101|You Know What to Do. Why Can't You Do It With Her?

[00:00:00] When You Know Better but Do the Same Thing

If you've ever heard something on this podcast and thought, "Yes, I'm going to try that tonight," then my guess is you've probably experienced something like this. Maybe it was about listening. You heard an episode like this one, and it clicked. When your wife is upset, your job isn't to fix or explain yourself, it's to listen and to let her know you heard her.

So you ran it through your head on the drive home, what you'd say, what you wouldn't say, how you'd keep your mouth shut and let her finish, and probably for the first couple of times on the small stuff, it worked. She noticed. Things felt a little lighter in the house. And then came the first time it really counted.

Maybe she brought up something a little bit more uncomfortable, something you did and how it made her feel, and before you even realized it, you were right back to doing the same thing you've always done. You were cutting in, correcting the details, telling her that that's not what happened, that's not what you meant, or going silent and waiting for it to be over.

And afterwards, lying in bed or sitting in your car the next morning, you're thinking, "I knew exactly what to do. I've heard it a dozen times. Why couldn't I do it?" And then the thought underneath that one is, "Maybe I'm just not built for this." Well, if you've had that night, I've had it, too, more than once.

And the men I've watched change their marriages have it as well. What made the difference is that they decided what that moment meant.

And today we're talking about what actually happens in your brain when you learn a new way to show up for your wife, why it falls apart right when it matters most, and how it finally starts to hold.

By the end of this episode, you're gonna know the four steps every skill goes through before it becomes a part of who you are.

I'm also gonna show you two pretty interesting brain studies and what they show about why practice matters so much, and where you can practice this stuff long before the hard conversation at home. Plus, you'll walk away with a few simple steps to start this week. Stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

[00:01:54] The Listening I Learned at a Men's Retreat

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, before we get into today's episode, I've got a quick favor to ask. Whether this is your first episode you've ever listened to or you've been listening for a while, my mission is to help as many men as I can in their marriages, and this podcast is how I do that.

So if you could take a moment to hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching and leave a rating, a review, or a comment, it would mean the world to me,

and you'd be helping this reach more men and helping more marriages around the world.

Now, in the spring of 2021, I went to my very first men's retreat out in the Southern California desert, and I've shared about it on this podcast before. And one of the very first things they taught us there sounds almost too simple to be worth talking about.

They paired us up. One man talks, the other man listens. That's it. But the way they wanted us to listen was something I'd never done in my life.

The goal was to give him your full attention. Don't fix anything. Don't jump in with your own story that's kinda like his. Don't make any of it about you.

You stay open, you stay curious about him, and let whatever he says be okay to say, and stay out of judgment. I thought I was a decent listener walking in, but sitting across from another man and just listening, I found out how hard it was. My mind kept running ahead. I'd catch myself trying to think of what I was going to say next while he was still talking.

I'd feel the urge to tell him what he should do or tell him, "Oh, man, the same thing happened to me." Right? Keeping my mouth shut and staying with him took everything I had. And then we switched, and when it was my turn to talk, I had a man sit there and really listen to me. No interrupting, no advice, no turning it back to himself.

He just took in what I said. I don't really know how to describe what that did to me. It was a strange feeling. I'd never had someone listen to me that deeply and know that their full attention was on me, so of course, I came home fired up. I wanted to try this with my wife, and for a while, it went well.

I'd practice it in small moments. She'd tell me about her day or about something that bugged her, and I'd work on just listening, not jumping in, not fixing. My wife was patient with me. She knew I was trying something new, something I'd never tried with her before, so she'd share a little bit.

And then the better I got at it, the more she was willing to share, and that stretch felt really good. Looking back now, I'd call it easy mode. We were easing into it. We hadn't gotten to the hard stuff yet. Then a few weeks in, she started opening up more. She started sharing more of what she was feeling, including how some of the things I'd said and done had made her feel, and that's exactly where I'd always struggled.

In the past, when someone brought me their feelings, especially feelings about me, I'd either shut down or get defensive, and that's what happened. I slipped right back into the old pattern. I'd feel the urge come up right away before I could even think. She'd be talking, and I'd have the thing I wanted to say sitting right there waiting.

