Your Marriage Isn't Broken, It's Paused feat. Dr Lee Baucom

00:00 That's the rolling of the eyes. That's the turning away from and walking away from. That's disrespectful. When all of that comes together, the next point is disappointment, where you're like, this is not what I thought it was going to be. You're not who I thought you were. This is when you can begin to demonize, which leads to disliking your spouse. And the only next stage beyond that is disdain. Like, I am done with you and I'm done with this relationship. Welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships, and results they deserve.

00:39 Get your high value man blueprint and join our community at highvalumanproject.com. Let's go. Most men I speak to aren't in terrible relationships. They're in completely flat ones. The love is there, but somewhere in there, right? But the spark, the intimacy, the genuine excitement of being with each other, that has gone quiet. And most couples just accept that, which if you've listened to the podcast very often, you'll know that I'm completely against. You know, these couples, they call it growing up. They call it like, oh, well, we've been together a long time, settling down. It's the reality of long-term relationships. But that's just not something I'm willing to accept.

01:16 I am genuinely excited to see my girlfriend. Five years we've been together. And I know that's not 20 years, but I want that for myself for as long as we're together forever, hopefully. But for every man listening, not just a honeymoon phase, but a relationship that's actually alive. You know, where the intimacy, the passion, the physical connection, but also just the laughter and the playfulness is an ever-present thing. We're not just co-managing a household. We're not just friends who happen to be married. Like we're actually a passionate couple. My guest today has spent 30 years helping couples get back to that. And crucially, he's worked out how one person can start shifting the whole system, even when the other isn't on board yet.

02:00 I actually bought Lee's Save the Marriage program during my own divorce, possibly a month or 12 too late. That was 10 years ago. But that thinking definitely changed me. And here we are today. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for reaching out to me, Lee. Lee Bulkham, welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show. Well, Johnny, thank you for having me. I was excited about this story when you told me about it when we were chatting. I'm like, that's cool because, you know, even when things don't work, you took it to the next level and grew with it and extended that. And that's always a piece of the process. I've had to learn so much about myself as a result of the divorce.

02:42 And I think a lot of men should realize that. I mean, the stats on second marriages failing is a horrible number, basically. Why would you do it twice? But I don't mean like get married twice. I'm not sure I'm going to get married again. But nonetheless, like getting it wrong, getting it that wrong twice, I really learned, I took it upon myself in my rebuild to really find out like what about me in my marriage wasn't quite right. And it wasn't like I was a bad guy. In my mind, I was a great husband. I mean, Dr. Robert Glover's No One Miss the Nice guy was a big influence on me in putting myself back together.

03:24 But very much, you know, your Save the Marriage program really had me consider ways that I expected a relationship to be, way that I allowed arguments to manifest. And, you know, taking it into the realms of the High Value Man Project, which is what I do now, I could really see how I wasn't leading my marriage how I probably could have, and how I was really far too precious about it not being the way I wanted it to be and panicking about it going wrong and clinging on for dear life and all sorts of things that actually aren't that healthy in a modern relationship.

04:05 And at the risk of waffling on, I just don't think many men understand what it takes to keep the love alive, to keep the interest there, to keep the intimacy, to keep the passion, to be able to resolve conflict. They just, we don't given the tools to successfully manage a relationship. And I think that's a large part of what goes on for men today. And I'm really keen to get into all of this today with you. But by way of an intro, how did you get into this? You know, how long have you been doing it? And what does it all mean to you? Yeah, so before I answer that, let me back up on a couple of things you said.

04:45 One of the things that was true early days of my relationship is in my career is I would wait for the spouse to come in my office. And by all accounts, I was waiting for the horns out of the head and a tail with the spike on the end of it to come walk in my office. And the nicest people would come in my office and I would have two nice people who were not treating each other nicely, who were not treating their relationship nicely. And it really was clear to me that marriages are rarely about bad people getting it. There are some, but generally they are good people having bad relationships. And that to me is the tragedy. And you're right that subsequent relationships, I've got an uncle who helped the average for my family.

05:30 None of us need to worry about the divorce rates in our family because he, I think he had five or six marriages that didn't work for him. And you're correct that everyone after the first has a less of a chance continuing down. And that is a tragedy because most people go to another relationship, at least another relationship. And so they end up kind of replicating and getting into a bad relationship. That uncle, though, to get to your question of how did I get here, that uncle was part of how I got here. In college, I actually went to college thinking I would do a business major.

06:10 I wasn't there long before I went, yeah, I think I'd rather do something relational. And therapy was what I kind of picked because I was the person that people came to. And I thought, well, I mean, I might as well get paid for being the confidant, right? And so I knew I was going to grad school at grad school, in grad school, a couple of masters and a PhD through the training. I got trained as an individual therapist, but I got really interested in systems work of couples and families. And so I focused there and had some problems with how couples therapy particularly was being done or not done well. Statistics are not really good on the effectiveness of marital therapy.

06:53 And so as I was finishing up my dissertation, I read an article to my wife. And my wife's sitting behind me as I have stacks of books everywhere and I'm writing this dissertation. She has now lived through both masters and the PhD. And we got married right before we both went to grad school. And so I said, this is how I do my work. It was on coaching. And she said, what are you going to do now that you've done all this work for therapy? And I finished my dissertation and immediately started training as a coach and decided that instead of just saying, I'm not happy about this and I'm not happy about this and I'm not happy about this, I was going to figure out what to be happy about. So why marriage? Because when I was a kid, I watched my uncle go through multiple relationships, all destructively.

07:38 I watched two aunts go through several different marriages destructively and thought there has to be something that helps couples. My training proved that it wasn't marital therapy. And so I set out to say, what does make a difference? Like what is the underlying factor in marriages working? What makes a good marriage? And how do you help people who are even in a troubled relationship get to that positive? So that was, so I wrote the beginnings of Save the Marriage that you're aware of. The Save the Marriage System went online in 1999. So it's been a while since we've added to it, changed it, transformed it.

