Every chronically unhappy husband I work with is battling a very common affliction.
It’s his mindset.
The way he thinks about his role and his life as a married man is in need of what I call a “mojo makeover”.
And until he decides to buckle down and focus on changing his self-sabotaging thoughts he will continue feeling what he’s feeling and getting what he’s getting.
He will keep trying to “make her happy”. He will constantly worry about what she thinks of him.
And he’ll continue doing anything and everything to get her attention, gain her approval and feel her appreciation.
He will jump through more and more hoops each day just so she might give him want he wants.
In his mind he’s been a really “good husband”. The best kind. The caring, attentive, provider kind.
Everything would be fine if she would just acknowledge that and validate him.
(Note: Obviously, mojo makeovers are equally essential for chronically unhappy wives. There are many resources out there for that.)
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Why “Good Guy” Doesn’t Always Equal Good Husband
A client I’ll call “Kevin” told me once that his wife just blurted out one day, “Just because you’re a good guy doesn’t make you a good husband!”
“What the hell does that mean?” he asked me.
Kevin is like thousands of unhappily married men who aren’t getting what they want from marriage.
He’s a powerful and competent man at work. He is highly respected and appreciated by his co-workers and his clients. Kevin is decisive, quick witted, funny and persuasive.
He has a pretty tight group of friends and considers himself a caring, sensitive and conscious guy.
After hearing how he was operating in his marriage, I was able to pinpoint the problem.
His need for external validation from her is insatiable. His subsequent dark moods, angry outbursts and seething resentment create a predictable pattern in their relationship.
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Kevin is used to getting what he wants. His relationship skills outside of his marriage are effective at engineering the outcomes he desires. He knows how to get people to like him and get their agreement with doing the things he wants them to do.
Outside of his relationship it seems to work pretty well. His wife knows this about him. She sees how effective he is at work and how people gravitate toward his confident and assertive nature. He is patient and kind with everyone.
Except her.
She doesn’t respond to his manipulations and subtle games of getting his needs met and that pisses him off. He not only wants her to want him…he needs it more than anything.
While he gets his “validation bucket” filled easily at work, it’s not so easy at home. He relies heavily on his wife to make him feel okay about his masculine value and his sexual worthiness on a daily basis.
His need for external validation from her is insatiable. His subsequent dark moods, angry outbursts and seething resentment create a predictable pattern in their relationship.
He wants to know how to change her.
How can he make her more appreciative and desirous of him?
Shouldn’t she want to make him happy?
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Being a Happy Man First – Happy Husband Second
Kevin’s personal challenge is hardly rare these days.
I didn’t escape it either.
It’s the mindset and belief that we are dependent on outside validation and acceptance in order to be happy men.
It’s the trap of holding others hostage for making us feel whole and worthy.
It makes us resent them for not filling those needs. And, in turn, they resent us for being given an utterly impossible assignment.
The only possible way toward being a happy man inside our relationships is to take responsibility for being a happy man outside our relationships.
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I regarded women, sex and marriage as oases from which my sense of well-being could be filled – anytime I needed. Feeling like a happy man required me to be dependent on feminine approval, sexual surrender and unconditional commitment.
Perhaps like me, you are the product of a few generations of men who have obtained their PhD’s in the art of pleasing women and using relationships with them as the wellspring for your sense of masculine purpose and value.
This is a habit we develop early on when we find easy targets in our mothers, aunts and teachers who are all too willing to let us drink from their generous fountain of approval and “attaboys”. This is exacerbated by the absence of strong, masculine role models to teach us another way.
So what now? We’re decades past our formative years and still confused on what to do next.
The only possible way to achieve true happiness inside our relationships is to take responsibility for learning what it truly means to be a happy man outside our relationships.
First things first.
This means we must deliberately and mercifully release those we’ve held accountable for our happiness. I don’t mean leave them – I mean release the pressure from them. Not only will they feel a massive wave of relief as we lighten their load…so will we.
As we take our own initiative we will feel the departure of our clinging inner boy who has feared this day for some time now.
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The Key to Becoming a Happy Man
Learning to become a happy man is your paramount mission.
Nothing else is more important and nothing else will improve your life more dramatically.
Men first approach me with this problem when their intimate, committed, romantic relationship has hit a wall. It’s in these relationships where we first feel the intense pain of masculine inadequacy and powerlessness.
We have the ability, imagination and initiative to create whatever we want and to become whatever we want.
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It’s the first time our lack of emotional self-reliance is so vulnerably exposed. And our women don’t waste much time testing that sensitive underbelly. They can’t and won’t accept our demands for attention and validation like our mothers and teachers did.
It’s actually a favor if you can get yourself to see the beauty in it. I know how tough that can be.
The key to becoming a happy man inside our relationships is to learn that we already have everything we need inside of us to be happy.
