or the family, which isn’t true.
I can’t win. When I’m home, I feel like a failure. When I’m at work, I’m accused of abandoning her.
Our sex life has been dead for the last 18 months. We’ve become like strangers living under the same roof; our interactions feel transactional as if we are passing by each other like ships in the night.
There’s no closeness, no affection. It’s like the love we once had has been replaced by routine, a cold, mechanical existence.
To be honest, I’ve stopped talking to her as much because every time I open my mouth, it just makes things worse.
The silence is the only thing I can control right now. At least if I’m quiet, we’re not fighting, but I know she’s not happy.
But it doesn’t stop the distance between us from growing. I can’t fix the problems she’s sharing with me because I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried, and nothing works. And no matter how much I bend over backwards to fix things, she never admits she’s wrong or says she’s sorry. It’s like it all rests on my shoulders.
As much as I love her, keeping that love alive for her is getting harder. Every day feels like another battle I can’t win. I don’t want to lose her, but sometimes I wonder if we’ve already lost each other.
So I just keep going, day after day, pretending that everything’s okay while feeling more exhausted than I ever have in my life.
I don’t know what else to do. I love her, but I’ve reached the point where I don’t know if that’s enough anymore.
I’m giving up hope. The only thing keeping me going is the kids.
The Shift: Moving from Despair to Connection
The key to dealing with any relationship problem is understanding that if I can’t fix it, it means I haven’t understood it properly yet…
As you can hear, this man is giving up. This story is typical of what many men say in their sessions with me, which is why I felt it important to share it to help anyone in this place.
This gentleman is facing what seems like an impossible problem. When men have a problem they can’t solve, they tend to give up, and if the problem persists and they can’t escape it, they suffer.
But is the problem impossible to solve, or is his thinking part of what’s keeping him stuck?
Some of what you are about to read is a partial solution to a complex problem. It’s one of the many shifts a person has to make to see their problems in solvable terms.
To help this gentleman become more successful, multiple shifts of understanding and focus were necessary to free him from this problem.
I’m about to explain one of the many shifts he had to learn.
One of his challenges was the meaning he placed on the relationship and his role in it. He believes he’s failing because he’s tied his self-worth to her happiness.
Many men do this. I remember one man had left his wife because he wasn’t able to cure her eating disorder. To him, this meant he wasn’t enough for her, and so the pain of this meant he had to leave her.
It’s this type of thinking that can lead people to make terrible mistakes that affect everyone.
When she’s unhappy, Simon also sees it as his failure, which leads him to feel like he’s never enough. This has trapped him in a cycle of despair, where he feels responsible for fixing everything, but despite his efforts, nothing improves.
But the truth is, he isn’t responsible for her happiness, but he is responsible for caring about how she feels this small shift is where the first important shift sits.
The problem she faced was about what happened when she communicated her feelings. His response to her unhappiness was for him to become unhappy when what he did didn’t work.
She translates these events as follows: When I share my upset with you, you end up making my upset about you, and I’m left to deal with my upset on my own. I’ve never felt so alone!
He would never naturally see it this way, but it was what was happening to her.
He was fixated on her happiness or lack of it unaware that a person’s happiness is highly complex and connected to many filters, which are led by a person’s emotional state moment to moment.
So, making yourself responsible for how a person translates the world they are in is an impossible quest.
The role of a partner is to care in a way that makes their happiness easy for them to achieve/connect to.
As you can see, this self-imposed responsibility is the biggest misconception holding him back.
Her happiness is something only she can fully create or control. His role isn’t to make her happy; it’s to create an environment where happiness is easier for her to connect to.
There’s a huge difference between feeling responsible for someone’s emotions and being a supportive partner who makes joy and fulfilment more accessible.
The New Meaning: Redefining His Role in the Relationship
He must adopt the new meaning: “I am here to support, care and love her, but her happiness is not my responsibility.” This is a mindset shift that allows him to:
– Stop internalizing her dissatisfaction as a personal failure. He can learn to separate her emotional state from his sense of self-worth. This will help him stop the cycle of sadness and depletion that comes from feeling like he’s constantly falling short – this will stop him from making her unhappy about him.
– Start seeing himself as a partner, not a fixer. This shift is hard for men as they spend their whole lives fixing problems and feeling good when they do. Being a fixer may be his superpower, but if he’s always missing the real problem (because he’s never been a woman), he will keep fixing the wrong problems, which is why she remains upset.
His responsibility is to learn how to make her happiness easier to reach by being emotionally supportive, compassionate, and understanding, NOT by trying to solve all her problems but by caring how she feels about them.
You see, whilst he was trying to fix what he thought was the problem, he was missing what she really needed. She didn’t want his solutions. She wanted him to be present, to connect to care.
Instead, he kept giving her advice that she didn’t ask for, and when she got upset that he didn’t understand, he saw that as his failure. By making her upsetness about him (i.e. he saw this as his failure) she would feel a weakness in him that women tend to find unattractive.
If she sees him step down, almost all women will automatically step up and then resent the fact that she had to step up into being the man.
This will affect how she feels about him, and her ability to connect to herself, which my clients discover is critical for her to stay invested and ultimately crucial to her ability to keep her attraction for him alive.
Speaking to the husbands reading this today…
Whether this problem is like yours or not it illustrates there is always a new way to see a relationship problem.
I have been studying what works and what doesn’t for the last two decades with 1000’s of couples, and your wife’s thoughts about what she needs, values, and how she experiences life is totally different from yours.
Your wife is not a version of you in any way!
So, if she behaves differently, it doesn’t make her wrong; she is just different.
The world you live in as a man is totally logical to you, and I know you will struggle to translate her behaviours because you can’t get your logic to make her behaviours make sense to you.
So, many men will see her as badly behaved, and I suppose if she were a man, that would be true, but she isn’t.
Her behaviours are not supposed to make sense to you based on your current way of thinking as a man.
The solution you are desperately looking for sits in the need to expand your own logic to understand that her logic is also logical; it’s just different from yours, and for a good reason.
The reason why the differences are there is to keep the passion and sexual energy alive.
Sex lives die because differences are not respected and encouraged.
Most people don’t understand this critical part of the equation, and so they end up killing their sexual energy without meaning to.
So, the natural differences in her that are foundational to keeping her sexual energy alive for him must be understood, nurtured and developed.
When you understand and take action on this, she has the chance to feel good about herself, and she’ll then attach that feeling to you, and then she will do anything for you.
The key here is to find ways to stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution.
If you’re ready to hear my take on your problem, the process starts with an application for a free call.