How to present concerns in a way he will understand.

FastLifePineapple · 2025-01-19T20:57:53+00:00

Some questions:

Was your relationship egalitarian, male led, or female led for the majority of your guys time together?
Are you guys on the same page for leadership?

It's going to be extremely difficult to have your SO lead you if you've been domineering and betafied your husband and now expect him to control frame and effortlessly lead you while simultaneously managing any past negative experiences of resentment and contempt.

I don't have all of the relationship details, but it seems like you guys may both be in the hard case for having poor long term relationship game (emotional stability, relationship generosity (kindness, grace, compassion, care, forgiveness for mistakes, and building relationship trust, etc.)). If you're late to relationship self-improvement, it's not a hopeless case, just a hard case that will require a massive amount of work on both of your parts; truly sitting down with each other to communicate with love until you're on the same page and can begin rebuilding trust and eventually begin loving each other again.

This is an old comment from an EC that may help:

Improving our ability to select a relationship partner is one of the most fundamental factors that determines the success or difficulty of a relationship. It can be tempting to just jump into a relationship because we feel a strong attraction or connection, but taking the time to assess compatibility and make a thoughtful choice can pay off in the long run.

RPW has maxim on this principle that you can choose men who have pre-commitment risk or post-commitment risk, but from what you've written:

We’ve been married for 16 years. Got married fairly young. I was incredibly attracted to him. He seemed to be going somewhere and have his crap together. We had similar overall goals (get married, have kids, me stay at home with them, me be a SAHM, etc). I was head over heels in love with him and have been through our whole marriage - even the hard parts.

It seems like you've selected correctly and the current relationship obstacle you're facing is coming more from stress, fatigue, and both of you guy's threat regulation systems (John Gottman's 4 Apocalyptic Relationship Horseman).

To me, this seems like a life stage challenge (marriage > children > more children) where you guys can grow stronger together based on your previous investments in each other and continual investment - it's not easy though, great relationships require hard work which you either did before you entered the relationship through personal development and self-mastery or you will have to do together later on if you married young and early. All relationships have a tendency of decaying if you don't actively maintain and foster growth and vitality. This decay hits a bit harder though for couples who either didn't grow up with great direct relationship models from parents or they went on a continuous self-improvement binge as a way of life at some point in their life for whatever reason and gained enough mastery for long term relationship game that they can weather multiple life stages such as additional children, changes in job status and work loads, starting and success/failures of businesses, personal health, navigating extended family relationships, and other challenges and obstacles.

To keep this comment post brief, you guys are basically in 'The Crazy Cycle' from For Women Only Chapter 2.

It’s possible that you are you caught in The Crazy Cycle.

This happens when the man doesn’t give enough love, so the woman doesn’t feel love and treats him with distrust and as undeserving of respect, he in turn feels slighted and then doesn’t give love. If you choose respect and behave as though you respect him it breaks the cycle.

But how can I respect him if I don’t feel respect?

We do this by understanding that feelings follow words and actions rather than the other way around. If you disparage him all the time, then you will begin to feel contemptuous of him. This is simply the way our brains are wired. The decision to show respect can easily turn to actual feeling of respect. And you must demonstrate it. It’s not real to a man unless you show it.

I learned about The Crazy Cycle from a different framework when I was in high school, but in a nut shell, we have two regions that are brains can be in: Survive Regions, Thrive Regions.

When we accumulate daily stress from raising our children, going to work, and in general handling different life challenges - the stress accumulates fatigue and the more fatigued we are the more easily we become stressed. This slips us right into survivor brain and our survive regions that focuses on threat regulation activates. We become more critical, defensive, and contempt quickly builds up between partners. This eventually leads to stone walling as we check out of our relationships. The crazy cycle starts here in our relationships and for every 1 positive interaction in our relationship, we end up having 3-5 negative interactions which leads into a negative relationship health vortex.

We break this cycle by loving and respecting our partners regardless if we're in survivor brain and our survive regions is telling us to focus on the negative, to focus on what's missing/lacking/or never going to happen. We do this by following the 'healthy relationship ratio' framework that for every 1 negative interaction, we try to aim for 3 positive interaction in order to simply survive and neutralize the negative vortex that's spiraling out of control. We do this with the goal of working towards the 1:5 ratio based on John Gottman's relationship positive relationship health spiral where you're feeling 'in love', things are flowing naturally, you have compassion / grace / gratitude / and genuine love and care for each other. You'll see the 1:5 ratio in healthy relationships where it's 'effortless and natural', but also in relationships where the couple are in the honey moon phase and things are also effortless, natural, energizing, and fun. This is something within our control and a goal to aim for in our relationships to bring back passion, commitment, and intimacy.

