Your Wife Is Years Ahead of You in Growth — Now What?

[00:00:00] When You See How Far Ahead She Is 

I'm going to start this episode by making an assumption about you. If you clicked play on this episode, it probably means you're finally doing the work of becoming a better husband, or at least starting it. Maybe you're reading the books, maybe you've even joined a men's group, or you're going through therapy, or at least starting to think about it.

You're paying attention to your marriage in a way you never have before, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, maybe a few weeks in and maybe a few months, you look at your wife and you realize something that worries you. She's been doing this for years. She's been at it for years. She's on a completely different level when it comes to this work.

The things you're just now learning, she's known them. The conversation you're just now learning to have, she's been trying to have them with you for a decade. The emotional tools you're just now picking up, self-awareness, vulnerability, processing what's really going on inside of you, she's had those for years.

She built them on her own because you weren't available to build them with her, and now you're standing at the beginning of a road she's already miles down, and the thought hits you, "How am I supposed to close this gap?" That's discouraging. I know it is because I've been there. I've stood in that exact same spot, three months into the hardest work of my life, looking at my wife, who'd been doing her own version of it for almost 10 years, and I thought, "Does she even understand how new this is for me? Does she remember what this felt like at the beginning?"

If you're at that place right now, I want you to hear me. You're not alone in it. That feeling, the discouragement, the confusion, the there's no way this is gonna work, that's something I hear all the time from the men I coach, and it makes sense.

You're looking at that gap that took years to build and wondering how you're supposed to close it in months. That's what we're going to break down in this episode. We're going to look at the pattern, why she started first, and how it almost always goes this way.

Then we're going to talk about what to do with the discouragement, because if you let it take you out, the gap only gets wider, and there's a move that you can make inside of that.

I'm also going to do something I don't normally do on this show. I'm going to take a few minutes and speak directly to the wives who are listening, because this isn't just about you. She's in this too, and she needs to hear something from me. And then I'm going to come back to you and talk about what actually carries a man through this work, because it's probably not what you think.

By the end of this episode, you're going to understand why the gap exists, know what to do when discouragement hits, and have a clear picture of what actually carries a man through this work. Let's get into it.

[00:02:36] Ten Years of Her Work. Three Months of Mine.

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, I want to tell you my story with this because I didn't read about this in a book. I actually lived it. Over five years ago, my eyes opened up to the real state of my marriage. For the first time, I was able to see my wife's pain, her hurt, her grief, her disappointment, and I was able to see how I had contributed to all of it.

I started taking action, getting support, doing the deep internal work, and I fumbled my way through it. I'd take a few steps forward, and I feel like I took a few more steps back. I'd try to have an emotional conversation with my wife, and I'd mess it up.

The next day, something would go well, and I'd feel good about it, only to see it all crumble the day after. It was hard, probably one of the hardest things I've ever done.

But over time, I started to see change in myself and in our marriage. Not huge change, but small enough that it was giving me hope. Some days were good. Other days were really hard, and I'd get discouraged and wonder if any of it would ever work out.

But here's one of the hardest things that I had to face. When I finally started, my wife had already been on her own version of this journey for close to a decade. This was her journey over those 10 years where she did the work. She went to therapy. She went on retreats to India, to Bali, to California. She found spaces with other women where she could process what she was carrying. She worked on her body, her mind, her spirit. She dealt with deep emotional traumas.

She built an entire support system around her healing, and she did it without me because I wasn't available to do it with her. I didn't honestly want to do it with her.

And what was I doing during those same 10 years? Well, you know, I was providing for my family. I was working at the fire station, and I was hanging out with friends. I was getting drunk on my days off. I was playing golf. I was planning a date night here and there, but I was just puttering along.

Every time she came to me wanting to go deeper, to share what she was learning, what she was processing, what she needed from me, I wasn't equipped to meet her there.

I didn't have the tools. I didn't have the capacity. So she leaned on her support systems instead of me because I couldn't be that for her. That went on for years until she finally worked up the strength to say enough was enough, and what she was really saying wasn't, "I'm done with you."

It was that she wanted more than that. She wanted a partner who loved and cared for her deeply, someone who would be on this journey with her. She was calling me into my own work. She could see from her 10 years of doing this that I was in pain, that I was struggling, that I was sick and hurting before I could see it myself.

So she confronted me. She encouraged me to get my own support, and she essentially shipped me off to get help, and I said yes, reluctantly. I was not happy about it. But I knew that if I wanted to stay married, be in the home with our kid, and not break our family apart, I had to do something. The thing that I realized, even though in that moment she wasn't saying, "I'm done with you," I could tell that if things didn't change, she wasn't very far from making the hard decision that she and our son would be better off without me.

