100|How to Listen to Your Wife Before You Argue or Shut Down

[00:00:00] When You Argue, Then Go Silent

One of the men I coach in Better Husband Academy planned a special anniversary night for his wife, and by the end of that night, they had gotten into an argument, and he had shut down and gone to sleep with things worse off than when the day had started.

Here's how it went down. His wife had been away for several days, taking care of some things for the family, and he got everything ready for when she came home.

While she was away, he'd also been checking up on where she was on his phone. This was something that they had set up together. To him, that was a way of feeling like part of her trip. She came home worn out from what turned out to be a tough trip, and before they ever got to the night he'd planned, she told him it felt like he was tracking her.

So he did what most of us would do in that spot. He explained himself. He told her that wasn't what he was doing, that he was just wanting to feel connected to what she was going through, that she was taking it the wrong way.

He kept trying to get her, the woman he loved and was trying to celebrate with, to see it his way, and it didn't help. She pushed back, and the same man who'd been explaining so hard a few minutes earlier stopped talking altogether. He shut down and went to bed, and that was the end of the anniversary night that he had planned together.

Now, if you've been in a moment like that, you may recognize both halves of it. There's the part of you that wants to explain, to correct what she got wrong, to get her to see what you really meant, and there's the part of you that, when that doesn't work, goes silent and checks out until it's over. Most of us think of those as two different kinds of men, the one who argues and the one who goes quiet.

What I've seen in my own marriage and in the men I work with is that it's usually the same man doing both, one right after the other. And both come from the same place. So today, we're talking about defending and shutting down and why they're really one move. By the end of this episode, you're going to know which one you tend to go to first and what you do when it stops working and how to take what your wife is telling you as information about who she is and what she's asking for, even when she struggles to say it gently.

You'll also walk away with one first move that works whether you're the one who argues or the one who goes quiet, and a way to practice all of it on your own starting tonight without needing anything from her. So stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

[00:02:10] My Son Was Right About the Shoes

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.

Now, let's start with the obvious. You're here because you want to be a better husband, and that's what this podcast is for. But the work we do here is relational work. It's about how we stay connected to anyone when things get hard, how we listen, how we share what's really going on with us. And that work doesn't only show up in your marriage.

It shows up with anybody you love. And for me, and for a lot of us, the place it shows up the most is with our kids. If you have kids, especially little ones, you know they're going to push you. They know exactly how to make your heart melt and to make your blood boil, sometimes within the same minute. And my son is a perfect example of that.

It also turns out that he's a perfect reflection of me. When I see him getting defensive or arguing, I know exactly where he learned it. He learned it from his dad. Just the other day, I was trying to get him to put his shoes where they belong. He comes in the door, he kicks them off wherever they land, and he keeps going.

So I called him on it, and he didn't miss a beat. He said, "Well, Daddy, you leave your shoes right here all the time." And he was right. I do. But in that moment, I didn't want to admit he was right. What I wanted was to take a stand on being his father. Do as I say, not as I do, right? I wanted to prove my point, tell him not to talk back, and explain that the one time he was talking about I had left my shoes there because I was in a rush to go cook dinner or to go to the bathroom or do something important.

I had a reason, and I wanted him to hear it. That's me getting defensive with my own son over shoes. I stopped being the dad who stays connected to him, and I started using the fact that I'm bigger and I'm in charge to win an argument. And somewhere during the whole thing, a question came up in me that I didn't like at all.

Is that the example I want to set for him? I'd love to tell you that only happens with my son, but it doesn't. On days that I'm not at my best, I do the same thing with my wife. We'll say we're going to do something, and then I don't follow through on it, and instead of owning that, I defend it. I explain why, and I work hard to get her to see my side of it and why it's not that big of a deal.

That's me getting defensive. And when that doesn't work, when she pushes back, I shut down. I stop talking. I pull away. I wait for it to be over. First one, then the other. And I guess that might be true for some of you, too, that you go to one first, and when it stops working, you go to the other one. That's why the story I heard from my client about his anniversary night stood out to me.

I've done a version of what he did more than once if I'm being really honest.

I've checked where my wife is and when she's coming home on my phone so I could time dinner.

There's no bad intention behind it when I do it, and I don't think that's what was going on in him when he did it either. But his intentions weren't what his wife was bringing to him that night. She was telling him how it felt to her. And you have to remember that our wives are human, too. They have bad days.