Apologizing for hurt feelings, making small attempts of loving your partner when things aren't reciprocated, and attempting to repair and rebuild rapport, trust, communication, and love are different methods on building positive relationship interactions. What you'll see though when both partners are deep in the crazy cycle and you're in survivor brain is that it will not feel rewarding and many times not reciprocated. But that's perfectly fine, you continue loving and respecting your partner because those are +1s to your 1:5 ratios as you dig out of the negative emotional rut you guys are in. It'll be tempting to criticize, to express contempt, to become defensive, and to go with the natural and comfortable feelings of stone walling, but those are +1s in the opposite direction and we have a natural bias towards focusing on the negatives in our life as a survival and protection mechanism. Our goal is a healthy relationship and that requires work and discipline even when you don't feel like it. This will eventually inspire him to see that he's in his feelings and he has a great woman who loves and respects him and his protective instincts to provide and care for you not only materially, but emotionally should kick back in.

VasiliyZaitzev · 2025-01-20T05:03:30+00:00

My issue is that he never seems to understand my perspective, and always takes it as a personal attack when it isn't.

Are you sure? Because a lot of times, women will present things as: "I feel bad/sad/mad", and the guy will receive it as: "YOU MADE ME FEEL bad/sad/mad."

And sometimes it is that. And if it happens often enough, he's going to expect it.

Men, on average, have a much lower EI - like a lot lower - than women do. Dealing with a woman's emotions can feel a lot like being dropped into a foreign country where you have a rudimentary understanding of the language, but the locals expect you to be completely fluent and get mad when you're not.

He also lost all interest in spending any time together.

Yeah, it's kind of funny that when you make people feel bad, they don't want to be around you. /s

It's so frustrating to not feel heard or understood, and I don't want this to keep hurting our relationship.

Guess who feels exactly the same way? I bet you can name that tune in One Note.

Pro Tip No.1: Very often in dispute, the other person, whether knowingly or not, is trying to make you feel like they feel.

I know full well he is waiting for me to let it go and seek him out, but he has made it clear that he very well may reject me.

Yep. Because he wants you to be confused about things, probably like he is most of the time.

I felt sad after what seemed like several days of neglect on his part. I wasn't rude or disrespectful, I just told him how I felt when he asked me to share.

Why would you wait several days to do smth about this? This sort of thing does not make sense to men.

Pro Tip No. 2: Do not assume your partner is always having a good day.

So you were feeling neglected, and as a result, you withdrew/sulked/whatever, for several days, waiting for him to notice. Now, you've been married for 16 years, but I only know what's in your post, but here is what would work on me:

The SO coming to me, sitting on my lap, kissing me and saying "Hey. I miss you." This takes away the "You made me feel/this is your fault" element, while also (a) demonstrating affection, and (b) communicating what your needs are. If more of a conversation is needed at that point, ok, and everyone's defenses are at ease because there's nothing to be defensive about.

AutoModerator · 2025-01-19T17:48:17+00:00

Title: How to present concerns in a way he will understand.

Author throwawaytalks25

Full text: Me (39F) and my husband (40M) have been together for 18 years, married 16. I am working hard on self improvement and in more effective communication. My issue is that he never seems to understand my perspective, and always takes it as a personal attack when it isn't. For example, I felt sad after what seemed like several days of neglect on his part. I wasn't rude or disrespectful, I just told him how I felt when he asked me to share. He said it was an accident and I should show him grace. Then he was extremely sarcastic and dismissive the rest of last night and into today. He also lost all interest in spending any time together. I know full well he is waiting for me to let it go and seek him out, but he has made it clear that he very well may reject me.

It's so frustrating to not feel heard or understood, and I don't want this to keep hurting our relationship. I just don't know how to communicate in a way that makes sense to him. And yes, I have asked him, but his only answer is "be nice" but in reality it seems to be more of "pretend your fine."

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Title	How to present concerns in a way he will understand.
Author	throwawaytalks25
Upvotes	16
Comments	35
Date	January 19, 2025 5:48 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/RedPillWomen
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/RedPillWomen/comments/1i547xg/how_to_present_concerns_in_a_way_he_will/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/RedPillWomen/how-to-present-concerns-in-a-way-he-will.1541597 https://theredarchive.com/post/1541597

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