What if I told you that making “save my marriage” your only goal can actually make it harder to build the marriage you want?

That sounds backwards, especially when your wife is pulling away and all you can think about is stopping her from leaving.

But when every change you make is tied to whether she stays, you can end up performing your growth instead of actually owning it, and that is where things start to fall apart again.

So I want to show you how to tell the difference between change that is being driven by the marriage crisis and change that is actually becoming part of who you are,  and what to build instead so the progress you make still holds after the fear starts to fade. 

 

THIS EMERGENCY WAKES YOU UP BUT CAN’T KEEP YOU GOING

When you’re in the day-to-day struggles of a rocky marriage and you really start to think your wife may actually leave you, your brain is probably not exactly interested in a five-year strategic planning session.

Don’t leave this video because I am not telling you today you need to listen to me for a five year plan.

But obviously just being in the thick of your own thoughts while this has been going on with your marriage and trying to navigate everything else in your life, you’re not sitting there calmly thinking, 

“Interesting. Perhaps this would be an appropriate opportunity to evaluate our long-term relationship dynamics.”

The only thing probably going to be on your mind is how do you really stop your wife leaving from happening?

That is the big overarching goal, how can I save my marriage because it feels like I have tried everything and at this point in time, it feels like I am just failing. 

It is very challenging to feel like all the signs are all pointing to this emergency getting worse. 

But I want to challenge your thinking a bit, which is going to seem very counterintuitive to all of the feelings you are experiencing during this time.  

We have to go through all of these ups and downs in life to get better. If there weren’t the bad, we wouldn’t know what the good is.

So although it feels like a time of crisis in your relationship, you have to really change the way you’re looking at it.

This crisis is actually nothing more than a wake-up call… think of the emergency sirens going off in a good way, it is trying to wake you up. 

The most meaningful change in life usually always happens because something painful preceded it which made needing to change impossible to ignore. 

That is how most people are going to find my channel. 

The only reason you clicked my face (probably 99% of the time for men watching) is because you are going through some sort of issue with your relationship (maybe it hasn’t become that extreme yet but you sense things are off). 

You probably didn’t click for some level of entertainment value. 

So when you start to think about it a bit differently, you can re-focus the goal beyond just saving the marriage. 

And when you do that, what is cool is that you can start to have the fear of losing your wife and family dissipate because you are putting your energy and intention towards things that give you the conditions to ultimately save your marriage.

This is why I think there is such a major difference between a version of you who got the wake up call from the crisis, versus a version of you who needs the crisis to basically keep you motivated enough to keep growing.

And I’m going to get into more of that and why it is so important in a minute…

But essentially, the first version of you can actually build something durable, and the second version of you is living on emergency power off a crisis generator (and generators always have a finite amount of fuel they can provide). 

If your effort is attached to that one big specific outcome of saving your marriage, your motivation for making the right changes is going to be hijacked by whether that outcome seems to be getting closer or further away. 

So let’s look at this a bit closer because this really will play one of the major roles in whether or not you ultimately do save your marriage if your wife is pulling away.

And it is going to feel very paradoxical.

ARE YOU ACTUALLY CHANGING OR JUST ON AN EXTREMELY LONG JOB INTERVIEW?

When your wife is seeming more and more distant in your marriage, there is a really strange psychological state that you can get into.

And I look back on all of my failed relationships, and it really started to feel like every single time things were taking a turn for the worse I would almost act like I was living under constant evaluation. 

I remember when my ex-fiance was showing all kinds of signs of being distant, I would spend hours at night wracking my brain trying to think of a) things I could do to get her to change the way she is feeling, and b) just completely overthink any of our interactions to nitpick things I may have done wrong.

 

Maybe you don’t consciously think you’re doing that, or may not think of it that way, but pay attention to what can happen and see if this is something that is related to what you’re experiencing.

Think about conversations you have had with your wife recently that may have been either good or bad, like maybe not necessarily ones that turned into arguments.

Do you ever start this evaluation process where you’re watching yourself talk and wondering if you’re listening the way she wants you to or was that one thing you said too defensive.

If you have done that, even if it was after the conversation where you do a breakdown of what you think went right or wrong.

You are now in a phase where you aren’t interacting with your wife anymore. You are completely driven by evaluating your own performance from the outside and trying to determine whether you passed or not. 

But the problem is, that takes away all the intention you should have on being the leader and confidence in being you in the interactions, and instead almost waiting to see if she will give you the passing grade or not. 

Imagine applying for a job you really want and you get funneled into the interview process, but the interview process is like EIGHT MONTHS long….

