Women Are Soul-Detectors | 221

Many of the challenges men experience with women come from exactly what they stand to gain from them.

When a woman seems dissatisfied with a man's best tangible efforts, it's often because she's sensing an intangible disturbance-- his unconscious; what Jung called the man's Anima.

This episode covers this dynamic. While many of the example are directed at men who date women, anyone will find usefulness in understanding a common issue in intimate relating.

Intro music riff: "Stunning" by Julian Rhine. (Given with permission.)

Transcript

My wife gave me the absolute best birthday present I've ever received last week. She promised that for the next year, She would do everything in her power not to unload her stress, Overwhelm, Or anger onto me. Now, Neither one of us expected her to do this perfectly. That would be totally unrealistic to expect from a feminine woman. In fact, I'd say To the degree that your woman is in her feminine with you and sees you as her masculine container, She should be coming to you with her emotional troubles, If you will. Obviously, How she does it matters. We cover that more in detail on episode 219, Why she makes no sense in arguments. And actually, If you did catch that episode, And if you didn't, Don't worry, I'm going to recap it in a minute. Using Jung's mental model of the quaternity or quaternio, That in every intimate relationship between a man and woman, There's actually four entities. Conscious, The woman's conscious personality, The man's unconscious feelings, And the woman's unconscious feelings. Simply recognizing that the thing that generates your woman's unpleasant emotions or defensive reactions is a totally different entity than her conscious personality. It solves a lot of frustration for men. That whole episode covers that in detail, But simply just Recognizing, Oh, This is why this woman who seems to love me can also say hurtful things to me in an argument when she's overwhelmed. This is why they're two separate entities. In that episode we covered one side of the quatrainio, Her unconscious personality. This time we're going to focus on the other unconscious part, Your unconscious anima, Which is not only important for the health of the relationship, But the state of your anima also determines a lot of your well-being in many other areas of life. And what inspired this episode is in the last month, I think about 20 guys have reached out for relationship help with me, Mostly married fathers. A lot of these married fathers fit a certain type of man that I think is common, Which is the guy who's the total opposite of a deadbeat dad, At least on paper. He works hard to support the family. He works hard at home. He puts a lot of energy into meeting his wife's emotional needs and the demands of the family. And very often this dynamic will occur where he's trying to check off all of her demands. She makes like this checklist of things she needs to be happy, Whether it's around the house or within the relationship or in life, And he's doing everything he can. But it seems like the more he tries, The more effort he puts out, The less happy she is, Which obviously creates a lot of frustration in any man and sometimes hurt and confusion. And as I mentioned last time I brought up the quatrainio, Anytime your expectations of what should result based on your actions. Does it line up to what actually happens, Your reality? There is an error with the mental model. This episode is going to correct dynamics like that. Basically, Any time that it seems like your wife, Your woman, Your partner seems to be not happy even when you're doing the so-called right thing, Chances are what she's really picking up on and the reason why she's unhappy despite your best efforts is that you're not doing it with the right feeling. She's sensing something within you that maybe you don't even recognize in yourself and she's actually reacting to that. Hear women have about their partners, Husbands, Et cetera. Are actually due to this. Anytime you hear about a woman complaining about a man's emotional unavailability. She's actually talking about something with his anima. Or even like, Oh, We're not compatible anymore. I've heard this from a lot of guys recently. One day, You know, Even after 7, 10, 15 years of marriage, One day she springs on him, Oh, I don't think we're compatible anymore. This is actually an anima problem. She's picking up on something within your own feelings. As I mentioned, Anytime a woman's making a list of demands of what she needs to be happy in the relationship or at home, And he's doing them, You're doing them, And it's not actually making her happy, She's actually picking up on something in the anima. So 219, When a woman is feeling discomfort or that something is off, She will recognize that on a very visceral level, But because of the disconnect between a woman's conscious personality and what Jung called the animus, She might not express it in the right way. She might be reckoning a real problem, But she might voice it of like, Oh, I'm upset because you haven't been doing the dishes enough. It's not actually about the dishes, Although maybe you should be doing dishes. I'm not against men doing chores around the house, But very rarely is it really about that because if a woman is really feeling handled because she can sense that your anima, Or what Jung would call the soul, Is very much intact, You're truly operating from soul, Most women will let go of all these little complaints. In this episode, I'm going to cover some perspectives and principles that I've been employing in my relationship that I genuinely believe encouraged my wife to even come up with the awesome birthday present that she gave me. Of course, You can't control what your partner does, But, And this is true in either direction, Man to woman or woman to man, If you change certain things within your own emotional state, Or another way to put it, If you change your own relationship with your own unconscious, It is inevitable that your partner will experience some change within herself or himself. Without further ado, Jumping into the episode, This is episode 221. So one of the guys that I helped in the last month had one of these conversations where she was basically ready to leave. It wasn't so much threatening to divorce him as much as she just felt she couldn't be in the relationship anymore. And in one of these, Say, Dramatic conversations on their porch, Before she left, She said, Find me the man I married. And then she walked off. And this particularly stung, Aside from the fact that he's been trying to keep the marriage together and she walked off. It particularly hurt because in his eyes, The man that she married, The guy he was before they got married, When they were dating, And his words was pretty selfish. He put himself first. He never let himself get inconvenienced by her needs. He had no trouble saying no. But when they got married, He took his marriage vows very seriously. And suddenly he put himself last. He