Transcription
[Music] Hey Joseph, what's up?
Hey, how are you?
I'm fantastic, brother. How are you?
Oh, you know, I'm I'm doing I'm doing all right. What's up? So, um, I'm gonna be 23 next week. Um, been married for almost two and a half years to my wife. We got married, I was 20 and she was 19 when we got married. Um, and I guess I struggle with a lot of fear, anxiety, and just worry constantly. I think my brain is just constantly overthinking everything, and it's kind of exhausting. And I think it takes a toll on my marriage and, uh, just I I'm not able to show up as well as I think I'd like to, just because I'm so in my head that with every decision I'm making, I'm like having this insane internal dialogue. And I have you messed something up big in your life? Like, do you have some memories of doing some like something humongous and stupid? It's just me and you and a couple million people, just be honest.
So, I mean, I know that a lot of my fear, uh, all of that stuff comes a lot from my upbringing. I I would probably say just because I I saw a lot of divorce, I saw cheating, I saw death threats. My grandpa held a shotgun up to one of my stepdad's heads at one point. Uh, it I've just seen a lot, um, on both my mom and my dad.
I want to go one step deeper. More than seeing it, you've experienced it. Yeah, right. That's in your chest. Yeah. It's in your knees. It's in your legs. It's in your back. It's in your shoulders. It's in your body. Yeah. It's there's really not a day that goes by where I'm not really, like, my chest just always feels heavy. Okay. And I feel like with every decision I make, there's just something on the line. Like I'm like I'm screwing something up or I'm. Where where does that story come from? Did you get blamed for some of the chaos in your home growing up? Did you drop a pass in a football game? Did you fail or get caught cheating on something? Like, where does the story? Because I get, what what you're what you're laying out for me is very, very rocky soil. Yeah. And you got your own little patch of grass that you're trying to start with your new marriage. So it's not in that soil anymore, but for some reason, you're scared to put seeds down. What I'm trying to do is find out the thing or several things or a bunch of things. Often ruminators have been blamed for things, they've experienced things, and it has an outsized response. Right? Yeah. I've got a buddy, cheated on everything in eighth grade, everything. Care. He he'll tell you, like, "Dude, I was I was 13 years old, 14 years old." Who cares? I was an idiot. I cheated on something in eighth grade. It still haunts me. Haunts me right to this day. To this day, dude. I'm old man. I got a for I got a freshman in high school. To this day, still. I remember the teacher's name. I remember her looking at me. I remember that taste like silver in the back of my mouth. That is an outsized physiological response to something that happened when you're 13 years old. Yeah. And what I want to do is unhook those things. Give me an example of something you've blown or screwed up screwed up in your life or something you've been blamed for.
I mean, whenever I was, uh, I got introduced to pornography and, um, those things when I was really young. And I didn't necessarily get caught. I actually came to my parents and told them. Um, but I've had a lot of shame about it my entire life. And I even early on in our marriage, um, I was really into it because me and my wife, we we waited until marriage to have, uh, sex. We and, you know, we dated for a good three years before we got married. And I think I had to come to my wife, uh, and tell her, you know what I've been doing. And I've slipped up multiple times and still struggle with an addiction to, you know, the other half of it, the masturbation piece of it.
Um, here's the promise, brother. The bargain you struck with the universe is this: "Hey, Mom and Dad, I've been introduced and I'm seeking connection with this, um, fantasy, this something that's not real." And yeah, your Mom and Dad, instead of them saying, "Good God, dude, I'm so sorry we've created a crazy, chaotic place for you. I'm so sorry. We're going to work on connection from the inside out," or just saying, "Hey, dude, you're a knuckleheaded kid, you're curious, of course." And it used to be that we could try to prevent Playboys from being in the house. And now it's there. Pornography is everywhere, right? Yeah. And then there's this lie that if you can just get across the marriage finish line and find somebody who says "I do," that you will finally feel at peace. And you don't. No young, newly married guy feels, ah, now for right. And almost dumps gasoline on that fire. And we don't talk about this very much. You know what masturbation gives you? Momentary peace, release. Drops your shoulders, right? They can often be a Xanax, yeah, when you're walking around all day with the weight of the world on your shoulders that your parents' marriage was your fault, the violence you saw was your fault, the assaults that you saw, the near death you saw, all that was your on you. And now you're married, you're bringing somebody else with you. Five minutes by yourself. And I tell you that to tell you this. I I mean, I tell you all that to tell you this: There's nothing. You're not broken, dude. You're not. You're not. You're not ruined. But you're going to have to choose to seek healing from the inside out. Yeah.