And when it comes time to talk about what they're feeling, they might just wanna complain about something then request something different, just like you, just like me. And when I think about what she was asking for in that moment, it wasn't complicated. She wanted a husband who could hear that she'd felt trapped, and to keep talking with her about it and take in what she was telling him.

And then after that, a husband who she could lean on and talk about why the day was so hard for her and why she was not the best version of herself in that moment.

[00:05:42] Two Ways You Put Up the Same Wall

So what was going on in him that night, and in me with my son at the front door, and maybe in you the last time you and your wife had a tough moment? In Relational Life Therapy, or RLT, we talk about two parts of you, the wise adult and the adaptive child. The wise adult is the relational part of you.

He's humble, he's relaxed, he's forgiving, and he wants to connect. The adaptive child is the part of you that learned a long time ago how to protect yourself, and he sees everything in black and white, or right and wrong, win or lose. And if you've listened to this show for a while, you've heard me talk about both of them, and that's all we need from them today.

Because what matters for this episode is what the adaptive child does the second your wife says something that feels like it's about you. He puts up a wall. Before you've decided anything, there's a wall going up between you and her, and everything you do next, you're doing it from behind it. That wall is old.

A younger version of you learned to put it up because it helped you get through something back then, and he only knows how to use it two ways

Some of us hide behind it. That's shutting down. You stop talking, your face goes flat, you check out while you're still sitting right there, and she gets nothing from you, no reaction, nothing that she can respond to. If that's you, you're probably working really hard to stay calm. Maybe you promised yourself a long time ago that you'd never be the guy who yells or fights, and going silent feels like the only other option you've got.

All you're trying to do is not make it worse, but to her, you're gone, and that is making it worse. And some of us fight from behind the wall. That's defending, the explaining, the correcting, the list of reasons she's got it wrong. It feels like you're taking part in the conversation because you're talking, but you're not listening to her anymore.

You're arguing for your side, and she can feel that you're arguing, whether your voice stays calm or you get loud. Hiding behind it or fighting from behind it, it's the same wall, and underneath both of them is the same thought, usually one you'd never say out loud, that it's not okay for me to be wrong about this.

That's what drives them both. It isn't really about the shoes or the tracking or whatever your version was. Underneath the man who argues and the man who goes silent is the same younger part of you. He's sure that being wrong here says something terrible about him, and he would rather lose the connection with her than feel that.

So think about which one you go to first. You may have already recognized it earlier in this episode when I described him explaining himself and then going to bed. Knowing which one you go to first matters more than any label because you can't do anything about a wall you don't even notice you're putting up.

[00:08:24] Which Reaction Comes First for You?

Now, I said at the start of this episode that regardless of whether you shut down or defend, it's usually the same man doing both, and that changes what you're actually going to work on.

Let's go back to the anniversary night. The man I told you about didn't pick one. He did both in a specific order. When his wife told him that she felt trapped, the wall went up, and he fought from behind it. He explained, he corrected, he told her she had it wrong, and when that didn't work, and she pushed back, he didn't take the wall down.

He just stopped fighting and hid behind it instead. Same wall, same night, same man. I, I do it in the same order. When I haven't followed through on something my wife and I agreed to do, I defend first. I explain. I try to get her to see my side, and when that doesn't work, I shut down.

So what you're actually dealing with is one man who has something he goes to first and something he falls back on when the first thing stops working. Some of you argue first and go silent when it fails.

Some of you go silent first, and when she won't let silence be the end of it, all the things you've been holding back come out at once. Either way, the wall stays up the whole time. You just change what you're doing behind it. This is the 100th episode of this show, which is such an awesome milestone for me, and in the very first episode I ever recorded, I was talking about defensiveness, and I said that when our wives ask us for something, we put up walls.

We get defensive, we fight back, or we wall off. It was all there in one sentence 100 episodes ago.

And then I spent the rest of that episode teaching only half of it. Everything I suggested was for the man who argues.

The exercise I gave you needed your wife to sit down with you and take part on a calm day. I had the whole thing in one sentence, and I only taught the arguing half because that was the half I knew best from my own life. What taught me the rest was the men who actually did the work, men who listened to these episodes, tried the practices, and came back and told me where it fell apart.

Men who could listen just fine on a calm evening and lost it in the moment she started crying. Men who never argue at all, who heard another man describe going silent and realized for the first time that he was describing them. Men in Better Husband Academy who have walked through their own version of it on our group calls explaining, then failing, then going silent, and let me see how it played out in their marriage.