made sure she had everything she wanted. He met all of her demands. He did everything for their children. Everything, Right? So he was especially confused. And there's one way a man could spin off into like some red pill resentment about women only are attracted to selfishness. And this and that. I say this every episode I mention Red Pill, But it's worth repeating. Red Pill philosophy, When it applies to relationships, Recognizes certain truths about evolutionary biology that I certainly believe and I talk about in my own podcast episodes, Right? A lot of our attraction, Respect, Emotional attachment come from our so-called dog-brain, Animalistic, Evolutionary tendencies. And that is true, And we have to recognize them to understand the breadth of human behavior. The issue with Red Pill is that they have a very small context window for drawing conclusions, To use the AI term. They think we all we are is a dog brain and they don't recognize there is more to a human being, More to a woman than that, Which is why I think their conclusions, Their advice is pretty bad. Not even casting moral judgment, Like it's particularly unuseful, Even though their observations are very accurate. One could go in that direction. And it's not, That's actually not true. It's not that she was attracted to selfishness is that the man that she married, Even though he happened to be selfish, Still had his soul intact. And I don't mean soul in a religious or spiritual sense, I'm using soul in like the more Jungian sense of the unconscious is that he still had a very strong relationship with his own unconscious. He hadn't abandoned himself, Which is since marriage, Essentially, He abandoned who he was, He allowed himself to become depleted. He put her needs and whether or not she liked him as his moral compass on guiding his behavior. So over many years of marriage, He became more and more withered as a man. He became disconnected from his own feelings. So even if he was doing the so-called right things for her, He was fulfilling his duties as a husband and a father, She could not feel good in his presence. She could not feel safe in the presence of a man who allowed himself to get depleted, Even though he depleted himself for her sake. And I told this guy, Is that, Because he was reading a lot of relationship books and seeking all of this advice, It's like, Until you get your own soul back, No relationship advice will work. Anything you try will be a little bit off, A little bit too hot, A little bit too cold, A little bit too strong, A little bit too distant, Right? Like basically, To use attachment theory terms, When a person is disconnected, Or I'm mixing Jungian terminology with attachment theory, But when a man is disconnected from his soul, From his unconscious, From his anima, Anything he tries to do will come from insecurity, It'll be a little bit off, Like his attempts to get closer will be too close and smothering. His attempts to play it cool will be too distant and will come off as being an asshole. Only when you're connected to your soul. . . Only when you're emotionally secure, To use more modern language, Can you meet situations with perfect resonance, With the Goldilocks just right of being exactly what she needs in the moment. And if you're disconnected from your own enema, You can't possibly connect to her unconscious in a resonant way. And I've been seeing this in so many married fathers specifically lately, Because I think masculine men especially, Who have testosterone higher than 200 nanograms per deciliter, Or you simply have like a masculine mindset, Which means you have the ability to put your feelings aside for the sake of duty, Which I do think is ultimately a virtue. Masculine men have the negative side of that is that because we have the ability and maybe even the tendency to stuff down our feelings for the sake of duty, It becomes very easy to totally disconnect from your anima in a way that ultimately women will feel. It doesn't feel good for a woman to be with a man who's disconnected from his soul. As I said earlier, She might not recognize why, But she just won't feel connected to the guy. She'll feel like he's emotionally distant. Again, She might feel like you guys aren't compatible anymore. Like all of these words, It's not that their BS is that these are ways that a woman's animus searches for language to describe this vague, But very palpable feeling that her man is there physically, But he's only being a shell of himself. Now, I've experienced this a lot myself. In fact, Everything I'm describing, I've experienced myself, Especially since having children. I'm definitely a person who felt like, Oh, I'm a father now. My own selfish desires no longer matter. Let me push everything away. Let me do everything to make my wife happy and do everything for my kids. Say in the last year, Truly I've been recognizing that by allowing myself to get depleted, I'm actually not able to serve them. And not even in the sense that I need to have energy to do things for them, But to not be thriving in myself, Or a positive way to put it is that they can only really benefit from my presence as a father, They being both my children and my wife. If I'm truly thriving, If I'm full of energy, If I'm, In other words, Really connected to my anima, Just that alone makes all of my actions more meaningful. And even some of the things I felt I had to do to sacrifice for them, If I'm truly thriving, Or like we can say giving off positive positive energy or positive vibes, To put it in vague language. That actually matters more. In many cases matters more than the physical actions I do for them, Right? Sacrifice and becoming a martyr for your family is not actually a net positive. It does more for the male ego than it does for actually serving the needs and feelings of your dependents. And if you've been one of these guys who's done all of this sacrifice, Especially for your wife and she seems not happy, This is of course a recipe for resentment, Which I'm going to talk about in this episode. It can understandably feel hurtful and frustrating to do all of these things for your wife and then have her say it's not enough. If you caught episode 219, You have to recognize that the things she's saying when she's upset are not actually the truth. The real reason to look at all this stuff is not necessarily to make your wife happy, Although chances are if you are listening to this, It's because you have been confused as to why your wife is upset, Even though you're doing all the things right. The real thing, And I would say this is even a great benefit to the fact that women are like this, That women will feel dissatisfied and feel unsafe or feel some level of unease when you're disconnected from your soul, Is that she's actually, Especially for a masculine man, The warning bell. Most men can stuff down their feelings and not recognize it for 10 years, Go through the motions, Live a life of quiet desperation as the Thoreau quote, Without even recognizing it until he wakes up 10 years