094|How to Be a Strong Man and a Loving Husband — At the Same Time

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[00:00:00] Angelo: If you're listening to this right now, my guess is that this isn't the first place you've come looking for help with your marriage. You've probably read something or you've watched something. You've saved something you never went back to. And if you've spent any real time on your phone trying to figure out how to be a better husband, then you've probably had a night that goes something like this.

[00:00:17] It's late, your wife went to bed a while ago. You're still up scrolling, and a guy comes across your feed who has your marriage all figured out, and he's sure of everything, that you have to stop chasing her, you have to hold the line, you have to be the man. He says that women don't respect a man who bends, so stop bending.

[00:00:36] Your grandfather never asked for permission in his own house, and that's why your grandmother stayed 50 years. And nobody wants to say it out loud, but I bet there's a small part of you that thinks, "Yeah, maybe he's onto something. Why does this have to be so complicated? Why is this so hard? Why can't it just be easier than this?"

[00:00:55] It's possible that being a good husband has started to feel like a job where you just can't get it right, so you try some new things. You apologize more often. You soften instead of putting up walls, and this guy on your screen is the first voice in a long time telling you that you are allowed to stop doing all of that.

[00:01:13] Now, you didn't follow him, you didn't save the clip, you didn't comment, but you didn't scroll past it either. And I get why his message feels good to hear for a lot of guys, because look at the situation you're in.

[00:01:25] When it comes to men telling other men how to be in your marriage, in your friendships, as a father, as a boss, the thing that gets the most attention is always the extremes. On one end, be strong, take control, tell her how it's going to be. It's your way and your house. And on the other end, be gentle, be soft, take up less room, let her lead, stop being such an intense man.

[00:01:48] And those are two opposite ends. And they're two ends because that's what gets the clicks and the likes and the follows out there. Nuance doesn't work. But most of us, if we're honest, we can already see it.

[00:02:01] A man can be kind and humble and still be strong. We know that. We've met men like that, but nobody's building an audience saying it. And it isn't just influencers on the internet.

[00:02:14] There are marriage coaches sitting at those both ends, too. And I'm not going to name anybody, but go look for yourself. If you want a coach who will tell you to be hard and domineering and take your house back, you'll find them. If you want a coach who will tell you to be soft and gentle and let your wife lead, you'll find him, too.

[00:02:31] So let me tell you what I'm going to do today instead. I'm taking apart the picture the guy on your feed is selling, where it came from, what it actually does to your marriage, and why it never delivers the ease it promises. And I'm also not going to tell you to be softer. I'm not going to ask you to hand in your man card.

[00:02:49] I'm not handing you a five-step technique either, because what we're dealing with today isn't a skills problem. It sits underneath the skills. By the end of this episode, you're going to know the two ways men lose with the good old days of being a husband, one for the man who chases it, and one for the man who wants nothing to do with it.

[00:03:07] And you're going to have something you may have never been given, permission to be strong, to be masculine, to lead with an open heart, and a clear answer for what that strength is for and how you know it's working. Because there's a version of strength that guy on your feed has never once mentioned.

[00:03:26] It's the kind your wife can trust, soften, and rest against. Stick around. You don't want to miss this one.

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[00:03:36] Angelo: Welcome to Better Husband, the podcast that helps you answer the question: how can I be a better husband? I'm Angelo Santiago, a men's marriage and relationship coach, and every week I bring you practical insights to help you strengthen your marriage and become the best husband you can be.

[00:03:49] I want to start this one with a confession. Now, I've been around just about every kind of man you can imagine.

[00:03:54] Back in my fire service days, I lived alongside them in the firehouse. I've worked in nonprofits. I've sat in an office as an engineer. I've done manual labor. I spent time in the arts. I've seen the gentle guy, the take charge guy, the guy who never says a word, and the guy who fills every room he walks into.

[00:04:11] And now, doing this work, I can't open my phone without the algorithm handing me a clip like the one I described earlier. The guy that says, "Hold the line. Be the man. Take your house back." And I want to be honest with you about what happens in me when those clips come across my screen. Have I ever looked at my wife and said, "This is my house, my rules"?

[00:04:32] No, not once, and I can't even picture the version of me that says it. My wife and I met in college. She's an independent, strong-willed, capable woman. She's had a corporate career. She's worked at a nonprofit. She's built her own business, and she runs it well.

