If trying harder saved marriages, yours would already be fixed and I wouldn’t even have this channel…

Most men in a marriage crisis aren't failing because they don't care enough.

They're failing to fix their relationship because panic makes them do more of the very things pushing their wife further away. 

WHEN YOUR MARRIAGE BECAME YOUR FULL-TIME JOB

I want you to think back to when she was first starting to become noticeably distant and she stopped initiating intimacy with you.

If you’re in an even more hurtful state, she may have told you she loved you but isn’t in love with you anymore. 

Whatever the trigger was, there was probably a moment where something changed inside of you.

You may not have noticed it that acutely at the time, most men don’t recognize it right away. 

But there is this shift that happens where the relationship stops being just a normal part of your life and turns into your entire focus or mission

You wake up thinking about it. You go to sleep thinking about it.

You're driving to work thinking about it.

You're sitting at work pretending to focus while thinking about it.

You become obsessed with trying to figure out what is going on in the relationship and how it has gotten to this point.

You wonder what she is thinking or feeling, and what the hell you should do next to try and save the relationship. 

And before you know it, you're no longer focusing on ANYTHING else in your life or living your life at all, you are straight up in crisis management mode with the focus on your marriage. living your life.

I remember being in this exact place myself. I spent over a decade recycling this feeling every few years in new relationships, until the last straw where my ex-fiance broke my heart and called off our engagement.

I couldn't turn my brain off.

Every conversation and interaction I could get with her during that time period felt like life and death.  

I thought if I could just understand what was happening, or find that missing piece that was making her pull away I could turn everything around.

So I know the feeling of almost helplessness because nothing you can think of seems to be working.

What I didn't realize at the time was that I had stopped participating in my life. I had become a full-time relationship manager.

Maybe you can relate to that.

Maybe your mood depends entirely on how things seem between you and your wife on whatever specific day.

If she's warm and talks to you, you feel hopeful…optimistic.

If she is being cold or shutting down, your stomach drops and you feel crushed.

You basically wind up with a season pass to an emotional amusement park and are riding the roller coaster every single day.

And here's the problem.

The more dependent you become on the status of the relationship to determine how you feel...directly correlates to the more pressure you unknowingly bring into the relationship.

But before we get there, I want to talk about something that nobody seems to discuss.

Because this is really where everything starts going sideways.

THE ADDICTION NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

Most people think addictions look obvious. 

If you’re an alcoholic, slurred speech or erratic behaviour is probably going to be more prevalent in your day-to-day life, even if you get really good at hiding it. 

But there is another addiction that shows up constantly during a marriage crisis which most men do not think about in this way.

The addiction is trying to do something.

Think about what happens when you're anxious and uncomfortable..

Your mind starts racing and you start imagining worst-case scenarios about where your marriage is headed..

Naturally, you want relief so what do you do?

You take action.

But the common action taken is that you send that text, or you try and get her to sit down for another conversation to really fix things, or you buy her flowers or a nice bracelet.

So for a quick second you may feel better because you feel like whatever action you did, you may get temporary relief.

It feels productive and like you’re doing your part to try and get things to work in the relationship. 

Issue is…when you don’t get the desired response from her no matter the action you took, you get that anxiety right back a few hours later and it’s like you need another hit.

Another conversation or reassurance attempt to really try to find out where things stand with her. 

It’s this feeling of “if 100% effort isn't working, I'll give 200%. 

It is this addiction to giving everything you have because you want to save it so bad and it feels very noble to pile all this effort.

Is this resonating, do you see the pattern?

Because that was my pattern, and I know I am not alone in this.

This is so common with the men I coach. 

And when we do this, we all think that we are doing those productive things to save the relationship, but what we are actually doing is trying to manage our own fear. 

The problem is that every time you use the relationship to soothe your anxiety, you unknowingly make the relationship heavier.

What feels productive to you in that need to accomplish something and move the relationship forward as quickly as possible into a better place is actually where all your real trouble begins. 

WHY SHE STARTS FEELING EXHAUSTED

And I have empathy for this cycle because I was hamster wheeling in this loop for decades. Basically every guy ends up doing something like this in your situation, that doesn’t make you a bad husband. 

But good intentions don't always create good results.

All the extra intentions of asking if she is okay, if she wants to talk or if she thinks things can improve together all sound good on the surface.