later. But if you're with a feminine woman, She will reflect it to you sometimes better than you can recognize your own feelings within yourself. Another way to put this, And I quoted Jung in recent episodes on this, He would often use the Latin phrase, Tabut mulier anemium, Which roughly translates to woman has soul or woman carries soul. Women reflect the state of your soul, Especially the woman that you're intimately involved with. And as I mentioned at the top of this episode, But bears repeating, Femininity means dependence. A woman can't really be functionally feminine, Or a person can't be functionally feminine, As opposed to like performatively feminine, She can't actually be in her feminine in her high feeling states, Unless she trusts that there's a masculine container around her. And you can even drop the words, Masculine and feminine, Because those are, You know, Abstractions, But a person can't be in a high feeling state, Unless they feel secure enough that there's something external containing them that allows them to be safe in that high feeling state. And the reason why this is associated with women and femininity is that women make babies in their bodies. Pregnancy is the absolute most physically and emotionally vulnerable, Maybe not the most emotionally vulnerable, That's arguable, But certainly the most physically vulnerable a normal, Healthy person will be in in their life. Women are designed obviously for that or evolved for that. Whereas as the man, As the masculine presence, As the other part of creating life. Your role is to contain her. Which is all the traits that women seek for in men through courtship, Through attraction, Even in the bedroom, Come down to this dynamic. Anyways, Again, When it comes to relationships, She can only feel feminine in your presence to the degree that she trusts you as her masculine perimeter. And with that dependence of, I mean, Simply being in a high feeling state, You empathize more. The more feminine a woman is being, The more empathic she has to be, The more affected she is by the people around her. Women evolved to be this way to empathize very acutely with the needs of their children. But also, This is greatly affected by you as her perimeter center. If she's in a high-feeling, Emotional, Feminine state, She's going to pick up on your feelings very acutely. Which is all to say, If you feel like shit, Regardless of your actions, As noble and as dutiful as you're being, If you are disconnected from your anima, Or another way to put it is, If your anima, If your unconscious, If your own soul is unhappy, Despite you doing all the right things externally, Your wife is going to feel that. She's going to feel that discomfort. And then she might, Again, Might not understand why she just doesn't feel good around you. That, You know, After some years, She doesn't want to touch you. She doesn't want to be close to you. Maybe she'll interact with you. You know, You often hear this a lot of, Oh, I still love you, But I don't feel in love with you. Why is that? She loves you because she can see all the things you do externally as a good father or husband or whatever. But she's not in love with you because her unconscious doesn't feel good around your unconscious because your unconscious simply does not feel good. If you need some evolutionary grounding for all of this, It's that since a woman, Actually this goes across species, Right? If you caught my episode one of the History of Man podcast, I go into this in detail, Into the nerdy scientific side of this. Anytime a female mammal gets impregnated by a male mammal, She's, Again, Going into a vulnerable state. She's also taking a huge risk, Like she's betting on him. She can only get pregnant once a year, Let's say. She's taking a big risk in getting pregnant with your child, Being intimate with you. And even if you don't have children, All the feelings a woman experiences or a man experiences, For that matter, Do come from our reproductive instincts. So it doesn't matter whether you choose to have children or not. The evolutionary route is exactly the same. If she's gotten pregnant by you or is choosing to get pregnant by you or is going through the evolutionary emotions or, You know, The mating ritual, If you will, Such as being in a relationship with you. She's emotionally bonding, Again, Whether or not you have children. And then she starts to sense that you're depleted. She starts to sense that you don't have the emotional capacity, Which might express itself externally as you're emotionally distant. You don't have a lot of joy in your life. She picks up on your resentment. Relationally, Maybe you're being mean to her, Or you have a short temper, Or you're being sarcastic, Or you're just simply not being available. Emotionally even though you're there physically. Her dog brain, Her survival instincts, Her reproductive instincts freak out. Especially if she's already emotionally bonded with you, Her instincts are going to feel like, Oh, Did we make the wrong choice? Did we choose to be with the wrong man? You know, Maybe this guy, It seems like this guy is not able to take care of me and our child. Literal or metaphorical children. Your mood or your aura is kind of like a peacock's feathers. It demonstrates surplus. Like when you have a lot of surplus energy, Joy, When you're emotionally there, When you're really present, It signals to her, Oh, This guy has a huge capacity. He can more than handle everything, Right? When she comes to you with her bad feelings and you can handle it, No problem, No sweat, No resentment. It signals to her like, Oh, This guy has so much capacity. Of course he can handle a tiger who tries to attack us. Of course he can handle life's Whereas if she feels you're depleted, Resentful, Worn out, Emotionally distant, She worries that your batteries are empty, Which they might be, So maybe she can't actually trust you. Maybe she's not actually safe to go into that high feeling dependent state around you. Feels bad to do in the first place, But also she might have to masculinize to take care of herself and her children as opposed to relying on you. So another way to put this is she needs to feel that you have emotional surplus in order to feel safe, In order to feel good, In order to enter her feminine. And the story that I just shared, I highlighted it because even though it came out in a hurtful moment, In basically a almost breakup conversation, She actually gave this gentleman the right instructions. Find me the man that I married. He disconnected from his own soul. He needed to bring that back into himself for her to feel the emotional surplus that will allow her to feel safe and want to be around him and be with him again. Now the question becomes, How? How do you reconnect to your anima or make your anima happy if you've allowed yourself to become depleted? By life stresses or simply sacrificing yourself for your family or your relationship. And everything I'm gonna share now are things that I've been using myself. I've actually