Transcription
The fact that your ex won't acknowledge that she had any part to play in the problems in your marriage has probably been driving you crazy. I work with men going through unwanted divorces, and the vast majority of my clients face this problem. Their wives ask for divorce, and they blame the men completely. And the guys will look at their marriage and they'll say, you know what, yes, I I wasn't perfect. There's things that I need to take responsibility for, take ownership of. There's things that I need to change that I could do better. I'm willing to see that. I'm willing to work on that. But she wasn't perfect either, right? She also contributed. She also played a part. And she won't even look at that. She won't even consider the role that she played in this. She says, "No, this is nothing to do with me. This is on you. This is your fault."
If you're in this situation, there's something really important that I want you to understand, which is that women who insist that you were 100% to blame, they are doomed to end up in one broken relationship after another. They are going to repeat that same pattern, the same things that got them here. I'm going to show you why that happens for them. But more importantly, I want it to not happen to you. A lot of men in this situation where their wives are saying, "It's all you. It's all you. It's all you." They get kind of pulled into her delusion, into this reality where she's insisting it's all them. And they go down one of two paths that lead to them staying really stuck or falling into a pattern of repeating these same mistakes. And I don't want you to go down either of those two paths. It's really easy to get pulled in when you have a woman accusing you in this way. So, by the end of this video, you're going to understand what's likely going to happen to her. And I think it might ease some of your need for some kind of vengeance or justice or revenge, because she's going to get it. And you don't actually have to do anything to make that happen. She's going to do it to herself.
And then second, I'm going to help you understand the risks, how men get pulled into this cycle with her, and they go down these two paths that lead to them being stuck or repeating painful patterns, because I want you to move out the other side of this divorce and be healthy and whole and happy. And I want you to be able to step into relationships that feel truly fulfilling, nourishing, and stable, not repeating all of the unhealthy patterns that brought you to this divorce. So, that's what we're going to do today.
Your wife is going through this process where she's asked for a divorce and she's insisting everything is your fault. And I'm telling you that this is going to backfire for her, and she's going to end up in problematic relationships. When women do this, it's one of the most frustrating and painful things that a man can experience. And it's natural that you want to fight back, that you want to defend yourself. But let me show you what's happening on the inside for her and how it's going to come back to bite her in the butt, because it will. And you don't actually have to do anything to make sure that she gets what's coming to her or to get any kind of vengeance.
I know a lot of men struggling with divorce that they didn't choose. They feel such a deep sense of injustice, um, because she's making this unilateral decision for you and she's not giving you a choice or a say in what happens next. And so that imbalance, that sense of injustice can take over for a lot of men, and they get kind of hung up on, she needs to see the truth. She needs to see this differently. She needs to admit her part in this. The truth is that many women won't. Your wife might be one that really can't see her part in it. And when I say can't, what I mean is that she's so activated. Her nervous system is so high up in [snorts] that fight, flight, or freeze response that she can't step out and see her part in this. She's pinned it on you. She's blaming you. And that's a protective defense mechanism. That's protecting her from having to deal with all of the difficult things she would have to face if she stepped back and said, "I had a role to play in this." And what I'm talking about is not an intentional process. It is a subconscious response that happens when somebody doesn't have the tools or the capacity to handle intense emotions.
So, the work I do with my clients is the work that she's not doing. It's the work of taking a deep breath and a big step back and saying, "How the heck did we get here? What brought us to this place? What was my role in that? What's not mine? What's what's not mine to take responsibility for a change, but what was mine?" and how do I take action to fix my part, to heal my piece, and then to move forward and choose and connect with a partner who's also done that work. But that whole process of looking at your marriage and the problems and facing your part in it, that's hard. It is hard work. If you look around, a lot of people don't do it. And the feedback I get from my clients is, "Rachel, this is scary. It's hard. It's painful. It's triggering. It's the most difficult thing I've ever done, and it is hands down the most worthwhile thing I have ever done." It takes a lot of courage to do that work. But it's not just courage, and it's not just willpower to go deep and face and take ownership of your part in the problems that brought you to divorce. It's not just courage that gets you there. It's stability. You have to have a level of emotional capacity to even be able to do that work.