We have the ability, imagination and initiative to create whatever we want and to become whatever we want.
Happiness comes from choosing to manipulate our own circumstances – not the people around us.
We must reprogram our confused notions about our masculine value, women and sex.
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If we no longer want to be an unhappy man who seeks his well-being and worthiness from others, we can change that circumstance. If we want to feel more confident in ourselves and our sexual value we can change that circumstance.
And if we want to build emotional self-reliance and a sense of personal power, we can change that circumstance.
This is totally achievable when we develop more clarity around our personal values and self-expectations. We must reprogram our confused notions about our masculine value, women and sex.
And we have to accept responsibility for believing in our own self-worth and developing the confidence to stand strong in what we expect from ourselves and for ourselves.
Is it significantly more work to do that than to demand others to do it for us?
Yes.
But which one will create the real results and lasting happiness we want for our next 30 years?
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Owning our happiness and facing our fears is a scary proposition. Fear of change and the unknown is what freezes us in place. I wrote this free ebook for men who are feeling frozen. The Hard-to-Swallow Secret to Saving Your Marriage. Get it HERE.
Photo: jseliger2/Flickr
So having needs is the mark of a bad man?
Allowing him to have some fun or space to himself or escorts or just not being such a bitch it turns out the solution to make a man happy is to not address his needs at all .
I think your advice is good, here, and if a man can achieve loving himself, and being happy within himself without validation, then that’s great, and that’s what he should do. I’m not absolutely sure what form this validation takes, but I’m assuming it’s largely through sex, at least that’s how it comes across to me: that a man like this may want perhaps-too-frequent sex from his wife in order to maintain his masculine ego. If this is the case, and maybe even if it isn’t, it makes me think of how this need for masculine validation is a product… Read more »
Hey Paul, great insight. My answer to your last question may ring hollow at first.
” How do you simply assume validation from a world that doesn’t seem to care?”
That wording indicates a desire to GET something from the world. Self reliance can’t exist in that frame of mind.
We must start by assuming that love, happiness and well-being ALREADY resides within us – not outside of us. That’s the starting point for our work.
Men CAN BE sexually desirable in and of themselves. Most straight males in most countries still don’t want to put the effort into becoming physically/sexually attractive, though. The majority won’t go the extra mile; the majority don’t even know where to start. They like to look like “clones” in a way. Basically the same style, hair cut, shoes, whatever. Won’t groom properly. Un-charming, hardened demeanor. No sensuality. It’s difficult to desire someone like that, at least passionately and strongly. That’s the reason so many millennial women love gay porn, and younger generations are so attracted to foreign males. Look at… Read more »
I have also felt the need for external validation, but for my social skills rather than my happiness. When I was young, I was thought of as socially awkward. I never fully believed that, but I also knew I had no evidence to prove otherwise… because outside of my family, I was just not good at getting what I wanted from other people. And so, I became highly dependent on others’ validation for both confirmation and development of my people skills. Every rejection and “no” felt like more than just an ordinary setback. I came to see other people as,… Read more »
Hello my friend. It seems that social skills seem to be a problem with many people. I used to have those problems. The truth is that they are truly “skills”. You have to build confidence around approaching others and general conversation. This can be done with a simple excersise: next time you go on the street, say hello to every person that you see. It may be nerve racking at first, but after a while, it will ease your overall anxiety around approaching people. I highly recommend reading “how to win friends and influence people by dale Carnegie” if you… Read more »
Thanks for the kind words… but I really don’t think this is the issue I’m talking about. I’m talking about performing “being a socially skilled person”, and how dependent this performance really is on external validation, and the decisions of others going your way. The fact is, we hold ourselves responsible for others’ feelings and reactions… something we really have no control over. Part of why we do this is surely the service industry: everyone in customer service gets the message early that customers’ negative feelings are always our fault. But we also have an overarching narrative about personal responsibility… Read more »
Great article Steve, one of the best I have read so far on GMP. It applies to more than just marriages, it includes all depending on others for happiness. One of the consequences that can flow from going the change route to be responsible for your own happiness is that it can mean the end of your relationship which may have been a reality regardless. To minimise the risk of this you need to consider how you will effectively communicate your change needs with your partner and be prepared for negotiation around a win win solution. This also might require… Read more »
You have totally nailed it, Steve!!
“Feeling like a happy man required me to be dependent on feminine approval”
Women see the wedding, the ceremony as an end-game in itself, and not the ongoing process, the commitment of being married?
She has given you her approval once, publicly in front of a lot of people, and therefore it’s no concern of hers doing it again?
What’s the point of marrying someone, to give a promise of lifelong commitment and love (yes, love.) if their future happiness is of little to no interest or concern of yours?