been repeating to myself over and over. If you happen to be catching the video of this, You could see I'm in an unusual setup. I'm actually in the kitchen slash master bedroom of my RV right now. I mean, One minute life update. The family and I have been traveling slash camping around Spain, Looking for the perfect place to settle down. And put down roots for our family, For our children. We did find what I think is the absolute perfect place. We're still looking for an old farmhouse to fix up and make into a more permanent home. But for now, I'm in an RV. And for the last couple of weeks, We've been camping around and living semi-nomadically, Which is, We should say, Quite unstable to say the least. It's added a lot of uncertainty and stress specifically for my wife. So because of this, Because our so-called material perimeter, Our literal home has been unstable, I've had to put so much more emphasis on our spiritual perimeter or the intangibles of what allows my dependence to feel contained. In order for everyone to feel good. So everything I'm about to share are things that I'm literally repeating to myself. I'm rewriting over and over in my notebook to myself as reminders to make sure everyone is happy in my household, To ensure that I'm the happy genius of the household, Which starts with my wife as the emotional core of the family or the heart of the family, If you will. So the first rule, The first principle is to eliminate shame and blame from your household. Another guy I've coached recently in a somewhat similar situation, This guy was a younger father, But similar dynamic where he's doing everything he could to support his wife and the family. His wife had this growing list of complaints, It seemed like. The more he did, The shorter or the smaller her window of acceptance was like, It seemed like her standards kept increasing as his efforts increased. So like she he could never like kind of meet her standards, Like whatever he did seemed to be wrong. And that was actually something that she would say in fights, Like, You constantly mess up, Which is not actually reality, But that was her perception, Unfortunately. One of the things that he did, I mean, He had this bad habit, Which only increased or justified the anger from her animus, Was he would white lie a lot. And what was interesting was that, One, He knew that the white lying was breaking her trust in him. Two, I mean it was her main complaint, Like he would keep making these like little fibs about things. But the crazy thing to him was that The things he was lying about didn't even really matter. He was almost lying for the sake of lying. And with a little bit of exploration, It was my guess that the reason he was doing this was he was carrying a lot of shame. Almost any time you have a behavior that goes directly against what you want. And this could be addictive tendencies, Scrolling too much, You know, Pornography has become an unfortunately common way men, I guess, Kind of relieve their shame or even express their shame. You know, Losing your cool too much. Like I've seen this from a lot of men who, Especially prior to marriage or committed relationship, Were never someone who had a temper, But suddenly they take on the role of, You know, Being head of household, Whatever, Their wife is always like nagging at them and they start losing their temper for the first time in their life. A lot of times at the core there is an experience of shame within the person because, And I've done whole episodes just on this topic in itself, Shame is the emotion of disconnecting you from parts of your unconscious. That's arguably the cultural reason why shame even exists is to tell you like certain behaviors or tendencies you have are wrong and therefore you shouldn't do them. And while behavior modification is important, Like you want your children to grow up in a way that they fit into society and they're not totally unlikable, To internalize that feeling of shame. Means you are, For most people, You're compartmentalizing some part of yourself. You're cutting yourself off from your own unconscious, Some parts of your feeling. Dissociating from your anima is another way to put it. And I mentioned the dog brain earlier. Your unconscious, All of your unconscious feelings and forces, It really is like an animal. Our limbic brain is very Very similar to, Say, The limbic brain of a dog. You can cage it up, And as I mentioned earlier, The more masculine a person is, The more easily you can stuff down your feelings or cage the animal within you from strength of personality. And just like an animal, It will lose vitality. It'll become numb. Many men go through life with anhedonia. It's almost a ubiquitous thing in society, Like numbness, Essentially. Men, Especially masculine men, Can go through all the motions of life. Basically as a shell of themselves, Totally disconnected from their feelings. They can do all the things on the outside, But then they wonder why, Say, Women can't feel them, Or their wife says they're distant, Or they don't have that joy of life that they had when they were a child, For example. And there's been many movies, Psychodramas for men about this specifically, Fight Club, Breaking Bad, Are the ones that I bring up a lot on the podcast, Because they've touched me, At least, In recognition of caging this part of yourself. Just like a caged and starved animal, When it gets the chance, It will become hostile to you, It will bite you. And this is the root of many unconscious behaviors, Destructive behaviors. It's kind of like your anima, Since it's not listened to, Since it's not fed, It comes out and does anything it can to assert its existence, Which might, Again, Might be the form of addictive pleasure seeking. You know, In this gentleman's case, It was white lying. I've seen all sorts of versions. I mean, Simply losing your temper in ways that you really don't want to. Even that, I would say it's like when a person's anima has been suppressed, It finds an outlet. Finds a way to blow up. It might be at your wife, It might be going postal, It might be losing your cool in some other situation. Road rage is another place I think a lot of people unleash their suppressed anima because it feels safe when you're contained in this little box you're driving around. And on the flip side, And this emotion of shame is so interesting, Is because simply to deny shame within yourself is an act of reconnecting with your anima. Anytime you allow yourself to feel shame, You are saying that some external thing, Be it culture or your upbringing or the mood of your wife. This is the worst thing to make the mood of your wife your moral authority. I'll speak more about that in a second. Anytime you feel shame, You are making this external thing more important than your internal relationship. Whereas to deny shame is to say that I have my own back. I mean, I have a whole lesson on this in my archetype challenge, Like just denying shame and recognizing that you have your own back. That is the key to inner game, So