And so with my clients, we don't actually start with looking at the relationship and how they got there and what part they played and how to own that and fix it and move forward in a healthy way. We don't start with that. That's the work that we're there to do. But they can't just jump in and do that because they're so triggered themselves, right? And you know this if you're going through an unwanted separation or divorce right now, you're feeling anxiety and fear about the future. You're feeling immense grief and sadness that most people really can't even comprehend how intense that pain is. You're feeling anger and resentment. You're feeling regret and guilt and shame. And those emotions are strong. And we don't like to admit this, most of us humans, but our emotional brain is quite a bit stronger than our rational, logical brain. And what that means is if a big emotion comes up, we will get overwhelmed. We like to think that we're these strong rational beings that we can have discipline and willpower and stay logical. But every single human on this earth gets hijacked by their emotions sometimes. And when you're going through a divorce and all of this emotional pain is coming up, most people are overwhelmed most of the time.
So, we have to start with emotional regulation. We have to give you the tools [snorts] to develop an emotional capacity to be able to feel all of these hard things without panicking, without shutting down or reacting in anger. That's essential regulation work that your wife or ex-wife has not done. That's why she's blaming you so much because she can't face her part in this while she's as reactive as she is. She wouldn't be able to handle the emotions. And in fact, you probably see in her, depending on what her pattern is, that when big emotions do come up for her, when she gets really triggered, she either shuts down and turns off and just ghosts you, ignores you, goes no contact, shuts you out, gets cold, or she blows up, she gets angry and mean and cruel and vicious and goes on the attack, or she just runs away. That's because she can't handle those emotions and stay calm and grounded while all of that's going on. And so if she doesn't have that capacity, she definitely doesn't have the capacity to look at and take responsibility for what she did, her part in this. And that's actually really, really sad for her. Sad for you too, but it's really sad for her because she's going to repeat this.
The truth is that you are not 100% to blame for what happened, for what went wrong in your marriage that brought it to the point of divorce. You played a part. There are things that you contributed to that breakdown. There are a lot of things that you can learn to do better, to do differently. There's patterns of reactivity, of codependency, of poor conflict management, of poor communication that are yours, that are things that you need to address and understand and change. But she's got all of those things, too. She played a big part in this. And what's going to happen to her if she doesn't learn how to regulate her nervous system and develop the emotional capacity to take responsibility for her part in what happened? Then she's just going to replay it. She's going to say, "Well, it's all your fault. It's nothing to do with me. It's all on him. So, I'm going to get rid of him. And then I'm going to find the next person." And she's going to go into that relationship and be like, "Oh, I just found the right person and now I feel great and he's going to make everything great." completely ignoring how much of her own emotional experience she's creating. Completely ignoring her own poor communication, her own overreactivity, her own tendency to shut down or blow up, her own codependency, her own attachment wounds, her own challenges in giving and receiving love in healthy ways. She's ignoring all of that. Guess what? Those same problems that you guys experienced are going to crop up in her next relationship. And that is going to happen to her again and again and again until she finally takes a look at herself and her part. You don't have to get revenge on your ex. You don't have to exercise justice towards her. She is going to dig this hole for herself a h 100 times until she faces her peace in this. At the root of it all, she's disregulated. She has no awareness of that. And until she figures out that she needs to get regulated and gets calm enough to take responsibility for herself and her choices and her actions, she is going to stay stuck in the same toxic relationship patterns that she created in your marriage.