And I know there are a lot of jobs out there right now where people apply and it FEELS like the process is that long (and you also never hear back from their HR team… I have heard so many stories from friends).

Anyway, imagine this process with your wife being like that. 

You wake up every morning, gotta put the suit back on and be as good as you can because every single point in the conversations matter and you never know when the interviewer (your wife in this case) is going to make her decision on whether to hire you back into the marriage or not. 

I have to tell you straight up, if you are creating an environment where your wife is effectively the person that holds the clipboard and ticking off boxes on whether she approves of you or not, and that is your motivation, you are going to have a very tough time turning your marriage around.

Changing the way you approach things is non-negotiable moving forward.

That is not to be confused with me saying that what your wife is experiencing and what she says does not matter.

That couldn’t be further from the truth so please don’t mishear me. 

If she has been with you for 5, 10, 20 years and she is telling you that you are impossible to communicate with, or that she has felt lonely for years…

Yes, those are very important pieces of information for you moving forward…

I am just talking about the difference between getting that information and needing her approval for changes you are trying to make.

Information can help you grow, needing approval can make you disappear.

Because once you are terrified that any disagreement might push her one inch closer to the door you are going to start editing yourself.

And before long you are supposedly trying to “save the relationship” by slowly removing yourself from it and that is not the direction you need to be travelling in. 

Which brings us to something so important in terms of understanding why just saving the marriage cannot be the only goal. 

 

YOUR WIFE DIDN’T AGREE TO THIS BARGAIN

We talked about how making changes to how you are showing up as a leader in the marriage is one of the big keys to actually creating the results of reconnecting with your wife. 

This self-improvement is imperative to creating those conditions. 

So lets say you start doing that and get serious on changing those patterns that may have really had a significant blow to your marriage.

Maybe for you it is emotional regulation and working on creating emotional safety instead of arguing every point.

There are other areas to build skills on as well, but let’s just say those are the two key ones for you. 

Those are fantastic starting points, but along that journey what is so common to happen is underneath everything in your own subconscious, a little bargain or negotiation starts to operate in the background. 

 

And the bargain your brain starts to negotiate towards your wife (I will say towards because it isn’t with) sounds a little something like this:

If I become different enough, you eventually have to give me the marriage back.

She never agreed to that bargain.

You may never have actually said it to her or proposed to her that deal.

But you usually discover that the bargain exists when enough time passes and your wife does not respond the way you n

The days start stacking up where you are really being disciplined with your new habits but you start to let those thoughts creep back into your head where frustration shows because you’re not getting her response or acknowledgement yet. 

But I want you to pay attention to what the frustration exposes.

Because all of that growth and all that discipline you are putting towards it is incredibly invaluable to your life.

But if you let those thoughts creep in and take hold, it can start to make your growth suddenly feel worthless because she did not reward it with reconciliation yet.

So all that is telling you, is that your growth is still attached to the outcome as if it were a transaction.

And that puts you in a horrible position because now everything you do comes with that invisible set of terms and conditions.

When you divest yourself from the outcome of saving your marriage as the primary goal, you are able to make sure you never even have that set of terms and conditions show up in your invisible inbox. 

And that leads us into the real test on how successful you will be in saving your marriage..

That real test is navigating what happens after the threat of divorce disappears, or at the very least, disperse a little bit. 

 

THE REAL TEST IS WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE THREAT DISAPPEARS

And I will give you a really good example to illustrate what I mean.

Suppose your wife has complained for years that you get defensive.

That is your big achilles heel, for whatever reason (maybe it is insecurity, perfectionism, whatever the driver), but you are very defensive all the time. 

So then your marriage starts to fall apart, to divorce level threats, and you finally take your wife’s complaint seriously.

You decide, you’re going to work very hard for the next several months to become much better at listening before immediately firing back in defense of whatever she is talking about.

So you do that, and you really start to get better at showing up with shields down. 

Now, your wife does notice how much better you have been trying to be, so the divorce cloud really dissipated now that things have gradually started to improve. 

The rest of the year is much better compared to the period that was leading towards the divorce talk.

Would you still want to keep working on defensiveness (for one) but also growing in other ways?

If the answer is secretly, “Well, now that she is happy again I probably won’t need to work this hard or grow any further”,  then I can promise you sooner rather than later you will start to run down the same road of troubles again. 

All the work you did was really just in response to the emergency and it was tied to the outcome of her giving you another chance, so I would argue that it was never really for the right reasons. 

So even though it seems like it “worked” (for lack of a better term), it’s going to be built on a very wobbly foundation. 

You want to commit to developing qualities and skills that would make a future relationship fundamentally better than the one that got you here, and make you a fundamentally better man and leader in your life than you were previously before. 