So this episode is me finishing that first sentence, both halves this time, and one man doing both, which means the question to ask yourself is what order you go in and how far into it you get before you notice you're behind a wall at all.

[00:10:51] Listening Doesn't Mean Agreeing With Her

Because if the wall is the problem, what happens when you don't put it up?

When your wife comes to you, even when it comes out sharp, even at the worst possible time, she's giving you information. Information about who she is, information about what it's like to be married to you this week, information about what she's actually asking for underneath the words she used. The client I told you about was given something important that night.

His wife was telling him that being checked up on felt, to her, like being watched, regardless of the fact that he was doing it to feel closer to her. She was telling him something true about herself, and he never got to use it because the second he felt misunderstood and criticized, it hit the wall, and he stopped hearing it as information about her and started hearing it as her telling him he'd done something wrong, something he had to argue with.

That's what both halves of the wall do to you. The man who defends turns what she's feeling into an argument he has to win, and you can't learn much about someone while you're trying to prove them wrong. The man who shuts down just hides and waits for his feelings to pass, and he doesn't learn anything either.

Either way, you miss the one thing she was trying to tell you, and here's an important thing to realize. Taking it in is not the same as agreeing with it.

Hearing her doesn't mean you accept her version of why you did what you did. He wasn't trying to keep tabs on her in the way it felt to her.

Taking it in meant something much simpler. She felt watched. That feeling was real, and it was telling him something about what she needed. He could have heard all of that without admitting to anything he didn't do. What he couldn't do was hear it from behind a wall. And one more thing, which for a lot of us, is the hardest part of this whole episode.

Your ability to take it in doesn't depend on how she says it, even when it comes out angry, even when the timing is terrible and part of you is already stuck on how she said it. If you only listen when she brings it to you perfectly, then how you show up in your marriage depends on her getting it right every time, and that's not going to happen.

Because when someone is hurting, it usually doesn't come out gently. The man you want to be can take in what she's telling him no matter how it comes out. Because what he does next comes from his own values, his own heart, the relational part of him. It doesn't come from deciding whether she said it the right way.

Is that a high bar? It is. Nobody does it every time, and I'm not asking you to do it every time. I'm asking you to know what it looks like. Because once you know what taking it in looks like, you can tell when you're behind the wall, and noticing that is where everything starts.

Now, does there need to be a conversation at some point in your marriage about how the two of you talk to each other, about how you can both ask for what you need instead of complaining about what you're not getting? Yes, absolutely. That's a conversation worth having together. But expecting perfection from her or her expecting perfection from you isn't realistic for either of you.

There are going to be times she comes to you upset, and it won't come out perfectly. The question is whether you can stay relational even when she isn't. The goal is that both of you can do this for each other. What you can work on, starting now, is your part of it. So what do you actually do with all this information in the moment when your heart is pounding?

[00:14:04] One Breath, Then Do Something Different

It starts the same way for all of us, whichever reaction you go to first. You take a breath. That's the first move. It doesn't need to start with a walk around the block, or a time out, or leaving the room and telling her you'll come back later. Simply one breath, a short pause before you do the thing you normally do.

And if you're a man who shuts down, I'm not asking you to pause and stay frozen. You already know how to do that. I'm asking you to take one breath before the shutting down takes over so you can come back to yourself. Remember what's happening in you in that moment. The adaptive child is already putting up a wall.

The breath is you stopping him before he finishes it. It's a very small thing, and it's enough to give you the wise adult, the relational part of you, a chance to decide what happens next instead of the old habit deciding for you. Now, after that breath, what you do next depends on which one you are, and the two directions are opposite.

If you're a man who shuts down, after that breath, come back into the conversation. That's the hard part for you. Everything in you wants to go silent,

so staying and talking is the work. You don't need to come back with anything impressive. Just tell her what you heard her say.

You can even tell her that this is hard for you to hear, and that part of you wants to shut down right now, but do that without making it her fault. That's you being honest about what's happening inside you and staying connected to her at the exact moment you'd normally disappear. Now, she may not have had a husband who has stayed in a moment like that in a long time.

Now, if you're a man who defends, after that breath, you do the opposite. You're going to stay, but you hold back the explanation you were about to give. Tell her what you heard her say and then get curious. Ask her about it. Try to understand what it was like for her. Staying isn't the hard part for you because you were always going to stay.

You were just going to stay and argue. The hard part for you is letting her side of it stand without correcting her. Your explanation can wait. It usually matters a lot less than it feels like it does in the moment.