Sometimes I'd actually open my mouth and start talking while she was still in the middle of a sentence, just to correct some detail she'd gotten wrong or to tell her, "That's not what I meant." "That's not what I meant," is something I said a lot back then, and every time I said it, I made the whole thing about me again, which is the exact opposite of what I'd learned out there at that men's retreat.

I cared about getting this right, and I hadn't forgot anything. I knew what to do. I'd done it at the retreat. I'd even done it at home for a few weeks. What I hadn't done was practice it nearly enough for it to hold up when it actually mattered, when she was telling me how she felt and some of it was about me.

Learning it once and practicing it a handful of times showed me one thing, I needed a lot more practice.

So that's what I did, more practice, more retreats, men's groups, working with a men's coach, and eventually, my training and certification as a Relational Life Therapy coach.

And to this day, I'm still practicing that same skill, sitting with someone, listening without judgment, without planning what I'm going to say next, not making it about me. Those moments when my wife finally opened up about how she felt and how my words and actions had affected her, the ones that set off the immediate reaction in me, told me one thing: I hadn't practiced enough yet, and it took me a while longer to understand why practice matters that much.

[00:06:13] The Four Steps From Learning to Living It

Later on, as part of my Relational Life Therapy coaching certification, I took a course called the Relational Brain. One of the teachers was Jules Taylor Shore, who teaches the neuroscience side of this work, and she walked us through a simple way to think about how anything becomes new and becomes part of who you are.

It comes out of the work of Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist who spent his career studying how the brain and our relationships affect each other. It's four words: skill, practice, state, trait. Those four words explained exactly what had happened to me in those first few weeks home from the retreat. Skill is the thing you learn.

Somebody shows you how to do it, you understand it, and maybe you even do it once. That was me at the retreat. I learned how to listen in a completely new way with deep presence and an open mind, and I could do it with the man sitting across from me. Practice is doing it again, and again, and again on purpose.

Usually, it's clumsy. You have to think about every step, and that was me in those first few weeks at home, catching myself, slowing down, working at it in the small moments with my wife. Now, state is where you can do it while you're in the moment. You're in a conversation, and for that stretch, you're doing it.

You're listening. You're not jumping in, but it still takes effort and still depends on the conditions. When things are calm, you can get there. When things are heated, it's gone. That was me on easy mode. I could get into that listening state when the stakes were low.

But when my wife started telling me how I'd made her feel, I couldn't hold it. And then trait is when it's just who you are. You don't have to stop and think about it. It's what you do without trying, even when you're tired, even when the conversation is about you. Siegel describes a trait as something that happens without effort or conscious planning.

That's the goal.

Now think about a husband who's gotten there with listening. His wife tells him she felt brushed off at dinner. He doesn't jump to his defense. He says, "Tell me more about that." And he means it. He doesn't have to grit his teeth to get through it. It's just what he does now. Now most of us believe that we can skip straight from skill to trait in our heads, right?

We learn it once, and we expect to be that man the next time she's upset, and when we're not, we think something's wrong with us. There's a saying in neuroscience that goes back to the 1990s, state becomes traits. The more often you get yourself into that state, the more it becomes how you normally are, and the way you get there more often is practice, lots of it.

So think about the last time you were working on something new with your wife, and you went right back to the old way. Maybe you'd been working on not getting defensive, and for a couple weeks it was going well. Then she brought up something that hit a little closer, and you heard yourself say the same old thing, "Well, you do it too," or, "That's not fair."

And when that happens, the first thought is usually, "See? I can't do this." What happened is you got to this state on easy days, and you hadn't practiced it enough yet for it to become your trait on the hard days.

That's exactly where I was a few weeks home from that retreat, and it's where a lot of the men I work with are when they first come to me.

[00:09:14] Your Brain Changes When You Keep Practicing

Now, this next part gets a little nerdy, but it's the part that changed how I think about all of it. For a long time, the general consensus was that once you're an adult, your brain is pretty much set. You are who you are.

But that turned out to be wrong. Scientists call it neuroplasticity, which is a fancy word for saying something simple.

Your brain physically changes based on what you do over and over. There's an old line neuroscientists use for it, "Neurons that fire together, wire together." Every time you do it again, the connection behind it gets a little stronger. Do it enough times and it gets easier, faster, more automatic. One of the studies I found really interesting on this is about juggling.