When you start aggregating them together in repeated instances in conversations, each one gets more and more pressure filled and it becomes telling for her that you truly do not understand what the reason for her losing that emotional connection is. 

It is very counterintuitive to think that somebody showing genuine care about wanting to make things right and fix the relationship with the woman they love will make things even worse end send it towards the end for good…

But that is the truth you have to really digest if you want to save your marriage. 

And if you want to know why the relationship becomes too heavy when you take that approach, you have to remove yourself for a second and focus on her side of things.

If every conversation has this underlying emotional hidden agenda of you trying to fix the marriage (without showing the signs of understanding her emotions), it really doesn’t feel like a relationship anymore. 

It almost becomes this game of cat and mouse, where you are trying to get reassurance or prove something to her and she is too emotionally exhausted to play along, so she starts dodging it by checking out. 

ATTRACTION STRUGGLES TO SURVIVE UNDER EMOTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

The more responsibility you start putting on her emotionally, whether you intend to or not, it causes the attraction to continue to fade away.

Maybe intimacy still happens occasionally, but it feels completely different. Like she's trying to get through it rather than genuinely wanting to be there. 

Attraction really struggles to hold when she starts feeling responsible for carrying your emotional world, when the reality is you are supposed to be the leader and provide that safety for her.

So it becomes this counterintuitive struggle, because you are consumed by trying to fix things and the quality your day is pretty much determined by how she treats you or if she gives you any reassurance

But when you do that, it makes you take all of those actions that are based in the fear of losing her and it creates that emotional dependence on her which pushes her further away. 

Which is exactly why “what you fear you attract” is a very true statement. 

Simply put, attraction tends to struggle when one person starts feeling responsible for keeping the other person emotionally okay.

That means your marriage is no longer a partnership, it is just emotional caretaking. 

WHY EFFORT ISN'T THE PROBLEM

The cruel part is that most of the things you're doing are things a loving husband would do.

That's what makes this so hard to see. The problem is that fear has taken over the steering wheel.

It doesn’t mean you should immediately stop trying 

That is not what I am saying

The problem with the effort you’re channeling all your energy into, is the direction of that effort. 

That's the distinction.

I believe the fastest and most effective and only true way to save your marriage or relationship is through becoming the masculine leader that the relationship needs to reignite the connection. 

I have felt the results in my own life in all areas when I dedicated myself to make that transformation, and seen it in my clients and their relationships when they did the same.

Yes, saving your marriage or relationship requires effort…

A lot of effort….

It requires discipline, consistency, patience, humility, growth, self-awareness, and emotional maturity.

If you’re putting all of your effort into trying to get her to see or believe you will change to get her to reconsider and come back, that is where all the trying harder is going to be for not.

WHAT REAL EFFORT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

So where should all that trying harder go if the old direction doesn't work?

What does real effort actually look like?

It looks a lot less dramatic, and WAY more impactful than most people think. It isn’t all in ridiculous hatched plans to woo her back with romance like the movies show you. 

Real effort looks like learning how to regulate yourself when you're anxious.

Real effort looks like resisting the urge to constantly seek reassurance.

Real effort looks like building a life that doesn't revolve around monitoring the relationship.

Real effort looks like learning how to hold boundaries that build up her respect for you again. 

It may sound scary to do, because the initial thought is that you have to do whatever it takes to get her to change her mind so taking focus away from her is going to let her slip away.

But I promise you, this is the only true way that works to get her to see the real change and it gives you the self-respect that is naturally going to get her curious about you again.

And even more importantly, completely take you from a state of hopelessness to a man who is in control of his life. 

TAKE THIS NEXT STEP

So if your marriage is struggling right now...

The answer isn't that you don't care enough or haven’t tried hard enough…

Like I said at the top, clearly if all the trying hard worked to save marriages, yours would already be saved.

If you want to do what actually works to save your marriage, start putting that effort into becoming the man she will want to reconnect with you again. 

And if you want to learn the key areas that will time collapse your ability to save your marriage, go watch my free masterclass now that is linked in the description and pinned comment below.

I lived over a decade of heartbreak and pain, and realized I had to be doing things the wrong way. And I was, so everything I learned that works has been put into my Relationship Rebuild program, where I teach men now so they can turn everything around.

So check out that masterclass today if you want a proven path to save your relationship and change your life…

And if you’re interested in learning more on why it feels like she isn’t trying with you, check out this next video right here on saving your marriage when you’re the only one trying.