095|Why You're So Hard on Yourself — And Why Your Wife Is Paying for It

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[00:00:00] Angelo: For as long as I can remember, there has been a voice in my head, and I want to be clear about what I mean because I'm not talking about some voice telling me to go do bad things. I'm talking about the one that analyzes every move I make, every failure, every moment I fall short of something I expected of myself.

[00:00:17] It keeps a running commentary on me, and it is not a kind one. I'm sure you know that voice because my guess is that you've got one, too. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me give you a couple examples because that voice in your head has a direct impact on your marriage and on your wife.

[00:00:36] And I'm going to show you how. Here's the voice I'm talking about. For me, it shows up every Monday night. I play in an indoors men's soccer league over 30, which should tell you something about the stakes. It's supposed to be for fun. Well, I get the ball about six yards out. The goalie has already committed one way.

[00:00:53] The net is wide open, and all I have to do is put it on target, and I miss. And I don't just miss. I put it so far wide it never had a chance. Somebody could have closed their eyes and kicked that ball and gotten closer than I did. And before it's even out of bounds, the voice starts, "Man, I am so bad at soccer.

[00:01:14] Why am I even in this league? I should quit. Am I too old for this? Man, I'm losing this for the team. That was pathetic. I'm such a joke." And then one of my teammates jogs past me and says, "Don't worry about it. We'll get it next time." And somewhere off on the side of the field, I hear somebody watching the game chuckle, and I take that chuckle, and I make it mean something about me.

[00:01:35] Then the game ends, and I think about it in the car. I think about it in the shower. I think about it at 11 o'clock that night lying in bed next to my wife running that play back in my mind. That's a men's league game where nobody keeps the score past the final whistle. That's the low end of this.

[00:01:53] But that same voice, it's also there any time I lead some kind of group experience. After a call with the men inside a Better Husband Academy, after I sit down with a group of men interested in working with me and aren't sure yet whether it's the right fit for them, after I lead a gathering in my men's ministry at church.

[00:02:09] And it doesn't really matter how it went. Even if it was amazing, even if the feedback I get is fantastic, that voice, it's still there.

[00:02:17] It's there after I put my son to bed. It's there when I'm driving my wife to a dinner date on a Friday. And for a, a long time, I thought I was the only one who heard that voice. I thought I was the only one it affected. It happened in my head. Nobody hears it. My wife has never once heard me say a single one of those sentences out loud.

[00:02:36] And part of that is true. My wife has never heard the voice directly, but she's felt it. She knows when that voice is screaming in my head. She knows when I'm responding to something with her or reacting to something with her because of that voice. That voice directly affects me, and it directly affects everyone around me and my marriage.

[00:02:57] That's what today is about.

[00:02:59] By the end of this episode, you're going to be able to recognize when that voice shows up while it's still talking instead of at 11 o'clock that night.

[00:03:05] You're going to understand how that voice has been impacting your marriage and know what your wife has been picking up off you for years that you never actually said. And you're going to have one specific thing to do the next time you feel like you've fallen short and you're expecting that voice to show up.

[00:03:22] If you know the voice I'm talking about, that inner critic that's been talking to you for as long as you can remember, this episode might be the thing that helps you quiet that voice and understand what to do instead. Stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

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[00:03:38] 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.

[00:03:51] Now, I wanna tell you a story, a few of them actually, of when that voice showed up for me.

[00:03:57] Last year I finished co-leading a men's retreat. Three days of watching men do work they had never done in front of anybody before. It was good. Actually, it was more than good. I knew it was good while it was happening, and then I got in the car to drive home, and I spent the first half of that drive going back over everything I could have done better.

[00:04:17] The parts that ran long, the thing I meant to say in the last session and never said. Not the three days of what worked, just the list of what didn't.

[00:04:25] Here's another one. Bedtime with my son. Some nights it takes three books and two trips for water, and by the end of it, my patience is thin and my voice has an edge to it.

[00:04:35] He falls asleep within minutes and I stand out in the hallway going back over the whole hour, judging my every action and frustrated tone.

[00:04:43] And one more. I record this podcast every single week, and sometimes I will re-record the same take over and over, not because the first one was bad, but because the voice said it wasn't good enough, and I believed it.

