097|How to Invest in Your Marriage Before It Reaches a Crisis

[00:00:00] When Everything Gets Your Attention Except Your Marriage

If you're a man on planet Earth in 2026 with any kind of disposable income, I'm going to have to guess that you've had a night like this one, where it's late, your wife's already gone to bed, and maybe you're on the couch with your phone thinking about the thing you wanna buy.

You're reading the reviews. You're comparing one against the other, figuring out which one's actually better and which one's the best value. This thing has your full undivided attention, and it's had it for days, maybe even for a week, or maybe even more. This is not an impulse buy. Maybe it's a cooler that costs just more than a cooler should, but it's a really good one.

Maybe it's that thing for your car or your truck that's going to make it exactly right. Maybe it's a bottle of wine or bourbon or whatever you like to treat yourself with, and it's on sale right now, and you'd be dumb not to get it.

So you finally make the decision. You add it to your cart. You don't even have to type in your card because it's already saved because you do this all the time, and you check out, and you didn't even have to ask anybody for permission.

And now it's on its way to you, and you feel a little bit better than you did 10 minutes ago.

Now, go back a few weeks. Same couch, but this time, your wife is not in bed. She's sitting on the other end of it, and she says something that lets you know she is not happy in the marriage.

Maybe it's the two of you don't talk anymore.

Maybe she can't remember the last time you took her out. Maybe it's that she feels like you don't care what she's going through, that she doesn't know what's happening in your world, that you feel like a stranger to her, and it's heavy.

And inside, because you probably don't say it out loud, you're thinking what most of us think.

"It's not that bad. She's making a big deal out of this. We're fine. We're just busy right now. We'll go on a date next week. Why does she keep bringing this up? Can't she let it go? I wish this wasn't so hard." So you minimize it, or you don't engage, or you get a little defensive, or you try to explain her why she's got it wrong, and she lets it go, or she doesn't and gets more upset, and either way, you're still sitting there, and things are not getting better.

And fast-forward to today, and you haven't spent the last few weeks researching what you should do about it. You haven't compared different things that might help, that could take this marriage from where she just told you it is to where she wants it to be. There's nothing in your cart. There's no saved credit card.

There's no checkout button waiting for something different to happen.

And after a while, the urgency of that conversation on the couch fades away, the way it always does, and so you take no action. This is the same man. One decision got your undivided attention. You spent real time on it, and you took action.

The other one's been sitting there, and if you're honest with yourself, it hasn't been sitting for weeks, it's been years.

Now, listen, I'm not throwing you under the bus. I see what you're doing, and maybe I don't say it enough. You pressed play on this.

You committed to listening. You get my emails. You send me messages, and I read all of them, every comment, every review. I'm now seeing men show up on my Instagram account and my YouTube accounts too, and I'm grateful for every one of you. Listening or watching these episodes is real, and you made a decision to do it, and a lot of men out there won't even do that.

But it's also free.

It costs you about 20 minutes, and it won't push you to do anything uncomfortable. I always encourage you to take the next right action. But if you don't do it, I'm not gonna know. Nobody's gonna know. Nobody's gonna ask you, and they're not gonna ask you why you did or didn't. And here's how I know, because this is what I did for years.

I'm speaking to you from my own experience, not as someone who thinks he's better than you, and I've also experienced what happens on the other side. After listening to this, you might feel a little bit better. You might understand a little bit more. But the moment the hard thing actually has to happen, there's nobody there alongside you, because you haven't invested in the challenge that's right in front of you, and I think that's worth looking at.

Because that's what today is all about, why it's so easy for a man to spend money on himself and so hard for him to invest in himself. Why the cooler, the thing for the truck, the bottle, every one of those is easier, yes, than the marriage, and why the marriage, after all this time, has stayed a maybe.

By the end of this episode, you're going to be able to name what you've really been buying with all those yeses. You're going to understand why the thought of, "It's not that bad," or, "It's not a big deal," keeps running in your mind every time she brings it up. And you're going to know what it looks like to invest in the one thing that would change something, whether you've got money to spare or not.

Stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

[00:04:32] The First Time I Invested in Myself

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.

