Transcription
75% of divorces are initiated by women. 50% of women that are postmenopausal say that menopause played a significant role in their decision to get a divorce. Half of those post-menopausal women later regret the fact that they got a divorce. So what is this with women? Why is it women who are the self-professed more emotionally intelligent gender finding that divorce is the best feature or the best option that they have to deal with their emotions to deal with their relationship issues? That's what I want to talk about today. This is life 2.0. Let's talk about it.
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I'm not granting women a pass here. However, I do think it's important for men to get an understanding of the psychology of women. And this is something that's primal. It goes back for thousands and thousands of years. And there's probably some kind of a uh historical emotional aspect to it as well. Women, and I've said this in other videos, they live from a place of fear. Fear is their chronic emotion. It's something that's happening in the background all the time. Men don't experience this. So, it's very difficult for us to understand exactly what's going on in their heads.
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Doo is a wonderful dog. I love him to death. He will play with other dogs, no problem at all. But if he experiences fear, he will become quite violent. He will become quite reactive. That's the way animals are. When they get backed into a corner or they feel afraid, they can be reactive and they can cause harm. A women are the same way. It's this very instinctual experience. I was talking to a guy earlier today whose wife would scream obscenities at him just out of the blue whenever he did anything that upset her or anything that she was unhappy with. She would lose her and just start screaming at him from a place of what seemed like rage to the point where he would have to leave the house. He couldn't be in the house anymore with her. And it pushed the relationship right to the brink of divorce.
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Her reaction was one that evolved or came from fear. I know that's hard for a lot of guys to understand. So, we're going to dig in deep. And like I said, I'm not giving them a a pass because of this. They're still responsible for it. But I think it's important that you understand fear as a very very powerful motivator with women.
So, we've talked about what men don't understand about women. Let's talk a little bit about what women don't get about men. Because I think once this all starts to come clear, it's going to make a lot of sense to you. What women don't get is that men's primary love language, we'll call it, since that's such a a clicky kind of word. Our love language is not just physical touch. It's not acts of service. It's not, you know, compliments and gifts and all that. No, our love language is sex. Let's just be really straightforward and direct about that. Women don't get that. They don't understand it. I remember when I was married wanting sex, my wife said, "John, it's just like one more thing on my to-do list. I just don't have the time or the energy at the end of the day to have sex with you. I've got all these other responsibilities, and sex is just the least of my concerns." Now, at the time, I did not fully understand how critically important that conversation was. That conversation probably more than any other conversation led to our divorce because that happened, you know, at a time when we were, you know, just with children and um and things were just not in a really great place. I remember watching some daytime TV show with her one day, maybe it was an Oprah show or something like that. They had some psychologist on and she was recommending for couples who are struggling in their relationships that they should have sex every single day for a full year. And I was like, that's the solution. Like that's it. That's it. Like if we had sex every day for a full year, I know that we could heal this relationship. I know it now. I didn't understand why at the time, but and as soon as I brought it up, she said, "There is no effing way that's happening. I just do not have the time." D. But now I understand. Deboo. Deboo. Come back. Now I fully get it. Sex is our love language. It's not just about the physical act of, you know, copulating in some, you know, crude way. No, it's about the way we have connection. Like sex is our pathway to emotional connection. When we do not have sex as that pathway to emotional connection, all other forms of affection become less likely. We become alienated. We feel like we're being punished. So, if a woman withdraws sex in a marriage, that man feels like he is no longer in a marriage. He basically now has a roommate who he has to support. Women don't understand that.
So, two things we've figured out so far. One, women come from a place of fear. You know, they react like animals when they're afraid, just like any animal would. And two, men connect through sex. So, we're starting to starting to lay the the the groundwork here for what's coming.
So let's talk about what gives women fear when they see a disruption in their relationship. Women's emotional radar is very very powerful. They are very emotional beings and they speak the language of emotion. So when they perceive that something is not right in your emotion in in your relationship, they perceive a threat to their well-being. So they're depending on your relationship, your marriage, the foundation of their lives to be solid. And when they perceive that something is going on that isn't right, they get afraid. They become afraid. And this fear mechanism then can manifest itself in all kinds of really irrational bad behavior. the screaming, the shouting, the pouting, the um uh silent treatment, all of these negative behaviors inevitably have their root in some form of fear. And they are now acting out from this fearful place in order to get a reaction from you. They're hoping that you will see that their behaviors are so bad and so irrational and so ridiculous that you will do something. You will make some kind of a gesture toward them in order to heal whatever it is is bothering them to reassure them that they are loved, to reassure them that the marriage is solid, that everything is fine.