to speak. I recently read this essay by Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale. He was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. He was shot down and he ended up in a Viet prison camp for seven years. And since he was the highest ranking American POW in that camp, He kind of became the leader of this group of American POWs for seven years, Going through torture on an almost daily basis. All of these mind games, I'm sure most, I mean, Most of us know about communist prison camps. That's where the term brainwashing comes from. But he was able to maintain his sanity because one, He adopted or he employed stoicism, That's what his essay was about. There's a link in the show notes in case you want to read it yourself. But he had a lot to say about shame. He recognized right away that the only way that his captors could break him is if they got him to feel ashamed about something. I quote, The currency on the game table, Where you and the interrogator faced one another in a duel of wits, Was shame. And I learned that unless he could impose shame on me, Or unless I imposed it on myself, He had nothing going for him. " So this might seem like an extreme example or analogy, But if this individual was able to deny brainwashing in a literal prison camp, You can deny shame within your own marriage. Your wife is obviously not your true opponent, Although sometimes her animus can feel that way. But as long as you don't feel shame, You are not abandoning your own anima. And she will also benefit from that. I said this first principle is eliminate shame and blame from your household, Because shame and blame go hand in hand. Very often when a person is feeling shame, They're more likely to blame the other as almost a coping mechanism to relieve themselves from the feeling of shame. You blame the other person. Most arguments between married couples, Between couples is mutual blaming driven by, And then it becomes this vicious cycle where maybe you take on some of the blame from your wife that makes you feel some shame, But you don't like it. Send it back to her and it goes back and forth. And I'd even say shame and blame very much correlate with attachment theory, Which we mentioned earlier, That anxious people or it's more of an anxious tendency to internalize problems and feel shame. This feeling of it's all my fault. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough for my partner. Maybe he or she will leave me. Whereas an avoidant person or is more of an avoidant trait to be quick to blame. It's like, Oh, I feel bad. It must be that person's fault. I need to leave. They're not good enough for me. Maybe I should seek another partner or such and such, Right? And this anxious avoidance thing, They're both versions of insecurity, Right? Whether you're prone to blaming your partner or prone to taking on shame yourself, Or you do a mixture of both, Or you do the opposite to cope with the first one. They're both forms of insecurity. So there are, You can say expressions of you being disconnected from your own unconscious. Because if you are really connected with your anima and you're truly not feeling shame, It becomes harder to even be affected by someone to the degree that you would even think to blame them or have to blame them or dwell in that emotion. And note that I said, Eliminate shame and blame from your household. We've been focusing on your internal experience, Because that's the thing you have the most control over. But you do not want anyone in your household, Starting with your wife, Your woman, Your partner, To feel shame or blame. Because one way to look at it is that these emotions are pathogens. If anyone in your household is feeling shame or blame, It's going to be, For reasons I just explained, It will bleed out into the other person. If your wife is feeling shame about something, She will be more likely to blame you. She will be more likely to do things that are upsetting or against her own intentions. I see this on both ends, Both in men and women, When you're kind of building a case against your partner or stewing in resentment, Which is its own thing, Which I'm going to talk about in a second. But you're Being like, Oh, This is why I'm not happy, Because she or he is doing such and such. And you have this list of complaints. If only she did this, Then things would be fine. Or she keeps messing up in this way. Or if you're more of an anxious type, Or I keep messing up in this way, All of her blaming on me is justified. Any version of this is only going to grow it in your partner, And you're going to create this vicious cycle where shame and blame becomes heightened. And you almost always see some version of this when couples are drifting apart over years, Where you see this negative, This unpleasant feedback loop going back and forth where you're both increasing blame of each other, Building a case against each other, Until one day someone says, I don't think we're compatible anymore, Or I still love you, But I'm not in love with you anymore. Or maybe I just simply don't love you anymore. These things happen over time due to this feedback loop. The good side or the thing to recognize is that with any chicken and the egg feedback loop, Either party can stop it. Either one can end it, Which is why we obviously are focusing on your own well-being because that's what you have the most control over. If you stop the cycle within yourself, If you stop internalizing shame, If you stop accepting her blame and you stop blaming her back, You can end the cycle and create a more positive feedback loop where you both feel better with each other and reconnect with your unconsciousness, Reducing shame, Reducing blame. Now, Blame can be pretty hard to let go of, Especially if you're white has said or done hurtful things, If you have built a case against her to defend yourself against the case she's built against you, Or whatever. And the active word here is forgiveness. And I'd even say brutal forgiveness, Which sounds like an oxymoron, But For me, At least, It resonates more of that I'm not going to allow these toxic emotions in my household, Starting with me taking emotional leadership, Being the head of my household, But also doing everything I can to encourage my wife, And I would even extend this to my children, That nobody feels ashamed. No one feels blamed because, Again, They go hand in hand. And you can see this more directly with children, Right? If you get into the habit of blaming them about they're doing everything wrong, They internalize that shame. They end up acting out more as teenagers, Which typically is time in their development when their anima is strong enough to put their middle fingers up or talk back or rebel if they feel like they have to. And, You know, I did choose the term brutal forgiveness because I know the term forgiveness can seem kind of corny, Unless you're a Christian, Of course, And this is just part of your moral framework already. But I want to be clear, The forgiveness is not about turning a blind eye