Hi FK, It’s one thing to get married with the expectation that our partner cares about us and our happiness and totally another thing to get married because we DEPEND on them for our feelings of worthiness and happiness. In the first case we are in control of our expectations and boundaries and in the second, we are trying to be in control of our partner. Self reliance requires us to accept responsibility for our own happiness and not hold others accountable for it through abdication. Of course, the concept of “self reliance” and its importance can be up for… Read more »
Hi Steve,
What do I think?
I think that if I married someone, only to later down the road find out that she didn’t really care about us and our mutual happiness, I would be rather disappointed.
Me too. But “disappointment” isn’t a value nor a boundary. What is a non-negotiable value of yours that precedes your disappointment? What decision would you make as a result? What consequences are you willing to face when your boundary for your relationship values is crossed? What invitation could a man/woman make to their partner to address the situation without blaming them? Self-reliance is all about owning our responsibility for our own initiative – without dependence on the outcome.
We are brought up with the expectation that men are supposed and expected to be pursuers. Not every woman will go after a man who “goes to the mountain like a lion” to paraphrase DJ (from another discussion). Or rather, not every man will have a woman following him there. So we just disqualify ourselves from the available gene pool. I think that “self-reliance” mostly is about the definition we put in the word. Not ever listening to advice or suggestions, and/or bulldozing other people for having different opinions, is also forms of self-reliance. Sure, I don’t need a spouse… Read more »
“Not every woman will go after a man who “goes to the mountain like a lion” to paraphrase DJ (from another discussion). ” ____________ More importantly, I’m famous! Kidding, and always enjoy reading you, Kal, but I can’t take credit for that. Steve actually coined the mountain lion term. I just took it to extreme. I spent a marriage like yours. It sucked. Steve asked what price we’d pay? I paid a big one, walked away, lost a business, home, everything…but I’m happy now, and what got me through that was the fact that I was confident in myself, that… Read more »
DJ, thank you for the acknowledgement. I really appreciate it. I’m almost ashamed to admit I wasn’t really hit that hard in the breakup. I relocated across the country when we moved in together, so I got out of touch with most of my old friends over time. But we both worked full-time, we weren’t married and didn’t have kids so there were no real financial issues. I’ve got new outlets for my hobbies, and new friends over time, so I’m really doing fine today. Except for the “emotional connection” part. After a long-distance relationship for over a year before… Read more »
This suggestion sounds so simple but not so easy to obtain. As a husband and father of three, I find my happiness to be fleeting. My wife is exhausted and has little energy nor desire to care for any needs that I may have. I believe society places husbands in a codependent role which ties our happiness to our wives. I too, am loved and appreciated at work, but at home I am the lowest priority. I was taught to be a good husband you need to make sure your wife is happy, “happy wife, happy life.” Where is the… Read more »
Hi Henry, thanks for your thoughts. You asked: ” Where is the part about “happy husband” in this saying?” First, “happy wife, happy life” is an invention created to confuse you. It’s not true and it’s a unhealthy perspective for both parties. Therefore, there is no “happy husband” equivalent except for “Happy man, happy husband.” Relationships tends to self-destruct when one or the other partner puts the responsibility for their happiness on the other. It’s an impossible task, but we try anyway. “If you REALLY loved me you would find a way to make me happy”. Happiness is not given… Read more »
Whenever I hear someone say that Happy Wife quote, I respond with Happy Man Happy Plan and say that it is important that both people are happy. I look straight in their eyes assertively and smile until they acknowledge me.
Henry sounds like you both need to get counselling. Be assertive and respectful but don’t be a doormat.
Everyone, no matter what gender, needs to be a person complete within themselves – depending on someone else for validation is unhealthy.
Absolutely right, Arakiba. And our lack of emotional confidence shows up in many ways and places. It seems to be most triggered in our intimate relationships where we’re not getting our most urgent needs met. The specific ways men and women express that pain are very, very different. I teach men how to break through that pain and create what they want instead.
As always these articles point out a commonly understood issue and yet fail to offer much in the way of advice of how to practically address the changes required. For that try reading Reddits Married Red Pill (MRP). Yeah these a fair amount of douchebaggery there and an occasional misogynist (what do you expect it’s the internet) but there’s also a lot of straight forward no bullshit advice, feedback and a great resource of reading material on the sidebar. Take what you need, leave the rest. One things for sure it’s only YOU who’s going to do the work to… Read more »
Hi Red,
In defense of Steve, I would say practical advice depends very much on personal circumstances. I identify totally with the sentiments of the article but I’m in no way like “Kevin”. I know my default happiness is internal, but my ways of reconnecting to it will be different to Kevin. The men’s work you do depends on who you are and how far you are from where you want to be.
I’ll check out the site you mention, it sounds interesting.
Cheers
Steve many not have delved into that aspect in this particular essay, but he has covered solution orientated action in a number of others.
“Occasional misogynist” hahaha! The manosphere is all about misogyny – that’s where males show their true colors, after all.