Many times, men find that life appears to be more challenging and even harder than they think they can handle. They struggle with thoughts and emotions that bubble up due to their belief that they aren’t able to achieve.
We want to blame those around us for our pain, and our suffering, it is our wife’s fault that we aren’t having as much sex as we believe we should. It’s your kid’s fault that they don’t respect you as you feel they should. Your wife’s family is always dunking on you and you don’t feel comfortable around them. It is easy to pass the buck and point a finger at someone else, all while forgetting that when we point that finger there are three more pointed back at us.
Yes, I am saying that the vast majority of your suffering you are doing isn’t because your father-in-law thinks you are not doing enough for his baby girl, but what you think of how they act around you.
I also want to point out that we often bring our suffering, dump it on top of ourselves, and then wonder where the problem comes from. So let’s look at how we both invite and bring in all of our suffering.
How you are bringing in your own suffering.
You will often do stuff that is actually in your control and then complain about the results. You don’t take the trash out and then wonder why your house smells like garbage. You will intentionally or more often without intention perform some action and then wonder why people get upset.
For example, we know that one person who will always ask to borrow money after showing you their new Nikes. You wonder why you are broke yet you “have to” get Starbucks every morning.
Maybe you know a guy who complains about not being able to see their kids but only chooses to see them for a couple of hours before they have to hit the gym or play a round of golf with their buddies.
Are you that guy who walks around and makes loud statements that their wife is frigid and never wants to have sex? Yet what are you actively doing to correct the issue? How are you trying to improve the relationship? Many men will think they are trying by just staying out of the way. They are not trying to improve their intimacy, they aren’t doing much. Many sadly believe that if they just don’t interact with their wife or if they just bury themselves in their work their wife will start to miss them and appreciate what they are doing.
The problem is that thought is that your wife doesn’t function that way. You have to give her a reason to miss you. If you are being a stranger to her then why should she care for you? You have to be the catalyst for change. This is why you have to work on you. You can’t change your wife. Yet the more you try to change your wife the more she will resist and the more suffering you will pile on your head.
That is you apply your own suffering to yourself. Just like the guy who doesn’t have enough money for his rent even though he is always sporting new clothes, your marriage is suffering because you are trying to move a mountain with your bare hands.
Remember your thoughts create your actions. You have to be intentional with your thoughts so you get the results you desire.
No, you can’t control your wife’s thoughts or actions so you have to create the circumstances that may lead to her having the welcoming thoughts
What are you doing in your life that you have control over? Remember you can control your thoughts and your actions, and both of those are directly linked to the amount of suffering and pain you encounter.
When you start being intentional about how you think you can start to get the trash out of the way and start creating the needed circumstances in your life for your wife to be more intimate with you.
Circumstances you can’t control
Now there are certainly circumstances that you can and can’t control. Most circumstances are out of your control they are just events that are happening around you. What you make that event mean, is completely up to you. Circumstances are in fact, neutral. They are not good nor are they bad, until you apply a thought to them. Till then they just are events. This is why events that you don’t know about don’t affect you. Your thoughts on the circumstance are where all the emotions come from.
Different circumstances can create one thought in you and a different thought in your wife. The same event can create a different thought in you depending on what led up to that event. Haven’t you heard of something and got completely bent out of shape over that information, and then got some more info, and suddenly you aren’t mad anymore? The circumstance didn’t change, your thoughts on the circumstance did though.
So If you want to stop suffering and start loving your wife more stop obsessing over what didn’t go right because that is just a thought about how your wife reacted.
Most of the pain in your life is from your thoughts.
This is more true than I like to believe. Yet when you look at the points that your life is run on different models of THoughts create Feelings. Feelings create ACtions. Actions create results. Your emotional pain comes from your thoughts of a circumstance. Yet one point of all this is that we have a choice. First, allow yourself to feel the anger sorrow discomfort Disempowerment loss or what have you. Then decide, “How is that thought helping you?” If it’s not then what is a different way to look at that circumstance?
There is always more than one way to de-fur a feline.
What are you making everything mean?
You can only Control Yourself. So the big question of the day is, what are you making your wife’s actions mean? What are you taking that side eye to mean about you? If you are trying to get your wife in the mood and you put your hand on her breast and she throws your hand off what does that action mean about you? Not about her, but about you? This is where we find ourselves really digging into the suffering.
Many men will point to what they are angry about but anger is fear’s bodyguard. It shows up so that the vulnerable fear doesn’t have to be felt. This is why you want to look at what a circumstance means ABOUT you. You answer that and you can start questioning if that thought is really true or not.
Why, is what she’s doing a problem?
Why are your wife’s actions bothering you? Ask yourself that question anytime you find yourself irritated with an action your wife is making.
Remember her actions are based on the very same circumstance you are basing your actions on. So she maybe throw your hand off her boob because you left your underwear on the floor. What does that have to do with sexy time? Nothing other than to her you have been asked and told not to do so and you failed to follow her manual. So she is running off of an unintentional model just as you have many times too.
She is going through just as much suffering because of her unintentional thoughts. You see you both are faced with suffering thanks to your thoughts and you both are trying to blame each other. What would happen if you stopped blaming her and took responsibility for yourself and then made the needed changes? She would still be reacting to the circumstances you have created but you could love her for being the human with messy emotions just like you are.
You could approach the circumstance with the unconditional love that you want to have. You can pose solutions from a place of thought and not a place of emotions. We all know that when emotions get involved they get ugly and things get messed up. Just look at the patriot act to see that everyone is susceptible to the reactionary effects of emotions.
Who are you really punishing?
Now one thing women love to do but men do it also is to punish others by punishing themselves. A huge example is one thing that my wife will do, and that is to use sex as a reward. If I didn’t do something she asked me to and she gets upset about it. She cuts herself off from sex and physical intimacy. Then she wonders why we are so distant
Guys, we do the same thing. We will get upset or even pissed off at our wife and so we will punish her by working more. By doing things without her and then we sit around and wonder why she isn’t being intimate with us.
We need to constantly be watering our relationships with intimacy. Yes, some are more drought tolerant than others but they will need some form of intimacy be it physical, emotional, experiential, conflict, or whatever.
So where are you punishing yourself for the actions of your wife?
Give up the manual
Now at the base is us humans wanting others to use our user manual. This is a set of instructions that we believe will make us happy. Sadly it doesn’t always work that way, because when a person doesn’t follow our manual we want that to mean that they don’t care about us when in reality they just don’t care to be controlled any more than you do.
So in closing you are always in control. You have the power to have a good relationship. You may struggle and things will not always go the way you want them to, but how you react to those circumstances is your responsibility. You can have a good relationship or a bad one. That choice is yours. If you want help? Let’s talk