[00:04:47] Nobody in our house is confused about who's competent. We both are. A 1950s marriage was never on the table for us. She wouldn't have taken that deal, and the truth is, I never tried to put it on the table.

[00:05:00] But has the thought ever come into my head? Has some version of that life ever pulled at me? Have I ever fantasized about the imagined benefits of that old patriarchal setup where I'm just the man, I go to work, I come home, and my wife meets me at the door with a kiss and a cold beer?

[00:05:18] Yeah, I have, more than once, and it usually wasn't on the good days. It was on the days I felt like I was doing everything right, and it still felt like I was getting blamed for something. Those were the days the fantasy knew where to find me.

[00:05:32] And I wanna be careful with this because it would be easy to hear that as something it isn't. I'm not telling you I wanted to control my wife. When I slow down and look at what that fantasy was offering me, control isn't the thing that draws me in. What does is ease, a peaceful house, all the time in the world, watching a football game without being bothered, leaving the house without having to tell anyone where I'm going.

[00:05:56] And the one I want you to hold onto because we're coming back to it before this episode is over, I wouldn't have to talk about my emotions, ever. Nobody would ask, and it wouldn't be a part of the job. That's the pitch the fantasy offers. Those were the easier times. A man could really relax. A man had it all.

[00:06:16] And the slogan for those times, make marriage great again. And when I'm tired, when it's been a long week, when things at home have taken real effort lately, I can feel the tug of it. There's a version of me that exhales just thinking about it, not as an idea I believe, as a warm and fuzzy place my mind wanders towards, the way you fantasize about quitting your job on a bad day.

[00:06:38] And I don't think I'm the only one. Those clips don't pull the numbers they pull off men who want a servant. They pull them off men who are exhausted, and somebody finally showed up selling the dream. But look at what that fantasy is really made of. Go down the list. Every single thing on it is something I wouldn't have to do.

[00:06:58] I wouldn't have to check in. I wouldn't have to explain myself. I wouldn't have to open up. The dream isn't a better marriage. The dream is a marriage that asks nothing of me, and that's where the lie comes in. Because that house, the peaceful one, the one where nobody bothers the man watching his game, I'd been picturing it wrong my whole life, and I guess you have, too.

[00:07:20] What was going on inside that house wasn't peace.

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[00:07:24] Angelo: Terry Real, the founder of Relational Life Therapy, wrote a book called The New Rules of Marriage, and in it, he does something the guy on your social media feed never does. He goes back and reads the fine print on those old marriages, and the first thing he lays out is what the job description used to be.

[00:07:41] In his words, "According to the unspoken rules governing traditional twentieth century marriage, if a man was a reliable provider, a steady hand, and didn't drink a lot or beat anyone, he was a good husband." Now listen to that list. Bring home a paycheck, stay calm, don't drink too much, don't hit anybody.

[00:08:01] That's how high the bar was set, and a man cleared it by just being steady and not violent. And that's not a standard for a husband, that's the floor of one. And the men of that generation cleared it in good faith because it was the only assignment anyone ever handed them. Now, that's not a criticism of those men, it's just what the deal was.

[00:08:20] But it raises the question the fantasy never answers. If the bar was that low, why were houses so quiet? Where were all the unhappy wives? Well, Terry Real answers that too. He says, "A generation ago, if a woman went to her mother and complained of such a spouse that he never takes my feelings seriously, or he puts me down in public, or he's so shut down I feel like I'm living with a stranger," what do you imagine she would've been told?

[00:08:48] "Stop whining, suck it up, and go home." Of course. Go home. That's where the quiet came from. The peace in that living room wasn't peace. It was a woman with no options. He got to watch the game undisturbed because leaving wasn't available to her. No money of her own, no career to fall back on, and a mother who'd send her right back through the door if she ever said a word.

[00:09:12] The unhappiness was there, it just had nowhere to go. So look again at that 50-year marriage the guy on your feed keeps pointing at. He tells you that your grandfather never asked for permission and your grandmother stayed anyway, as if the staying proves the arrangement worked. Well, in a lot of those houses, she didn't stay because the marriage was good.