08:19 But that was my first stake in the ground of going, this is how marriages get better. More recently, I've been focused on what if you're not that bad that that point where you're having to save your marriage. Like, let's back up a little bit because I would rather interrupt the process before we're at that point. Absolutely. Yeah. And so instead of saving your marriage, it's how to get your marriage to where you want it to be before you have to save it. And there are some very similar pieces in there, like what makes a great marriage and why marriages get into trouble.

08:55 But that we backed up some, and that's what led to the unpause app. So we've got save the marriage at the end of the line to help people, you know, add to the line to figure out how to get off of that. And then to step back, the unpause app was designed to help people who were stuck in that pause point. So that's a long way to say that's how I got here. Nice. And just whilst we're talking about that, and actually I always hate leaving this bit till the end. That pause app, who's it for and where can people get it? So it's the unpause app. We don't want to use it. That's the unpause. Pause. Sorry. I'm like, come up with the count. Not five minute apps, four minute apps. Not the pause app. Okay, sorry. Got it. So unpause app. Yep. Unpause app.

09:40 And it's designed to help people understand first how their marriage got into trouble, but more than that, how to get it out of trouble at that point. We'll talk about the unpause, what happens when people hit the pause button. But the unpause app is education exercises a assessments, daily exercises on how to unpause the relationship when it's hit the pause button, which, by the way, it's not when it's they do. That's what happens to marriages unless people are very conscious. So, most of the time when I'm talking with people, they've hit the pause button, didn't know it, and are starting to see the effect of that, the negative effect of that. So, I decided that we needed something to help people understand how to back away from that.

10:24 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I see that as just such little things creeping in, you know, bringing someone a cup of tea in the morning or giving them a kiss every time you leave the house or like just that knowing hug that isn't just a quick flipping two bits of skin passing in the hallway. Like, it's got actually got some love and meaning there. I mean, these little things that are so natural when we're dating or so natural when the excitement of the relationship is still present. And then it's how willing we are to stay.

11:05 I'm really trying to pick the right words here. It's like a willingness to keep that alive, like holding a candle in the wind and being willing to put a little shelter around it to keep the flame flickering bright or just to say, oh, bollocks to it and chucking it over the shoulder kind of thing. That's that's what we're talking about, right? Let's talk about how that happens because I don't think it's for bad intentions. Okay. I think so. We back back. When people get together, they find this person, they're interested in them, and they start investing energy into that, right? They're building this relationship. And as you're building it, you're like, wow, this person is amazing. I want to spend all my time with them. I want to spend the rest of my life with them. And so people make a commitment in a fairly short ceremony.

11:50 Yeah, I remember it. It was like 45 minutes on a very hot August day. And my wife, we walked in single and came out. I'm like, that's it. Now we're married. And now we got to go do life. And so we did. I mean, right after that, we honeymooned and then we hit it off to grad school. And I could feel the tendencies of going, okay, we got these other things to do. We didn't, but a lot of people do hit the pause button then. So here's what happens. You have all of this energy you've put into the relationship. You've created the connection and you think you've got that down. Like, okay, we've relationship nailed down. Got that. We're in it for life.

12:31 Now we need to do these other things. And so we'll get back to our relationship at this point. And that's when we hit the pause button of going, for us, it was there was grad school to deal with. There was just, I mean, supporting ourselves on retail work and whatever else we could scrounge around. That was a lot of our energy. What we realized early on for us was that we could only survive it together, though. So we were like bonded together through having to hold through. But for a lot of people, they look at that and they go, okay, we're going to do the parenting thing, career thing, training thing for med school or law school or whatever for a lot of people, the hobby thing, the travel, whatever.

13:15 There's something that you will get back to us. And the problem is when you hit that pause button, the when we will do that, it's always a little bit into the future. There's always something else that needs to be accomplished. So, you know, when we've done the kid thing, when they're in diapers, oh, we could return to us. When they're in school, we'll return to us. When they're in high school, when they're, it's always just out there when my career is here. Well, when it's here, well, when it's here. And so we get out of the habit of connection into the habits of disconnection for benign reasons. Like we have this and the love is what we need. So we can do these other things.

13:58 Interesting thing about those statistics, you know, of what happens, even the first marriage, you know, the statistics are not great. They're better than in later ones. But if we just put them all together, roughly, at least in the United States and most other places I've looked, it's somewhere in the 50-50 neighborhood, right? Cointos. Roughly. Divorces versus like successful marriages. Stay versus marriages that fail. Yeah. Well, let's say divorces and staying married. Because I know there are also a lot in that 50% who stay together. They're not really successful. They're still together, though. Not happily married. We're miserably married. And we're not giving up. Still got the law that says we're married, but not to digress on that for far.

14:37 But that being the case, when I would see couples who were going to get married, because they had to come to my office three times before they got married, I would always ask a question: given the stats, why do you think you beat the stats? stats? Why are you willing to take that plunge knowing these divorce rates? To a person, they would tell me because they actually had the love that would sustain. Like they had the real thing as opposed to 50% who didn't and fell apart. And I would try to say, That's not it. That's not going to carry that. If there's any substance to it, oh no, we're different. We love each other. And then say, Okay, is there anything under the hood of that? No, nothing. We just love each other. She's got great boobs. I'm a fun guy, and we're going to live happily ever after.

15:21 And that will carry you for a while, even after you hit the pause button, because you've created momentum and you never realized there was something else underneath the hood, right? That there had to be something under the hood. So momentum carries it. But as the momentum starts to fall away, there starts to be pain points. And so, just observationally, most people are like, Why is my spouse more distant from me? Not why am I more distant from my spouse? Why is my spouse not treating me with respect and not treating me with love instead of why am I not doing that? Right. So we're aware of what we're not getting. When we're in pain, we are aware of the source of our pain, at least in our mind, more than whether we are a part of that.