Well, if they've cut you off, guess what? So, if you're not getting sex as a man, you're starting to feel like you're cut off from connection emotionally. You're no longer in this relationship as a as a co-person in this relationship. you're no longer um connected emotionally. You feel isolated. For most men, this woman is the only person they have in their lives. And I don't think women understand that. I mean, men are isolated in marriages to the to a large degree because we lose track of our friends very easily. We're not as good at keeping up with them. Um inevitably, we're going to start to be more and more dependent on this one relationship, this woman, for everything in our lives. When that happens and she withdraws sex, well, now we are completely emotionally isolated. We no longer have a trusted partner in this this relationship. We are now in stoic mode. We're now like, "Okay, I've just got to endure this. I have to push through. I've got kids. I've got a mortgage. I've got responsibilities. Obviously, this marriage is over. She no longer is having sex with me. She doesn't think it's important. She's emotionally isolating me. I am just going to have to endure it and push forward." This is not a good place to be mentally as a man in a relationship, especially with a woman, because it comes off as I don't care. I'm going to occupy my time with other things. I'm going to focus on things I can control. Since I can't do anything about this relationship, I'm going to focus my energy at work. I'm going to focus my energy on my hobbies. I'm going to focus my energy on washing the car, mowing the lawn. I'm just going to keep myself busy so I don't have to deal with this problem because I feel completely isolated and disconnected in this relationship. And that is what causes her to feel all those negative things about the relationship. And it all started because she didn't understand that sex was his pathway to emotional connection.
Now, obviously, there are other things that can cause a woman to feel fearful in a marriage. Economic uncertainty certainly can put her in that place. Um, if she feels like she's being ignored because a man is spending more time at work because he's stressed out or whatever. um men in their desire to um protect and provide, which is sort of like a primal thing for us. Well, that can cause a woman to feel like she's being neglected because oftentimes providing and protecting means taking time and energy and dedicating it to those things that cause us to provide and protect. Um, sometimes disagreements will come up where a woman wants something, usually a financial thing, and a man says no and he puts a veto on it, and that can make a woman feel quite uh um discriminated against. Make her feel disempowered. It can make her feel like she's unloved.
Debb God, I can't turn around for a minute. There you are. What a good boy. Let me see you. Good dog. What a good boy.
What men don't understand about women is women put their um put your relationship at the center of their lives. They expect that this relationship will be the foundation for everything that they build in their in the in your world. However, because they are emotionally triggered very easily, their um radar is extremely powerful. They frequently will misinterpret behaviors as being problematic and see them as a threat to the relationship as a whole. That emotional hypersensitivity becomes extremely problematic because men have no idea what that is. Like we do not experience emotional hypersensitivity. If two men sit down and have a conversation over something in which they disagree, there will be very little emotion involved in it. you know, it will be a very in most cases a rational, well thoughtout. It could become somewhat emotional, but no one's going to die, you know, like we're not going to kill each other over something like this. Well, if you get two women who are having a disagreement over something that they're passionate about, it can get ugly. It can be like you might get law enforcement involved like that could be a problem. So, women are much more emotional. They're much more emotionally triggered and they are uh they have this emotional radar that is on all the time and they're hyper sensitive. All of these things lead to women misinterpreting the conditions of their lives as being under threat and they believe that the man's behaviors are in some way causing this threat. And that is the underlying cause of the vast majority of divorces that don't involve you know um cheating or uh you know alcoholism or drug addiction or you know those those big you know uh vice related um divorces. In the vast majority of cases that I talk to and with guys these are guys that are calm. They're wealthy. They are rational. They're well thought out. They're not hitting their wives. They're not drinking. They're not drug addicts. They are they put together um they have a good living um and their wife is in this reactive state. They're screaming. They're on their their last nerve all the time. The guys are thinking about I just need to get out of this house so I can find some peace. This is such a common thing. And what the guy doesn't realize is that she's coming from a place of fear. And what she doesn't realize is that he doesn't feel connected to the relationship anymore because she stopped having sex with him. Partly because she feels threatened by, you know, something else that might be going on. Maybe, you know, they had some financial insecurity in their lives at some point and that caused a withdrawal of sex. Maybe she felt threatened under those conditions. But in any event, sex frequently is at the core of the of the problem. And the woman's misinterpretation of the threat to the relationship is what in inevitably causes the relationship to end in divorce.