[00:04:56] Now, these are just a few of them. I could spend this entire episode giving you all the times in a single day that that voice shows up, but I wanna show you what happens after, because this is the part that took me years to see. After that retreat, men came up to me. They told me it was powerful. They told me something moved for them. Some of them were still texting me about it weeks later.

[00:05:16] After the soccer game, guys are laughing and having a great time off the field, and my teammate is telling me that we'll get 'em next time, but none of it gets through. Not one word of it changes what the voice is saying. The voice made up its mind before any of that ever happened.

[00:05:32] It isn't telling me how the day actually went. It decided how the day went before the day was even over, and nobody is going to convince it otherwise. Not the men from the retreat, not my teammate telling me, "We'll get it next time," not my son telling me how much he appreciates me reading to him at night, not the reviews or the emails that come in about this podcast.

[00:05:53] Now, let's take that same voice and put it in a car with my wife

[00:05:58] Thursday night, date night. We have a reservation and we have a sitter, and if you have a six-year-old, you know what that takes.

[00:06:05] The planning, the timing. The night starts costing money before you even leave the driveway. And we get out the door on time. I did my part.

[00:06:14] The first stretch of that drive is good. We're out of the house, we're talking. This is the night we've been waiting on for two weeks, and for a few minutes, I'm actually in the car with my wife instead of somewhere in my own head.

[00:06:26] And then we hit traffic, real traffic. Brake lights as far as the eye can see, and it's nobody's fault. Nothing to do about it. No way around it. I'm just watching the clock on the dash and I feel the night starts to slip and the voice starts.

[00:06:42] "I should've left earlier. I should've checked traffic before we got on the highway. I should've seen this coming."

[00:06:47] And because I'm in my head listening to that instead of paying attention to the road, I miss our exit, an exit I've taken 100 times. And now the voice has proof. Now it isn't the traffic anymore, it's me. It adds maybe 10 minutes, and this time I'm the one who added them. Then we're circling for parking while the clock keeps moving, and the voice is running the whole time.

[00:07:11] "See, now we're late. Now we're rushed. Now we're paying the sitter for a night we're gonna have to spend hurrying through."

[00:07:17] And my wife is there, sitting two feet away from me. She has watched the entire thing happen on my face without me saying one word out loud, and she does the kind thing. She reaches over and she says, "Hey, it's okay. It's not a big deal."

[00:07:33] And I say, "It is a big deal because now we're gonna be late and we're gonna have to rush through dinner." And she didn't say anything after that. She looked out the window the rest of the way to the restaurant.

[00:07:45] Now, that moment didn't ruin the whole night because it's not the first time and I've learned how to repair those moments, but it took some work to get back to each other, and part of that work was me quieting that voice so I could actually be at the table with my wife instead of somewhere in my own head.

[00:08:01] But let me show you another way that same voice plays out, because it doesn't only run on me

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[00:08:08] Angelo: This past summer, my wife planned a hike for the three of us, something easy, something a six-year-old can handle. She picks the trail. She picks the day. All I have to do is show up. We get there later than we planned. It's hotter than it was supposed to be. The trail is crowded, and the place she thought we could grab food afterward isn't there anymore.

[00:08:28] Now, go back to that list: a late start, a hot afternoon, a crowd, a snack that didn't happen. Nothing in that list ruins a day. Nothing in that list ruins an hour. But the voice doesn't see a list of small stuff. The voice sees a plan that didn't get met, and this time, I'm not the one who made the plan.

[00:08:47] We should have left earlier. She should have checked in that place was still open. Why wouldn't you look up the trail before picking it? Did she even check the weather?

[00:08:55] Look at those sentences. They are the same sentences from the car at date night, same shape, same tone, same word driving all of them: should. The only thing that changed is the name at the front.

[00:09:07] It's not about me anymore. Now, the voice is going after her.

[00:09:10] For years, I would have told you I had two separate problems.

[00:09:14] I had a confidence problem. That was the soccer field, the drive home from the retreat, me lying in bed 11 o'clock replaying a shot I missed.

[00:09:21] And I had a patience problem. That was me sighing on a trail while my wife apologized for a snack bar that closed. Confidence problem, mine. Patience problem, hers to deal with.