I felt it. I knew it. Even though she never said the words, something in me could see that future not too far away. So I went to my first retreat. I joined my first men's group. I started to experience and see ways of being a man that I had never been exposed to.

I went to the next retreat. I started talking to people. I started reading, expanded my vocabulary around my emotions. I started journaling. I started sharing things I never shared before. I came face to face with my own guilt, my own shame about the man I had been up to that point. I did things that were so uncomfortable, things I never thought I would do.

I stopped drinking. I reviewed almost every aspect of my life. I chose to let go of certain friendships that were unhealthy for me and my marriage. I chose to leave my career as a firefighter. I came face to face with all the ways I had fallen short as a husband. Here's the part I want you to really hear.

This was not a smooth process. It's not like I did all those things and everything changed overnight. It's not like my wife looked at me with a huge smile and open arms and told me how proud of me she was. This was painful for both of us. I made mistakes. I said the wrong things. I still shut down. I had to have some of the hardest conversations I've ever had to have in my life. I reverted back to old patterns that had been in our marriage for a long time, and in all the progress I made, small amounts of progress, those moments of reverting were almost more painful to her than the original ones.

And what happened inside me when I stumbled three months in, six months in, when I'd mess up and I'd feel like a failure, I'd look at her and think the things I shared with you at the beginning of this episode.

She's been at this for ten years. How could I possibly be anywhere close to where she is? Does she even understand how hard this is for me? Does she remember what this was like for her at the beginning? That was discouraging. It made me feel like I was fighting an uphill battle. Sometimes it made me feel like there was no way this was going to work.

Now, more than five years into this work, I see that same story play out with so many of the men I work with. They get to the point where their wife finally confronts them, finally tells them she's had enough, finally calls them up to something different, often because she knows he's capable of more. And these men come to me feeling the same thing I felt.

Discouragement, confusion, a sense of there's no way this is gonna work. So let's talk about what's actually happening here and what to do about it.

[00:08:07] Why She Stopped Bringing It Up

The thing most men don't realize until they're already in the middle of it is she started first. That's almost always how it goes. By the time a man wakes up to the real state of his marriage, by the time he starts reading the books, listening to the podcast, going to therapy, joining a group, his wife has usually been doing some version of that work for years, sometimes five years, sometimes 10, sometimes longer.

She went to therapy when he wouldn't go. She read the relationship books that sat on the nightstands untouched. She found other women who understood what she was going through. She processed her pain, her grief, her frustration, and she did it most of it without him because he wasn't available. And during all of that, most men don't even know it's happening, or if they do, they don't take it seriously.

They see her going to a retreat and think she's taking a vacation. They see her in therapy and think she's dealing with her own stuff. They don't connect it to the marriage. They don't realize she's building the tools she needs because her husband can't meet her where she is. And here's where it gets dangerous.

At some point, a lot of women stop bringing it up. They stop asking for the conversations. They stop pushing him to go to therapy. They stop fighting for the marriage, and most men read that as progress, like something is going well. They think things have been pretty good lately. She hasn't been upset. We haven't had a big fight in a while, but that's not what's happening.

When she stops bringing it up, it usually means she's stopped believing you'll hear her. She's exhausted. She's decided the cost of bringing it up one more time is higher than the cost of carrying it alone, and that silence, the silence most men mistake for calm, that's often the most dangerous moment in the relationship.

About 70% of all divorces are initiated by women, and in most of those cases, the husband is caught off guard. He didn't see it coming because he confused her silence with satisfaction. I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'm telling you this because if you're here, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're already doing the work or just getting started, you are past that point.

She confronted you. She told you what she needed. She called you into something different, and that means she hasn't given up yet. But you need to understand what she's been carrying. You need to understand that when she seems impatient with your progress, when she doesn't celebrate every step you take, when she looks at you like she's not sure she believes it yet, that's not her being unfair.

That's the weight of years, years of doing this alone, years of hoping you'd show up, years of wondering if this version of you is going to last. That's the context you're walking into, and the faster you understand it, the better you'll be able to stay in the work instead of getting crushed by it.

[00:10:46] Why Your Setbacks Hurt Her More Now

So now you know the pattern. She started first, she's been at this for years, and you're just getting going. And this is where a lot of men get stuck, not because they don't wanna do the work, but because the gap feels impossible. You're finally giving her what she's been asking for, and it's still not enough.