16:05 So, you know, if I'm hitting my hand with a hammer, I'm aware of the pain in my hand, not necessarily the fact that I'm continuing to hit my hand with the hammer until I stop, right? So that sets up the pattern. And that as that pain accumulates, that's when you see the marital problems. And so for years, people would come into my office and say, Here's what's wrong with my marriage. And I would go, Those are the symptoms of what's wrong with your marriage. The problem with your marriage is you disconnected and you stay disconnected and you're trying to treat the symptoms. So communication or, you know, the fights we have, we need to solve those things, or we disagree about parenting, whatever it is, those are symptoms of the fact that they hit the pause button and are now feeling the effects.

16:49 Yeah. So somewhere in the early days of their relationship, they hadn't really understood exactly what the constructs of the successful relationship was going to require. So shared values, open communication, grace and forgiveness. What does hard work look like? What does chilling out look like? You know, like a real understanding of what each other is going to be looking for and what each other is going to commit. Then they find themselves in the relationship and then be like, well, she doesn't make me happy, you know, failing to realize that you haven't asked her what you could do to make her happy.

17:26 Yeah. Yeah. And that's all in the layers of connection. You know, when we are trying to, so back to those early days, you're looking and watching for what's working and not working. You're asking the questions: what do you want? What do you not want? And so at those points, because we're attending to it, because we're trying to connect, we build a connection. And since you think you've got that, you're like, okay, well, we don't have to do that anymore. So then the disconnection starts happening. And there are three levels of connection. And when people aren't aware of what those connections are about, they just think, oh, well, we love each other, right? So physical connection, emotional connection, spiritual connection, physical connection, loving touch.

18:10 And that's one of the ones where often that you pointed to the hugging like you mean it or kissing as you're coming in, all those physical touches often become perfunctory or just disappear. And so if you're disconnected, then you're going, why are we not closer physically? Well, you're disconnected. And that's one of the areas where it shows. Emotional connection is that sense of we get each other and we support each other. And that is, so physical is nonverbal. Emotional is verbal and nonverbal. You can look at each other and give each other a look when the kids are doing something, or you can nod along with each other as you're talking, but that's emotional connection.

18:52 Do we get each other? Do we support each other? Spiritual connection is that do you know each other at a depth? Like, what are your values? What are your dreams? What are your fears? What are your hopes? What is there in there? That's often where people fall in love. Just kind of the irony of me is people would come in my office and I would say, you know, so tell me the story of how you got to here. And they would get to this, and then we fell in love. And it's almost always, and then we fell in love after this long discussion about the family they grew up in, the experiences they've had, the values they hold, the things that they didn't tell everybody else. They kept them within. I remember that conversation with my wife. I shared, well, girlfriend at that time.

19:35 I'd never shared those things. And so you bond over them because you're like, well, that's really cool. What's inside of them? Our values match and our experiences. And now I know them at a new level. new level. And that's where people would often say, and we fell in love, not realizing that that was a different conversation than that emotional connection. And then people stopped talking about it. Yeah. That's like, that's the Disney story, really, isn't it? It's the movie. It's the movie moment. Like, she gets me. I get her. We want the same thing. I've never met someone that like, not only do I have the hotspot, but we're on the same page. Like, I must marry her in case she gets away. And there is part of the problem because the movie stops there.

20:16 We got to happily ever after, right? Not the hard work that keeps you happily ever after, or not the attention that keeps you or the connection that keeps you happily ever after. And so we just drop that. And that's why the movie stops is because from there, you know, it's like conscious work. Up until then, all this can happen. So yes, it is that moving moment of going, oh, you're the one. How do you continue it, though, if you hit the pause button and you turn your attention elsewhere and you're no longer putting in the energy? And so here is one of those myths. People will say to me, I can't put in all the energy I did, you know, when we were dating.

20:54 I'm like, I never said you could, but isn't there a space between all the energy you put in while you were dating and none of the energy you're putting in now? Is there somewhere in between there? Because momentum is easy to keep moving, right? So years ago, at the beginning of my driving years, I had crappy cars. So I pushed a lot of cars. And I happen to know that the hardest part of pushing is getting it started. Once you get it rolling, you can keep it rolling, but you got to get it rolling. You got to put the momentum in. Once it's rolling, there's only a certain amount of energy you have to put into it. And the same in a relationship. Once you do all the work, which didn't feel like work because it felt warm and loving and fuzzy and all that.

21:39 And then when you need to continue that momentum, is when you hit the pause button thinking, we'll get back to us. We got this. Yeah. But in no other area of life is that a winning strategy. If you had a plant, the plant's going to die. If you don't clean your car or put new oil in it, the car's going to die. If you don't nurture a child to be able to walk and talk and wipe its own ass, like the child's probably going to die or turn out to be feral. There is not another example. Leave it to run its own course and it'll go well.

22:14 And yet here we are in relationships and people so often don't give it the attention, the respect, the energy, the even just the sense of, you know, a slice of my work is, you know, I do have a lot of emphasis on the energy that we're giving out in the world, our attitude towards things, our beliefs and what we know, what we get back what we expect, we get back what we put out. And so if we expect it to go wrong, if we put almost nothing into it, and then it's painful and uncomfortable and we're full of arguments and it's falling apart, like it's, it's not a surprise. It's literally negligence at a gross level.

22:55 Yeah. So I have people who say, well, it shouldn't be that hard, right? If it's a, if it's the relationship is right, there shouldn't be work. I'm like, if it was going to work, it would just work. And I would, I mean, if I, if I was meant to have muscles, I wouldn't have to go do something and pick up something heavy, right? If I was meant to be good at something, I wouldn't have to practice it. And that never works out. That's the kind of the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. The fixed mindset is like, you're born the way you are, or something's the way it is. And that's just the way it is. And that's, and we get stuck in that with relationships as opposed to a growth mindset that says you can get good at something because you practice and you give it attention. And that's where the energy is. And so then we forget that with a relationship.

