She's leaving you, pulling back, acting like she doesn't care. So you got to fight for her, right? Put in the effort, make those changes, and give acts of unconditional love to prove how much she really means to you, right?
Yeah, sure. If you want to lose her for good, you need to stop trying to win her back to save the relationship. But how could this possibly be true? I mean, how can you get your wife back if you don't try to get your wife back?
I mean, deep down, doesn't she really want you to show effort in how much you actually care? Why is he so nice? Like why are you apologizing every two seconds? Or getting to know her life story over text?
Or talking to her for weeks even though she won't commit to a date? Bro, stop it. Stop it.
Stop being so nice. Do you want to be the nice guy that she talks to about the guy she actually wants to date? Or do you want to be the guy that she actually wants to date?
Because if it's the latter, you gotta shape up friend. When most men hear the idea that they need to stop trying to get their wife back in order to get her back, they may say that the woman is being immature or playing games. And I do understand that perspective, but it's also limiting to not see it the other way.
Listen, in all of your effort, there is a hidden insidious motive that she subconsciously picks up from you. It's a hidden conversation, okay? And honestly, after working with thousands of guys at this point, It is a motive, when you really look at it, that comes from weak, low-value place, that she's hardwired to project from thousands of years of evolution.
And then once you grasp this idea and act on it, I don't see a way that you won't have a massive shift in the dynamic between you and her. Removing your anxiety, sparking attraction, and getting her to invest in the relationship again. Now, if you're new here, my name is Josh Hudson. I'm a licensed therapist who has found a more effective way to save marriages than traditional marriage therapy.
And on this channel, I give impractical and proven advice. on how to save their marriage, even if their wife wants out. And without compromising who you are, which is the most important part, today I'm going to show you how the real issues that cause her to leave tell you why effort only makes it worse for you and her. The two types of men who use completely different strategies and how you must know which one you are to know what type of action that you must take to win her back.
Because if you use the wrong action as the wrong guy, it's going to have the opposite effect. And then finally, a way to overcome her inevitable tests with each new win. you have. All right, let's jump in. Principle one is that what she needs is not problem-solving care.
All right, let's talk about the problems in the marriage from a first principle's perspective, all right, meaning the core root issue, not what she says or what's on the surface and what you guys see. The first example we're going to look at is cleaning the garage, okay? Let's say you ask your wife why the marriage is bad, and she says, well, you never cleaned the garage.
And most men will see this and they'll say, what do you mean I never cleaned the garage? Like, what are you talking about, right? Well, the truth of what she's really meaning here is that it is not your behavior that she's pointing out. It is a part of you.
Your not cleaning the garage speaks to your lack of integrity as a man. And that's what she's more upset at. It is a pattern. And you'll see this as time goes on with more examples, how does it play out in your own marriage? Because at the core, if you're lacking integrity, she cannot trust you, right?
And if you want to go deeper than that, deeper than the lack of trust, which is one of the core issues, when she can't trust you, she doesn't feel safe with you. And you'll see with all of these, there's a lack of emotional safety with every single thing. That is like the core root of it all, okay?
All right, another example is a wife will say, you always do this or you never do that. Or she'll say, you've done this thing seven, eight, 20 times. And the guy, instead of focusing on really the important part, the core, he'll say, well, it's not always or it's not never. Or I did the opposite of that last week, right? He'll try to focus on logic.
So if we go deeper here. I see this as more of a communication issue between the two of you because when she's emotional, she's going to use words like always and never. And if I was working with your wife, I would tell her to not do that. But if you change yourself, then your wife will change, okay?
But I just want you to focus on not using logic. Understand that this is a communication issue. And underneath that, when she's communicating something to you and their emotions she's expressing, the frustration, the anger, the lack of validation, whatever it is, when you're focusing on the logic, it makes her feel invalidated, okay? And invalidated, I want you to think of this one, that word invalidated basically means that the way she sees the world, the way she feels, who she is as a person is not being said like, oh yes, this is okay to feel this way.
Being invalidated, it makes us feel like we're not okay to view the world and ourself the way we are. I'm sure you've felt this at times. It is a horrible feeling. One special note here, at the core of it all, with everything you do and all the logic and all the context that you're focused on as a guy, I want you to start orienting. your attention, how you make her feel.
Quite simply, on a fundamental basis, she's choosing to leave you because the amount of moments compounded over time have been more negative than positive. I talk about the emotional tipping scale on this channel a lot and the special relationship ratio. Over time, she's felt bored, angry, resentful.
All these emotions have just been compounded over time and that tipping effect has taken place. But we'll fix it in this video. To be exactly new, Dr. Gottman had that ratio as a five positive experiences to every one negative is a healthy relationship. And once you skate towards three to one, even two to one, two positive, one negative, you're skating in negative territory and a relationship that's not going to last. I know you need at least four to five positive relationship experiences to every one negative.
And by the way, you can get two positive two, 10 to one. 20 to 1, there's no challenge in a relationship. And those are the relationships where the wife or husband will get bored, but that's for another video.