Let me start off with a little story. In the spring of 2021, I paid about $1,000 to sleep on the ground in the desert for three nights, and that was the first time in my life I spent real money on me. Not a thing I wanted, on me. Now let me back up a little bit. My wife had asked before, more than once, whether we could do couples therapy or whether I'd go at least talk to somebody, and every time she asked, I said, "No,"

and I had a reason ready every time.

We're fine. That's for people whose marriages are actually in trouble. I can handle this. I'll figure it out. And this time it was a men's retreat she found, and this time I could tell that things were a little bit different. I could tell she was tired of how things were between us, and for whatever reason, my typical no didn't come.

It was just not there.

So I did what I do. I researched that retreat the way I would research buying a new spatula on Amazon. Who runs it? What happens there? What it costs, what people said about it. I read everything I could find, and if I'm honest, I wasn't researching to decide.

I was researching for a reason to say no. I wanted one line on top of that page that would let me stop looking and say, "See, it's not for me." But I never found it. $1,000 was the cheapest option they had, and I wanna be clear about what that meant. It was me in my own tent, in my own sleeping bag that I brought from home, on the desert ground for three nights.

Cold at night, scorching during the day, group meals, nothing fancy. There was a shared room, and there was a private room, and I didn't take either one because I told myself I didn't need them. Now, I was a firefighter at the time with a stable salary and overtime whenever I wanted it. I was buying wine and having nice dinners that year without ever thinking it would break the bank.

Before COVID started in 2020, my wife and I were taking trips and vacations all over the world. There was money, and I still drove myself down there from Northern California all the way to the Southern California desert instead of flying because that was cheaper, too

I look back on that now, and what I see is a man who didn't think he was worth the private room, and not even worth the shared room. I could rough it. It was fine. A tent wouldn't be that bad. That was everything I was thinking about because the honest version is that the pain in my marriage didn't feel bad enough to justify spending that kind of money on it.

I could spend on nice drinks, I could spend on a trip, but spending on me to understand something to get support, that felt like too much. So I bought the version of it that hurt the least to buy, and then I drove instead of flying because that made it hurt even a little less than that.

And then I got there.

Now, I'm not gonna tell you everything that we did at that men's retreat. I could, but it would take way more time than we've got, and this isn't what this episode is about. What I will tell you is what happened to me. I watched men engage with each other in a way I'd never seen. I heard men tell the truth about what was going on with them, painful stuff, and I watched other men just hear it, not fix it.

And in watching all of that, I felt my own painful stuff come up for the first time. I wasn't ready to say it out loud yet at that retreat, and nobody forced me to do it, so I didn't, not that week. But I know exactly why I felt it.

There was no TV out there, and there was no alcohol, and there was no comfort zone at all. There was hardly any cell service, and every man there had agreed we weren't going to disappear into our phones anyway. I agreed to it, and I kept to it. And within moments of that thing starting, a group of strangers were accountable to each other, and there was nowhere to hide.

I'd been hiding for years. I just hadn't known it because I always had somewhere to go. Now, after four days of something that was new, that was unnatural to me and uncomfortable

, the retreat ended and I drove back home. Now, I didn't come home as a new man, and I need you to hear that because this isn't the end of the story.

Nothing was fixed when I got back, but that thousand dollars and that tent and that drive, that was me drawing a line in the sand from the man I'd been to the man I hadn't become yet. Everything came after that. More retreats, men's groups I paid to be a part of, a coach, certifications of my own. All of it came after the first one because the first one was the hard one.

It was the first time I decided I was a man worth investing in.

[00:08:57] The Difference Between Spending and Investing in Yourself

And I wanna sit on that word for a second, because there's a difference between investing in yourself and spending on yourself, and most of us have only ever done one of them. If I asked you whether you're a guy who spends money on himself, you might say, "No, not really.

I'm careful. I'm a provider. Everything goes to the house, the kids, her." And I believe you mean that, but let's just take a minute and look back at the last 30 days together. Consider all the places you've decided to eat out or order takeout. Consider the subscriptions you're paying for and barely use, the thing for the kitchen, the thing for the garage, the thing for the thing, the trip you booked because you both needed to get away, the bottle you picked up because it's been a long week, or the fancy six-pack if that's more your speed.