23:38 And so people then justify, well, I guess it wasn't meant to be because, you know, we have these arguments or disconnection points. And I'm like, it's not that it was meant to be. It's just that you're no longer putting energy into it. And that's what happens. A lack of responsibility, personal, a lack of personal responsibility. And I love that word. It's one of my favorite words, responsibility. It's the ability to respond, right? And we have that. We have a response ability. And we can, instead of reacting to a spouse or reacting to the hurt we have in the relationship, we can choose how we're going to respond, how we're going to step into that relationship. And that to me is a fundamental shift for a lot of people of getting out of reaction mode into response mode.

24:21 Okay, cool. So we've talked a lot about it happening, right? Let's get a bit practical for a moment. What are some of the literally the telltale signs of a relationship going into the pause phase? I think we all know them, but let's just bring them out into the open. open here. Give us some headline ones that people can relate. Yeah. So one of the things you often see is that the kind of the bickering comes up. And so you have both the silence where we're no longer even, you're just like, well, whatever, you know, I'm not going to have this fight, or the bickering where we are having the fight.

25:01 And that ends up being pretty symptomatic for a lot of people that that's where they can begin to see that they've got problems and just begin to see because that grows. And when that grows, when it continues to expand into life, we have this arc of disconnection, right? And the disconnection that people feel is distance. That's what is behind the disconnection. You end up having distance. And because of that distance, because of that, that space, you end up having more and more struggles over basic things like parenting.

25:38 So when people tell me that they are arguing about parenting, I know that part of why they're arguing about it is because they actually have this disconnection that's going on that they set basically. But what in terms of the disconnect comes, I think, because you start to settle on the idea that it's not worth bringing this topic up because I tried to bring something else up last week and that didn't go very well. And I tried to bring something up the week before and that ended up in a blazing row. So do you know what? I'm just going to give up. I'm done trying to work things out with her. But trying to get ahead of that, the bickering, like, why do people, and by the way, I empathize with this.

26:19 And in my relationship, which is a tremendous, she's an incredible woman, and how we have a wonderful relationship. But part of how I set the tone at the beginning was I said, there's certain things that we're not going to do. And I didn't say this on day one, obviously, right? But once we got past like the early stages and started to get into like, okay, we really are going to actually start seeing a lot of each other and hanging out. I was like, there's a few things just we're not going to do. We're not going to do rolling eyes and huffing. We're not going to do being in a mood for three days, let alone three weeks and not say what it was. Like everything is going to be clear and communicated and out in the moment. And I'm speaking on her behalf, but it did take my girlfriend a little bit by surprise.

27:03 And it did take her a while to get like used to it because she'd been so used to being in this fractious relationship herself. But being able to sort of hold it, be able to say, no, what's that? I was like, well, what was what, like, what just happened there? And in our relationship, slowing, being able to slow time down to be able to excuse, she'd be like, oh, well, actually, you did this or you didn't turn up on time or you did that. And that kind of annoyed me. And then I'm committed saying, yeah, actually, do you know what? I can really get that. I really understand what that must have been like for you wondering where I was for the last 20 minutes whilst you're excitedly getting dinner cooked and a glass of wine on the side and I rock up 20 minutes later.

27:44 Like actually knowing that there's some value in us communicating along the basic commitment of we're not doing that uncomfortable turn our evening into a row literally five minutes after we've got got home, let alone going to bed on a row. And so let me jump in. Yeah, please do. Yeah. Yeah. So what you're described, that that conversation you had with her was a connected conversation. If you are disconnected, that's a that's that conversation is not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're, you're having that conversation to stay connected, but it also because of the connection.

28:25 So let me, let me add one more piece in of what I see as a possibility for marriage. Marriage gives us the possibility of becoming a we. Like we are a team. We are in this together. So I just, when I'm writing, it's just a we. And that doesn't mean you lose yourself to it. It means you show up as your best self to that. And so being committed to that is another element that has to be there to have that conversation. Like I want to be a we. And so I need to let you know when something is bothering me instead of just letting it simmer on the back stove until we burned it down. And so all of those pieces are there when you're having that conversation. So you have connection.

29:06 You want to have that conversation. You have a we team approach. So we matter in this, how we are playing this game. I play a good bit of pickleball. And one of the things we're always saying is, gosh, we got to communicate about this. A ball will fall between us. And I was like, I thought you were going to do it. I thought you were going to do it. Or you could say, I got this. Or that's yours, right? Either way. So communication allows you to avoid some of those really silly little things. Are you that calm and pleasant? pleasant on the court, Lee? I am pretty calm and pleasant on the court. In fact, I did a podcast. That was my fault. Yeah. So here is my, I also nurture a belief in myself that people do the best they can where they are.

29:49 So if you swing and miss, you're doing the best you could. I mean, I don't think you're out to mess up, but I also think that that is what you do in a good team. Like, I'm going to, exactly. Yeah. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt there, right? And yesterday I was back playing. I hadn't played in like two and a half weeks, and I swung and missed it one. And I was like, how could I do that? And my partner, who I'd played with many times before, looked at me and said, don't worry, you got it. And I'm like, that's what you do in a relationship. Encouragement, boost. Yeah. There's no reason to say, how was wrong with you? You swung and missed that. So anyway, there are a lot of parallels on how we do teams, period.

30:30 What I like about pickleball is it's two of us. So it very much matches some of that. That point there on when couples are willing to jump into an argument, instead of screw you, I'm going to defend myself and engage in this row. The complete opposite would be, whoa, something must have really upset you to say that. How about I give you a hug and you tell me about it? Yeah. Yeah. So you're leaning into something. I just did a training on anger. And the biggest point of anger is anger is a secondary emotion. I love that. Yes. And underneath anger is always hurt, fear, or threat.