And one final point on this tipping scale with the negative to positive, let's say this hand resembles the negative experiences and the left hand resembles the positive. When she brings up a negative experience, you have an opportunity to make her feel validated and take that negative experience and make it positive. But when you are trying to solve her problems or use logic, you're taking a giant rock and throwing it on that negative side and it just completely tips. I'm going to let you know.
that powerful metaphor. That's what's exactly happening when you do that, okay? So the first step as a man that you actually must take is to remove yourself from the scale and learn how to make positive emotional investments and shifts back to neutral. But how do we do that? Well, this leads into our second point on where therapy fails.
Now, where I challenge the Gottmans and pretty much all traditional therapy is when you go to work in couples counseling, what they'll do is they'll teach you to produce more positive emotional experiences, right? There's healing conversations. There's all these great tools and skills and exercises in order to mend the relationship.
But as you'll know, when you try to fix the relationship or do these positive emotional investments, when she's in negative sentiment or she's an apathetic towards you, those things come off as manipulative. Common examples that many men face is that when the wife said, okay, I'm done. I want out of here.
I want a divorce, whatever the language was. I'm no longer in love with you. What would happen is that as a guy, logically, you're like, okay, I'm going to read these books. They said to do these things. Okay, I'm going to take our dates.
I'm going to fix all the things she said wrong. I'm going to tell her I'm sorry. I'm going to write her these letters. You're doing all these things.
How does she interpret those things? When she has that negative lens that you are the source of stress in her life and there's more negative experiences and positive in her memory, those things come off as manipulative. They go through this filter of like bad person, bad person.
Like, right, you can do the same action with your wife at different time intervals. Let's say you say she's upset with you and you guys are at neutral. You're at like two to two.
And you go ahead and you get her some flowers and you get her a spa day. She'll be like, that was really nice of you. When she said, hey, I'm done. I want a divorce at a different time period.
That's when the wife's like, now you're doing this for me? Screw you. You're just trying to get me back.
You see how that works? This is why it is so, so important that if you are struggling in your marriage, that you do not try to do things on your own if you keep on messing up. You need to get support. If you want support from us, you can set up a call down below, but you need to do something different or you're going to go into this negative tipping scale, this negative sentiment, and then the uphill battle to get her back to neutral. It's possible we do it every single day, but it's a lot harder and you wish you didn't wait.
You see, at the different stages. which I'll put the stages video at the end of this one, the five stages, how to get through them. So stick around for that.
But each different stage she has from one to five, she has different emotional needs and different behaviors you must interact with to get to the next stage. If you do actions at stage three, when you're at stage one, even at stage five, if you do actions at stage two, it's going to cause you to go backwards. There is a formulaic way to win her back and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time just messes you up.
Stage three, you see when she is emotionally invested and open to you and showing love and going on dates with her, all those things will happen. work. Now, where most men falter in this lower stage is not in displaying apex behaviors.
As mentioned before, one of our core needs is emotional safety. Now, I want to lay out those two types of guys that I talked about in the beginning that can make their wife feel unsafe, but from completely different behaviors and ways of being. Now, the first pattern we see play out is the typical nice guy who has high anxiety and their fearful avoidant wife, the wife that shuts down, that is apathetic, the one that says, I want a divorce, and the husband goes, what? You've been thinking about it for years?
Where does this come from? because she doesn't want to express her emotions. That's her MO.
And quick side note, I hate labels because they limit your capacity to overcome that thing, right? So use labels as a framework, but don't adhere your whole identity to these things like nice guys or my feel for avoidant wife or all of these things. I talk about in the channel a lot, but when you only see your wife or yourself through a certain prism or lens, it limits you to overcome that thing.
All right, let's continue. Now, if you need to perpetually talk about your issues, you have covert contracts, you obsessively worry about what she's doing, you check your phone constantly. then most likely you're this type of guy and she feels smothered by you at times. The other type of man I talk about is the logically distant man. He tends to shut down or leave conversations with his wife when she gets heated.
He often feels overwhelmed by her communication style and just needs time to think about things or be at peace with her constant nagging. Sorry, without her constant nagging. He often feels overwhelmed by her communication and just needs some time to think or be at peace without her constant nagging.
And he often tries to control his wife through logic and putting her down. Now in this case, you must show her levels of validation and empathy on how your actions impacted her over the years so she feels understood that you won't hurt her. her again. For the nice guy, as hard as it is, you need to start giving her space.
Stop texting her as much. Only single response text messages. Don't text her out of the blue if you can't help it. Find more hobbies. Spend more time away from home.
You need to create space because even if you are changing when you are connected to her, she's not going to see those changes. You must have that pull away, that differentiation is what's called therapy, not being enmeshed in order for her to actually give you a chance, okay? Ultimately, at the end of the day, for the nice guy, you need to become whole, right?
You've had this... gaping hole in yourself, H-O-L-E, and it can only be filled by hurt. And that's been created over time.
You used to be this more apex, confident man, right? It's more authentic, on your purpose, driven guy when she first fell in love with you. But over time, you just become complacent. And now it's that object permanence where you're just like, you can't imagine your life without hurt. You tied up your own well-being, your own self-worth.