to negative or unwanted behavior. It's that even if your wife does something that is not cool, You are not making her a bad person for it. You're not blaming her in a way that she has to feel shame, Which will inevitably make her repeat the bad behavior anyway. Forgiveness in this sense, Whether you're forgiving your own shame of all the times that you messed up or forgiving all the times that she messed up in the form of blame, It means that you are not letting the past control the present anymore. You are not allowing your past fuck-ups or regrets or shortcomings affect how you show up as a man today. You are not holding the mistakes that your wife made in the past or the hurtful things she said from a state of overwhelm or panic or whatever. You're not holding that against her in a way that you're going to continuously be suspicious, Continuously have this negative view of her, Which ultimately, Especially if she's a feminine woman, And she sees you as the masculine in her life, She will ultimately conform to your expectations regardless of what they are. So you might as well place positive, Shameless, Blameless expectations on her. And a lot of times when I'm working with a guy whose relationship is in trouble, Or he's even wondering whether or not he wants to stay, And I've worked with a lot of infidelity cases recently, We do focus on forgiveness. Is first because the truth is and it's not my place to tell a man what he should forgive or not. But I will say. If you can't forgive your wife a hundred percent, And specifically what I mean is you can't let it go, You can't allow the past to stay in the past and not be affected by it in the present, If you can't do that for whatever the reason is, Due to your moral beliefs or what allows you to respect yourself, Whatever, You might as well divorce her. Because if you can't fully forgive her, You're going to have this repeating cycle where she's going to continuously do things that are going to make you upset, Right? You're always going to find ways to blame her if you're still blaming her for the past. The only way to have a happy, Healthy, Polarized, Intimate relationship is to forgive yourself and forgive your wife. And another way to put this is not allowing shame or blame within your household. And I did mention either party in the chicken and the egg thing can do this, But whoever does this, Whoever takes the emotional leadership here, Whoever decides to stop the cycle by not allowing shame, Even if the other person's blaming, That person takes the masculine role. That person is the one being the emotional leader or controlling the frame, So to speak. So if you want to step into the mask and roll, The buck has to stop with you. This is part of your responsibility to forgive her and forgive yourself, Even if she's going to have to take some time to catch up to you. This is actually the most empowering way a man can show up in a relationship, Is to be the source of forgiveness. And I'll say even from a more, Say, Philosophical lens, This is how the man becomes moral authority of the household. And that might seem like a weird term to use in modern day, You know, I'll say like traditional family gender roles of like, You know, The 1950s daddy knows best. I do think as most cultural things has kind of gotten disconnected from the natural roots, That whole thing of the father being the moral authority does come from evolutionary roots, Which I covered this in detail in episode one of the History of Man podcast, That whoever the tribe sees as the leader, The chief of the tribe ultimately is the person that everyone trusts, He says what's right and wrong, We all trust him to mediate our problems or make grand decisions for the group, And that's what makes him the leader. So not from like a domineering sense or a man has to be the head of everything, But if you really want to serve your family and be the so-called happy genius of your household and have a happy feminine woman, And I even say happy and in their feelings children. This has to be something you do. Where this has gotten twisted on a cultural sense in the traditional gender roles is when the man is the moral authority, Expresses it as casting judgment all the time of telling you or telling the children, Telling the dependents where they are wrong all the time. And, You know, There is a, I would say a male tendency. I try to catch myself and actually even this whole section of no shame and blame. I have recognized that. I've negatively contributed to my relationship and my household by expressing too much blame or expressing blame at all. Opposed to gently guiding or correcting behavior in my children or in my wife. Anytime the moral authority comes off as casting judgment, Basically telling people that they're wrong, Telling people that they should feel ashamed, This makes people not want to follow you. And this is like the core of, We can say, The stereotypical teenage rebellion. It's like, If my moral authority keeps telling me that I'm wrong, I'm going to go find some other moral authority. As opposed to the more functional roots of this, And you can see this in many religions, Christianity is what I'm most familiar with, Is God the Father reminds you that you are loved, That you are a child of God. It's not to go in a spiritual sense, But the philosophy here You know, A lot of this maps into, You know, Familial consciousness, If you will, Is to if you as a moral authority are reminding your dependents, Your wife, Your children, That they are loved. They are good people, Even if their behavior needs correcting. One, That makes them want to follow you and continue to see you as a moral authority because you're sharing good feelings with them. Two, It makes them want to live up to the projection you put on them. So even though the kids fuck up sometimes, Even though the wife does things wrong, By reminding them that they are loved first, This is almost like parenting 101 or what Mr. Rogers talked about in every Mr. Rogers episode, By telling people, I love you exactly the way you are. You are exactly right, Although sometimes you mess up and that's okay. Your behavior can be corrected. That's what makes someone feel intact. And actually, You know, About once a year I watch the documentary on Mr. Rogers' life. If you don't know who that is, Because you're not American, He was a children's TV personality for like 40 years, I mean up until the 90s when I was a kid. One of his messages was that the most important thing that a child needs to hear is that they are loved exactly the way they are. And another way to put this is that you are telling them not to feel ashamed. Because when you can raise a child such that they still are in touch with their anima or animus, They still have a healthy internal relationship with their unconscious, That's when they tend to do things well. That's when they can actually act on their intention as opposed to doing these unintentional things like addictive behaviors or self-sabotage. Sabotage, Or blowing their top over