Okay. I guess the thing that I guess how that kind of plays into is I I just feel like my wife and I haven't been on the same page as far as you haven't. And I don't know. She, because she struggles with her own things, her own anxiety. I mean, and Joseph, everybody does. The question you'll have to ask each other is, will we walk alongside each other and hold each other's arms up in the desert? We can't heal each other. Tom Cruise was wrong. You can't complete somebody else. But will we ride or die? Will we tell each other the truth? Will we not beat up and abuse each other for being honest and telling the truth and being vulnerable? Can we also create some boundaries for this marriage, this new marriage? Because here's what you're having to do, brother. And I want you to hear me say it's like it's like you grew up watching, living inside of a prison yard, watching them play football. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you found yourself in the NFL. You've never seen football played the right way, coached the right way, with the same rules. You've never seen it done. And here you are trying to do it in real time. Cut yourself some slack, man. That's the thing.
I feel like I'm I'm that's the that's the hard thing. I don't know why I can't cut myself some slack.
What is not cutting yourself slack getting you? What's it protecting you from? Be honest.
I don't know.
I'll tell you what it's protecting you from. You being quiet. And you keeping secrets from your new wife keeps the possibility in your mind that she's going to see all of you, see all of you, and know you, and just like your parents, find you lacking. And so I'm going to have a secret fantasy life. I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to say, "Hey, I miss you." I'm going to just go jerk off and call it. I'm not going to go for a walk and go lift weights and go do these things. I'm just going to try to earn money and try to get status over here. And I'm going to avoid the messy, vulnerable part of, "Hey, I miss you." And I've never even seen this done right. The thing.
So I've had all these. I feel like I've had these conversations. My struggle is is that I feel like whenever I say my wife and I are not on the same page, it's like I've been trying to get us to go to therapy together. There's this couple that I really appreciate. I told her the other night, I'm trying to get a dinner scheduled with them. And she's very hesitant about it. But I was like, "I really like the way that they love each other, and I want that for us." You know? And what does she say? Just sometimes, you know, she says, you know, "I I'll do the dinner, but I'm not going to promise you anything." You know? Like that. I'll I guess. So maybe you're on the other side of what I'm saying. Maybe it's already happened. Maybe you've already said, "Hey, this is me." And she's like, "Yeah, I don't want that." I feel like I've said it many times of, you know, just like, "Hey, let's try to figure some things out." But she doesn't want to figure herself out. I mean, the I believe that marriage, you have to be curious about each other. And you also have to be curious about yourself. Correct.
Done a lot of. I feel like I've been doing a lot of work in the past two years, you know, going to therapy and trying to figure out what's going on with me, why am I the way that I am. And she doesn't want to go to therapy. And, you know, I asked her, I was like, "Do you feel safe with me?" You know, "Do you feel like you can tell me the things in your heart?" And she's like, "Yes." I'm like, "I I just don't believe that's entirely true." Because she's just very, she doesn't like. She says she's just not an emotional person. And I I I don't believe that. I feel like we're all emotional people. I don't think there's not an emot emotional person. I think, you know, she's just afraid to face the things that are painful. And so Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, please. Do you love her?
I I love her like crazy, man.
Do you trust her?
I I do.
What if she's telling you the truth? That's the thing. Like, maybe I'm like that's why I feel crazy sometimes, man. But what if you? Here's the deal. What if, what if she's not real demonstrative? What if she's like sitting around having five-hour conversations about childhood? That's just not her thing. Yeah. And what if she just loves you for you? Or worse, what if she doesn't? But what you're what you're saying to her is, "I think you're lying to me, and I think I know you better than you know yourself." Yeah. And what I want to tell you is, it doesn't that that approach to her, that that that downward sloping judgment has not worked. What if you tried just believing her? Because then when you just believe her, here's what you have to do. You have to say out loud, "Here's what I want." Yeah. It's easy to say, "I want you to be more emotional. You need to go do this work. You need to go do all these things. You need to go do all these things," hoping that she discovers the "you want to be loved." That's less vulnerable for you. It's way scarier to say, "Hey, here's what I need. Here's what I want." Because she might say, "I'm not doing that." Do that. Do you get what I'm trying to say?