31:12 And so if somebody is coming at me angrily, I try to have the habit of going, wonder what's hurtful, fearful, or threatening underneath it. You know, how am I entering into that? Or I might be able to say, that is not about me, whatever's going on, but I can be supportive either way. Instead of what we generally do is meet anger with anger. And so in a relationship that is connected, to be able to say, I wonder what's going on that's leading to that, or even to head back into a relationship by being curious about what is the hurt, what is the fear, what is the threat. That allows us to respond differently when the anger comes out, which it will in an intimate relationship.

31:52 So am I perfect on the pickleball court? No, but I don't react to my partner. I don't do that. That's one of those, I'm not going to do that. Just like I have some choices in a marriage of how what things I would never say. You know, I'll say to somebody, you should never threaten divorce. You should, I mean, unless you mean it. You should never use that as a threat. You should never stomp away without some, I need to calm down and I'll be back. You know, there's some things you just don't do if you want to have a productive relationship. Same on the court. I'm not going to berate them. I'm not going to tease them. I'm not going to make fun of them. I'm going to support them and back them up as best I can. So just I carry those. And seeing that as

32:34 if you're not going to talk to your pickleball teammate like that, why would you talk to your wife like it or vice versa? If you can be gracious with your pickleball partner or you can be gracious with the bus driver who's being an ass to you, why can't you be gracious to your wife who you love and adore and said you want to spend the rest of your life with? It's like, just because we're in the routine, just because they're not going anywhere, just because we've got to wake up to the next day as well, like it's carte blanche to have a row. And I've been guilty of it for sure in the past. Yeah. Well, in fact, my wife and I have used the criteria of if they're going to treat each other this way, I don't think we want to be friends with them because if it leaks out on the pickleball court, it's probably leaking out other places too.

33:20 So it actually is interesting to watch that dynamic. Couples often will tell me they just can't play together. And I'm like, that's interesting. You might want to reflect on what that means on how you interact. But anyway, that's a whole pickleball conversation. So as people disconnect, so you ask, what are the symptoms? There are some, I call them the disses of a relationship. The first piece of that, that disconnection is what starts the distance. And so if you also see some other pieces like disinterest, like I'm not interested in what's going on with my spouse. I don't care what's going on in their interwar. I don't care what their interests are. I'm just disinterested. That is a symptom of that disconnection. If you allow that to go on long enough, you watch disregard show itself.

34:04 So when I make a decision, I don't think, how is this going to impact my wife? If I decide to stay at work until seven at night, what's it matter, right? That's a disregard for what might be important to them. If I'm making decisions based on me, that's disregard. All of that starts to show up as disrespect. That's the rolling of the eyes. That's the, you know, turning away from and walking away from. That's disrespectful. And when all of that comes together, together, the next point is disappointment, where you're like, this is not what I thought I was going to be. You're not who I thought you were. This is when you kind of begin to demonize, which leads to disliking your spouse. And the only next stage beyond that is disdain. Like, I am done with you and I'm done with this relationship.

34:48 And so that's the cross. That's the arc. Yeah, that's the, that's the slippery slope. You know, in my work and when a man, like, just everything starts to go wrong, I call it the low debt, the low value death spiral. And unless you recognize it, it's almost impossible to get out of it until you hit rock bottom and then you go, oh, blind me, what do I do now? You've just, as you went through that, I can, I lived those moments so vividly. And that disdain and despair ending of it, unfortunately for men, is where mental health problems start to show up. Sure. So one of the things that research shows us as humans is that we need to matter. Like that is a deep need for us to feel like we matter. Mattering is some recent conversations people have had.

35:33 So do I matter? And if there's one place where you should feel like you matter is to your spouse. Like if I don't matter to my spouse, what does that mean about me? And so that what you're talking about, the impact of that for people of like, what do I do now? Like, I don't feel like I matter to my spouse. Often they either do fall into depression or anxiety or something like that, or they start looking for where else they can matter. Like, can I matter to my kids? Can I matter at work? Can I matter to that other person outside of the marriage? That's where that begins to be much more of a temptation because we have that need so deeply. Our ancient ancestors, if they didn't matter, they didn't survive.

36:16 And so it's wired into our DNA that we need to matter and we work hard to matter. So if we are working hard at mattering and it's not happening in this core relationship, that is deeply painful for people. Yeah. Because in a relationship, in an intimate relationship, in a marriage, the opposite of that, what I'm hearing is that's rejection. Yeah. So when we get rejected constantly, rejected with the hug, rejected with the kiss, rejected with the interest in their day, let alone rejected when we go in for, you know, the back rub, the sex, the whatever, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. And I can see it. I don't matter. I don't matter. I don't matter. And it's interesting.

36:59 So, yeah. And so there are times when somebody might say, I'm not interested in this right now, which is different than I'm never interested in you. Right. There is, and that sometimes in a fragile relationship, it feels like it's, you know, that there it is. You know, I went to for an embrace. I went for, you know, sex or whatever and got rejected. Now that confirms what I most fear. If we have better relationships, more connection, the person can say, I'm really tired. The kids have touched me out today. Yeah, yeah, give me a break, right? There are some ways of that being understood.

37:38 If you're working as a team, you feel connected and you don't assume that your spouse just feels like you don't matter. That changes the whole tone of those conversations. Yeah, there's a equilibrium that's at play there. And I can see if you're interested in where they're at. And if you're a guy that's consciously feeding into a relationship, you take that feedback as, oh, okay. Well, what could I do for you tonight? Like, let me really serve you. Let me really have you feel great. Not transactional, not like if I do this at eight o'clock, I'm going to get a shag at nine o'clock, right?

38:17 But as some kind of, I've got you tonight. But then in a healthy relationship where she fully receives that and she's like, okay, yeah, I feel like I matter. I feel heard. And so the exchange comes back, whether it is later on that night or whether it is, you know, the following day, the following week. But I see that as a healthy relationship where we don't do things when we're expecting an immediate response or value, like an equal value response, but we are in it together where we're committed to picking up the slack and making sure that I understand that you wanted a hug and he and you understood that I'm all hugged out today. Got it. So let's, the only tweak I would put is when you said the exchange, right?