[00:09:33] She stayed because the exits were locked, and I've never met a man who wants that once it's said out loud. Nobody listening to this wants a wife who stays because she can't leave. You want a wife who stays because she wants to, which means the thing the fantasy is selling, her compliance, was never the thing you wanted in the first place.

[00:09:53] Because you can get compliance out of a person. Pressure works short-term, but compliance is not love. A woman who goes along with everything isn't at peace with you. She's enduring you, and the ease in that old house was never ease for two. It was ease for one paid for by the other. So that's what they sold your grandfather.

[00:10:16] And there's a second version of the same pitch, and if you grew up in church, you've probably heard it there. And if you didn't, if church isn't your thing, if you've got a real reservation about religion, just stay with me with this next section because you've almost certainly seen or heard or run into this version anyway.

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[00:10:33] Angelo: Because the guy on your feed isn't always selling the 1950s. Sometimes he's selling you the biblical ideal of marriage.

[00:10:40] He's quoting scripture, and there's one verse that does more work for the "my house, my rules" crowd than any other, Ephesians 5:22. It says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord."

[00:10:53] Now, I am a man of faith, so I'm not going to tell you that verse doesn't count. It's right there, and I take it seriously.

[00:11:00] And if faith isn't your thing, you don't need to believe a word of the book to follow what I'm about to show you. All you have to do is count.

[00:11:07] Because when someone quotes Ephesians 5:22, he hands you one verse and then he stops reading, and the verse he stops on is hers. But if you keep going, you see something different.

[00:11:19] The instructions to wives runs three verses. Then Paul, the writer of Ephesians, turns to the husbands, and he doesn't give them three, he gives them nine. Three for her, nine for him. And look at where his nine start. "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." Gave Himself up for her.

[00:11:43] That's his assignment. It doesn't hand him a throne, it hands him a cross. So the man stuck on verse 22 is quoting his wife's three verses and skipping his own nine, and every one of his nine points the same direction. You go first into the cost, and that's just the counting. If you actually read about Jesus, the man all of it points at, it gets worse for the guy on your feed.

[00:12:07] The night before He died, holding all the authority there was to hold, He got up from the table, tied a towel around his waist, and washed his disciples' feet. And when His friend died, He cried in front of everybody, and the people watching Him didn't say, "Look how weak He is," they said, "See how He loved him."

[00:12:27] Look at the whole man. He led, He served, He knelt, He wept in public, He ate with people nobody else would sit with. A whole person, not a rule about who's in charge, and you only get Him if you keep reading past the wife's verse.

[00:12:43] If your feed is stuck on the guy telling you what a biblical marriage looks like, then the picture on your feed can't survive one page of the book it quotes.

[00:12:52] If somebody told you that moving toward your wife humbly and lovingly, bending, serving, going first, makes you less of a man, it's worth asking who told you that.

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[00:13:03] Angelo: Now let's get back to your marriage and what it means to be a modern-day man and husband. There's a road you're trying to walk. The man who's strong and masculine and also kind, gentle, loving, both at once.

[00:13:16] That's the road. And the old way of being a husband created a ditch on either side of it. One of them is a man who runs his house, controlling, hard, everybody adjusting around him. Most men can see that ditch coming from a long way off, and they swerve, which is where the trouble starts. Because if you overcorrect, you find out that there's another ditch on the other side.

[00:13:39] The man who's so soft, he's gone silent, passive, never decides anything, never brings anything up. You dodge the one you can see, and you land in the one you can't. And nobody explained these to you. They just got handed down. Generation to generation, the same basic deal about what it means to be the man of the house.

[00:13:59] The men who passed it to you weren't trying to hurt anybody. They were running the instructions society gave them, and nobody prepared us for what's being asked of a husband now because the men doing the handing down didn't have that to give. So think about where you actually learned it. For most of us, it was a father.

[00:14:18] For some of us, it was a father figure, an uncle, a grandfather, a coach, a friend's dad whose house felt just a little bit different than yours. And for some of us, there wasn't a man at all, and what we learned came out from stories about him. However it reached you, it usually showed up in one of two shapes.

[00:14:35] There's the man who ran the old playbook straight. The house had a temperature, and it was his. When he was fine, everybody was fine. When he wasn't, everybody knew inside of 30 seconds, and everybody adjusted. Nobody in that house needed to be told who was in charge. It's the old image of, "Everybody hide, Dad's home, and he's pissed off."

