My wife gave me the best birthday present last week.
“For the next year, I promise to do my best not to unload my stress, anger, or overwhelm on to you.”
We half-laughed about it.
Firstly, I expect all my birthday presents to be year-longs from now on.
Secondly, I don’t expect her to actually do it perfectly. (That would be totally unrealistic for a such a feminine woman.1)
But that she came up with this intention on her own, tells me that she is totally with me in my reality; she’s in my Perimeter.
So as she expresses the wide range of emotions that a feminine woman should, I know we’ll ground back to harmony faster and faster each time.
Do not pray for an easy woman. Pray for the gigantic balls to handle a wild one.
~Bruce Lee (paraphrased)
Lately I’ve been speaking to a lot of married men who fit this type:
He puts in a lot of effort to keep his wife happy.
Meets all the demands of family life.
Works hard at work. Works hard at home.
And then is confused (and often hurt or resentful) that his wife isn’t happy.
In fact, the harder he tries, the less happy she seems to be.
It doesn’t make sense.
Remember:
Anytime your expectations don’t match reality, there’s an error in your mental model.
We’re going to revisit everyone’s favorite Quaternio…
The Arguments article focused on the bottom left triangle—her unconscious, or Animus.
This one focuses on the bottom right—your unconscious Anima—your underlying feelings.
Your Anima represents your deeper emotional needs and drives.
Masculine men especially, have the tendency to push aside those feelings for the sake of duty.
But in the long run, this also pushes away your woman—even if you specifically push aside your feelings for her benefit.
It’s ironic. It can feel unfair.
But if you really understand this, you get a happier wife and happier life
without having to try so hard.
“Find me the man I married.”
A man I coached recently heard these words as his wife walked out of the house.
It stung. He was confused. He felt he had been a model husband—took care of her, the kids, always put himself last.
Whereas, before they got married he had been “pretty selfish.” (His words.)
It wasn’t that she was attracted to selfishness per se.
It was that the man she married still had his soul. The current man didn’t.
It didn’t matter that he sacrificed his soul for her.
Though it came out in a hurtful moment, she actually gave him perfect instructions:
“Find me the man I married.”
Before he could get her back, he needed to regain himself.
Until then, no amount of great relationship advice would work.
When a man is disconnected from his soul, all his best efforts are a little “off” (miscalibrated).
Attempts at kindness come off a needy.
Attempts at boundaries come off as aggressive.
In his case, he had developed a temper that he didn’t have prior to marriage. That was his unhappy anima “acting out” to get attention—more on that below.
Whereas when you are connected to your Anima, you don’t have to think so much because your feelings guide you to the correct response.
Why she can’t tolerate soulless-ness
Femininity means dependence.
(Pregnancy and post-partum is the absolute most dependent an adult human being can be.)
She can only be feminine to the degree she’s contained by a masculine Perimeter she can trust.
The more feminine a woman is being, the more her emotional state is affected by yours.
So the more she feels you emotionally thriving, the more she feels safe depending on you. Being feminine.
But if she senses that you’re chronically depleted, resentful, or emotionally unavailable2 her dog brain freaks out.
Her survival instincts fear that she made a bad choice of mate. She has to masculinize in order to protect herself.
Just as a woman’s body will stop menstruating when under physical duress, her heart will close off when not met by emotional surplus—both are ways to avoid being vulnerable in unsafe conditions.
She needs to feel your have energy to spare.
Many of her tests check for exactly that. If you can remaining patient (and joyful) during her stressful moment, it tells her dog brain that real catastrophes are no big deal.
I’ve spoken to a lot of men in the last month with relationship troubles. Each situation has been different. But in almost every case, the guy’s soul has been unhappy.
So step one is always to fix that.
Here are the two main things I’ve been focusing on with clients:
(They’ve done wonders for my own marriage too.)
Eliminate Shame & Blame from your Household
Shame dissociates you from your Anima.
It tells parts of your unconscious, “You are not wanted.”
At first, this causes numbness. Anhedonia.
The more masculine a person is, the more he can typically function without his feelings. The world is full high-functioning male anhedonists—Empty shells of men who go through the motions of of life without any feeling.
But the Anima doesn’t stay quiet forever.
Like an animal in your head,3 it will put up with being caged and starved to a degree. But eventually it will bite you.
The thing that brings a man down is not pain, but shame.
~Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale
from his essay on surviving prison camp using Stoicism
One married father I coached recently had an unusual vice:
He couldn’t help lying to his wife.
He didn’t mean to. It was the main visible cause of their relationship problems. And most of his lies were about things that didn’t even matter.
But he still couldn’t help himself.
Anytime we do destructive things against our own will, it’s often our Anima “acting out.”
The most common vices I see in responsible men are mini-addiction4 (doomscrolling, porn), and overreaction (having a short temper, creating unnecessary arguments)—Such a man forces himself to take care of responsibilities, so his Anima finds somewhere to act out.
It seemed clear that his lying was an expression of his shame. The lying created more shame. It gave his wife a logical reason to blame him. Which created more shame.
Vicious cycle.
And so it goes.
~Vonnegut
In relationships, Shame and Blame go hand in hand.
The more one partner feels shame about something, the more the other feels “justified” in blaming them.
It can go both ways—most arguments are mutual blaming.
But often the dominant dynamic correlates with Attachment Styles:
Anxious people tend towards Shame:
“It’s all my fault…I’m not good enough.”
Avoidant people tend towards Blame:
“It’s all his/her fault… He/she is not good enough for me.
But they are of the same coin.
(Blamers externalize their shame. Shamers internalize others’ blame.)
Either person can stop the cycle. But whoever does assumes the masculine role…
If you want to feel like the man in your relationship, the buck has to stop with you.
This is how you take Emotional Leadership.