I spent over a decade working in a firehouse, and let me tell you, if you wanna watch men spend money on themselves, that's the place. Guys comparing trucks, guys comparing boats, who's got the better setup, the better gear, the better whatever. Nobody in that room thought of himself as a guy who spends on himself, but every one of us did.

And every guy there picking up overtime was complaining about everything he had to pay for, the house, the wife, the kids, when we were spending on ourselves just as much. We either didn't see it or didn't want to admit it, and none of it was wrong. I liked the wine. I liked the cocktails. I liked the beer.

I liked the trips with my wife. I liked the toys. Some of that stuff was the best part of a long week. What I want you to notice is how it felt to buy it. Easy. You didn't lie awake over it. It didn't keep you up at night. You didn't need anybody's permission, and you sure didn't have to explain yourself.

You wanted it. It was there. You got it. And when the box shows up on the porch, she doesn't say much, and you don't say much because you work hard, and this is what that's for.

Now, put the other thing next to it, a coach, a program, a retreat, a therapist, a men's group, and feel what happens in your chest.

Feel how fast the reasons show up. "Hmm, that's a lot of money," or, "I don't have the time. What am I gonna say? 'Hi, I need help.' What if it doesn't work? What if it does, and then I've actually got to change?" That's the same wallet. It's the same man. One thing's a yes before you finish thinking about it. The other one requires a committee to decide.

So take this with you before we go any further. Whatever you've been telling yourself about being careful with money or being a provider, the last 30 days might say otherwise. What I want you to know and what I think you wanna know is what all of it has been for.

[00:11:25] When Spending Becomes a Way to Avoid the Pain

Because now let's take that list from the last 30 days and ask what each thing does.

That's a different question from what it is. When you get home and pour the drink, what does the drink do? When you turn the game on on that nice 4K ultra-thin TV you picked out and you don't get up for three hours, what does the game do? When you book the trip, when you decide this is the spring you finally redo the deck, what do those do?

I'll tell you what mine did The nice bottle of bourbon turned the volume down. I'd walk in the door carrying whatever I was carrying from the day and from the marriage, and by the second glass, I couldn't feel most of it. The TV did the same thing with less effort. The trips with my wife, those were real.

We had a good time, and I'd come home, and within a week it was like we were never gone, because whatever was wrong between us came with us. Every one of those purchases had one job, and it was to keep me from feeling all the uncomfortable realities in my own life.

There was a pain that I didn't wanna feel, and if you're human, which I'm guessing you are, you've got a pain you don't wanna feel either.

And again, if you're human, you spend money and attention on things that turn it down. That's numbing, and I'm gonna keep using that word, so hold onto it. The alcohol, the TV, the toys, the trips, those are the obvious ones, but look at the ones that don't look like numbing. Look at the money you spend on her, the flowers after a bad week, the dinner out when you can feel her pulling back, the gift that's a little too big for the occasion.

Ask what that does.

I'm not telling you to stop buying your wife flowers. I'm asking you what you're hoping the flowers do. Because a lot of the time, and I know this because I did it, the flowers are there to smooth things over, to get things okay enough that you don't have to have the conversation. Her pain goes down a little, so yours does, too, and the thing underneath doesn't move an inch.

Here are other things that might not look like numbing. The house, the remodel, the project. You're out in the garage. You're working. You're doing something for the family, and a lot of the time, if we're honest, you're doing it so that nobody can say you're checked out. You're just busy in a way that means you don't have to sit in a room with her and have a conversation you don't wanna have.

That's what you've been buying. You've got a whole budget for not feeling the pain, and you've never once called it that. And I wanna name what she's experiencing while you do this. She watches you come alive for the boat. She watches you research the truck for three weeks. She watches you plan the trip down to the hour, and she's brought up the marriage maybe a few times, maybe a lot, and watched you brush it off and reach for the remote.

Now, I can't tell you what your wife feels, but the wives I've heard from and my own will tell you it was never the individual purchases that hurt. It's watching what you're willing to give your time to, your energy to, your attention to, and your money to, and what you're not.

[00:14:17] Why It Never Feels Bad Enough to Act

So now we get to the thought, the one that ran through your head on the couch, and the one that I just told you ran through mine with that retreat in front of me, the it's not that bad thought.