[00:09:32] Two different problems, and I would have worked on them separately, too, one with a book about believing in myself and one with a book about being a better husband. But it's not two problems. It's one habit. When something doesn't go the way it was supposed to go, somebody has to be at fault. That's the habit.

[00:09:51] That's the whole thing. When I made the plan, it's me. When she made the plan, it's her. So if you talk to yourself that way when you miss, I'd ask you to take an honest look at what happens when she misses. Maybe it never comes out of your mouth. Mine mostly didn't. But it's the same voice, and it doesn't care who missed. It just knows something got missed, and it's got something to say about it.

[00:10:14] The way I talk to myself when I fall short and the way I judge my wife when she falls short, those are not two problems. They never were. It's one standard. The only question on any given day is which one of us it's pointed at.

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[00:10:29] Angelo: Now, some of you are already ahead of me here, and you've got a defense ready, and I know because it was my defense for years. And this is what it says.

[00:10:37] I never said it out loud. It's just in my head. I think it, sure, but I bite my tongue. On that trail, I never told her she should have checked the hours.

[00:10:46] I kept it in, and honestly, I was proud of that. That felt like me being a good husband. The voice runs internally. I take the hit. Nobody else gets touched. But I want to show you why that's not true, and it changed how I understand a lot of the car rides in my marriage.

[00:11:02] Turn the sound off on any conversation, and you can still tell what two people think of each other. You've probably done it yourself. You've watched a couple across a restaurant or a coffee shop, no clue what they're saying, and know exactly how it was going over there. A total stranger can read that in a few seconds.

[00:11:19] My wife is not a stranger. She has been reading my face across tables for twenty-three years. She didn't need one hard word from me on that hike. She watched me look at that closed snack bar. She caught the sigh. She saw me check the time twice on a Saturday with nowhere else to be. I said nothing, and she drove home knowing exactly what I thought of the day she planned.

[00:11:42] My silence never protected her. It just meant she had to work it out on her own. And in some ways, that almost makes it worse because now she's facing my frustrations, my resentment, my annoyances all alone. We're not talking about it. I'm not being honest about it. I'm not working through why these small things get to me or how that lands on her and on our family.

[00:12:05] It creates more distance. And there's a second way that voice reaches her without me ever saying a word, and this one costs more.

[00:12:14] Go back to the car with me. When she reaches over and says, "Hey, it's okay. It's not a big deal," what do I do with that? The voice has already decided it is a big deal. It decided somewhere back on the highway, so when my wife says it's not, as far as the voice is concerned, she's wrong, and that's what that snap was. I was correcting her. She contradicted the voice, and I took the voice's side.

[00:12:39] And I wanna be clear about that because it was the wrong choice. Taking the voice that puts me down, that judges everything I do, that makes me miserable over the voice of the woman who loves me and is trying to support me is always the wrong choice.

[00:12:54] I wanna say that one more time. My wife offered me a way out, and I took the voice's side against her in our own car on our date night. Do that enough times, and she learns. Comfort gets argued with. Kind words get corrected. There's no point in saying it's okay because he'll explain why it isn't, so she stops saying it, and maybe that's exactly where you are right now.

[00:13:19] And then she learns one more thing. A few weeks after that hike, my wife mentioned the next thing she's planning, a day trip, her and our son. This time, I'm not included. And here's what I wanna say about that. She wasn't punishing me. She wasn't making a point. She had just realized the reality of planning family activities for us.

[00:13:39] A day out with me in it takes this much work. A day out without me is easy, so she planned the easy one, and honestly, I don't blame her. That's the part that I had to sit with, and it actually worried me. There's no anger in it anywhere. It's just easier when I'm not there. I spent years believing that I was protecting her and the marriage by keeping that voice in my head, but what I've learned is that she could feel it even if she couldn't hear it.

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[00:14:06] Angelo: So maybe by this point you agree with me. You saw yourself in that car, you saw yourself on that trail, and I wanna tell you what happens next, because it's what happened to me for years.

[00:14:15] Nothing. Nothing happens next, and here's why. When you start thinking about getting rid of that voice, when you start thinking about challenging it, when you start deciding you're not going to let it take the lead anymore, the voice shows back up.