[00:14:55] And then there's the man who softened it. He watched the hard version growing up, and he kept parts that worked for him. He provided, he worked, he showed up, he didn't rage, and he set down the anger and the control. And that was progress. That was a man doing better than what he was given. And I don't wanna take that away from him, but he never picked up the rest of it.

[00:15:16] He wasn't open. He wasn't available. You couldn't get to him. He was in the house, and he was unreachable. And everybody called him a good man because compared to what came before him, he was. But neither one of those men modeled what you're being asked to be now, and that's not their failure. It's just true

[00:15:35] Regardless of which version you grew up with, there are only two things a man does with those two options. You take it or you push away from it. I'm going to be that kind of man or I'm never going to be that kind of man. And those are reactions, and both of them can put you in a ditch.

[00:15:52] Maybe you've held onto the old way, not necessarily as a whole way of living, maybe only in the middle of an argument.

[00:15:58] The voice comes up, the conversation gets shut down, the point gets to be won. Maybe you've said it out loud that, "You don't get to talk to me that way."

[00:16:06] Or maybe you've never said it because you've gone quiet and you don't wanna push back. You wanna be easy and peaceful. Either way, neither is making you the husband you want to be or the one your wife is looking for.

[00:16:18] So what does it actually look like to be a strong and loving husband? What does it look like to be masculine and tender at the same time?

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[00:16:26] Angelo: In my world, it has a name. I call it relational leadership. And before you decide what leadership means in your marriage, listen to what I mean by it, because most men hear leading and go back to imagining control.

[00:16:38] They think it means calling the shots, fixing the problem, setting the rules, but that's not leadership. Because notice how we've been taught to measure the effectiveness of a leader. A lot of us assess how we're doing at home the way we'd get assessed at work. Did I handle it? Did I keep things running?

[00:16:53] Did I stay calm? Did the job get done? Like, there's a performance review coming and the metric is whether the house stayed under control. And that's exactly how the old picture measured a man. Was the house quiet? Did she fall in line? And underneath that whole picture is the one lesson it taught. If you're not in control, you're failing as a man.

[00:17:14] But true relational leadership measures something else entirely. It measures whether the people in your house can trust you, rely on you, know that you have their best interests at heart, that they can actually lean on you and know that you have them. Relational leadership is the ability to stay centered and open-hearted in the exact moments that used to send you into your ditch.

[00:17:35] She gets emotional, and you don't collapse. Things get heated, and you don't escalate. Conflict shows up, and you don't leave. Not the room, not behind your phone, not behind a flat voice saying you're fine. It's steady presence when the moment gets hard. Because it was never about control. You can't control your wife, but you do have influence.

[00:17:57] Your actions influence her, how you behave, how you treat her, how you speak to her when you're frustrated and nobody's watching, whether you're a man she can bring a hard conversation to, what the two of you build together, what you decide your marriage is going to be about, how you talk to each other, what gets said and what doesn't.

[00:18:15] All of that lands on her every single day, and all of it is yours. You have real influence with the woman you married. Your influence lives in the unglamorous places, in repair, being the first one back in the room after the argument, in intimacy, in connection, in the culture of your house, what's normal there, what's allowed, what gets talked about, in how you care for your life and how you care for yourself.

[00:18:42] Every one of those needs somebody to go first, to lead, because none of it happens on its own. No man wakes up and discovers his marriage got closer while he wasn't paying attention. Somebody decided, somebody stepped up.

[00:18:57] What I wanna get across to you is that you're allowed to be masculine. You're allowed to be a man. You're allowed to be strong. You're allowed to lead. You're supposed to be those things.

[00:19:08] Nobody worth listening to is asking you to hand any of it in. What the old picture took from you was never your strength, it was everything the picture left out.

[00:19:18] There's a common saying that goes like this: It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. The strength doesn't go anywhere, it just stops needing an enemy. It's held, not swung.

[00:19:31] Which brings me back to the thing I asked you to hold onto, the one item off my fantasy list, that I wouldn't have to talk about my emotions.