What “dominance” or “holding the frame” really means is that she syncs to your emotions on the other war around.
That means you reject toxic emotions, and invite her to join you in that reality.
Reject any idea that you’re unworthy/a fuckup/trapped by your past (Shame).
Reject any idea that your wife is the cause of your unhappiness (Blame).
And do everything you can to help her avoid those feelings too…
I wrote “Eliminate Shame and Blame from your Household” for a reason.
Shame and Blame are pathogens. If anyone in the home carries them, it will infect others. Allow them to keep festering and they will break your relationship apart.
The antidote to these pathogens is Brutal Forgiveness.
This may seem like a silly oxymoron. But I chose this term intentionally.
Make it your household responsibility to ensure no one in your home, especially your wife—whose feelings affect all of you, feels these toxic emotions.
Forgiveness doesn’t make turning a blind eye to bad behavior.
Forgiveness means you’re not letting the past (your past, her past, your shared past) hold sway on the present.
Blaming her tells your unconscious that she has power over your present well-being.5
Feeling ashamed tells you unconscious that your past has power over your present well-being.
Any assumption that an external thing (including your own past) is slave morality.
Whereas through Brutal Forgiveness, you claim authority—not a domineering kind. But the kind every feminine being wants to follow.
Be the source of Forgiveness
From earliest human history, male leadership meant being the moral authority.
The leader was the person all people trusted to settle internal disputes. That meant all parties trusted his judgement of right and wrong.
That was true in Neolithic clans, and early nations. Its even true in the micronation of your family/relationship.
Traditional family roles (“Daddy knows best”) originate from this. But as most cultural paradigms, they’ve become abstracted and disconnected from nature.
The Perimeter-setter of the group unifies them. He interfaces with the cold outside world for them. He a source of safety, not a burden.
On the most deep psychological level, that means telling each person that they are loved as they are.6
It’s counterintuitive.
When people feel you love them as they are, they are more likely to want to do what you want.
This is because you are encouraging them to keep their souls intact.
And when your soul is intact, her soul will want to be close to you so it rubs off.
Treat your Anima as one of your children
A few years ago I had a revelation that totally changed my ability to be there for my wife:
Whenever she’s emotional, I try to see her as a child.
I try to ask myself, how would I respond if this was my daughter?
From that perspective, it became infinitely easier to be patient, loving, and not take anything personally.
I realized that all my resentment came from an underlying expectation that my wife should be a certain way.7 So any time she didn’t live up to that false expectation, I’d lose my cool.
Bad mental model, remember?
Whereas, I don’t have any such expectations of my daughter. That’s a clear asymmetrical relationship.
Many of my clients have been able to greatly increase their patience and cool by taking on this perspective.
But a couple years ago, I realized it needed modification.
Because one could easily forget his own feelings when tending to those of his wife and kids.
So I extended the analogy very specifically…
I think of my own Anima or “inner child” as one of my kids—my eldest kid.
If you think of the old agrarian families with ten kids,8 what made that manageable was the older kids took care of the younger kids.
If I think of all the “souls” of my family members, my own Anima would be the eldest daughter…
She’s been with me the longest.
She’s the most self-sufficient (and therefore easiest to ignore)—her problems are never as urgent as that of my wife and kids’ “souls”.
But if I constantly ignore my Anima, she will rebel and has the power to make my life hell. (“Acting out”, self-sabotage, killing motivation, resentment)
Whereas, if I proactively make time for her needs, she will take care of everyone else for me. (Good feelings, motivation, peace of mind, emotional stability and availability.)
In practice, this means making sure my batteries are charged. Starting each day with something that gives me joy, energy, or clarity before I enter dad mode.
That can mean scheduling some of your hobbies or social time back into your life, and finding a way to work around your wife and family’s needs.
This may invite an argument with the wife, especially if she’s already in “Blame mode”. I’ve had to help a few married fathers prepare for the likely/inevitable pushback:
“You’re already falling short, and now you want more time to yourself??”
Don’t get caught in the cycle and feel ashamed or blame her back.
Remember (and forgive) the fact that a toxic pathogen has taken hold of her mind.
You are deciding what’s best for everyone.
And your wife will be able to sink more deeply into her feminine, when she feels that you are taking care of your “inner feminine” (feelings).
If you could use help in your relationship, fill out this form.
Femininity, in function, requires dependence. If your woman can’t come to you with her problems, then she’s not really in your Perimeter.
“Emotional availability” is an expensive signal that you’re willing and able to provide for her. (It’s not so much that she even really gains from venting to you—she had girlfriends for that.)
A man who will process her feelings with her, isn’t going to abandon her. It’s the emotional equivalent of a diamond ring.
Much of your unconscious correlates with the limbic brain which is very similar to that of a dog.
Shame has long been associated with “real” addictions in 12 Step recovery.
If you truly can’t forgive your wife for her shortcomings, you might as well divorce her now. Because it will be IMPOSSIBLE to have a truly intimate and harmonious relationship.
Mr. Rogers hit this in his children’s songs “I like you the way you are.” I didn’t realize life-changing this was until I became a father.
Mini-political rant: Feminism and Consumerism give us this false mental model. It’s totally unfair to women to expect them to act like men. And this belief makes men worse partners.
The corrected mental model is not about putting men “above” women. It’s about recognizing that in a relationship, the man is supposed to give more to the woman as she gives more to the children.
My wife and literally talk about these types of families all the time as we debate over having a third… If only we had a teenage daughter now who could help us with more little ones.
Generally treating your gf as if she were your daughter really is the solution. I found it to arise naturally with the right (feminine) woman. Like you said, the daddy-daughter fantasy doesn't come from nowhere. For most couples this is how it's supposed to be and always has been (until feminism).