No, I I I get that 100%. Have you sat down and said, "You know what? I believe you. And I think I've taken all my insecurity from my childhood and me trying to be a good husband and me struggling pornography and..."
Yikes. By the way, 90-something percent of men. You're not alone, brother. Yeah. Okay. Don't don't be your own judge and jury and executioner. Don't do that. Yeah.
Do you think your wife loves you?
I do.
Okay. Does she trust you?
She does.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think what you said is right. It's just, you know, me trying to think I know her better than she knows herself. I guess. I I don't want to be doing that.
Hmm. But here's the scary, here's the scary other side to that. Do you love her for her? Do you love her as she is right now?
Yeah. I do.
Okay. If there are things in bed you want to try, if there is affection that you want, if there's a daily check-in that would really matter to you, if there are things in your home that you all need to reimagine, you've been together for three years and or you've been married for two, two and a half years, and there's some things you want to reimagine in in terms of like household, domestic stuff, and money, and like, man, have those conversations. Yeah. Put it on the table. And in the same way, the ground rule is be curious. If you say, "Hey, I want to try this in the bedroom," the only thing I would ask her is to say, instead of going, "Ew, gross, no, never," what and say, "Tell me. Tell me about that." Yeah. And vice versa. If she says, "That just makes me feel uncomfortable," you, instead of being frustrated or mad or, "You don't love me," be curious. "Tell me about being uncomfortable." And that is where intimacy is found. And that that that that further peeling away layer after layer. Do you see me? And do you still love me? Because here's what it sounds like is missing in your marriage, if I can just throw this out there, okay? Just being good old-fashioned friends. Yeah. Y'all do fun stuff together. Um, we sometimes we'll we'll play a video game together. Boo boo. Do y'all do anything fun?
You know, not as often as as I would like to.
Does she not want to do fun stuff with you?
No, I don't want to say that she doesn't want to do stuff that's fun. The thing that is hard for us is our work schedules. So she gets up really, really early, and she's done with work around 1:00. And then I get done at work around 5:00, and I'm home by 6:00, and she's going to bed by 7:30. So it's like by the time I get home, and we eat dinner, and do dishes, she's she's hitting the hay.
Um, and that to me is something y'all need to talk through. Because here's what's getting in the way: your work schedule. And and if y'all are doing this for for a short period of time, you're doing this for two years while she gets promoted or you go to grad school or like, whatever the thing is, fine. Every couple needs to go through those periods, right? Those that's that's great. Fine. Wonderful. But if you have found yourself two years into married, you're 23 years old, and your work schedules are dictating your joy, your work schedule, not even the work itself, but the work schedule is dictating your life around it, man, that's a recipe for a crash for your marriage. Because it's both of you are going to be starved emotionally, intimately, and some in another context will fill that void, or you'll go completely dead. Yeah. You have to have intentional connection points. And that may mean one of y'all sits down and says, "All right, I'm I'm going to start working towards a new job because I don't want this to be our life." Yeah. Or maybe you say, "We're just doing it to our 25. We don't owe anybody anything, and we get to pay for a car, and then we're going to go to something else." That stuff's all good. And then you just have to be really intentional about, um, I always tell people, put date nights on. Put sex on the calendar. Underneath that is, find things that y'all just love hang like doing. Yeah. And it might mean you got to learn how to do something dumb, right? Like, or and I say that you think is dumb, it's not dumb objectively. Yeah. My wife's obsessed with gardening. She loves it. I I just never was. But eventually, it became up to me. I am going to get interested in gardening, and now I'm kind of a nerd about it. I've got boxes of seeds and starters. I can't wait. Right? I'm I'm all in. But it became, I want to connect with her. Yeah. And on some of my nerdy things, she has done the same thing. So it's just about, dude, sometimes it's about not overthinking and it's just being like, "Dude, let's go hang out." Where can we do that?
Yeah, that's that's good. Is it fair that you miss your friend?
I I think I've just kind of felt alone a little bit.
That's. Hey, no, no, no, no. Don't dude, don't hedge. You've been hedging your whole freaking life. Will you be full of you for a second? Yeah. I think you married somebody that you love and you care about and is you're really close to. And like most of us growing up in your situation, you put a lot on this relationship. Yeah. This was going to be what healed you. And a three-year-old marriage can't carry that weight. Yeah.