But there's a trap here because some of you watching this are going to be listening and thinking, "Yeah, that's right. She deserves that." You know, cuz she's doing this. And there's a story that a lot of men get stuck in when she's chosen the divorce for you and you didn't have a say in it, which is this is all her doing. Maybe not the problems in the marriage, right? Maybe you're able to take responsibility for some of that, but this divorce, that's her fault. She's tearing the family apart. She's screwing up your kids. She's taking your financial future away. She's doing all of this damage to you, to your life, to your future, to your family. And if you keep your attention on all of the things that she's doing, you can get stuck in this spiraling, ruminating rabbit hole of powerlessness where you feel like the victim. She is the aggressor, the perpetrator, and she's doing this to you. And guess what does this start to look like? Starts to look like the story, it's all her fault. Which is a lot like the story she's telling. It's all your fault. And you might step back and be like, "Well, Rachel, yeah, but she is the one executing this divorce." And she is. She is the one choosing it. But you have more power here than you realize. Maybe you can't stop this divorce. Maybe you can't make her take responsibility for herself and do the work on herself that would be necessary for the two of you to get back together and have a healthy relationship. You can't control those pieces. But you can control what you do next. You control how you react to this divorce.
And there's there's two paths that I see men going down when their wives are blaming them 100% for the divorce. And both of them keep men trapped. They send men right back into unhealthy relationships or keep them stuck, totally afraid to even try a new relationship. Path number one is they fall into the same blame game. They're getting attacked and blamed, and they start to turn all of their defensive, understandably, justifiably defensive feelings towards her, and they go on the attack. And it starts to look like, she's doing all of this. This is all her fault. She's creating this. She's ruining everything. She's destroying everything. And now you're telling that same powerless victim story that she's telling. You're saying it's all on her. She's got to change. She has to do something different. You have no power there. Just like she has no power when she says it's all your fault. All she can do is make you leave. But she can't actually feel any better. And she's going to be stuck in that same powerlessness in every relationship that she's in, needing somebody else to show up a certain way, do a certain thing, say the right thing, behave in the right ways in order for her to feel okay. If you outsource your emotional well-being to the behaviors, the thoughts, the words of another person, you are always going to be on an emotional roller coaster. Do not fall into that blame game trap with her where you get so obsessed with what she's doing and what she's not doing that you give up all of your agency and become a victim yourself.
And the second path that I see men going down when they get accused like this is a path of shame and self-doubt. So she's accusing you. She's blaming you. She's saying it's all your fault. And for some men, especially if you've had some self-esteem or self-confidence issues in the past, it triggers self-doubt and you say, "What if she's right? Maybe I am that bad. Was I that awful as a husband? Was I a horrible father? Am I a bad person?" And there's a heavy, painful spiral of despair that men can sink down into if they start believing what she's saying. And these are the two paths that I see just screwing men over after divorce is they either get stuck in that angry back and forth blame game where they're attacking her and she's attacking them, or they start believing the story, the narrative that she's spinning, and they fall into this deep depression and despair. And I don't want either one of those things for you.
I had a client who got stuck in one of these paths. He got stuck in the blame game path. She and it was so understandable. She attacked him. She blamed him for everything. But she was the one who committed a horrible betrayal. Did some really nasty things in the divorce. Was a completely uncooperative co-parent to their young kids. She was just putting him through the ringer again and again. And he was completely justified in feeling angry, in feeling resentful, and feeling defensive. It was probably eight months, maybe a year, and he was healing in a lot of other ways. He was doing the nervous system regulation work. He was working through a lot of other pieces of it, but he just couldn't let go of the resentment. And then one day, he sat down and he did the math. So, I want to read to you uh the email that he sent me. And this is the moment where everything shifted for Kyle, and maybe it'll help make a shift for you, too.
So, Kyle says, "I used to spend 30 minutes or so every morning just bitching about my ex. This wasn't fair. I gave up everything for her. This double standard was BS. How could she? Etc. I'd pace around the house just bitching out loud about it. Then one day it dawned on me, I'm saying the same things every day. They all might be true, but it doesn't matter anymore. There's no point in hashing it over and over again. But what did it for me was I did the math. 30 minutes a day for a year is almost eight days, 24 hours a day, for eight days just focusing on that negativity. After realizing that, whenever those thoughts would come up, I'd say to myself, I know, but let's focus on something important. After a few weeks, I wasn't stuck on those things anymore."