Some of the compounding factors that really push this over the limit is women are externally validated. They are always looking outside of themselves for reassurance that things are the way they should be or to get approval from the outside world. So, they can do that. Obviously, we've talked a lot about it on social media, but also they do it with their friends, their so-called friends. um when they start spilling their guts to their friends about what's going on in your relationship, their friends take on what appears to be a sympathetic tone. They want to be helpful for whatever reason. And I'm not sure why, but a lot, not all, but a lot of women will double down on the negative aspects of what's happening in the relationship rather than trying to find solutions. So, in their counsel, they are making the matter worse than it actually is. It's like they're they're pushing the fear button over and over and over again. Almost as if they are trying to destroy their relationship. I don't know if it's a jealousy thing. I don't know if it's a uh I don't know what it is. I don't know why they do that to each other. If a guy comes to me, he wants some help, he wants some advice, I'm going to give him help and advice. I'm going to give him the best I got. I'm not going to try to make things worse, you know. But women seem to want to destroy their friends by giving them really really bad divorce information. Maybe they're thinking that they're helping by agreeing with them about how bad things are and doubling down on that idea and just reinforcing the fact that everything is just. But that's what they do. And that often times pushes women to that point where they're willing to file for divorce, where they're willing to take that next step because they've gotten all this support and this this validation from these other women in their lives, probably women who are in bad marriages who are getting divorced themselves, but they they seek this validation from them. They get this reassuring, yeah, he's a dick kind of energy. You should leave him. And then next thing you know, they're sitting in front of a lawyer.
I think another thing that men don't understand about women is their fear goes from zero to 100 instantly. So, if you're working late because you've got this big project at work or whatever and you need to um to get things done, she immediately jumps to the worst case scenario. You're cheating on her. You're no longer interested in her. Her marriage is is threatened. Her whole life is threatened. Her whole foundation for her existence is threatened. Do you see what I mean? And all you're doing is coming home an hour late because you had to work on a project. It instantly goes there. Now, they'll try to cover up because they realize this is irrational, crazy behavior. They realize that they're nuts. And I think that a lot of women have this awareness of just how how weird it is inside their own heads, how the chaos reigns, and they'll try to keep it under wraps. Try not to overreact. But anytime that they feel that there is a threat to the foundation of their lives, like you're running into some money problems, you're into some debt, maybe a business went bad, maybe you can't make a credit card payment, something's gone wrong, they immediately feel that threat right at the core of their lives. It's like you can no longer um be in this relationship because this relationship doesn't exist anymore. It's the the the foundation of it has been broken. And when that foundation is broken, well, they want to leave or they're going to go talk to their friends about it and then they're going to leave. I don't think most men understand that. Most men don't realize just how whacked out the fear is in their heads and is very difficult to be aware of it.
Now, if she's not having sex with you and you're working late and you're having financial problems and you're distracted by other things like you're trying to stay out of the house cuz she's not having sex with you, don't want to deal with her she's always reactive and you're mowing the lawn more, you're hanging out, you know, you're taking long walks just to get away from her or you're um locking yourself into the TV, you know, and you're just no longer even conversing with her. Well, you can see how that fear just mounts and mounts and mounts and mounts and it becomes inevitable that this divorce is going to happen.
So, how do you stop it? I mean, obviously, you can't force her to have sex with you. You can have a conversation with her obviously about what sex means to you and how connection is at the core of it. But if your relationship has already been down this path and you're you're in this situation where you know your communications has been cut off, um she's screaming at you all the time. um she's reactive to just about everything. As a man at this stage in the game, you need to realize where this is coming from. You need to realize that this is a fearful reaction. It's like a dog that's been u pushed into a corner and this is a good dog, a good loving dog and you've pushed it into a corner and it feels threatened and it is showing its teeth. It is coming after you. Beating the dog does not solve the problem. So that's not an option. Okay, that's not an option. You need to soothe these emotions. You need to reassure her that there is a solid foundation in your relationship. You need to work through what this is, what this means. You need to have conversations. You need to open up the doorway and start talking about what you're experiencing and try to do it from a place that doesn't involve a lot of emotion. Understanding that she's going to be emotional. She is going to be emotional in this conversation. She's going to lose her. She's going to scream at you. She's going to say bad things about you that are not