It was published in the Journal of Nature back in 2004. Researchers took a group of adults who had never juggled before and gave them three months to learn a basic three-ball juggling pattern. They scanned their brains before they started, then they scanned them again once each person could keep the balls going for at least a full minute, and on that second scan, you could see it.

Certain parts of their brains, areas involved in tracking things that move, had grown. Three months of practicing a party trick and their brains looked measurably different.

But the part that matters most for us is what happened next. After that second scan, the jugglers stopped practicing. Three months later, the researchers scanned them again.

The growth had shrunk, and most of them couldn't juggle smoothly anymore. They learned it. They practiced it. They got into it. They could do it, and when the practice stopped, both the skill and the change in their brain slid back. That's skill, practice, and state right there on a brain scan. It just never became a trait.

When I think about my own story, I picture it like this. Those first few weeks home from the retreat, I was juggling with one ball, then two. Small conversations, easy stuff, my wife sharing a little at a time. I was getting the hang of it, and then the third ball came in when she started telling me how I'd made her feel, and everything hit the floor.

I hadn't practiced enough to keep the three going yet. So think about this. If it takes three months of practice to change your brain for juggling, and that change slides back once you stop, what do you think it takes for something that actually matters, like staying open when your wife is telling you she's hurt, or not cutting her off to explain what you really meant, or staying with her instead of shutting down when the conversation is about you?

That's a much harder skill than juggling. You've had a lot more years of doing it the old way, and at home, you're doing it while the woman you love is upset, and part of what she's upset about is you. So when you try listening differently for a couple of weeks, and then you slip the first time it gets hard, your brain is right where you'd expect it to be after a couple of weeks.

You've started building it. It's just not strong enough yet to hold when she's upset with you.

[00:11:59] Time Alone Doesn't Make a Skill Stick

The juggling study shows your brain can change and that it slides back when you stop. The second study shows what separates the people whose brains keep changing from the people whose brains don't. It's about London taxi drivers. If you wanna drive one of those black cabs in London, you have to pass a test they call The Knowledge.

You have to learn the whole city, something like 25,000 streets, and how to get from any one of them to any other, all from memory. It usually takes three or four years of training, and a lot of people never pass. Researchers scanned the brains of 79 trainees who were just starting that training. 39 of them went on to qualify and get their licenses.

Three to four years later, the researcher scans the one who qualified again, along with a group of trainees who didn't make it. Only the 39 who qualified showed growth in the part of the brain that handles memory and finding your way around. The trainees who didn't make it showed no change at all. This next part is what really got me, though.

The ones who made it and the ones who didn't had been in training under the same number of years, same city, same streets, same tests. The difference was how much they practiced each week. The 39 who qualified were practicing about twice as many hours a week as the ones who didn't.

Same years, twice the practice, different brains, and only one group got the job. Those 39 were serious about it. That license was their living, so they showed up week after week and put in the hours, even when it was boring, even when they got it wrong. So let me ask you, how do you wanna show up for your marriage?

Because a lot of men are putting in time without putting in practice. They've been listening to the podcast for a year. They've read a book. They know the words, but they practice the skill maybe once a month, usually in the middle of a fight, and then wonder why it hasn't stuck. And think about it what that's like from her side.

She watches you try something new. Maybe she lets herself hope a little bit. Then it disappears the first time things get hard, and a few months later, you're trying something else. Every time that happens, it can get a little harder for her to believe the next try is going to last. Practicing steadily week after week is how she gets to see that this time you mean it.

So if your marriage is in a really hard place right now, I'd say show up like those 39 .

And then some. Your marriage matters a lot more to you than a cab license ever could. Now, I can't promise you how she'll respond because I don't know your marriage, but I can tell you that how often you practice is the part you get to decide.

I see this in Better Husband Academy all the time. The men it sticks with are the men who keep showing up, slips and all. They try something, it goes sideways, and they don't decide it means that they can't do it. They come back to the next call, and they try again. Those are the men I watch change how they show up at home, and it's how I went in my own marriage, too.

I got a lot of it wrong early, and I kept going.

[00:14:47] Practice Before the Hard Conversation With Your Wife

So if practice is what does it, the next question is where? And I hear this from men all the time. I don't have anywhere to practice this stuff. And I get it. If the only place you think you can practice listening is with your wife in the middle of a tough conversation, then you're waiting for the hardest moment in your marriage to be the first time you try it.

