Do you consider yourself a smart man,
Perhaps an analytical man,
But yet somehow when your wife or girlfriend gets upset,
You just can't stay calm?
You try as hard as possible,
You try to stay in control,
You try to breathe through it,
Maybe you try to walk away,
But you just can't stay calm.
When she gets reactive,
When she's angry,
When she blames you,
When she attacks,
When she's a little harsh,
When she's a little critical,
All of your intellect and logic just aren't enough to be relaxed,
To feel solid and at ease.
I know how frustrating that can feel,
And I know how it can hurt our identity.
Because we want to think of ourselves as logical and rational and a healthy boyfriend or You know,
A loving husband,
But we just can't stay in control.
When it really matters.
A lot of the times for us as smart analytical men is we look for more information.
We want to gather,
We want to analyze,
We want to understand.
But somehow it hasn't been enough.
To hit the roots of our issues so we can actually stay calm naturally.
In the moments when she's upset.
My name is Noah Elkrief.
I'm the author of a number one bestselling counseling book.
I've been coaching analytical men for over 14 years.
And my YouTube channel has over 20 million views.
And in this video,
I'm going to talk about three of the core reasons.
Why us as smart analytical men often struggle to stay calm when our wife or girlfriend gets upset.
Because if we don't know the real,
Genuine,
Deep reasons why we get upset,
Why we get reactive when she's upset,
There's no chance for us.
So the first reason is.
.
.
When our wife gets upset,
When our girlfriend gets angry or reactive towards us.
Logically,
We know that we're safe.
We know we're not in danger.
But what's happening is it's triggering Uh,
Uh.
.
.
A trauma,
A suppressed emotion from our childhood when our mother treated us in a similar way.
So whether our mother spoke with the same harshness,
The same critical energy,
The same loud voice,
The same volume,
The same facial expression,
If anything about how our wife or girlfriend talks to us It's any part of our unresolved emotions from childhood when our mom spoke to us in that way.
It will trigger and activate how we felt when we were a child.
So,
As a child,
When our mother yelled at us,
Punished us,
Insulted us,
Criticized us,
Spoke with a harsh tone of voice,
It can be a very strong reaction inside of us as a child because she's bigger than us.
We're scared of her attacking us.
We're scared of her leaving us.
Our safety is on the line.
She's the source of our food,
Shelter,
Love,
Nourishment.
So anytime our mom gets angry at us,
Whether that's an angry face,
Tone,
Volume,
Or words,
It can hit deep on safety,
Deep fear.
And so when our wife or girlfriend talks to us with the tone,
Volume,
Words,
Or facial expression that remind us of what happened when we were a child,
It can hit a deep unsafety in us.
And since we don't want to feel that unsafety,
It feels vulnerable,
It feels scary,
It feels fragile,
It feels powerless or helpless.
We respond.
By protecting ourselves,
Coming into fight mode.
I'm not going to let you talk to me like that.
I'm,
You know,
I need to shut you down or.
.
.
It's too much,
I can't handle it.
Yeah,
I have to stop her before she goes even further.
And all of our anger helps us take back control,
Helps us not feel small and weak.
And and makes us ultimately feel safer than being scared and fragile and overwhelmed because we can't Handle.
The unsafety of her talking in a way that triggers how our mom treated us.
And I find for a lot of analytical minutes.
Hard for them to remember those moments because they're deeply suppressed.
But the vast majority of the time,
That men are getting triggered by their woman getting upset,
It's because of this.
So,
And.
If we continue to respond in these ways,
It really hurts our confidence.
It makes us feel bad,
Inadequate,
Insecure when we can't stay calm and end up treating our wife or girlfriend with harshness.
Or intimidation or trying to overpower her and it hurts love and hurts how she treats us.
So the second reason we're going to go into is.
.
.
Around self-worth.
So for many of us as smart analytical men,
We look for our self-worth through our performance.
For many of us as children in our childhood,
Our mother and father gave us more love,
More appreciation,
More respect,
More rewards when we performed well.
Whether that means knowing the answer,
Remembering what we're supposed to do,
Getting good grade,
Doing good at sports.
And so on and so forth.
And so we learn.
I am more worthy of love.
I deserve love when I perform well.
And I don't deserve love.
I'm less worthy.
I'm less.
.
.
Adequate,
Sufficient,
If I make a mistake,
If I'm wrong,
If I'm bad,
If I'm not good enough.
Our parents withheld love.
They weren't as loving,
Weren't as kind.
When we didn't get the perfect grade,
When we weren't the MVP playing sports,
Or whatever the case might be.
And A lot of us aren't aware of this mechanism,
But we maybe are aware by the pressure to be great,
The pressure to prove we're amazing,
The pressure to be smart,
And the fear of making a mistake,
The fear of not being great,
The fear of getting it wrong.
And so when our wife is upset with us,
When our girlfriend gets mad at us.
Our immediate response inside can be.
She's saying,
I'm not good enough.
I failed.
I'm a bad partner.
I responded in a bad way.