Now, notice that both of those end up in the same place.

You tell her what you heard. The man who goes silent does it instead of disappearing, and the man who argues does it instead of fighting back. And to her, those two look almost the same.

A husband who isn't behind a wall taking in what she just told him.

So can you do it even a little bit? That's the real question. Just a little bit this week in one small moment where you'd normally put the wall up might be exactly what your marriage needs. A little bit of this done clumsily in a real moment with your wife will do more for your marriage than every episode of this podcast you've ever listened to.

And I know some of you are already thinking, "That's easy to say on a podcast, but my heart's pounding before she even finished her sentence." And you're right. That's why you're not going to start practicing this in the middle of an argument. You're going to start somewhere a lot easier, and that's where we're going next.

[00:16:56] Awareness, Action, Accountability

Because if you recognize your own wall or the order you go in or your own version of that anniversary night, let's take it out of this episode and into your marriage this week. Let me help you with an awareness question, action steps, and accountability.

To get clear on your own pattern, I want you to answer one question and answer it for real out loud or write it out on paper. Think about the last time your wife came to you with something that made you react from your adaptive child response. What did you do first? Did you start explaining and then go silent when that didn't work?

Did you go silent first and then come out arguing when she wouldn't let it go? Or did you only do one of the two? Get specific about the moment the wall went up and what you did from behind it. Now, here are the action steps I want you to take this week. The first three are a practice you can do on your own tonight without needing your wife to take part.

The fourth is how you start using it in real life.

First, pick one conversation. Choose a real moment with your wife when the wall went up, recent enough that you can still remember how it felt.

If you answered the awareness question, you already have it.

Second, practice it on your own. Sit somewhere quiet where nobody will interrupt you, and if you can, sit in front of a mirror, but that part is optional.

Go back to that conversation in your mind. Picture her face and picture her saying the exact thing that set you off, in the same words, in the same tone. Notice what happens in your body when you do. It probably won't be as strong as when it was in real life, but something will happen. Maybe something in your chest or something in your stomach.

Treat it like it's the real thing. Take a deep breath and stay with that feeling for one minute. Don't try to fix it, don't argue with it, and don't check out from it. Just stay with it for one minute. Third, respond to it out loud. At the end of that minute, say what you wish you had said to her in that moment out loud, not just in your head.

If you're the one who shuts down, include the hard part, that it was hard to hear and that part of you wants to shut down. If you're the one who defends, leave your explanation out of it and ask her the question you never asked. Listen to your own voice saying the words and notice what it does to you.

Fourth, start using it in small moments. Don't wait for a big argument to try this for the first time. Use the little everyday moments when you feel yourself start to put the wall up. Maybe it's with your kids pushing back on you or somebody cutting you off in traffic or a small comment that gets under your skin.

When you feel that urge to explain or to shut down, take one breath and do the other thing instead. Practice it when not much is riding on it so you're ready when a lot is. That's what all four steps are for. Practicing on your own and then in the small moments is what makes it possible to take that one breath when it really counts, with your wife right in front of you.

And for accountability, remember that the anniversary story came from a call in Better Husband Academy.

It was a group of guys working on exactly this, listening to one man walk through what happened that night, and a lot of them recognizing themselves in it. That's what Better Husband Academy is. It's men practicing this together every week so you're not trying to figure it out alone. If you want that kind of support, join us.

Go to betterhusbandacademy.com or click the link in the show notes for accountability on this episode's topic.

[00:20:13] Closing Takeaway

Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Think about the man on his anniversary night. He'd planned the whole night for his wife, and when she came home and told him she felt tracked, he explained himself. And when that didn't work, he disappeared. He put up a wall, and first he fought from behind it, and then he hid behind it.

And the whole time, what she was telling him was about her, how it felt to be checked up on while she was away, and what she needed from him. He never got to hear it. You're going to have a challenging moment with your wife again, maybe today, maybe later this week. And in that moment, right before you do what you normally do, you have a chance to take one breath.

If you take it, you can come back to yourself, tell her what you heard, and find out what she's actually telling you. You'll still feel the wall start to go up. The work is noticing it, doing something different, and staying with her through it. When it happens again, can you take that breath? Thank you for spending the 100th episode of Better Husband with me, and for being willing to look at your own wall today instead of anyone else's.

Keep practicing it even a little at a time. That's how learning this turns into doing it, and how you build the marriage you're working toward. You're listening to Better Husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.