39:02 I want to get away from it feeling like the, oh, I did this, therefore that. But that part of connection, part of being connected, has multi-dimensions, sex being one of them, making sure that the other person feels taken care of being one of them. And when all of that comes together, that it's not so much the exchange for that, but the overall connection. connection between you, which is multiple exchanges that all filter down. What a lot of people get into, and this is one of those ways of determining that a marriage is already in trouble is when they go, I did this, why not this?

39:38 I did this. Yeah, I agree. I'm fully, yeah, no, no, you said that. I just want to, I want to make sure that it's not the exchange of this to this, but all of the exchanges together that lead to our connection point. And when you go, I did that, why not that? That is actually a good symptom of we've got a problem. Yeah. Like we're filling up a mutual love tank. We're filling up a mutual resource of love and energy and vitality and intimacy. Let me ask, change gears a little bit, right? When things are strained, right? And the man does begin to struggle. You know, when I bought Save the Marriage, I was literally broken.

40:19 I was one of my, one of the things I say in one of my talks, I was at my counselor's office in her garden, screaming in her face, there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me. Clearly, I was in a bad place. My mental health was utterly shot. A relationship that is strained will ultimately, and of course, this happens to women as well. But talking about men who are listening to the Johnny Jensen show, it's an incredible tough time for men when a relationship is really struggling. And quite naturally, the rest of their life will suffer with it.

41:00 I don't know how you want to enter into this topic, but what are some of the telltale signs and concerns for you when you see a guy and you're like, okay, he's really struggling. The relationship's a problem. I can see he's really struggling. Yeah. So one of the things you're pointing at kind of obliquely is the feeling of competence. Like when I feel like something is failing, for many men, that's a I'm not competent. And it's true if it's a job problem, if it's a parenting problem, if it's a spousal problem, or even athletics or whatever, if there is a challenge to competency for some men, that ends up being a global competency question.

41:42 It's not that I might have a struggle here, but suddenly it feels like I am incompetent everywhere. And so that globalization of competence can be a pretty clear sign. There are three fears that I think humans carry with us. And it's whether you are enough, are good enough at things in life, are loved enough, have enough, good enough, and loved enough. So those are the kind of the ones. And all of these, you know, we've already talked some about that ancient wiring about mattering, but these fears tie in there. Am I good enough? is about my comp my sense of competency.

42:22 Because if we didn't have competency way back, like what are you going to do for the tribe and therefore what's the tribe going to do for you? What are you going to do for the family unit or the community? What are they going to do for you? So I'm not good enough. If I'm not good enough back then, you're in trouble. Out the tribe. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I don't have enough. Well, in the middle of not having enough, you can't get what you need. You can't feed your family. You can't do whatever. So I don't have enough. These are devoid of whether it's real or not. So I'll talk about that in a minute. And then the last one is about I'm loved enough because that's a part of that mattering and being included. So if you think about that mattering,

43:03 am I good enough? Am I loved enough? Do I have enough? All are pieces of that mattering deep down. And so this is not a reality check in the sense that it doesn't have to be real. So do I have enough? I had a guy in my office years ago. He said, I don't know what I'm going to do to survive. I'm down to my last $6 million in the bank. And I'm sitting there going, love to trade places with you and try to survive on that. I'll have one of those. It was in his head, right? It was entirely in his head of, I don't have enough. So it's not whether anymore, it's a factual piece. It can happen for people. And I've known people who were, I'm like, how are you even staying afloat? They didn't have the fear, though.

43:47 They were just like, it'll take care of itself. I'm good. They keep rolling. The people who have six million or even more who are like, don't have enough. I'm not loved enough. Often gets to be a monofocus, especially if there's a marital problem where suddenly it's nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. You know, the friends aren't there. My kids don't care about me. My parents, I mean, all of it becomes globalized very quickly. And so we have a competence issue, a resource issue, and a relationship issue that all, when we are in a marriage crisis, all three of those. of those can feel like they are just motto focused.

44:25 And so, part of what I suggest for guys is to step back and go, which one or two or three are activated for me to understand where that's coming from is helpful. And to step back and say, Is that realistic? Because so, my guy in my office who's fretting over six million, I'm like, okay, so let's just draw this out runway-wise. You don't bring in another penny. How long are you going to live? And he started doing the math. He's like, Wow, I mean, I got years to go. Okay. So, realistically, that's a good assessment. And even in a marriage, you know, you obviously want the love there. That doesn't mean there are not other relationships in your life.

45:06 That is one of the problems for men, though, is they often have gotten themselves isolated to the fact that there is one relationship that matters. And now that one's in jeopardy. When I point that out to guys, it's a revelation. It's like you're putting your everything on this relationship. Like, first of all, that's a lot of pressure for her, which she never even signed up for. And second of all, for you, if anything about that relationship even starts to wobble or fray, then you're at risk in your own mind of absolutely losing everything, which of course is going to generate panic and fear and snappiness and not being able to sleep and a whole load of pressure and anxiety.

45:51 And yeah, plus on that regard, men thrive in groups, men thrive in other relationships. We need mentors and associates. We need friends and family to laugh with. And we need a partner to have sex and fun and cuddle and chit-chat with. Like, she didn't sign up to be your business mentor and therapist. She signed up to be your mate, your buddy, your lover. Yeah. So the longest longitudinal study we have in looking at what makes people feel like they're happy and they have meaning in their life, they look at all of the factors. The number one that led to longer life, better health, better happiness, better meaning in life was relations.

46:36 That was relations, what relationships they had, not the one. Oddly, when I was back in the beginning of my career, I was a chaplain at a hospital. Nobody ever said, I wish I'd spent more time at the office and made a little more money, but all of them had regrets over the relationships they had not cared for. So that tells us if we know that at the end, maybe we back up a little bit and do a little reverse engineering and say, how do I spread out my relationships? Make sure that I'm paying attention to my primary relationship. Make sure that I'm building a relationship with my kids and with whoever else in the family and also friends and mentors and colleagues and whoever else you need to to have that.