I spoke to her in a bad way.
I didn't listen in a good way,
That in some way I'm a failure,
Not good enough,
Inadequate.
And it's very scary for us as men to feel inadequate,
Unworthy,
I'm wrong,
I made a mistake,
I'm bad,
Bad husband,
Bad boyfriend.
We're so afraid to feel that pain because as a child to be A failure to be inadequate means maybe I don't get mom and dad's love which means I'm not safe.
So we protect it vigorously.
We might say,
No,
You're wrong,
Or how could you say that,
Or you did that too,
Or we protect with anger when they're upset with us so that we don't have to feel the vulnerability of I'm a failure,
I'm a bad boyfriend,
I messed up,
I'm no good.
Whereas if we weren't looking for our self-worth through our performance,
It would be very easy to just admit Oh,
I was wrong,
Or I made a mistake,
Or can you explain that to me further?
I don't understand what you feel I did wrong.
You know,
Okay,
I did something wrong or I wasn't great,
But I feel I still deserve love and to be treated kindly while I did something wrong.
You understand?
So as analytical men,
So often we're in our heads and overanalyzing all the time because we want to do everything perfectly because we don't want to mess up because messing up equals unsafe.
So this is the second issue that once again is very frustrating and feels very disheartening and weak.
When all our analysis and intellect aren't enough to manage to stay calm when she says anything that sort of intimates or insinuates that we did something not perfect.
Yeah,
Maybe her upset is just like a subtle tone of voice that we didn't do perfectly or messed up or weren't what she wanted and that's enough to trigger us being angry,
Defensive,
Or harsh.
So the third reason.
Is the most sneaky and subtle or hard to find.
And that is how we respond to our girlfriend when she's upset is the same way our parents responded to us while we were upset.
And this is a concept called emotional attunement.
Or co-regulation as there's a lot of concepts within it,
But basically It's that as a child.
.
.
If you were angry,
If you were having a temper tantrum,
If you were upset,
How did your parents handle it?
Were they loving?
Were they soft?
Did they sit with you?
Did it give you space to express yourself?
Yes,
Let it out.
Be angry.
No,
For a lot of us.
Our parents squashed us.
They were like,
Don't talk like that,
Or calm down,
Or toughen up,
Or breathe.
So they tried to get us to relax.
Because they couldn't handle us when we were upset or strongly emotional.
It's possible that our emotions scared them.
Maybe they didn't know how to handle it.
Maybe it made them feel like they're a failure.
Maybe it embarrassed them if we were out in public.
There's a wide variety of reasons why our parents could have been not capable to handle our emotions with love and support.
Maybe it just hurt them too much to see us in pain,
So they tried to get us to just be happy,
To be relaxed,
To be unemotional.
And what that does to us is we don't.
Our parents are supposed to model to us how to be with the variety of emotions.
So if we're sad,
They hug us and love us and say,
It's okay to be sad.
Let out the tears.
That's teaching us how to handle it when we're sad.
If we're upset with them and we're angry,
They're supposed to say,
What's making you upset?
Let me hold you.
Tell me what's going on.
But if they say,
Don't get upset with me,
How dare you get mad at me or anything like this.
We don't learn how to deal with upset,
Anger,
Frustration inside of ourselves.
In a healthy way.
And therefore,
How our parents treated our emotions as a child is how we treat our own emotions.
Going into adulthood and how we treat our own emotions is how we treat our wife's or girlfriend's emotions.
So if we're upset and the way we handle it within ourselves is like calm down,
Relax,
Stay,
You know,
Even keel,
Stay in control.
Like this we push it down.
What that means is we don't know how to handle,
How to be relaxed in the midst of emotional intensity.
So when our wife or girlfriend is expressing emotionally intensity,
Expressing strong anger,
Strong,
Upset,
Strong,
Upset.
Frustration,
Strong criticism,
Some sort of strong emotion.
It feels chaotic to us.
It feels too much for us.
We don't know how to handle it because our parents didn't know how to handle that emotion ourselves.
So we still don't know how to handle that emotion ourselves.
And so when our wife has these strong emotions,
It's overwhelming for us.
It's intimidating for us.
It's scary for us.
It can feel.
.
.
Like just uncomfortable.
And so we want to squash them to protect ourselves.
To regain control,
Like I need to stop her before it's too much for me to handle,
Or it's starting to feel like a threat because it's kind of taking me over,
Because I can't manage it,
So I need to protect myself to get her to calm down and stop so that I can feel in control,
So I don't feel overwhelmed.
And when we can't handle our wife when she's strongly emotional,
She feels unloved,
Unaccepted,
Rejected,
Abandoned,
And she loses respect for us because we couldn't keep our cool.
We couldn't stay in control.
And when our wife doesn't respect us as much,
Doesn't feel happy about how we treat her,
If she feels rejected,
She's gonna treat us with less love,
Less kindness,
Less appreciation,
She's gonna be less open for sexuality,
And it just slowly erodes the love,
Goodness,
And ease in a relationship.