[00:14:28] And if you're anything like me, I know exactly what that voice says when I think about letting it go. It says, "I'm the reason why you're good at what you do.

[00:14:36] I'm the reason why things get done right. I'm why people can count on you. Let me go, stop listening to me, and watch what you become." That was my actual belief. Somewhere along the way, being hard on myself and being good at things became the same thing in my head. I thought the hardness was the reason for everything I'd ever done well.

[00:14:57] And I wanna pull two things apart for you here, because they are not the same thing, and treating them like one thing might be keeping you stuck. The first thing is the standard you set for yourself. Wanting to plan a good night for your wife, wanting to lead well, wanting to be patient with your son at bedtime, that's the bar you hold.

[00:15:15] That's the standard. The second thing is what you do to yourself in the 30 seconds after you miss it. Those are two separate things. The standard is the bar. The standard is noble. The standard can be healthy. But what you do to yourself, what you say to yourself, how you punish yourself after you miss it, that is not the bar.

[00:15:36] That's just what you've always done when you don't clear it. They showed up in your life at the same time, so you think they're one thing, but they're not. And my guess is that you've never once tested them apart. So test it right now. Ask yourself one honest question. Has the voice ever actually made you better at anything?

[00:15:55] Go back to my soccer game. The voice started before the ball even went out of bounds. It decided everything about me for the entire game in one missed shot. Then, multiple men told me at a retreat that something changed for them, and the voice didn't change one word of what it was saying. Whatever that voice is doing, it is not evaluating you.

[00:16:14] It is not taking notes on what to do differently next time. It knew what it was going to say before anything ever happened. The standard makes you good. The preparation makes you good. Caring about people in front of you makes you good. And the desire to learn, to grow, to get better at this, all of that makes you good, too.

[00:16:34] The voice just shows up afterwards and takes the credit. So if the voice was never making you better, why is it there at all? Why do you talk to yourself like that in the first place? The truth is that voice got installed a long time ago. There's a whole conversation underneath this one, why it shows up when it does, whose voice it actually is, where you first learned to talk to yourself that way, and that's a much deeper conversation.

[00:16:58] And we're going to have it on this show at some point, but not today. Today, all you need is this. It was installed, which means it isn't you, and you do not have to find out who put it there before you're allowed to stop taking orders from it. And you don't have to take my word for it.

[00:17:14] There's a review published in the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Journal that pulled together 15 clinical trials, around 900 people. When people worked on how they treated themselves after falling short, the perfectionism came down. So did the anxiety, so did the depression. Hear me on this. I'm not telling you to want less. Keep the standard. Aim high. Plan the good night. Hold the bar for your work, your marriage, your kids. The thing that has to go is what you do to yourself if and when you miss it, because you will miss.

[00:17:50] That's the part of being human. The only question left is what you say to yourself instead the next time you miss, and that's the last thing I wanna give you.

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[00:18:00] Angelo: There are two ways to tell yourself you got it wrong, two ways to talk to a man who just missed. The first one asks what's wrong with you. You already know that one. "I should have seen this coming. Why am I even out here? I'm such a joke." And notice what's actually in those sentences. Nothing. No information about next time, nothing to do.

[00:18:19] They just tell you what you are. The second one names what happened and what you'll do about it. "That didn't go well. I missed the exit because I was in my head instead of on the road. Next time, I check traffic before we leave." Same mistake, same honesty about the mistake. Nothing got excused. Look hard at that second one, because the critical voice is going to tell you it's soft, but to me it's not soft.

[00:18:43] It names the miss out loud. It doesn't pretend the night went fine. It holds the standard all the way through. It just skips the beating. Both of them are trying to correct the mistake in two very different ways, but only one of them is productive and helpful and doesn't land on the people around you the way it landed on my wife in that car and on that trail.

[00:19:03] Think about the people who taught you something, teachers, coaches, bosses, mentors. Most likely, you've had them on both sides of that line. You've had the one who scolded you when you fell short, who made sure you knew exactly how much you had let them down, and you've had the one who saw you working at it and told you so, who corrected you in a way that made you want to go back and try again.