true. You need to just understand that that's the way she's going to be. And if you react to her in kind, if you give her back what she's giving you, it's over. Relationship is done. You're going to have a fight. No conversation's going to happen. You're going to continue down the path towards divorce. It's just almost an inevitability. The only thing that you can do as a man is to use the skills that God gave you as a rational thinking being and play the game of helping deescalate her emotions so that she can finally have a rational conversation with you. She will not be able to do that because she's un her rationality, her rational thought is under this huge layer of emotional that's got to come out. She's got to scrape the emotional off before you can get down to the rational, reasonable person that you can talk to. So, she's gonna have to dump it on you. She's going to dump it on you. She's going to dump it on you. She's going to dump it on you. Just sit there and listen and be kind and thoughtful and say, "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry that I made you feel that way. I'm sorry that this has happened." Even though none of these things need to be true. Okay? This is not about you accepting responsibility for her negative state of mind or her emotional whack jobness. You just need to scrape off all that emotional crap so you can get down to what eventually will be hopefully a thoughtful, reasonable, rational person that you can talk to. It's like when a a toddler has a tantrum. When they start screaming and kicking their feet, you don't want to try to talk to them then. That's not going to work. But eventually they exhaust themselves. Like toddlers only have about 15 minutes worth of energy. then their battery is dead. Once their battery is dead, well, you can talk to the little kid, you know, you can sit down and say, "Now look, little Joey, was that really the best way for you to handle that situation? What did you want? What if you just ask mommy nicely or you just ask daddy nicely? You know, you can have a conversation with them at that point and you can change their behavior. But if you try to interject in the middle of that tantrum, you're not getting anywhere. You're not changing anyone's behavior. In fact, you're reinforcing the bad behavior, you know? So if you start screaming at her in the middle of her screaming at you, you're just reinforcing the fact that she needs to scream louder. You see that? You see what I mean? You're going to have to go through that whole deescalation process. You're going have to have that really tough conversation about um what's going on in her head. You're probably also going to have to have a really frank, rational, calm conversation with her about external validation and how she needs to come to you when she's feeling insecure and have a conversation with you about those insecurities. And then you are really going to have to see that she is having this underlying fear reemerge. And you're going to have to treat it as that. I know it's easy for guys to dismiss a lot of emotional behaviors from women because they seem so innocuous. so um incidental that it doesn't deserve the time and attention that it actually does. So, you're going to have to respect that. But once you create a habit of respecting her concerns, her fears, her insecurities about the relationship and you are able to address them in meaningful, rational ways and reassure her that your relationship is fine, that you love her, that you're caring for her, that you're not planning on leaving, that you're, you know, 100% on board. And then you have that conversation about sex and the importance that it has for creating connection in your relationship. You can heal a relationship that has been broken for a long time. You can bring it back around to something that both of you can enjoy. You don't have to go down the path of divorce.
This solution becomes really really challenging with post-menopausal women. And part of that is because for many of them, not all of them, because I know women experience menopause in different ways. Some women experience really harsh, crazy hormonal shifts and other women seem to go through it much more easily. For those women who have those really harsh emotional shifts after they've gone through menopause and they're in that pmenopause state, they're having all these swings. Once they go through menopause, they frequently end up feeling um less compassion. They are less nurturing. They are less loving in many ways. So, it can be difficult to to have that relationship even through this whole menopausal process or to have this conversation through this whole menopausal process. It may require that you need a third party involved. You may need to um have someone, you know, present to keep her emotions in check cuz women are very externally focused and they will not want to embarrass themselves in front of a third person while they will be very happy to scream and yell at you in person themselves. So, as a last resort, if you're dealing with someone who is permenopausal or going through menopause and they're reactive or they lack compassion or they seem to be very um unloving in their communication with you and it feels like there's just no getting through to them, if you still want to maintain this marriage, you're going to have to find someone who specializes in working with post-menopausal women through marriage counseling. Now, I'm not a big fan of marriage counseling personally. I have not found any value in it, but I have heard from some guys that they were able to find good counselors and they were able to get through some of these these rough spots. So, don't discount it completely. There is an opportunity. There is like a slim opportunity, but an opportunity that this could work out for you.
