You can’t make a person feel anything. Yet we’re always told our wife needs to feel safe and secure to be able to open up and become more loving within her relationship.
Our wife often closes up because of past events that happened and our marriage. From fights that went unresolved, two slights that were perceived. There have been many events that have occurred in our relationship that caused us to handle each other with kid gloves.
This is one reason that we have roommate syndrome. This is why communication falls short. This is because we don’t wanna say something that might upset the other person. It is easier in our mind to try to manage the other person’s emotional state than to just live our life.
We fought to stay connected with each other, and ended up with a stalemate. We turned to just holding the line instead of trying to better ourselves. Because we’re just coexisting we’re not developing our relationship.
How do we get our wife to want to improve the relationship?
The big problem that people trying to improve their relationship run into is that they believe they have the power to affect the other person. How many people would like to what I was just saying at first and say yeah that’s an example of you affecting the other person.
The answer to that is actually no. If you remember the times that we’ve talked about the model, you know that circumstances happen they are not good nor are they bad they just are. A circumstance is completely neutral until we apply a thought to it.
Once we have a thought about the circumstance, that’s where we have our emotions and from our emotions, we have actions and actions. This is where we get our results. This is the reason why your thoughts create your results. This means that our attempts to manage our spouse weren’t working. Because we failed to build a good connection, because we were afraid that our wife would react, I result was a diminished level of relationship.
What you can control
You can only control two things in your life. Those things are your thoughts and your actions. You cannot control your wife’s responses to something you said. Your wife cannot control your reaction to something she said. So many times when we get into fights with our spouse, it is because we are taking what they said personally. We’re not thinking of anything else other than what she said means to us. So yeah we’re gonna get mad when she calls us non-Romantic because we decided that she is attacking us. Instead, what she could actually be saying is that she wants you to romance her more.
Now could she have said this in a better way? Yeah, but that is beside the point. You can control your thoughts about the circumstance. So you can decide that her calling you non-romantic is her saying she wants more romance. You could also step back and notice that you’re getting worked up And you could change the circumstance and not get angry.
Always remember you have the power.
Take action with the circumstances
So if you wanna improve your relationship with your wife, and you cannot affect her emotions or her thoughts, what do you do? Remember you have only two things you can control. Those are your thoughts and your actions. That means you have to start generating circumstances that insight into the potential for the thoughts you wanna have.
Now there are many different circumstances you can work on. But three primary circumstances will help your wife start to open up to you more. This is because women need these three circumstances in their lives so they can feel open and loving. These three circumstances are the five intimacies,Trust and safety?
The 5 Intimacies
No recently, I did 10 episodes on The Relaxed Male podcast about 10 different types of intimacy. After looking at them. Studying them, and examining what they were actually about. I say that all 10 intimacies are truly important for fulfilling relationship. But there are five that are very important and some of you can’t have without these five being present.
So let’s look at what these five intimacies actually are.
Emotional
One of the big intimacies that a woman needs in her life and that us men actually also need in our life is emotional intimacy. This is where you can’t share your emotions openly. Now the snag a lot of people run into is understanding what sharing emotions actually means. Women talk about their emotions they share their emotions with their girlfriends what they’re feeling and all that.
However, men show their emotions. Yeah we will talk about feeling proud. Feeling happy feeling upset feeling angry, regretful things like this. But we also display our emotions. Men are just as emotional if not more emotional than what women are. The problem is is that society thinks that we should be sharing our emotions like women do. With us being men we don’t do that.
We are often described as just kind of stomping around grunting things like that but being able to interpret what each other’s emotional states are is where emotional intimacy will come in to play. So when your wife understands that you’re sitting there cracking your knuckles, not saying anything doesn’t mean that you hate her or that you’re mad at her just means that you are in a contemplative mood.
When your wife is sitting there telling you exactly why she is angry that is not a means of saying that you are incompetent. Even if she does say that’s how she feels. That doesn’t mean that you are incompetent.
This is why emotional intimacy is so important because when you can understand that your wife is just having her own form of emotions and you’re having your own form of emotions and that neither one of y’all’s emotions are actually because of the other they’re because of the thoughts they’ve had. Doors of possibility open wide
Intellectual
Intellectual intimacy is the ability of you and your wife being able to share thoughts with each other. Now this sounds easy it’s like I tell her what I think all the time and she tells me what she think all the time. The issue is when she says something that she is thinking, and you have the thought That she’s attacking you.
Again, this is where the thoughts create the emotions. Can you hear what your wife tells you and stay present with what she say? If you can awesome you actually can start having a deeper conversation with your wife about whatever it is she’s thinking.
Do you feel safe enough to share your thoughts with your wife? Nice guys struggle with this. They will say what they believe their wife girlfriend best friend boss whoever wants to hear, but it’s rarely ever what they are truly thinking. Telling your wife that your wanting to have have some fun between the sheets with her is a scary thought to share after several years of being married. The reason is is because we attribute “no” to mean something personally.
We never discuss details with our wife, but she wants to know what we think she wants to know how we would approach something without fixing it. She wants to hear what you’re thinking and the same as you need to hear what she’s thinking.
Conflict
This is the scary one for so many people because they hear conflict intimacy and the first thing they think of is that’s not possible. But it is actually possible to have conflict in intimacy. Can you share a conflict and know that you’re going to stay until that conflict is resolved?
Many of us struggle with this particular idea.
