Your Wife Wants To Know That YOU Know You're Okay!

The great prophet Cyndi Lauper once said, "Girls just want to have fun!" In my twenties I thought that meant they like to party. Now on the edge of fifty I understand better that the spirit of what she meant is that the feminine nature is attracted to laughter and fun and connection backed by a sense of safety and security.

As single focus, goal oriented men who have mistakenly tried to earn our value as a men by shouldering more and more responsibilities and trying to be smart enough, strong enough, or enough enough to have all the answers, meet everyone else's needs, and fix it, we have become stressed, frustrated, and resentful.

This place where we find ourselves is not any fun for us and it's certainly not any fun for her. In fact our tension, our anger, our disappointment with her, ourselves, and our situation feels like a threat to her safety and security.

How you might be asking. I'm not a threatening man. In fact, I feel like I am the least threatening person I know and sometimes I even feel shame for being so accommodating of others. I feel like a doormat most days and that doesn't make me feel good about myself.

Bingo! She wants to know that you know you are okay. She wants to know that you aren't going to explode out of nowhere. She wants to know that you aren't going to go out for milk one day and not come back. She wants to know that you are loving life and that she gets to relax and ride along side with the sun on her face and the wind in her hair.

Every day she feels your disappointment. She feels your disapproval. She feels your discontent. The way you walk into the room, how you set a glass down on a counter, the tone of your voice, the pace of your speech, the way your eyebrows come together while you are analyzing her story and trying to tell her what she should have done, it all feels threatening and unloving to her. She is one of those finely tuned earth quake meters and your vibe is making her needle go crazy.

And let's be honest, it sucks on your end too, doesn't it. The tension in your body, the constant noise in your brain, and the fear that it's all going to come apart at the seams is slowly killing you physically and emotionally and your spirit is wilting like some unwatered house plant left out on the patio to long in summer sun.

You might not say the words, but going out for milk and not coming back has crossed your mind in one form or another and you aren't fooling her, yourself, or any other man here by pretending you haven't.

So what's the answer? How do you fix it for both her and you? How do climb out of the hole you find yourself in?

It's simple really and might even scoff when you read the next few words. Ready?

You slow way down, breathe deeply, and smile often.

That's it! 

I told you it was simple.

What I did NOT tell you is that it is easy or that it happens overnight.

If it did happen overnight would it last or be worth having, probably not.

Anything worth having takes time and whether we take ownership of our life, pursue clarity of self, and choose to trust ourself and the universe or not, time will still pass.

But if we do the work and seek understanding interesting things do begin to happen. How do I know? Because I have lived it and I am still living it even now as I write these words for you to read.

Here are a few of the things I have learned along the way.

Inner peace, personal power, and connection come when...

You take ownership for every aspect of your life.

You realize that only you are responsible for your happiness.

You stop blaming her and everyone and everything outside of you for your unhappiness.

You acknowledge the innate value your were born with as a human being.

You stop trying to earn value through acceptance, approval, and her love.

You acknowledge that your thinking shapes your reality.

You start seeking clarity about your own thoughts, beliefs, and expectations.

You stop asking her and others to tell you what you think.

You start asking yourself, what do I think, what do I believe, what do I want.

You start valuing your opinion more than you value everyone else's.

You stop putting her up on a pedestal and elevating everyone else's heads higher than your own because it puts pressure on her and devalues you.

You acknowledge that your thoughts create your feelings and drive your actions.

You acknowledge that you have no control over anything outside of you.

You own that you only have control over what is inside of you, namely your thinking, what you think about your feelings, and your choice to act.

You learn to let go of the thoughts, beliefs, and expectations that are not serving you.

You learn to accept the reality of what is and stop resisting what you don't like.

You learn that accepting the is-ness of something isn't approval, condoning or giving in, but rather it is presence, inner peace, and personal power.

You learn to trust yourself and know that you are stronger and more powerful than you think you are.

You set boundaries to care for yourself and be kind to others.

You start thinking abundance and stop thinking scarcity.

You trust God, the Universe, Source Energy, whatever you wanna call it, and know you are loved and that life has been teaching you something all along and that instead of need to be strong enough to swim upstream, you now choose to flow downstream with an open heart, an open mind, and a genuine curiosity and excitement for whatever comes next.

You learn to give to yourself the acceptance, love, and respect you are asking others to give to you.

You slow way down, breathe, and learn to quiet your mind.

You learn to have less thoughts about everything.

You learn that you can create whatever you want in your life.

You learn that all you have to do is show up in your own life and that what happens next isn't important. What's important is that you show up again, and again, and again.

You learn to love unconditionally, fully, and without giving to get.

You stop accepting imitation love over real love both from yourself and others.

You forgive yourself and others to set both yourself and them free of the past.

You choose to be grateful for every experience that has come before, even if it was painful, because it has been necessary to bring you to this point of understanding.

You learn to laugh, to find the humor in everything, and stop taking yourself and everything so seriously. The grave won't care how serious you were.

You learn to feel the fear and do it anyway. Be grateful that your brain is trying to protect you, and then you choose to go after what you want knowing you can trust yourself to handle whatever comes next.

You realize that one day you will die and that all you ever truly have is this moment that is front of you, right now.

You acknowledge your greatest fear is not dying, but not having fully lived.

You choose to love. You choose to live. You choose to let go.

As we stop struggling to get what hasn't worked to finally produce fruit, as we let go of unproductive thinking, and as we embrace a new way of being, we begin to see changes in her, changes in our kids, changes in our career, in our extended family, in our friendships, in our interactions with strangers.

Remember, your wife doesn't have a secret owners manual. She's doesn't have more insights than you do. She's really just a scared 14 year old girl with hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments, just like anyone else. She's doesn't have all the words necessary to describe her feelings to you, but what she feels is real to her and she wants to feel safe and secure, accepted, and unconditionally loved by you.

So, breathe, go slow, and smile often.

She wants to know that you know you are okay.

Much love brother,

Charlie McKeever
Happy Man Coach & Freedom Fighter
HappyManCoaching.com

Remember: dying isn't the problem. Not living is the problem. You get to choose what that looks like and she wants you to lead, starting with yourself. Listen to this song and try singing it for a few days and see if anything changes in your world.