[00:19:25] Which one of those men do you admire? Which one do you want to be for the people who look to you?

[00:19:31] That second voice, the one that understands you'll make mistakes and help you get better, is already in you. But most likely, it's hidden underneath the loud, critical one. That second voice will tell you the truth about the miss and still be on your side while it does it.

[00:19:46] You've just never asked it what it thought because the other one talks first, and it talks louder. So start asking it.

[00:19:54] Let's run my date night car story again the other way. Same traffic, same missed exit, same nine minutes late, but this time somewhere back on the highway, I say to myself, "It's okay. It's only a few minutes.

[00:20:06] That's not the entire night." And when she reaches over and says, "Hey, it's okay," I get to say the thing I've been wanting to say to her for 23 years. "You're right. It is okay. We're still going to dinner, and we're still together."

[00:20:20] Because the only thing the voice ever changed was who my wife had to sit next to on the way.

[00:20:25] So for you, when that critical voice shows up, and it will, don't try to ignore it. Push it away and it only comes back louder. Let it know you heard it. You can even thank it for showing up and telling you what it thought. Then tell it you've got this, and you don't need the negativity to move forward.

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[00:20:42] Angelo: So if you can see it now, if you understand the impact that voice has been having, not only on you, but on your marriage, and you're ready to say thanks, but no thanks to it, and you're ready to invite in a voice that encourages you and helps you reach the goals you set for yourself and the values you hold, then let's put everything you've learned to work.

[00:21:01] Here's your awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this week. To deepen your awareness of this, start by thinking about how often that voice is taking over in a given week. Then answer this and write your answer down. In what ways can you now see the impact that voice has been having on you, your marriage, and on your wife?

[00:21:23] Now, your action steps. Four of them this week. First, once a day, when you catch that voice being hard on you about something, write down the exact sentence running through your head, word for word. Don't clean it up. Don't analyze it. Just get it on paper. I want you to see what that voice is actually saying to you.

[00:21:42] Second, pick one of those sentences you caught this week and run it through one test. Would you say that sentence in that tone to a friend who did the exact same thing? If the answer is no, then what you're doing to yourself isn't teaching you anything. It's a beating, and now you can tell the difference.

[00:22:00] Third, name one thing your wife does that you judge silently. One thing. Then ask, what do you say to yourself when you do something similar? If it's the same harsh sentence, you've found it. One standard running on both of you.

[00:22:14] And fourth, the next time something goes wrong this week, say it out loud in that supportive voice.

[00:22:20] Name what happened and what you'll do differently. Say it in the way one of those great mentors would have said it to you.

[00:22:27] Now, this practice is simple, and it's not easy because that voice has years of a head start on you. The men who actually change the way they talk to themselves are the men who don't try to do it alone.

[00:22:40] That's what Better Husband Academy is for, accountability. It's men working on exactly this on live calls every week when somebody knows what you've committed to and asks you how it went. If you want that kind of support, come get started at betterhusbandacademy.com or click the link in the show notes and get accountability on this week's practice.

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[00:23:00] Angelo: Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Some night soon, something is going to go wrong, small wrong, traffic wrong, late wrong, and the voice is going to start in on you, same as it always has, and somewhere close by is going to be your wife, watching your face, reading the whole thing the way she's been reading it for years.

[00:23:20] And in that moment, there are two conversations happening, the one in your head and the one on your face, and they have never been separate conversations, no matter how well you kept the first one to yourself. So when you hear it start, don't let it take over. Don't let it tell you what's wrong with you or why you're a failure.

[00:23:38] That is what it claims. That is not what happened. Invite the other one in, the voice that wants to see you win, the one that wants to help you learn, that wants to help you grow, and then ask yourself the question: Who else is going to feel the effects of this voice in my head if I let it keep running?

[00:23:56] You already know the answer. She's two feet away from you. She's always been two feet away from you. You've been letting that voice do all the talking, so let it go and watch what you become. Thank you for sitting with me on this one. Most men never look at how they talk to themselves and the impact it has on their marriage, and you just did.

[00:24:15] So keep catching that voice, keep choosing something different, and keep showing up. You're listening to Better Husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one

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