[00:19:38] Of everything that old picture promised, that's the one that costs a man the most. Because a man who's never allowed to be hurt or scared or sad or confused doesn't get to take the mask off, not at home, not even with her. The old picture hands you the mask of the strong man for the days you don't feel like one, and somewhere in there, you decide you have to wear it all the time.

[00:20:01] So out of everything you've been told to lay down, let me be precise about the one thing this asks you to set down. Not your strength, not your masculinity, not your leadership, the mask.

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[00:20:14] Angelo: So we've gone over a lot in this episode, but let's put some of it into action in your own marriage because you can agree with every word of this and nothing changes in your house. The picture you were handed got installed by watching over years, and it changes by doing something different one week at a time.

[00:20:30] So let's start with this week in your house with your wife. Here is your awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this episode.

[00:20:39] For your awareness this week, one question: What's missing from your picture of what it means to be a good man and a good husband? Not what's wrong with you, what's missing from the picture, the one you were handed, the one you've been working off of this whole time.

[00:20:53] Stay with that until you can name the thing that isn't in it because that's the piece you've been trying to be a husband without and the one that needs to be put back in.

[00:21:01] Now, the action steps, two of them this week.

[00:21:04] Step one, get a piece of paper.

[00:21:07] Actually go and get it, turn it sideways, and draw two lines down it so you have three columns. In the left column, write down the hard man, the one who runs the house, in control, provides, protects, figures that ought to be enough, who thinks that he shouldn't have to hear a complaint in his own home. Write down what he's actually like.

[00:21:25] And in the right column, write down the other one, the man who's so careful not to be that first guy that he stopped taking up any room at all.

[00:21:32] He's soft, agreeable, doesn't decide anything, doesn't need anything, doesn't bring up anything.

[00:21:37] And then in the middle column, which is the one that matters and the one nobody ever filled in for you, the man who's both strong and kind, steady and reachable. What is he actually like? What does he do when things get uncomfortable? What are his habits? What would it be like to be married to him?

[00:21:55] Fill that middle column in yourself in your own words. Spend 10 minutes on this on actual paper doing this for you and your marriage knowing that nobody is going to read it but you.

[00:22:06] Most men have never once seen those three sitting next to each other, and the middle one is the only one nobody ever showed you.

[00:22:13] Now, step two, do one actual rep out of that middle column. Pick something you wrote in there and go do it this week, and do it while attuned to her, her needs, her desire, her heart.

[00:22:26] Be humble, be giving, be kind, be cherishing. I'm not going to hand you a specific action because I don't know what your week looks like or what's been going on in your marriage. The question that defines the rep is this: Can you show strength and tenderness at the same time?

[00:22:42] I'm also not going to stand here and tell you that it's gonna go smoothly every time. Some reps will land, some won't, but do it anyways. Learn from it. Adapt. Try again. Learning something new takes time and effort. Don't give up the first time it doesn't go well

[00:22:57] And the last thing, accountability. That middle column on your paper is simple to write down and hard to live out every single day, because the moment it matters most is the exact moment that your old default kicks in, and that's what Better Husband Academy is for.

[00:23:13] I built it so that men doing this work have one another doing it side by side. Head to betterhusbandacademy.com or click the link in the show notes and get some accountability on this week's rep.

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[00:23:24] Angelo: Now, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. You were handed a picture of what a strong man looks like, and whether you chased that picture or swore you'd never become it, it has defined the man you are at home.

[00:23:35] For some of you, it's the mask of the strong man. Never overwhelmed, never scared, never unsure, and never seen. For some of you, it's the mask of fine. Nothing's wrong. No need to talk. Everything's smoothed over. Different masks, but the same impact on your marriage.

[00:23:52] So picture tonight going differently. She brings up the thing that usually sends you into your ditch, and you stay centered, open-hearted, still in the room, still in it, still you. That's the option nobody ever told you about. When you're strong enough to be seen, she finally has something to lean on.

[00:24:11] Out of everything you carried out of your childhood, the mask is the only thing you're being asked to set down. Everything underneath it is yours to keep.

[00:24:20] Now, thanks for sticking with me through this one. I know it's not easy to sit through an episode that asks you to look at all the ways you're still working on this, but that's exactly the point. That's what this actually looks like, so keep doing it.

[00:24:32] You're listening to Better Husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.

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