Episode 030 – Why your man isn’t acting like one (and why it’s your fault)

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

Ladies, this one’s for you if your man (husband, boyfriend, spouse, significant other) isn’t showing up as a man anymore.  Is it his fault?  Are you to blame?  What can you do to facilitate the elevation of the man you love into the protector, provider, and king you desire him to be?  Is he even the type of man to claim those titles – because not all men are?  Let’s dive into some of those questions and talk about your role in the relationship and what you can do to help your man show up as the man you want him to be.

What (All) Women Want

As a man, I may not be an authority on what goes on inside a woman’s mind, but I’ve been in enough relationships and worked with enough women to know that, at their core, all women want safety and security.  They want to be in relationships where the man protects and provides.  They want certainty.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t want to contribute to the relationship.  It means you want to relax a little bit, knowing that your man can take care of things.  You want him to be the king so you can be the queen.  You want a man who is decisive, bold, confident, and understanding of his self-worth.  Because when a man is those things, he can do those things (and his love) outwardly in a meaningful way.  But a man who is insecure and stuck in his head is not attractive.

The 3 Types Of Men

It’s important to understand that men fall into one of three categories.  The first type of man is the one we’ve already described as an ideal man – a protector, a provider, a secure man, and the type of man who most good men aspire to be and that most women want.  These men come in different shapes, sizes, and personality traits.  But so far as their relationship with women goes, they’re always looking to make the lives of their women easier.

The second type of man resembles this first type of man, but he’s more of a chameleon.  He’s the “bad boy” type of man who seems tough on the exterior, but whose self-confidence comes out of his insecurities.  You’d call this type of man a “player” that commonly hurts women’s feelings.  Women often make the mistake of thinking this type of man is an authentic, good man, but when they get into a relationship with him, they end up getting hurt.

The third type of man is one who didn’t grow up a solid role model of what it means to be a man.  He wasn’t taught how to be confident or secure in himself.  He most likely experienced significant childhood trauma and was made to feel like he was never good enough.  This is the type of man who fails the most when it comes to showing up in a relationship.

If you’re a woman reading this, there’s a good probability that it’s this third type of man that you find yourself with.  The good news?  You can support him in reclaiming his personal sovereignty and confidence and help him become the good type of man you want and deserve to be with.

Why Men Lose Their Way 

I’ve had quite a few female clients and attendees of our events tell me that their relationships with their husbands have lost their spark and they feel like their man has more or less given up.  Typically I’ll ask them: “What was he like when you first met?”  And the answer is revealing, because each and every time the man more or less had this shit together, but somewhere along the way he got lost.

Here’s why that happens – as a good woman, you wanted to take care of your man.  Maybe this was cooking meals, doing laundry, picking out his outfits, or something else.  You started doing certain things because you wanted to make him happy, and he started obliging because he wanted to make you happy.  In any case, he was already doing these things before he met you.  It might not have seemed like it based on your parameters of how things “should” be done, but he was doing just fine on his own before getting together with you.

There’s two underlying reasons for this.  Number one being out of genuine care.  Number two is out of control.  You probably aren’t even conscious of this, but most women have a built-in protection mechanism and the belief at some level that they need to take care of themselves.  So it’s only natural that when you enter into a relationship, not only do you continue taking care of yourself, but you also start taking care of the person you love.  This isn’t a criticism, it’s simply the reality that you want things done the way you do them and you likely have little regard for the way your man does things.

Eventually, you get tired of having to do everything yourself.  You reach a place in your relationship where your man takes a step back because he’s learned to accept that you like doing things your way and have always offered to do them.  As a consequence, you may begin to resent him.  You start thinking to yourself: “Why am I always the one having to do this?  Why doesn’t he help out more?”  You’re still willing to do these things, but resentment, anger, and criticism soon begin to build.