You're showing up differently, and she's still guarded. You're trying, and she doesn't seem to see it. I wanna be honest with you about something. Just like it happened to me, like I shared in my story, when you're three months, six months into this work and you stumble, when you say the wrong thing or shut down or revert back to the version of you she's been dealing with for years, those moments can be even more painful to her than the original ones.

Because now she's seen what's possible. She's seen the version of you that shows up differently. And when the old version comes back, even for a moment, it's like a promise being broken all over again. You're in the process. The process is messy, and the process includes setbacks.

But you have to understand what those setbacks feel like from her side, not just yours. I want you to hear this about the discouragement you're feeling. It's real, it makes sense, and you're not the only one feeling it. Most of the men I work with in Better Husband Academy are somewhere in this exact place, doing the work, committed to the work, but looking at the gap and wondering if it'll ever close.

And what I've learned in my own marriage and in coaching other men through this, sometimes the strongest thing you can do in that moment of discouragement is name it out loud to her. When you're clear and calm and connected, when you can communicate from a grounded place without dumping this, "I'm not good enough," or, "I feel like I can never get it right," or, "This is pointless," onto her, you tell her, "Babe, this is really hard for me.

I know you've been doing this for a long time, but this is so new to me." And that's it. Whatever the moment calls for, whether it's talking about something emotional, processing a breakdown between you, having a deeper conversation to repair something that went sideways, you share your experience with her.

But here's the key. She needs to know what's really going on, but it needs to happen when you're both in a good place, when you're having open, honest relational dialogue. If you're in the middle of an argument and things are heated, and you're already saying things that are probably not gonna make it better, and you say something like that, she might hear it as an excuse.

You might actually say it loaded with the frustration and discouragement that you're carrying, and she might fall into the story that you're just trying to get out of accountability. But if you're really connected and really talking with her vulnerably and she's receiving it well, then share with her what this is like for you. Let it be an invitation for her to understand the depth of the work you're doing, if you're really doing it. There's a difference between a man who says this is hard to get his wife off his back, and a man who says this is hard because he wants her to know him in this.

You'll know which one you are, and so will she.

[00:13:40] To the Wives Listening

Now, I know this show is called Better Husband, and most of the time I'm speaking only to the men, but I want to take a moment to speak directly to the women who are listening right now. And guys, this is not your opportunity to check out and fast-forward through this. I need you to hear what I'm saying to her as well, so stay with me.

To the wives, I want to start off by saying this. I know how hard this has been for you. I know what it's cost you. The years of waiting, the conversations that went nowhere, the moments you needed him and he couldn't be there. I know you've been doing the work on your own for a long time, and I know that some days, even now, you're not sure if what he's doing is real.

I want to acknowledge all of that, all of it. And then I want to ask you to hear the same thing I tell the men. This works, but it takes much more time than you'd like it to. You're at a crossroads right now, and you have to honestly decide whether this is something you're willing to lean into and be patient for.

You need to know that there are going to be ups and downs. Your man is going to have good days and bad days, and that's going to affect you as his partner. So here's what I want you to ask yourself. When you look at him, do you see his sincerity? Is he really trying? Is his heart all in? Does he really want this?

Is that clear to you? Do you see him taking the right actions or at least trying to figure out what the next right actions are? Because that may be a challenge for him. Do you see him continuing even in the face of struggle, even in the face of failure, getting back up and trying again? That's the process.

And the real question underneath all of it is this. Are you getting enough out of this marriage right now to make up for the things that you're not getting? When you look at not just the marriage you have right now, but the marriage that's being built in the work that he's actually doing, can you see where this is headed?

Are you getting enough of what you need to stay in it, to stay in the process? I can tell you what this looked like in my own marriage. One of the greatest gifts my wife gave me as I went through this was an understanding that something was happening in me. She could see it. She could feel it. And she had people in her life who reminded her of that when things were still hard. In the words we use now in our family, God was working on me. If she could be patient, if she could trust the process, there was something on the other side of all this pain that she had been asking for for a very long time.

And it took time. It took tears. It took frustration. It took moments of confusion, moments of wanting to give up, and we got through it. If my wife were here recording this podcast with me, she would tell you because she's told me and we've talked about it that it was all worth it. All the pain, all the hurt, all the struggle.

The marriage we have now is something neither of us could have imagined. We say it's nothing short of a miracle because in our hearts and in our beliefs, it is. It took time. It took patience. It took continuous support. And it took her having her own support system through the process as well. So that's the question you have to ask yourself.