47:17 I have an expression I use a lot in terms of parenting conversations, but it applies everywhere. Relationship before results. And by the way, if you do it in that order, you're probably going to get both. Try the other way and it will fail. Exactly. Exactly. So look, as we sort of head in towards the last 10 minutes, Row, let's talk to men about them taking responsibility, them leading, you know, unpausing or leading the save in the marriage. Like what does it take for a guy to wake up, see his part in the process and actually take the lead?

47:55 What can a guy do in that regard? That's a really good question. And it's one that I see a lot of men, and let me say, I see people do it, but more men than not who ask the question, why should I be the one to lead the charge on this? This is, I shouldn't have to. And my response is any change starts with one person going, this isn't where I want it to be. So why do I think one person can change it? Because a marriage is a system. I'll say this repeatedly to people that one person can make a difference and people say, oh, it takes two to tango. And my response is, you are already tangoing. It just doesn't sound like it's going well, right?

48:35 You're not dancing well. So you're already doing the tango. Maybe we do it a better tango. Maybe you find ways of changing your step because you chose to be here. So the first thing is to recognize that there is an impact that you can have on your own that that is entirely possible for any one person to do. And if you're not happy with where things are, to take it on and say, I will start the process. So let's talk about, we've already talked about why that's important, right? Of longevity, but also just you made a commitment, living into that commitment, honoring your values, all of those things are reasons to do it.

49:15 What do you do is one of those other pieces. And so, what do you do is you become invitational in your connection. So, I talk about three C's to this process. One is to connect with your spouse. We named three targets: physical. By the way, physical does not mean sex, it means loving touch, including sex, but loving touch. Emotional connection of making sure your spouse feels like they matter, that you get them, that you support them. Spiritual connection of sharing what's important to you. And I want to talk just for a second in a minute about how you can do that, low-key.

49:54 So, that's connect, change. That doesn't mean I think something is wrong with somebody as much as I know that we all stagnate. And so, that's deciding that we're going to grow and change and expand ourselves. So, that's that's an important piece. And then, create, create a new path. That is seeing things as a we, like we're on the team together. So, those are the three C's. And to do the connection, you do it invitationally. If you say, we're going to do date night, probably not going to work because that's too much connection. But, hey, there's a place up the road that has a really good sandwich I heard about. I'd like to go try it.

50:30 Would you like to go with me? That's a whole different platform. Same outcome where you're at the same place together and you can have a good time without the expectations, without the pressure, because they can say, No, I'm okay. And you go try the sandwich, right? So, you do an invitational approach. Yeah. And if you go three times, there's always for me when men lead in this. If you go, okay, you don't want to come fine, no problems. But you create in the space and you're creating the atmosphere. Well, you're going and you'd love her to come with you. Somewhere down the line, she's like, I think I'd love to come actually. So, she joins you in the space rather than you having the hump that she took her three, three requests.

51:09 And by the way, that is not the time to say, okay, so now we need to have a deep conversation about where we are. That is not the time. That's the time to have a light, loving time together, an enjoyable time, laugh together. But yeah, and the nice thing about the way we phrase it, I'm doing this. Would you like to come? Is that even if they say no, it feel there's a residual warmth to it? If a friend of mine says, Hey, I'm going to go grab a cup of coffee. Would you like to go with me? Even if I'm like, I'm too busy, I would still be going, that's so nice of them to think of me and invite me. There's a warmth that's embedded in it, right? He wants to spend time with me. Yeah, yeah. So, invitational connection.

51:47 So, a lot of times I do think spiritual connection is one that is often missed. And so, people are like, Well, how do you do that invitationally? Hey, I just read this really cool book and it really struck me about this message they put down and to share that what was in there, like, or a movie or a TV show or whatever, something that you found interesting in it. Because if you found it interesting, you're telling something about yourself without having to say, that's what I believe. You can just put it out there as that was an interesting message they put, or that was an interesting message I didn't agree with. The counter of it is still something that's important to you. So, you start talking about things that strike you at a deeper level roundabout by the movie, the book, the TV show, the whatever.

52:30 And that allows a conversation to open up. And so, you talked about the three things. It takes about three times of doing anything to feel less awkward about it. Yeah. So, does that mean, because my girlfriend did this today, right? I made a real clanger. We were doing high rocks tomorrow. We had to raise some money for charity. So, we raised a thousand pounds and 200 pounds of that becomes the prize pot. Yeah. So, I had to, I donated the money. I sent it all off. I forgot to keep back the prize money, right? So, I was, I was livid with myself. I was like, I was like, oh, no, I'm never going to get the money back. What they're going to do and all that. She repeated back to me one of my core values. Oh, how dare she?

53:13 She, then she goes, she goes, she goes, always believe. As in, like, it'll work out. Always believe. And I said that to my kids. I say it to myself. I said, I would have said it to her. In that moment, she repeated back to me one of my kind of mantras, one of my core values. In what you just said about that spiritual thing, that's a real, that, that, that hit me kind of like I know, I really noticed that she'd said that. It wasn't just a casual line in a text message. I really felt her get me, like she understands me, she's listening, she's there for me.

53:50 So I can see in what you just shared or what you just suggested, repeating back to someone their value or showing an alignment with one of their core values would really build that spiritual connection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you're talking at the level of values, and we all need reminders of what our values are. But when you're talking you're talking about that level of values, that's a pretty deep connection point. Well, it is deep, but on at the entry level, you know, once you've had some fun for a couple of months and a few nights out and some good sex, that's a conversation to be had, surely. Like, are we aligned here? What do you want out of life? What really matters to you? Have you ever do you even know what your values are?