small things. I realize this might seem like a far jump from marriage advice, But all of these things internally map to each other. Familiar relationships, Tribal relationships, Religious perspectives, Or philosophical perspectives, All map to the same thing within us emotionally. So bringing this back, The best thing you can do for your household to be the leader of your home, To be the masculine for your woman, Is to ensure there is no shame or blame in your household, That forgiveness is a regular thing practiced within your household, That you are the source of forgiveness, Starting with yourself and extending it next to your wife. As the source of forgiveness, You are ensuring everyone's internal relationship can be intact, That the unconscious of all of your dependents is happy because that's what allows familial harmony and of course marriage harmony or relationship harmony. And on that note, This last principle I have is a short one, But I find it's been very powerful for myself, Very useful as myself, Which is I've begun to think of my anima, My unconscious feelings, As one of my children. So a couple years ago, And you may have heard me say this if you've listened to my podcast some years ago, I had this kind of revelation a year or two into marriage that I should stop seeing my wife as an adult, Especially when she's emotional, And almost treat her as my daughter. And you know feminists get mad at this oh you're infantilizing your wife or whatnot but actually I found this to be such a healthy framework, A way better model for recognizing when she's being emotional and she's not acting like a rational man. You know, Most of the resentment that men have towards women in relationships actually comes from this inaccurate mental model that, Ironically, Feminism pushes that, You know, Men and women are the same. We should see each other as exactly the same. Our relationships are symmetrical. And then when a woman in a relationship does or expresses something that you as a man would never do to her, You're like, Oh, What the hell? I would never do that to her. This is totally unfair. Whereas the mental model was wrong. To expect a woman in a relationship to behave like a neurotypical man, That's the mistake. It's actually unfair to a woman to put those expectations on her. When I think of my wife as a daughter, And I think of how I would react if this was a little girl speaking to me, Especially in moments, Not all the time, But specifically in moments where she's emotional. I think like how would, How would I react to my daughter? It immediately becomes harder to get butthurt about things, Even if she says something not so nice. It immediately becomes way easier to have patience, Right? Because obviously with a parent-child relationship, I don't expect her to do what I do for her for me, Right? That would be ridiculous. It's called enmeshment, Actually, In psychology, To treat your child as if they're your parent. One of the worst things emotionally you can do to a child causes all sorts of issues for that child as an adult when they try to have their own romantic relationships. Whereas if I just recognize like, Okay, There's certain duties responsibilities I have to my children that they don't have to me, Right? It's not symmetrical. Apply that to my wife too. There are certain things that as the masculine in her life, I owe to her that she simply doesn't owe to me. For me to expect that from her is me, You know, Flipping the polarity and not fulfilling my role as a man, Right? Women do other things for the family, Such as creating life inside their bodies. I can pick up the slack in other ways. Once I have this perspective and I stopped thinking of her as my exact equal, It's been very useful. And although this makes some people uncomfortable, Especially if you're really vanilla, This is the root of the daddy daughter fantasy, Right? You don't hear that for the mother son thing other than in odd cases where like a man has like stunted growth. I mean, I did a whole episode on the MILF fantasy, But like the reason why the daddy daughter thing is kind of ubiquitous amongst neurotypical men and women is because that is closer to the relationship between an adult man and woman in terms of like emotional needs being met than it is towards some sort of symmetrical thing that modern day culture purports. All this is to say, I adopted this for a while and this has been very useful in increasing my patience. A lot of my coaching clients have also found it to be useful in increasing their patience with their romantic partner. But I did recognize more recently that I was missing out on something because this idea that you need to be there for your wife the way that you are there for your children, Where you put your needs absolutely last, This is a formula for creating resentment within yourself. Last year is that I also need to see myself as a person who's under my care. I also need to see myself or my own feelings or my anima as one of my children. And I've actually taken this analogy, I've made this analogy even more specific is that I need to think of my anima as my eldest child. If you imagine like the stereotype or if you've seen this a lot in television film of like a little house on the prairie, You know, Rural agrarian family where they have 10 kids. My wife and I have talked about this a lot as we're deciding whether or not to have a third child, I was like, Wow, How did all these families historically have like 10 children? Well, The reason, The way they made it work is that you start having kids in your 20s, Your oldest child is basically a teenager when you have your later children and they become like a co-parent. Like your eldest daughter, Historically at least, The eldest daughter becomes kind of like a second mother to help out with the little kids. As I think of like the unconscious side or the quatrainio Jungian side of my emotional family system. It's like there's me as the conscious father and then there's the feelings or the unconsciousness of all of my dependents including myself. Yes, My Anima is kind of like my eldest daughter in the sense that she's been with me the longest, She's the most self-sufficient. Because she's the most self-sufficient, It is the easiest to ignore her needs when there are, You know, We can say younger souls, If you will, Who need attention or like have more urgent needs. However, If I ignore the needs of my anima, Of this metaphorical eldest daughter, She will rebel. She will cause me more problems in all the ways you can imagine. This would mean all the ways of acting out that I mentioned earlier. Addictive tendencies, Losing my cool, Being emotionally unstable. These are all signs of my anima or an anima being unhappy. Whereas even though her problems aren't urgent, Her needs aren't the loudest, If I make sure to have a healthy relationship with my anima, If I make sure this metaphorical eldest daughter's needs are met and she feels happy and she's part of the system, She will actually help me take care of all the