That's like handing yourself a third ball to juggle when you've only gotten the hang of one. The skills we work on here are relational. They're about how you show up with another human being, and that means you get a chance to practice them just about every time you're around other people. On one of our Better Husband Academy calls recently, the men were talking about this exactly.

Some of them are practicing at work with their coworkers. Some are practicing with their accountability partners. Some are practicing with their kids, and this is what I was practicing at that men's retreat with a man I had just met.

And the weekend before that Better Husband Academy call, I was at my son's birthday party, and I got talking with some of the other dads. A few of those conversations went a little deeper than small talk, and I got to practice some of the stuff that's still harder for me to do with my wife when she's upset.

Listening and reflecting back what I heard without sounding like a robot. Nobody at that party knew I was practicing, but I was. There are places to practice everywhere. The guy at work who's going through a rough stretch, your brother, your buddy who calls you to vent, and then there are places built for it, like Better Husband Academy.

On our calls, the men get to watch me listen to them. They get to practice with each other. They have accountability partners they can practice with between calls. It's a lot easier to get your hours in when you have people to put them in with, and none of this ever really stops.

I've been practicing this for years now, and I'm still at it. The people who are the best in the world at anything, the top athletes, the great musicians, they still go back to the basics over and over. That's how they stay good. Now, some men ask me about practicing with AI, and that's where I draw the line.

AI does not have feelings. It won't get hurt by what you say, and it'll pretty much agree with whatever you tell it. Your brain gets better at what you actually practice, and the people you need this with are real people.

If you wanna hear me talk more about what AI can and can't do in your marriage, go back to episode 73.

[00:16:58] Awareness, Action, Accountability

So if you're still listening and something in this episode made you understand the importance of practice to make these new skills stick, let's take it out of your brain scans and into your week. Let me help you with an awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this week. Now, to get honest with yourself about this, answer one question and write it down.

Think of one thing you've learned about being a better husband, maybe from this podcast, a book, or a call that you've tried with your wife and then quit using the first time it didn't work. What did you tell yourself that meant? Now, here are the steps I want you to take this week. One, pick one relational skill to practice.

Just one. If you don't know where to start, almost every episode of this podcast gives you one. Listening without interrupting, owning your part without explaining it away, asking her a question, staying curious about the answer. Make sure it's a skill about how you are with another person. You're here to work on your marriage, so practice a skill you'll use with her.

Two, find a place to practice it with another person before you try it with your wife. You can work on some of this on your own, but this skill lives between you and someone else, so pick a person or a place this week, a coworker, your kid, a buddy, an accountability partner. Go in knowing you're practicing, even if they don't.

Three, after you practice, reflect on it. Take five minutes afterwards and write down a few things. What did you learn? What went well? What was hard? What part of it were you in control of, and what was out of your control, something you just had to go through? Don't try to change that part. Just notice what it did for you.

And four, decide how you'll keep practicing. One week of practice isn't going to make it a trait, so set up a way to keep going. A weekly coffee with a buddy, a group that meets every couple of weeks, an accountability partner you check in with. Put it on your calendar so it happens whether you feel like it or not.

Now, for real accountability, the kind I talked about in step four, if you've been trying to do all of this on your own and you keep slipping and wondering if you're the problem, you don't have to keep practicing alone. Better Husband Academy is a place built for this practice. You get to see it done, try it with other men, and have a partner in the group you check in with between calls.

Go to betterhusbandacademy.com or click the link in the show notes to get support practicing the skills from this episode.

[00:19:10] Closing Takeaway

Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Picture the next time it happens. You've been working on a skill, it's been going okay, then your wife says something that stings, and you hear yourself say it again, "That's not what I meant."

Or you feel yourself going silent, and later that night, the old thought shows up, "See? I can't do this." When that happens, remember those jugglers. They could do it. Their brains had changed, and then the practice stopped. It slid back. Remember those 39 taxi drivers, same years as the ones who didn't make it, they just practiced twice as much every week.

A slip means you're somewhere between learning it and living it, and the way through is more practice. So when you slip, go practice again. That's how a skill becomes a state and how a state becomes who you are as a husband. Thanks for being willing to look at your slips honestly with me today instead of letting them tell you who you are.

So keep practicing.

You're listening to Better Husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.