Or the longer version of it, yeah, things aren't great, but it's not like we're getting divorced. It's not bad enough for me to go do something about it. Now, I'm about to say something that's 100% true, and it doesn't feel great to hear.

Pain is what moves people. Almost nobody changes because things are fine.

We change when it hurts enough. Every man who's been through recovery knows this. That's why they talk about rock bottom. He was in pain for years before he hit it. It just wasn't enough to make him do anything, and then one day, it was.

There's a level, and I don't want you to go out and find yours. What I want is for you to understand why it takes so long to get there, because that part you can do something about.

Because look at what you've been doing with those 30 days. Every drink, every game, every project, every trip, every gift that was a little too big, each one turned it down a notch, just enough to get through the week, and you've been doing that for years. So when you sit there, that thought runs through your head, "It's not that bad," I want you to hear what you're actually saying.

You're saying, "It's not that bad yet." And not bad enough yet is the result of everything you've been buying. You've been keeping it just under the line where you'd have to do something, and then pointing at the line as proof that you don't have to. That's what happened on that couch. She said something real.

You felt it land, and a week later, it faded. It didn't fade on its own. I know because that's exactly where I was, and what finally moved me wasn't the pain I was in, it was where I could see it going. Because the numbing doesn't hold.

It takes more and more to numb the pain every year.

More wine to get to the same place, a bigger trip, a bigger project, and the whole time she isn't numbing with you. I'd guess she's feeling every bit of it at full volume because that's what my wife was doing while I poured the second glass. So the gap between how bad you think it is and how bad it actually is gets wider every year, and you can't see it because you're paying not to.

And then one day she's had enough. She says she's done, or she says she's been thinking about leaving, or you find out she's already been talking to somebody about what it would look like, and suddenly there's more pain than any bottle or any purchase can touch, and now you're ready to do anything. Now, you'll spend anything.

Now, you'll call anyone. I've sat with a lot of men in that exact same spot, and what I'd say to you now while you're not in it yet is this: You already have enough pain to be listening to this. Something got you to press play on an episode about your marriage instead of the game. That's pain doing what pain does.

So you're clearly in enough pain to act or you wouldn't be here. How much more are you waiting for?

[00:17:15] Why Money Was Never the Point

Now, some of you have been sitting there for the last ten minutes going, "No, no, that's not me. I'm not buying boats. I'm not picking out bourbon. I'm barely covering the mortgage." Money is tight, and that's real, and you're right.

It is real. I'm not going to pretend it isn't, and I'm not going to tell a man who's stretched financially to go find a thousand dollars he doesn't have. But stay with me because I don't think the money was ever the thing. When the money's gone, the numbing doesn't stop. It just gets cheaper.

Instead of the forty dollar bottle, it's the pack of beer on sale. Instead of the trip, it's every overtime shift they'll give you, and you tell yourself it's for the family, and part of it is,

and part of it is that work is easier than the hard conversations.

Instead of the remodel, it's the recliner and the phone until you fall asleep in it. Instead of the flowers, it's just going quiet, getting home later, saying less, and none of that costs a lot of money, and it all does the exact same job as buying the boat. And I'll go further than that. The man with no budget is often numbing harder than the man with one because his stuff is free and it never runs out.

He doesn't even get that moment at checkout where he might have noticed what he was doing. So if money's tight, you're not the exception to what I've been saying. You might be the clearest example of it, which is why money was the last thing on that list a few minutes ago. Forget whether you can afford it.

Where does your attention go when it hurts? What do you reach for? Where do you disappear to? Because that's what you've been really spending, and you've got plenty of it, and right now, almost all of it is going to not feeling your marriage.

[00:18:48] What It Looks Like to Stop Numbing and Speak

Let me tell you what it looks like when a man finally spends it in the other direction. I got off a call recently with one of the men that I work with, and I'm not here to tell you everything about him. What I'm here to tell you is that on a group call before that, he said out loud in front of other men what was really going on in his marriage.

It wasn't some huge trauma, it was the plain truth of where things stood, and he told me afterwards privately that he'd never said it out loud before to anyone.

He'd been carrying it by himself the whole time. Sharing on that group call took him maybe 10 minutes. Nobody fixed anything in those 10 minutes.

