If your wife is emotionally checked out right now, I actually think that's one of the biggest reasons you may be getting terrible advice.

Now, that probably sounds strange because you would think marriage advice is just...marriage advice.

But it isn't.

When your wife was still emotionally engaged (even if she was frustrated) certain things could genuinely help.

But once she's emotionally checked out…the rules change.

You can have the best intentions in the world but when you're playing the wrong game, you lose it every single time. 

So today, I don't want to spend ten minutes defining emotional checkout, as important as that is (I have done that in other videos).

Today I want to show you what actually matters ONCE she is emotionally checked out, and the priorities you need to start implementing NOW to turn her connection with you and your relationship around.   

EMOTIONAL CHECKOUT CHANGES THE RULES

Right off the bat, I have to tell you something that may go against what other people have told you and you might believe because it is just easier…

Your wife’s emotional checkout doesn’t mean that she has changed.

That is an easy scapegoat to use thinking, I can’t make her happy because she has changed.

First of all, it is not your job to make her happy, but as soon as you use the “she has changed” excuse, you remove any ownership from your controllables. 

What has really changed is the situation itself. 

I grew up in a place where there are about 3, maybe 4 really bad snowstorms per year, so I got pretty good at driving through some bad storms.

If you’ve ever experienced driving in a snowstorm, you will REALLY understand this (and if you never have, it is still easy to understand).

If you have ever been driving down the highway and everything seems normal and then all of a sudden a white out just blows in (which is basically a blizzard out of nowhere and visibility goes to very minimal), did you keep driving exactly the same speed (or…would you)?

Of course not. You don't say, “Well, this speed worked twenty minutes ago, so I'll just keep doing it."

No. The conditions changed so your driving has to change too.

And the cars that speed by you (as I have seen before) you usually pass down the road spun off wrecked in the ditch. 

You have to think of your wife’s emotional checkout the same way, the conditions have changed in the dynamic. 

Which means, your approach has to change as well. 

Because most men are going to sense her pulling away and you’re going to go to the first instinct of trying to solve the problem by either needing to show her how much you care or dragging her into “serious” conversations to try and straighten things out. 

That is not going to move the needle because those actions are designed for someone who is still emotionally available enough to work through things with you.

She is no longer looking for more emotional work. 

So instead of grabbing on tighter to her, which is going to do nothing but push her to the brink, there are 3 priorities that actually matter once your wife has emotionally checked out.

The first priority isn't rebuilding attraction, It isn't rebuilding intimacy right away,  the first priority is that you have to stop making every interaction feel emotionally expensive to her.

PRIORITY 1: REDUCE EMOTIONAL COST

Every interaction between the two of you, whether you know it or not, has a price tag attached to it

And the currency those interactions trade is in emotional energy. 

Some interactions cost very little.

Others are much more expensive.

When she has reached the point of emotional checkout and you keep sending her invoices in the form of “we need to talk”, “do you even still love me?”, “can you please tell me how to fix this”, and so on and so forth, she is going to get to a point where there are no more emotional energy bills in her purse. 

There are none left in the drawer, none hidden under the mattress. 

There is nothing left in terms of her emotional currency. 

So the priority is to stop sending her emotional invoices and lighten the way she feels around you. 

She has to start feeling like she doesn’t have another emotional job to do every time you’re together and having interactions. 

If she seems quiet, you don't immediately assume something is wrong and start digging for answers.

Moments like that are where your relationship quietly becomes a little less emotionally expensive.

You’re removing unnecessary pressure from her to allow her to breathe and heal a bit emotionally.

Once you understand this first priority and you start to do a good job in reducing her emotional cost, you want to make sure you stay as far away as possible from making this next common mistake a lot of guys make even if they are able to lower the emotional cost. 

Once you've stopped making interactions emotionally expensive, you have to make sure you stop gauging how well you think it is going based on how she is reacting to you. 

PRIORITY 2: STOP CHASING PROOF

I know the feeling of figuring out some things that you start to do that you believe will change your wife’s opinion of how things are going, and dedicating yourself to implementing them in your life. 

It gives you this renowned feeling of hope, but it can also cause you to start doing the counterintuitive action of looking for proof from her that it may be working. 

Proof that she's warming up and noticing how you’re being a bit different, or the gold nugget, proof that she is actually changing her mind. 

And I get it…your relationship feels like it is hanging by the thinnest of threads and you really want that blinking green light that tells you you're moving in the right direction.

But real change really doesn’t work like that. 

You can’t go to the gym Monday and check the mirror Tuesday morning and say “hey I think I see another ab showing up”, (no matter how many times I tell myself in the mirror, it hasn’t worked yet). 

Give your wife some credit.

She is going to start to notice your behavior patterns if you seem much happier when you have good interactions with her versus seeming not noticeably discouraged after a difficult one.

So if you keep riding the roller coaster based on whatever proof you think you may or may not be seeing, it’s going to just start absorbing all of your focus and take you down a sideroad far away from the one where you can make the consistent changes that work over time.

And that is where the next priority will start to be so important, and really determines whether your wife starts experiencing you differently to the point where she has the best chance to start to build that emotional connection with you again. 

It has everything to do with whether being around you feels peaceful...or whether it still feels like work.

PRIORITY 3: BECOME EMOTIONALLY SAFE TO BE AROUND 

When you start to create an environment where she feels emotionally safe to be around and open up to you more, this is the real first piece that can get you on the fast lane to reconnection.