That is the goal. The qualities, or growth driver, cannot disappear the moment the threat against your relationship disappears temporarily.   

 

BUT WHAT ABOUT HER?”

And this is where I know some men start getting irritated with relationship advice.

Because hearing things like that makes them feel very angry or dismissive.

Nobody likes to look in the mirror, and it is way easier to just point the finger elsewhere.

They get mad and say  “So apparently I have to become Gandhi, Superman and a marriage therapist while my wife gets to do absolutely whatever she wants.”

Which is clearly, not what I am saying.

Actually somebody commented over the weekend on one of my other videos, 4 Reasons Your Wife Isn’t Affectionate Anymore, and literally proved this point:

What did he say… he said something like “ this entire video is a list saying  there is no responsibility,  or accountability for women” or something like that. . 

And I just laughed to myself a bit when I read it because, especially if you have watched me for a little bit, you know that has absolutely nothing to do with the video at all.

Nor would I say that or even insinuate that.

Your wife is an adult and she has responsibility for how she participates in a relationship too.

But I know guys like that to a tee. They will most likely always stay close to wading in the victim pool, will find some red pill content on YouTube that tells them women are terrible and it will justify their world view so they don’t have to make any changes for themselves.

And until they do, they will continue to get the same results in their life and continue to blame everybody else. 

Yes it is true that the marriage is ever going to become genuinely healthy again, you cannot create that entire relationship by yourself.

You cannot communicate for two people or create mutual intimacy and respect by yourself.

And having contributed to problems in your marriage does not mean you need to tolerate anything and everything forever.

There may eventually be legitimate boundaries and standards you have to think about too.

But if you hear a comment like what that guy wrote and maybe have a feeling of wanting to agree a bit, you have to know that I am not talking to your wife.

I am talking to you because you do not need to wait for her to work on her side before you begin dealing with yours.

And the entire point of this video and separating saving the marriage as your goal from really becoming the man and leader you can be…

The reason for that is if you want your marriage to be saved, you have to become a different man in it regardless of what she does. 

When you can create polarity and be the masculine leader, it will naturally create the environment to change the way your wife starts to respond to you. 

What I think is very underrated about keeping the entire goal divested from saving your marriage to then focus on really upping your level as a man is that it starts to give you opportunities for more choices.

And I think there is something incredibly freeing about finally understanding that.

I have had a few clients who started to work on themselves and REALLY committed to making the required changes in learning leadership skills in my program, and really built up their self-respect and identity. 

They both basically did the same work, but had two very interesting and different developments.

One guy, Jaylen, had all this growth and as he was just levelling up as a man. His wife was noticing, but what was interesting with Jaylen was that all kinds of behavior he used to let slide before (because he was basically brainwashed into the happy wife happy life toxicity), to just try and please her and keep the marriage going, he stopped letting that behavior slide.

He realized he deserved better treatment, and decided that it was actually better for him and his wife separated to have some space. 

So that goes back to that naive comment on my other video with that guy and mindsets alike talking about no accountability for women.

Actually it is quite the opposite, when you start showing up as the leader of the relationship and you have the skills to set boundaries, be confident in you as a man, then it is your job to hold her accountable for the treatment of you.

But you cannot do that if you play victim all day long and play in fear of losing your marriage.

And the other client of mine, Liam, his wife recognized how much he had changed and still did not want reconciliation. 

But he realized how much of himself he lost over the years of his marriage, and that the growth was an incredible change to his life and the best thing he ever did for himself. 

Him and his ex-wife are actually on really good terms, and their son is way better off for that. 

That is an important reality check because relationship content can sometimes accidentally create the fantasy that if you become “good enough,” the other person is obligated to return.

They truly aren’t.

If your entire plan requires another adult losing the ability to choose differently, you do not have a plan, you just have a wish.

And if you’re sitting there watching and thinking about what has gone on in your relationship and you want some guidance on what exactly you should be working on to help your situation, that is why I put together a free Relationship Rebuild Masterclass.

You can watch it after this video for free by clicking the link in the description or pinned comment below. 

But there’s something else I want you to be careful of, because even when you say you’re going to focus on yourself, you can still make most of what you do be about your wife without realizing it.  

 

“FOCUS ON YOURSELF” CAN STILL BE COMPLETELY ABOUT HER

That phrase “focus on yourself” gets thrown around a lot…and yes for sure I have said it as well, but contextually it gets thrown around a lot in different ways.

Some people use it in a defeatist sense to basically say “she doesn’t matter, just focus on yourself king”. And all that noise.

So when I have used it, I know the context I am using it in.