You sacrificed so much just to be with hurt. You must pull away, become whole before you get the opportunity to be with her, plain and simple. This is known as the reverse law. I've always been fascinated by the law of reverse effort.
Sometimes I call it the backwards law. When you try to stay on the surface of water, you sink. But when you try to sink, you float.
When you hold your breath, you lose it, which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, whosoever would save his soul shall lose it. Try to think of it like this. The act of pursuing someone that doesn't want to be with you is admitting through your actions that you are incomplete without her.
And biologically, like I said in the beginning of this video, Women are hardwired, designed. I don't care how many memories and you know her, she knows you. I don't care if it's 50 plus years of marriage.
That DNA, that hardwired, that evolutionary drive in her, it's like trying to ignore that fundamental principle is like trying to say like, oh, you know what? I don't need to eat or I don't need to sleep. It's just a hardwired biological function. That's what I want you to think with your behavior and how it makes her respond. That there are hardwired biological laws that you must engage in to maintain attraction and respect and love in a relationship, period.
Okay. Now. the mindset that helps guys facilitate this change the most is flipping or reframing this event as an opportunity for you. I know with all the pain, the panic, things falling apart, not even wanting to wonder what life is going to be like without her, the effects on the kids, just falling apart.
You want to do anything to save it, but that desire to just cling on, to just want things back the way they were, they're not going to be the way they were, but they can be better. Okay? So as hard as it may be, you have to do it. have to start seeing this as an opportunity for your growth, okay?
Now, the common thread among the logical distancer and the nice guy is that empty hole inside of us. It's just both men trying to fill it in different ways. Quite simply, you need a miracle to win your wife back.
But a miracle, all it is, is a shift in your perception, right? Seeing the problem as an opportunity, right? Seeing what your wife did to you as trying to divorce you or whatever she did as an opportunity for growth. The men that win their wives back, when she handed them the divorce papers, they said, Cool.
All right. Thank you for the wake-up call. I'm still going to win you back. Period. That's a miracle.
If you ever asked me, I got to say that, who didn't believe that before, that's a miracle. Okay. The fourth point is how to pass those tests. I talk about tests a lot in this channel. However, all a test is, is that we are with people that give us positive emotional needs, like I said.
Now, those positive emotional needs are seen as valuable, right? They are valuable. They help us survive.
So with your wife, her being nice and happy, and then you have the physical looks, which are a huge component of it for sure. It's not all of it, but it is a huge component. We know what a high value woman is, a woman that is desired by a lot of men, okay? And you have a lot of commonalities with her. Those are all valuable to shared emotional experiences.
Now, a lot of that is overlapped with a guy as well, but there's other things here that are valuable to her that she cannot see, right? And a woman can only know your value through testing you and seeing your responses, okay? How other people respond to you. And if she can't see how other people respond to you, she's gonna see how you respond to her. And- you and your logical mind, you're like, okay, cool.
I know my wife is this person, but to her, that knowing of value comes moment by moment. It shifts. And let's admit it, for most men, they are not the same guy when their wife first fell in love with them.
They don't have the same drive, all these, I'm not going to go into that. You know this, okay? You know this. So she's been testing, but a lot of guys perceive that test as criticism or nagging or like, why does she have to be this way? When in reality, that miracle shift.
is recognizing that her testing you is a good thing because she is seeing if you are still the man and it is an opportunity for you to express how valuable you are to create more attraction. Logic of how much money you have, your looks, even your past memories are not enough information of her to know you are still the right man for her. Your wife will constantly test you.
It is her means of knowing you are the right man. She tests you by challenging you, becoming distant, pointing out your flaws, getting emotional, or testing your boundaries. Now a lesser man will think that these tests are coming from a rude or insecure place. But the apex man knows that this is all a natural process that all high value women engage in. Look, the more she tests you, the more she wants you.
There are two types of guys in our program that I see. There's lots of different types, but these guys who first come into the program, they're like, oh, my wife is complaining. She's criticizing.
She's doing all these things. And then there's guys that are like, I wish my wife still cared enough to do that. My wife is at the stage of apathy, stage one, where she doesn't even care to test me.
So if your wife is at that stage where she's testing you, she's going against your boundaries, she's still engaging with you. If she's showing emotion, she cares. And that is a good thing. For example, one of the guys in our program that recently came into his name is Greg, right?
As soon as he came to the program, he started sharing that his wife was saying things like, it's too late. Save your chances for the next woman. I'm not going to fall back in love with you.
Or my favorite one, I'm not going to have sex with you. Just so you know, I know we're going to go hang out, but like, I'm not having sex. Which by the way, if she says that, the perfect response is to say, oh, you're thinking about having sex with me?
Okay, sure. It's golden. Look, as a man on his mission to win his wife back, when she's testing you and failing those tests happen, it's like you're almost at the finish line to the next stage and then you trip over it.
Okay? So there's a video right here going over tests, why she tested, how to pass them. And here's the five stages video.
Again, if you want to set up a call down below, click the link. See you guys in the next video.