others. And you know, I know I'm stretching maybe the analogy pretty far, If your anima is really happy, If you prioritize your anima's needs, Your feelings, Even though Her needs aren't urgent, But if you do it anyway, To use Stephen Covey's Seven Habits perspective, Her needs are important but not urgent, But you make sure you do the important, Not urgent stuff anyway. The benefit is you have all the good feelings, All the extra motivation, All the synergy within yourself where you don't have, Your animal's not driving you to seek pleasure or do things for yourself because you've neglected it. It becomes so much easier to genuinely be there for your family, To be emotionally available. Emotional availability, To some guys it seems like, You know, It's like almost a foreign concept. Like, What are you talking about? I'm here, I'm listening to you, I'm talking to you. What do you mean I'm not emotionally available? I'm doing all the things. But women can sense it when your feelings are not on board. And the only way for your feelings to be on board is that you have to prioritize the relationship you have with your feelings, Making sure you are happy within yourself. And in the last principle we spoke about, Forgiveness is the antidote to the toxic emotions or demons of shame and blame. To really prioritize your anima's needs on a high level. Aside from you could come up with specific tactical things, Like make sure you have time for yourself. I always say, Get up an hour before your kids or before your family so you can do some things for yourself that make you feel alive and recharged, Whether it's physical or reading or anything that builds you up rather than drains you. Don't wake up early to play on your phone, Obviously. But high-level principles, To make your anima really happy, To treat it as that eldest child and make sure that eldest child is really thriving, You have to ensure you feel autonomy. Autonomy is one of the, Maybe the deepest, Specifically male psychological needs, Meaning you are not subject to some external force that dictates your behavior. I reposted the Nietzsche episode on slave versus master morality, Right? Your anima, Your unconscious, Does not feel good when subject to some external factor, Living by slave morality. It only feels good living by master morality. And again, A lot of the male psychodramas, Fight Club, Breaking Bad, Are all about breaking out of slave morality and entering master morality. And autonomy, Similar to forgiveness, Can seem like this abstract thing. It can be hard to recognize in the moment. But similar to the last principle of like, Shame and blame is very easy to recognize and eliminate. The negative is resentment. Any time you feel resentment, You are telling yourself or you're reinforcing the perception that you do not have autonomy. Whereas blame is kind of like an acute thing of like, Oh, This person is causing this problem for me. But very often, You can feel blame without necessarily feeling resentment. Resentment is kind of on this long timeframe where you're Adopting the perception, The belief that some sort of external force, Your wife, Circumstances, Fate, The cards you were dealt in life, This is the reason why you can't be happy. I've taken this as an overarching spiritual principle in my life. And even though I haven't done it perfectly the last many years, I can see at times where I make sure I'm eliminating resentment. I'm happier. My wife is happier. My life is more thriving. Whereas when I allow resentment to creep in, I feel disempowered. I feel worse. My relationship with my wife is worse. My sex drive is down, Right? If shame and blame are like these toxic pathogens, Resentment is almost like this deteriorating condition. Like it eats at you over time. It makes you feel less and less vital over time to the point where a man becomes a shell of himself, Not realizing why. So there are many tactical examples of how to reduce resentments. You know, You can make your own laundry list. You probably come up with many on your own, But certain things that I try to live by, It's easier to catch the negatives, Right? Complaining, There's never a reason to complain. Actually, For the patriarch series that I'm doing, Joseph Kennedy, Controversial figure, But very successful as the patriarch of the Kennedy dynasty, Never allowed anyone to complain in his home. You can say this is like a tactical version of eliminating resentment. There's no reason to complain. Take responsibility, Make some changes if you have to, But complaining says that, Oh, I don't have the power to change or affect my experience, So I'm just going to complain about it. I've also noted like seeking pity in little ways of seeking pity. And I noticed like, This is a bad habit I've had at different times with my wife that I'm not proud of. And I've done my best to eliminate of like making little comments of like, Oh yeah, Life is tough. Or like, Man, The kids really wiped me out when I took them to the park all day yesterday, Like little things like that. There is no reason to bring that up. You can process a failure or disappointment with your partner, But seeking pity from them, Even in a little way, Just like that mild intention of like, You want someone to, Especially your wife, Is the worst person to seek pity from. You just want her to pat you on the head, Or metaphorically, Or tell you things are okay. No, Reversing the polarity that is disconnected from your own anima, That's reducing your own authority and autonomy within your life, Not to mention your relationship, Because you should be the authority of that. You should be the person that, To use Dr. Robert Glover's term, Self-soothe. It's the same idea, Right? You are the source of telling yourself it's okay. The moral authority or emotional authority, And that allows you to extend it to your wife and to your children. If you can't even make things right for yourself, You can't possibly make things right for the household as a whole. Not only for your own well-being, But for the sake of your relationship. Your anima is just as important as any entity within your relationship. And what's so interesting, Again, About intimate relationships with women is that for most masculine men, Your feminine partner will signal to you when you are disconnected from your anima, Often before you will recognize it in itself. I expand on this whole idea and different applications of it in my upcoming book. But your enema is not just about relating to women. Your enema is also the source of your creativity, And joy de vivre, And drive in life, And motivations, And ideas, And all sorts of other things that actually don't directly have to do with women. Although they indirectly do, They are part of the feminine side of the unconscious. But that I will save for another episode, Another chapter. See you soon. Goodbye. You want a piece of me? Take the whole thing, Gold it. Not stolen, I give it away. Truth ain't black and white, Even actin' right, Right. There's still a little gray on my mind.