When I say focus on yourself, it does not mean she doesn’t matter. 

But you can technically be “focusing on yourself” while making nearly every decision about his wife.

That goes back to the motivation being separate from getting your wife’s approval. 

And I am guilty of that, when I was working in corporate and my ex-fiance called off our engagement.

While I was in chase mode still, it was shortly after she left me and I actually got a promotion at the time.

And the only thing I thought of was how can I use this leverage to look more attractive in her eyes, how can I get her to reconsider. 

I wasn’t trying to be manipulative, but there is so much junk out there saying that women only care about that stuff.

But the reality I was faced with when I looked in the mirror was that my fiance left me because of the constant experience she had of me not being the leader in our relationship. 

It was when I decided to make changes for myself and really focus on myself, and took those years to really learn how attraction works and how to be a leader with women, that is when everything changed for me.

And funny sidebar, I am not a big social media guy, but I guess I had instagram at the time while me and my ex-fiance were together and she was still following me. 

And I was levelling up in my life and even when I first started dating the woman who is my wife now, my ex-fiance I guess started creeping her social media and sent me a few messages.

And I just ignored them and ended up deleting my socials.

But it really showed me what happens, because she was the one who called it off but from afar she could see all the things I was doing to really grow as a man and that got her curious again. 

And what I really did learn through all of that is all the people-pleasing, cow-towing, and trying to become a perfect guy is really not needed.

It is so freeing once you learn these skills and start to embody that abundance mindset in your everyday life.

And that is really what I want for you. 

 

STOP TRYING TO BECOME “THE PERFECT HUSBAND”

 

What you really have to avoid is the trap of thinking that you have to become the perfect husband. 

There is never going to be a you that exists in this world that is some imaginary version of a perfect husband who never says the wrong thing by accident and is always 100% bulletproof in communication. 

Like someone who is going to make the absolute perfect decision 100% of the time.

You’re not going to be some relationship robot who has perfect coding.

If you start believing you need to become that robot before your marriage has any chance, you are going to put an insane amount of pressure on yourself that is not only unrealistic, that notion is false.

What matters far more is whether you start to grow and develop a reliable way of dealing with your imperfections.

In a way where you really identify what your weaknesses are (like I mentioned, can be defensiveness, victim mindset, boundaries, validating her emotions), whatever it is that you need to work on and learn a repeatable process owning them and continuing to grow. 

That idea is far more realistic because your wife does not need you to become incapable of making mistakes.

You need to become much better at being the leader in the relationship who is willing to be okay with making mistakes, but also understanding how to handle situations after you screw up.

That is sustainable, and frankly, that is much closer to how healthy adults actually live.

 

BUILD CAPACITY INSTEAD OF MANUFACTURING AN OUTCOME

If you want one word to think about after this video, I would use the word capacity.

Right… that is a much more useful way to think in that perspective than just wondering if you’re doing better.

If you really decided to take ownership and start working on these skills, are you becoming more capable?

And that can be measured in a lot of areas, again focus on the ones you have identified through reflecting on what your wife has told you throughout the relationship…

More capable of hearing something uncomfortable without jumping immediately into defensiveness.

More capable of setting a reasonable boundary without turning it into punishment or communicating it in a controlling fashion.

Those are just a few examples but they are very powerful. 

 

DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT SUCCESS

So I want to be able to think about success in a different way over the coming week. 

This is a first step in being able to focus on what you can control.

Do not spend every night trying to decide whether your marriage is moving, or can move closer to reconciliation day-over-day.

Most of the time you are not going to accurately know that anyway, so it is a waste of your energy.

Instead, pay attention to the capability factor I was just mentioning.

Are you becoming more capable of showing up in a way you actually respect?

You are trying to build evidence for yourself first that you can trust yourself again.

A big part of being the leader is having that self-respect and solid in your identity for yourself first. 

So think about the areas where you can build that capability, the ones that have been an achilles heel in the connection with your wife that has led the marriage down to this point where you are, whether that is just the start of some rockiness or in a really bad situation where separation and the possibility divorce are looming on the horizon. 

If you want help to identity what has been going wrong in your relationship, again you should go and watch my free masterclass linked in the description because if you’re struggling to know what is causing your relationship to get to this point and how to fix things, it will really open our eyes to what a lot of guys miss. 

I really encourage you to watch it as a first step to get you on the correct path if you’re trying to save your marriage. 

And if you have been in a marriage that has been really struggling for a while and there are a lot of times you feel like giving up, or you’re just in that go-along-to-get-along phase where you are content just keeping the peace but not sure if you should bother fighting for your marriage…

Go watch this video next.