When it comes to divorce, I'm pretty sure that most women are delusional, especially as they get older. When they get over 40, maybe 50 years old, they think that they're going to cash in big, and they're not. um, yeah, they're going to get half of your wages and half of your assets, but their standard of living is going to be reduced significantly. There are economies of scale when two people live together under the same roof, sharing the same wages, etc., and it creates a standard of living. When you take that and divide it in two and give half to each person, you don't have the same standard of living, their um financial status changes significantly. If they were upper middle class, they're going to drop down to being working class. It's going to be a significant drop. They're going to see they're not going to be living in the big beautiful house anymore. They're going to be living in some little apartment somewhere. um, and that from the women's perspective, they may think that they can replace you, that they'll find some guy who will help support them, and they will lead their relationships with sex. I know this woman who um I have not had sex with, but who has dated a lot of men recently after her divorce, and she has sex on the first date almost every single time. and she's thinking that she's doing this that she's going to ent trap or she's gonna find some guy who's going to fall in love with her right off the bat because that's what's happened for her in the past when she was younger. Well, now she's in her 40s and she's kind of chunky and she's not all that cute anymore and she doesn't realize that men will just have sex with her because men want to have sex. It's not it's not a loving act, you know. It's not like this is emotionally moving in that direction, but women tend to believe in the power of their ability to seduce a man into a relationship. And maybe when you're 20, maybe when you're 25, maybe even when you're 30, but in your mid-4s or you're 50 or you're 55. Sorry babe, it's not going to happen. You know, if you're going through trouble with your wife, have her watch this video. I'll try to keep it clean. I'll try not to blow it up too bad. But honestly, most men in their 50s or 60s who find themselves single after a divorce, they are not looking for another 55year-old woman to hang out with. They're not looking for some uh woman with a ton of baggage to hang out with. You know, life is growing short for them. They're thinking, I want to sew some wild oats. I want to find a woman in her sexual prime. I want to find a woman who's beautiful, who's motivated by sex, who loves having sex, who enjoys being with me, even if it's just for my money. I just want to have fun, damn it. And they'll do that, and they're not going to find that with some middle-aged or older lady, you know? They're just not going to find that. They just don't want that. um, so they're not going to improve their lifestyle at all. If she leaves you, her life is going to suck in most cases. She's going to struggle. She's not going to have another meaningful relationship in her life. It's very likely that she's going to die alone. It's very likely she's going to struggle financially and it's very likely she's going to be miserable. That is the path that lies ahead of most women who get divorced after middle age in this country, especially in the post-menopausal world. That's just the way it goes. So, I don't think they have the reality in their heads about what's lies before them. They don't realize just how bleak their options truly are. After divorce, many of them learn the hard way how bleak their options truly are. And that's when they have regret. That's why there's this huge movement online of all these divorced middle-aged women expressing regret about having left their husbands. Because the truth of the matter is these men were good men. These were men that were providing for them. These were men that weren't beating them. They weren't drunks. They weren't drug addicts. You know, they were doing everything in their power to create a good, healthy relationship for their wife. And she took them for granted. She wanted more. She had that Disney princess mode in her head about what life was supposed to be like and the perfection that it should have had. And she's unhappy because he didn't live up to her preconceived ideas of what it should have been. She didn't take any time to actually learn about relationships. She thought that her emotional intelligence was enough to get her through. But she never looked back in the mirror at herself to determine if there was anything she was doing to contribute to this marriage failing. It's very rare that a woman is reflective on her own behavior in a relationship. They do become reflective after that relationship is over. When they're in that regret phase and they realize that they lost something that was really valuable, then they become reflective.
Men will end it there. Once that separation has occurred, once that divorce has occurred, there is a change of status for that woman. Very seldom do um men go back with a woman who has scorned them in a serious way, who has harmed them, who has emotionally beaten them, who has cut them off, and who has left them for dead. Basically, men move on. They move on to greener pastures. They'll lick their wounds. They'll learn what they can, and they'll find someone else. Most of the time, guys don't go back to their their exes. Women will come after their exes. If you're a guy that has been divorced recently and you're starting to get calls from your ex, here's a warning for you. She's got something in her head. I suggest you get some clarity about what you want from this relationship and what you don't want from it and make it clear to her right now. Because if you don't, she's going to try to worm her way back into your life. Man, I'm telling you, it's going to happen.
The tragic irony in these cases is that the women unknowingly destroy the thing that they were trying to protect with their fear. without realizing it. Their behaviors lead to the destruction of the marriage that they so valued from the very beginning that they set the stage for all the terrible things that follow. When they get a little bent out of shape, they don't communicate well and they withdraw sex and they use sex as a weapon or they use sex as a chore. Oh, I don't want to do it tonight if I'm just too tired. They don't see it as a form of connection. They don't put the time and energy into understanding what motivates their man. They don't put the time and energy into understanding that by creating this emotional connection through sex that they will have so much more um security in their relationship. Because a man who is getting sex on a regular basis, enjoyable sex, I just swallowed a gnat. He will honor that relationship and be much more responsive to that woman's needs. He will be the guy that she wants him to be. But if she's withdrawing the sex, she's withdrawing the emotional connection. She's withdrawing the love. That's what she doesn't understand. That emotional connection is love to him. And once it's gone, it's gone.
All right, you guys. That's all I got for you today. I certainly hope you found this video to be enjoyable, educational, helpful in some way. I'm not just going to beat up on women. You know, I thought that this one needed to be a little more even balanced because I do see in a lot of the guys that I'm coaching that there are opportunities for them to save their marriages if there was just a little bit better communication, just a little bit more understanding of what's going on in the head of the other person. Anyway, till next time, stay healthy and if you can stay single.