Are you in it? Are you willing to go through this? And if the answer is no, I want you to know that there's no judgment from me. You get to choose your life. I just want to encourage you to think about whether that vision of your life includes the part of the story where you witness your husband transforming and your marriage evolving.

[00:17:02] What Actually Carries a Man Through This Work

All right, guys, I'm back to you. You heard what I just said to her. You heard me ask her if she sees that your heart is in it. Now I'm asking you the same question. Is your heart in this? Because this is what it's going to look like. It's going to be hard.

It's going to suck. It's not going to be fun. You're going to need to let go of a lot of things you've held onto to become the man you're trying to become. You are being reborn. You are being forged into something new, like raw metal being melted down into nothingness so it can be shaped into something sharp.

That's what's going to happen to you, and you have to answer honestly, is this something you want? I tell the men I work with, especially the guys I coach one-on-one, I can't want this more for you than you want it for yourself. I can't do it for you. You have to do it. I'm here to support you, encourage you, guide you, walk with you.

And in the Academy, I can take you to the edge of the scary cliff and show you where you'd have to jump, and I'll even jump with you if you need me to, but I can't jump for you. I can't be the first one to jump. You're the one who has to do the work. And if the answer is no, if you don't wanna do it, there's no judgment from me.

That's fine. You get to live your own life. But I will demand something of you. Do not drag your wife along any longer if you're not willing to do this. Let her go. Let her live her own life. Let her find happiness. Let her find what she's been looking for.

And hopefully, you can see that what she's been looking for can be you, and you want it to be you. And if it is, then buckle up. Let's get to work. What actually carried me through this was support. I had men around me. When I stumbled, when I messed up with my wife, I had places to go. I had people to talk to.

I had a room where I could stand up and say, "Here's where I screwed it all up this week." And instead of judgment, I got support. But there was another side of this. The last thing I wanted to do was to go to my wife and say, "Hey, didn't I do great at that thing?" Looking for her praise. Sometimes she'd be happy to see the things I was doing, but sometimes it was hard for her to give me that, and that's fair.

She was doing her own healing. What helped me was having a place where I could share the wins of my week and just be honest about the work I was doing, even though it was hard as hell. That's what carried me, and that's exactly why I built a place like Better Husband Academy. When I started doing this work and leading other men through it, coaching one-on-one, building the online course, I knew I needed to build a community, a room, a place where men could do this work together, and that's what the Academy is.

Now, before I share more about that, let's just get into the awareness, action steps, and accountability for this week.

[00:19:45] Awareness, Action, Accountability

Here's your awareness question for this week. How far ahead of you is your wife in this work? How long has she's been working on herself, on the marriage, on her own healing, and when did you start?

I want you to name that reality, and then I want you to notice what it does to you. Does it discourage you? Does it give you a reason to give up? Can you name that reality without it meaning anything about you or where you're at? Just acknowledge what she's already done to get to the point where she is and sit with that. Don't run from it.

Here's what I want you to do this week. First, have a conversation with your wife. Based on what your awareness showed you, acknowledge her. Acknowledge everything she's done. Acknowledge how much work she's put into this, into herself, into the marriage, into holding things together.

Acknowledge how hard this moment is for both of you and appreciate her. Even if she seems impatient right now, appreciate her patience in this process.

Second, share with her how hard this is for you. Honestly, without making excuses or seeking her pity, just be more vulnerable. Let her see what this is like from your side.

And third, find your room. Find your support system. Find the men who are going to help you, who want to see you win, who lift you up when you stumble, and who you can be fully honest with. Without a place to be honest, you're just internalizing all of this, and that's only going to add to the damage in your marriage.

Now, if you're looking for that type of accountability, if you want a place where you can get clear on what that conversation with your wife looks like, or if you're looking for your room to stand up in, come join me and the other men in Better Husband Academy at betterhusbandacademy.com.

This is the place where we do this work together, where we're honest, where we celebrate together, where we talk about the struggle, and where we share our vision of the man we're becoming. You don't have to do this alone. That's the whole point.

[00:21:39] Closing Takeaway

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

The gap between where your wife is and where you are, it's real. She started first. She's been at this longer, and you're just getting going. That's the truth. But that gap, that's the starting line. She started her journey because she had to, and now it's your turn. The man you're becoming requires it. Your heart has to be in this because you actually want to be different.

And if your heart is in it, if you're willing to do the work, to stumble, to get back up, to be honest about how hard this is, that's all she needs to see. Your sincerity. A man who keeps going.

So thank you for being that man who keeps going. Thank you for sticking with me through this episode. If you have any questions or you just wanna reach out, my email is in the show notes.

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