It doesn’t mean there won’t be some bumps along the way, but it is such an important piece of the reconciliation puzzle. 

When you consistently create this environment, it helps build her trust back up where she no longer expects that she has to carry part of your emotional world anymore.  

And on top of that, you develop the leadership abilities to validate her emotions in a way that makes her feel safer with you than anybody else in the world. 

If she not only doesn’t feel like she has to manage you anymore, but trusts how you have been showing up as her rock, oh it’s a game changer for your marriage and reconnection. 

Emotional leadership is so important to build that attraction of you in her, but it doesn't mean you have to have all the answers. 

You don’t have to be some perfect bulletproof leader. 

It sounds scary being the leader, and a lot of guys I talk to who end up joining my coaching program were just like me.

Confused as to what it really means to be the emotional leader. 

If I can really summarize, it means staying true to your purpose as a man and not asking your wife to carry questions that you should be learning to carry yourself. 

That doesn't mean you never ask for support and you bottle everything up.

It means your emotional balance isn't constantly depending on her response.

This goes such a long way because there are going to be ups and downs in life.

Being the leader doesn’t mean you can necessarily prevent things from happening, but it is how you respond emotionally as the leader of the family which makes the huge difference. 

As you are taking action on these 3 priorities and starting down your transformation path, she probably isn’t going to wake up one morning in these first few weeks and tell you how emotionally grounded you are now. 

And that leads us to the cornerstone that allows for the reconnection to happen, and a piece that almost everyone struggles with if they don’t go into it with the right mindset. 

Because even when you're doing everything we've talked about there's still one thing that makes people uneasy about….

Time.

Most men believe time is their enemy, but what if it is actually your friend?

WHY TIME ISN'T YOUR ENEMY

If you're someone who likes solving problems, you know the easily summarized path would be identifying the issue, making a plan, and taking action. 

Then you expect to see relatively immediate progress.

We naturally have this expectation that effort and results stay fairly close together.

The reality is, when you’re trying to rebuild your relationship after tumultuous times where she has disconnected emotionally, it is going to probably take longer than you anticipate.

And that isn’t a bad thing.

You need that time to rebuild her confidence that a new version of you isn’t temporary. 

She isn’t going to get some magical feeling that appears right away.

It’s going to be time and repetition of showing up as a new you who is able to be grounded and provide emotional safety for her. 

Because she is going to be subconsciously waiting to see if this version of you survives ordinary life.

Every interaction where you stay consistent with the guy who can be the steady leader will build another piece of evidence. 

Not evidence you're trying to present but evidence that naturally accumulates.

She is going to start trusting the repeated experience she has with you, so that is why I don't want you to think of time as something you're simply waiting through.

Time is revealing.

It's exposing whether your old habits eventually come back or whether this new way of showing up has actually become who you are.

Now…before we wrap this video up I have to talk about one mistake that can undo all the progress we have talked about today if you start implementing the priorities we talked about. 

This mistake usually happens right when men think they're finally making headway in reconnecting with their wife. 

STOP LIVING LIKE EVERY DAY DECIDES YOUR MARRIAGE

Right now, there is a high percentage chance your life is being lived where it feels like every single day will decide the future of your marriage. 

If today goes well it will give you some hope. If today goes poorly, it adds a level of defeateness to your feelings. 

This becomes a very exhausting way to live, and more importantly, it’s just not true.

One day doesn't decide your marriage, much like one workout doesn’t determine your health.

As you go through this transformation that is needed to be a confident leader, there will be times where corrections will need to be made. 

You’re not going to determine everything in one day, rebuilding a relationship is going to be a process. 

Don't confuse being imperfect with going backwards.

Your growth doesn’t require perfection, but it does require honesty, ownership, and making sure that any little speed bumps get corrected to get you back on course. 

Think about 6 months from now if you decide to put in the work to grow.

You wake up and take care of your responsibilities, spend some time with your kids and interact with your wife, and maybe you talk about planning a weekend getaway.

Whatever it is, you feel completely different and in such a good place. 

You’ve created a new standard for yourself which permeates to the rest of your family, and the connection with your wife is better than you could have ever thought.

That can absolutely happen for you, but it doesn’t happen overnight and if you’re so focused on making every day feel like it holds the entire relationship in its hands.

It also cannot happen if you are not committed to putting in the work that is needed.

And in my experience it's the work that changes far more than just your marriage.

YOUR NEXT STEPS

So if you’re ready to put in that work (and again, it becomes a lot easier than you think once you take that action), or at least take a peak at the first step to see what it looks like, I'd really encourage you to watch my free Relationship Rebuild Masterclass.

Because in this video we've talked about what really matters after emotional checkout.

Inside the masterclass, I go much deeper into the best path in how you actually rebuild emotional safety, trust, respect and connection.

The link for the free masterclass will be down in the description box and pinned comment below. 

If you watch the free masterclass and realize that you see a lot of what I talk about happening with you and your marriage, towards the end of the masterclass you will have an opportunity to book a free strategy call to apply to work with me.

When we work together, we'll take your unique situation and I will guide you through your transformation and help you apply the skillset to your own relationship, which is the fastest way possible to start attracting that reconnection with your wife.  

So again, the free masterclass link will be in the description and pinned comment below. Take action and watch it today.

And now that you understand what actually matters when she’s emotionally checked out, this next video will really break down why she doesn’t feel safe with you and how to turn that around. 

Go watch that one right here.