Kyle hit a point where he realized like, what if she never accepts her part in this? What if she never apologizes? What if she never takes any responsibility? Am I going to spend the rest of my life being pissed at her, bitching about her to myself every day of my life? She's not even there. She's not suffering from this, but he is suffering endlessly. And in that moment, he chose himself over her. He chose his future. And he was able to make that choice and make that shift because he had done some groundwork. He had regulated himself emotionally. He had looked at the accusations. He had done that work of unpacking the marriage and taking responsibility for his part. So when he let this go, he wasn't just saying, "Well, that's There's none of this was my fault. There's nothing I need to work on." And he wasn't saying, "It was all my fault. I have to take responsibility for everything and hate myself and fall down the pit of despair." He had actually done the work of saying, "No, I know what I contributed and where my shortcomings were and I've done the work on those patterns in myself and I know this other stuff isn't mine. It's hers. and maybe she's never going to take responsibility for that. So, do I want to hold on to all of this hate towards her about that? Do I want that in my life anymore?" And eventually, he decided he didn't. He chose regulation over vengeance. And that was the moment where he really set himself free.
And what's beautiful now is the same man, she doesn't have power over him at all anymore. She's still difficult and nasty sometimes and aggressive. And guess what all of that means? It means that she's still stuck. She hasn't changed anything. She hasn't taken responsibility. Her life is not going to get better. Her relationships are not going to get better. But that has nothing to do with him anymore. He has freed himself from that. And yes, they still have to co-parent, but she can't get under his skin anymore. She can't rile him up. She can't upset him. His life is his own. And he is free to move forward and enjoy it and have joy and love and connection in his life and let her stew in her own mess. I promise you that she will. If she's blaming you 100%. This next relationship, even if she jumps into it and is in that rebound lirance phase and everything seems amazing and she looks all happy, it's not going to last. I've worked with over 600 men and I see this all of the time. and their wives, blame them for everything, ask for a divorce, move into the next relationship. Everything's perfect and amazing, and then a year, 18 months, 2 years later, it all starts to fall apart because she cannot have a happy, healthy relationship until she accepts her role, until she takes responsibility for her part.
But neither can you. You cannot feel good, feel whole, enjoy healthy, happy relationships until you take ownership of your part. Let go of the things that are not yours and commit to healing your patterns and showing up in healthier ways in your own relationship. And the first step to all of that is emotional regulation. We cannot, you cannot, and she cannot accurately unpack the marriage. Figure out what is yours to own and how to work on it and do that effectively when you are really activated into fear, anger, or overwhelm. If you're feeling depression, anxiety, frustration, resentment, regret, shame, guilt, and those emotions are getting you worked up, you're getting overwhelmed, you're acting out, you're lashing out, you're shutting down, if you're stuck in any of those feelings, you're not going to be able to effectively do this work, and you're running the risk of getting stuck in the same way that she's going to be stuck. That first step has to be learning those regulation skills to increase your emotional capacity so that you can do this deeper work and really move on in a healthy way.
That's exactly what I teach in my free master class. There's a link in the video description below this video. The master class is completely free. It's going to teach you how to regulate your nervous system so that those waves of anger, of anxiety, of fear, of grief can't overwhelm you. You can stay calm and clear and grounded and have the capacity, the emotional leadership that you need to be able to do the work that Kyle did, to be able to say, you know what, I am not going to let her have all of this power over me anymore. So, come with me into the free master class. Let's go through, let's show your nervous system how to get regulated. And I think you'll find that this work, difficult as it is, is the most worthwhile thing that you can do. It's what gets you off of this endless, painful loop and makes relationships whole, healthy, and fulfilling. It's what gives you access to yourself again and lets you feel back to being you, living a full, whole, happy, healthy life. It all [snorts] starts with the master class. So, click the link in the video description below. I'll see you guys there.