His marriage was in the exact same place when he got off the call, but he said he felt lighter. He felt like somebody had seen it. He heard what the other men were carrying, and he wasn't alone with his anymore. And that's what I felt in the desert in 2021, and I paid $1,000 and slept on the ground for it.

He got it in 10 minutes on a call. The dollar amount was never the point. What he spent was the scary thing. He stopped numbing for 10 minutes and let it hurt in front of other guys. Now, I don't know what's going to happen in his marriage. I'm not going to stand here and promise how it turns out the way that he's hoping, because I don't know.

But I know what I saw, and I've seen it enough times to trust it. I think that his line in the sand moment he'll look back on and know that whatever happens next, that's where it started for him.

[00:20:11] Awareness, Action, Accountability

if you're still listening and what I've shared has done something in you, made you think about something, made you consider something new, made you question how you've actually been spending on yourself instead of investing in yourself, then let me help you with an awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this week.

For your awareness, I want you to answer one question, and I want you to write the answer down. On the nights your marriage hurts the most, what do you reach for? Name the thing, the drink, the phone, the garage, the game, the overtime, the project, the gift, going quiet. Get specific, and then ask yourself how long you've been reaching for it, because that thing is where your money and your attention have been going, and it's what's standing between you and how bad it actually is.

Now, the action steps, four of them, and none of them cost money. One, review your last 30 days. Sit down and write everything you spent on that you didn't think twice about, every purchase, every subscription, every tab. Next to each one, write down what was going on at home that week. Don't judge it. Just look at it.

I want you to look for a pattern, and I want you to see it in your own handwriting.

Two, pick one night this week and don't reach for it. Whatever you go to on the nights your marriage hurts, the drink, the phone, the garage, the game, whatever, go one night without it. I did it for four days in that desert.

You can do it for one night. Sit in the living room with your wife or sit by yourself and let it be as uncomfortable as it is. Don't try to fix anything. Don't start a big conversation. Just find out how it feels when nothing's turning the volume down.

Three, say it out loud to one man. Find one man you trust and tell him the plain truth about where your marriage is.

Not the version you tell the guys at work, the real one. Don't ask him to fix it. Tell him you just need him to hear it. Saying out loud to another man once is the part that I couldn't do the first time at the retreat.

And four, decide what the investment is and make the call this week. This is the scary one.

If the thing you reach for is the drinking and you know it's more than a habit, call somebody who works with that. If what's underneath all this is something that happened to you as a kid and you've never told anyone, find a therapist. And if you're struggling in your marriage right now and what you need is other men and real accountability, stay with me one more minute.

Because for accountability, if you got to the end of that list and realized the thing that you've been avoiding is a place to actually do this work, that's what I built.

Better Husband Academy is where the man I told you about said the truth out loud for the first time. It's live group calls every single week with men who are doing exactly this. It's a 24/7 online community for connection and accountability. It's an online course that teaches you the skills nobody ever taught you.

It's all the things I didn't have for years. If you're done waiting for it to get bad enough, come join us. Go to betterhusbandacademy.com or click the link in the show notes for accountability on this exact thing.

[00:23:08] Closing Takeaway

Here's what I want you to take away from this episode.

Picture yourself on that couch again, phone in your hand, add to cart, done, and the thing your wife said is still sitting there.

Maybe it's been a few weeks, maybe it's been a few months, maybe it's been a few years, and there's still nothing in the cart for it. You've been spending on yourself the whole time. I know that now, and I think you do, too. Every easy yes was buying you a little more distance from how bad it is, and it worked right up until it didn't.

That's why it never feels bad enough. You've been paying to keep it that way. I paid $1,000 to sleep on the ground in the desert because I didn't think I was worth a bed, and it was still the best money I ever spent because it was the first time I stopped reaching for the numbing and let it hurt with the support of community.

Nothing got fixed that week, but I drew a line and everything since has been on the other side of it. You don't have to wait until she's done to draw yours. You've got enough pain right now. You're here, so what are you going to do with it?

Well, thank you for listening, and thank you for sitting through an episode that asks you to look at your own pain, your own numbing, and your next steps.

That isn't a comfortable thing to do, and you did it anyway, so please keep going. You're listening to Better Husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.