Definitely put a lot of weight on it. Yeah. Thinking I was going to be the I wanted to be, I don't know. I just always wanted to be the man that my mom never had growing up. And Joseph, the fact that you're having these conversations tells me you're going to be. Yeah. You're going to be. It's something that you will work and work and laugh and grow and say, "I'm sorry. Do you forgive me? You want to try again?" "That was amazing." "That was not amazing." Like that will it. You'll look up and have been married 20 years and then look back and go, "Oh my gosh, we're a single united front and middle and back." Yeah. Right? Yeah. But also, I want you to remember, you're judging those men through the eyes of a seven-year-old. Yeah. Right? You're you you've got a lens of terror and fear. And I will show up. And that's jet fuel. It's rocket fuel. But man, you see rockets? They shoot all over the place. It's just man, manic energy everywhere.
Here's a homework assignment for you, okay? All right. I want you to write down on a piece of paper what you just said, but I want you to detail it very specifically. And the further you can refine it, the better. Here's what I mean. I want you to write the top of the paper: "I am a husband who..." What kind of husband are you? And not don't list a bunch of of of strategies. "I'm a husband who works out." "I'm I'm a husband who believes his wife." "Oh crap, I've never believed anyone because everyone lied to me my whole life. I got to practice trust." "I'm a husband who loves my wife till the end of time." Well, crap, man. I got to do dishes. Hate dishes. She comes home exhausted at 7 o'clock. Yeah. Right? And it may mean you come home at 5:00 and you start figuring out how you can go to bed with her at 8:30. Maybe she stays up a little bit later, and you get up and do some of your life stuff in the morning. Yeah. That's I want you to start with the identity. "I'm a husband who..." "I'm a man who..." And then we'll come back, fill that with action steps. Right now, you're looking for a feeling. You said that at the very beginning of the call, and it's just stuck with me. "I feel like I feel like I feel like." Man, your feelings have kept you alive your whole life. And you have like movie after movie after experience of crappy, crappy men. And good on you, brother. I'm not going to be that kind of man. I'm going to be a different kind of man. But if you're not specific about what action steps, what what identities you're going to be, what you're going to look like, what that's going to look like day in and day out, what you're going to do is you're going to chase how it feels. "I want to feel like my wife loves me." "I want to feel like my wife is happy." "I want to feel like my wife has got everything she wants." "I want my wife to make me feel like." And now, crap, I became those guys. Feelings are just signals. They're just they're just blinking lights. They are. Don't tell you the truth. Your actions tell you the truth. Follow those those actions, but be very clear about them. Try them out for 30 days. Try them out for 60 days. And be willing to say, "Ah, I tried that. Didn't work. I'm going to try something else." Do it for 90 days and see what happens. Make sure your wife has a note every morning she leaves to go to work about how much you love her. It's just an action step. Make sure when you walk home every day, your phone is already off, and you walk in and hold her face. You set your bag down. You hold her face. And you just put your forehead on her forehead. 10 seconds. Make sure you go preheat her side of the bed. If you got like an electric blanket during the winter, whatever you got to. I mean, whatever you got to do. It's about the action stuff. And I'm I'm telling you, the feelings part will follow. And if she is keeping some big, deep, dark trauma from you, it will emerge when her body feels safe. It's not an indictment of you. It's it's her in her chest. It's that she feels your pressing and pushing and moving. And maybe she doesn't have any deep, dark secrets. Maybe she just loves you. And you can press practice trusting her. Brother, I I think you're going to have a pretty amazing life ahead of you. I'm going to send you a copy of my number one bestselling book, "Building a Non-Anxious Life." I'm also going to send you. Also, I hooked up a last caller. I'm going to hook you up too. All three. I've got two questions for humans, couples, and I got a third edition coming out. Um, I think it's out in stores now. And also, I'm going to send you the "Questions for Humans" intimacy deck. I want you guys just to sit around and chitchat, become friends, do cool stuff together, laugh. Go through a couple of these cards every night. You can't put all the pressure in the world on her to heal you. This entity to heal you. You've got to do the work to heal. And together, you will build something amazing. I think it's going to be a rad ride, brother.