The Self-Perpetuating Cycle Of Relationship Frustration

Good men will allow things to continue on like this.  Not out of obliviousness, but out of wanting to make you happy thinking that you are in fact happy doing things your own way, despite your resentment.  However, they eventually start to realize that they’re no longer contributing and start wanting to step up and help out more.  The problem is that now they realize that they’re getting criticized for doing so and buy into this limiting belief that there’s nothing they can do correctly.

What happens from here is that your man starts to live in his head.  He’s got an inner argument going on around wanting to help, but not knowing how to help.  He wants to do things that’ll  motivate you to be less angry, less critical, and more loving like you were when you first started out in your relationship.  But he doesn’t know what to do in order to facilitate that and make that happen.  This moves him into a place of feeling emasculated and that he’s best served by being an order taker in your relationship.  He’s outsourced his self approval to you as the woman he loves.

When a relationship reaches this stage, what typically happens is that for you – the woman – you get lost in a self-perpetuating cycle of resentment, criticism, and anger.  Meanwhile, your man gets trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of feeling like there’s nothing he can ever do right, so he stops trying altogether.  Now, none of this is an excuse for the man you love.  It’s not your fault that your relationship may reach this place.  Relationships are a two way street and you both carry 50% of the responsibility for why your relationship isn’t all butterflies and rainbows like it once was.

6-Steps To Transform Your Relationship Dynamics 

The good news is that there’s something that you can do in order to course correct this dynamic so that you can contribute to building up the confidence of your man and helping him to elevate into the king that he is actually meant to be.  It’s a 6 step process.

Step #1 – Encourage your man to read this and listen to the accompanying podcast episode so that he can start becoming aware of why your relationship has evolved into its current dynamic and the role both of you have played in getting there.

Step #2 – Stop criticizing your man and start acknowledging him more.  Chances are that you’ve reached a place where you’re overemphasizing the things that your man is NOT doing right and the burden that’s put on you rather than the things he’s trying his best to do well.  He doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong and is probably unaware of why he’s taken a step back.  So start acknowledging the things that he is doing.

Step #3 – Ask for help – and be okay with it.  The only way to reach a place where you no longer have to ask for help is if you’re willing to ask for help, first.  Be aware of the energy you’re bringing to the asking and try to ask from a loving place.  Tell him exactly how you like things done and how you’d like him to contribute to assisting you clearly.

Step #4 – Acknowledge your role in all of this.  Acknowledge that you, as a woman, have a desire to be in control and do things a certain way and, when they’re not done, you get critical and angry.  Cast the vision for the type of man you want him to be when he’s decisive, bold, and contributing more on his own accord.

Step #5 – Be patient.  A good man needs time to learn new habits.  Remember, he’s outsourced his decision making and self approval for a while and it’s going to take time for him to reclaim his personal sovereignty.  Be okay with that.  If he’s a good man, he’s going to want to keep doing things your way, but in order for him to do so, you’re going to have to be okay with him not doing them correctly at first.

Step #6 – Know this – if he’s not trying, then he’s not the one.  It might be a tough pill to swallow, but you’re a queen and you deserve your king.  Remember, this process I’m laying out is mostly geared toward that Type 3 man who was never taught how to be a good man.  But there’s also a fourth category of man who’s simply a weak man with no interest in becoming the best version of himself, for himself, or for you.

A good man, or a man with the potential of becoming a good man, will try because he cares.  Yes, it’ll take him time to unlearn his old ways in order to improve, but if he’s trying, you’ll see it and your relationship will benefit from his efforts.

My recommendation is that if you’ve got a good man, hang onto him.  Do the work yourself in order to improve the dynamic of your relationship and support him to elevate into who he’s meant to be – your protector, your provider, your King.

Stay tuned for a future post (and podcast episode) where I flip the coin and talk about what men need to do in order to elevate the woman they love into the place that she deserves to be in order to feel protected, loved, and taken care of.  For now, my hope is that you’ve got a better understanding of relationship dynamics and a simple set of tools for how you can better communicate with the man you love, so that you can both continue to improve and grow together.