54:31 Like, not like, do you know what your values are? Send me a letter, but some banter, some intimate sort of chit-chat about these things. So, so powerful. And if we, if we're in a long-term relationship, we don't know them, then wow, we can create a whole new chapter when we start to do some of these things. And so much of what you're sharing, I dare say, I've like, what's that osmosis? Kind of 10 years later, I'm bringing save the marriage into some of my work. Trust me, I've not like scoured it and robbed it all, but the impact it had on me, without doubt, there will be aspects of your work in my work. And I say that with honor, really, with great pride. Thank you. I appreciate that.

55:13 But it's for a couple to realize that they can create a fresh chapter at any time by doing some of the things that you're sharing here today. Yeah. Yeah. Change is more possible than people think. And that's so I, you know, created the save the marriage system. Do I believe that every marriage can be saved? No. I do know that there's only one way to find out, and that's by trying. And if you try and you fail, you don't walk away with regret. You walk away going, I did what I could. And that's that's there's a lot to be said for that. Clean break, like emotionally clean break. We fell in love.

55:54 The children were made with love. We got married with love. And you know what? We reached the end of the road. Let's break up with love. A bizarre thing to even suggest because it's so contrary to what everybody else does. But how about we break up with love? Yeah. So, and I always say, you know, optimally, I want people to walk away with a great marriage. Minimally, I want people to be able to look in the mirror and say, I did my best and to be able to walk away with peace. Because when people have kids, you're tied together for life. I mean, it's not like you get rid of that person. And many times people realize that when they, what they fantasized about, getting rid of the pain, they actually end up, because of where they were in their connection, they end up having to be more connected to talk about the kids and deal with those things than they were before.

56:41 Yeah. As a divorced couple, as a married couple, there's an element of, oh, I'll let them take care of it. But as a divorced couple, you really get serious about everything that matters to you. Yeah, totally. There's another whole, whole subject for us, absolutely. Well, like, bizarrely, if you, in case you hadn't noticed, we're kind of heading up towards an hour. And I generally, contrary to Joe Rogan and the other guys, I generally like to sort of clip it at the hour. There are so many more things I could talk with you about. And for anyone who's listened to the end, I hope there's plenty of you. Just to let you listeners know that I'm aware that Lee and I have talked about a lot of things today.

57:21 And there's whole episodes in these individual subjects. Whether you want to come back on it or not, I dare say we could dig into some of those in a more extended way. But I don't want people to think that we whizzed through these different topics because they don't matter or because they're that small. It was just that there was this our first time on together. It was an opportunity to cover all these topics. Yeah, we unrolled the map and said, look at the, look at the map. Here's the whole map. Yeah. But there are different places you might see along the way. Exactly. At the risk of repeating something we might have already said, but for a for a guy who's listening to this, who loves his wife and he wants to transform their marriage, what encouragement or direction would you give him?

58:11 Yeah, so one of the pieces that I find to be just a major important shift is that team approach. Like if we're going to be a team, how do I need to be the best person on that team for me? And how do I need to support the other part of that team? If you do that, that begins to open the doors. When people tell me they feel like they're oppositional with their spouse, they don't feel like they're working as a team together. I'm like, okay. So if you were to do that, to see each other as a team, to start with that approach, that can transform a lot of what things are broken. So just having that one piece is a starting point for anyone.

58:51 Beautiful. Yeah. And anybody can take the responsibility for that. Any man can take the lead in that. And just what I know in my work to kind of bookend that is time and time again, it's not 100% of the time, but time and time again when men sort of wake up to themselves when they take responsibility for everything that's working and everything that's not working, when they start to put some emphasis on how they're showing up and get on with other parts of their life, start learning something new, going to the gym, seeing their buddies, taking the kids out and doing something, consciously planning date night and inviting her to come along. You can't just do it for a week. But when you let her know, like, I'm about to create a new chapter here, I'd love you to come on this journey with me.

59:36 There's an element of doubt for certain that starts, but then she gets really curious. And as I see it, our wives, our partners start to see us as the man that she fell in love with, not the man that she's been stuck with for however long it's been. And then the relationship transforms, then this new chapter blossoms. And I really want men to see that as a possibility for themselves. From the moment they're willing to step into it, that becomes a possibility. Yeah. Yep. Beautiful. Remind us again of where your web, your various websites. Where do you want to send people, Lee, if they want to come and work with you? So let's talk about two different paths. There are some people who will go, oh gosh, we are in trouble.

1:00:19 We are deeply into the crisis and I'm afraid, or there is legal stuff on the horizon. That would be the save the marriage path. Yes, 10 out of 10. I vouch for the save the marriage. Ideally, get it before you break up. Yeah, I mean, the earlier the better. Always. If you know you're in a crisis, though, the early point might be going, okay, we're in a crisis. So that's at savethemarriage.com. So I try to be as simple as possible with where I send people save the marriage.com if your marriage needs saving. A lot of people are kind of chronically stuck. Like it's not, there's, they're just stuck. It's not that the marriage is about to end, but you know, if you're stuck that you are drifting in that direction.

1:01:03 I mean, it's like you're up the river and you hear the waterfall. One is if you're at the waterfall, save the marriage. But if you're just like, oh, we're headed that way, that's where you might want to unpause your marriage. And that's unpauseyourmarriage.com. Again, nothing to be tricky about it. Unpauseyourmarriage.com. That's the app. I'll put them in the show notes anyway. But if you're listening, go and see them. And I have a lot of guests on the show, Lee. The fact that I bought your stuff 10 years ago has been a honestly, I'm not just like it would be easy just to bullshit about that, but it's generally true. And it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And I would love to have like subject-specific episodes we can do together.

1:01:46 It's an absolute pleasure to support and bring your work to more people's attention. I'm going to hit the goodbye button and I'll see you on the other side, Lee. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Johnny Jensen show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with fellow dads. Creating the life you deserve starts with you. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community of motivated modern dads at highvalumanproject.com. Let's go.