This is because being in a conflict specially a high stakes conflict, our mind wants to run to the fight flight or freeze. Our mind starts making up all these thoughts of what’s being said, and the stress levels get very high And we fall out of the moment of when our wife is sharing with us her thoughts.
So the heated discussions often cause one or both members of the party to try to appease, or settle, or just distance themselves from the issue at hand. They avoid the conflict at any cost. Many nice guys are guilty of doing this very action.
The problem though is that no problems get resolved. The hurt feelings the the thoughts of injustice just compound themselves with each fight, which causes the couple to pull apart. So the intimacy dies the relationship weekends and you get that whole roommate syndrome as a problem. This is because you haven’t tried to resolve The conflict at hand and just let the trash build up as you kept sweeping it under the rug.
Experiential
What type of experiences do you and your wife have? Do y’all go out? Go to museums go to amusement parks go walking in the park? Maybe y’all just stay at home. You watch television in one room she watches television in another room and then y’all both sit around, wondering why the spark isn’t there.
Many times we get comfortable with the daily routine. There’s a bit of familiarity about the daily routine of getting up going to work coming home watching TV going to bed. You don’t try to initiate sex anymore because she’s gonna say no anyhow so wanna try. She does not suggest going on a weekend or because y’all never have money. So y’all stay home and fall into the rut of routine. This is one reason why experiential intimacy is needed in a relationship.
We need experiences to pond over. Now we don’t have to do trust falls to build trust but going to a museum and mixing things up once or twice a month is a far cry better than what you’re doing at the house right now.
Spiritual
Now I understand a lot of society today is very secular. As matter fact, church attendance was at an all-time low last decade. But now there has been an increase in young people checking out churches.
This is good on many levels, because being able to share your spiritual experiences with your spouse improves your overall relationship with them. Yes, spirituality religion was poo poo severely for a long time and then people wander around wondering what is missing from their life and most of the time it is because they have turned their back on any type of religion. Yes, they like to say well, their spiritual, but not religious And that takes out a lot of the form of what makes religion special. That’s why religion is needed. It provides rules for you to live your life upon so that you find meaning in your life. And when you can find meaning in your life and share that meaning with your spouse and she could share her meaning with you Then suddenly you both are tapping into all of the other intimacies.
So you need to have more than just physical intimacy in your life and that’s the reason why physical intimacy wasn’t listed because yeah we all want physical contact but to have physical contact and have it reciprocated in a way that brings the deepest meaning to us we also need to have those five other intimacies in our life.
Trust
This goes almost without saying, your wife has to be able to trust you. This is because of several different layers to what women make trust mean.
Now a lot of women have been raised with the feminist thought that they have to work also. This is at the detriment of thinking that raising children is somehow a demeaning job. That taking care of the house is degrading. If your wife thinks that, then that’s her thought and you have to learn how to work with that.
Yet there are a lot of aspects of in the world of trust that only men can bring to the table.
Providing
One of the big reasons that working women leave a marriage is because the man is not making as much as she is. This is often the sad truth of the matter, and proof that women inherently want men to provide for them. This flies in the face of everything a feminist has been told but Actions speak, louder than words.
Now, how does a man provide for his family? There are many routes you can take to provide even if you are a stay at home dad.
You can provide a peaceful home. By making sure the house is a sanctuary for love and peace. This is the same thing that a woman who stays at home would do. Provide by getting a job that helps with the bills. You could also provide by starting your own business.
But what she needs is proof that you are actually providing for the family.
Steady
Your wife also wants to know that you are the rock for the family. She needs to know that when the times get tough you’re not just gonna turn around and bolt. She wants to know that you can be trusted to take responsibility. That you will be emotionally stable even when everyone around you is losing their damn mind.
Your wife needs to know that you are always going to be able to maintain space for her and the kids.
Supportive
Your wife also wants to trust that you are going to support the family. That does partially tie in with providing, but is also when your wife needs emotional support. Are you willing to listen to her without fixing the problem? Can you allow her to have her own emotions? Are you going to allow her to have the safe space to emotionally crumble when it gets too hard. Or are you going to be someone who has to run because you’re not sure how to handle your wife being emotionally upset. Are you going to blame yourself for her upset emotions?
safety
finally, your wife needs to know that she is going to be able to be safe. Are you in a position to be able to protect her and the kids in a moment of danger?
This is one of the reasons why the man’s body is such an important pillar in a man’s life. because when it comes to actual physical fights and out of shape, Man will get tired a lot faster than it in shape of man. And yes, we do have firearms but sometimes it’s not feasible.
This is one reason why you want to take care of yourself. This shows your wife that you are dedicated to being by her side for the long haul. You’re in shape enough to be able to fend off any bad guy who intends harm upon your family.
When you’re able to show that you’re going to be a force of safety in her life this allows your wife to be able to relax so mixing that with safety support and trust you start having the right circumstances the allow your wife to relax. And when your wife is able to relax and be able to enjoy the moment, then she is more willing to have physical intimacy with you. But that also means you have to have the communication that comes with an intellectual intimacy you have to have the emotional fortitude to have emotional intimacy. You have to be confident enough to have existential, intimacy, and willing to give it all over to a God with spiritual intimacy.
Doing all of these provides the needed circumstances for your wife to have the thoughts that she can relax. And a relaxed wife is a content wife and a content wife wants to say thank you in the ways that you would like for her to thank you.
