088|You're Giving All You Can and It's Not Enough — What Does It Mean to "Hold Space"?

[00:00:00] When No Amount of Time Feels Like Enough

If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know two versions of my story. You know the crisis days, the one I talk about a lot, when divorce felt real and everything I cared about was slipping through my hands. And you know the good days, the now, where my marriage is something I'm proud of.

But there's a stretch in between that I don't talk about as much, and it's the one most of you are living in right now, and I call it the messy middle. The messy middle is where you get it. You understand the concepts, you're doing the work, you've got good days, maybe even good weeks, and then something stretches you.

A hard week, a little tension, a night where you're just spent and you stumble. You make a mistake. An old pattern shows up, or maybe you just feel like you're giving more than you ever used to, and somehow it still isn't enough. Some of this stuff clicks right into place, and some of it leaves you sitting there thinking, "I don't know how to do this one."

That's the messy middle. You're not in crisis, you're not fully transformed, you're just in it. And a while ago, I got an email from a man living right there in that spot. He's making a real effort towards change. He's not getting reactive as much. He's not checking out, and his wife just keeps asking him for more of his time, more of his presence, to stop blowing her off when she wants to share.

So he gives it. Before work, at lunch, in the empty spaces of the day, on the weekends. He adds it all up, and it's hours. And no matter how much he gives, it still feels like a lot. Sometimes it even feels like too much, and he can't figure out how to draw the line between being available for her and making time for himself.

So he asked me a fair question. He said, "When you talk about creating space for your wife to share, how much time should that be?" And I want to answer him today because that question he's asking is one I've asked in my own marriage, word for word, and I know a lot of you are asking the same thing. So today, we're talking about holding space, what it actually is, what it isn't, and why the question isn't really how many hours you owe her.

By the end of this episode, you're going to know what holding space really means. You're going to see why it can't run in one direction, why it has to go both ways, and you're going to have a way to give it a real shape, real agreements, honest limits, a clear sense of what you can give without burning out or checking out.

Most of all, you're going to walk away with a better question than the one this man emailed me. Not how much time should this be, but what kind of husband do I want to be while I figure that out? And if your wife is listening with you right now, wherever you've got this playing, this is a good one to hear together.

What we're getting into today works from both sides, and there's a real part near the end I prepared just for her, so stick around. You don't want to miss this one.

[00:02:43] "How Much More Can I Give?"

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 me take you back about two years into rebuilding my marriage. By then, we were out of the worst of it. The crisis was behind us. I'd done a lot of work on myself, and I understood my own history in a way I never had before, why I was the way I was, how I hadn't been showing up for my wife, Julie, the way that she needed me to, and I'd changed. Real changes, the kind that stick.

I was also deep in men's work at that point. Not as a hobby. It was my life. I was facilitating men's retreats. I was the operations director for a global men's organization.

I was earning the first of what would become a whole stack of certifications in men's work and coaching, and I was in my own men's group on top of all of it. So all day, every day, I was pouring out, and I was being poured into. Men bringing me their hardest stuff, me holding it, me giving them everything I had.

Now, picture the end of one of those days. I'm spent. I've given all day, a lot's been asked of me, and I showed up for every bit of it, and I come home, and our son was right there in that phase where he needs Daddy. Three years old, high energy, all in, wants me down on the floor with him, which I love, and also, by the end of the day, there's not a lot left in the tank.

And then my wife Julie comes to me. She wants to connect. She wants to share what's on her mind, talk about the future, talk about some things going on in her work and with a couple of friends. Completely reasonable. This is my wife. This is the person I love. This is the whole reason I'm doing any of the work in the first place.

And I sat there, and I felt lost because part of me was saying, "This is who you show up for. This is the one. You should be able to give her this." And another part of me, the honest part, was already running the numbers. We did this yesterday. We did this the day before. I've got nothing left. And I heard this thought go through my head clear as anything: How much more can I give?

And I'll be straight with you. A lot of times, I didn't handle those moments as well as I could have. I'm not proud of how I showed up then, but those moments I didn't handle well turned into some of the most important lessons in my marriage

Because right around that time, Julie and I were working with a couples coach, a dear friend of mine named Shems Heartwell. And in a session not long after one of those nights, Julie got to say what it felt like on her end. I got to say what my reality was, how depleted I had gotten, and instead of it turning into a fight about who was right, we came out of it closer.

And Shems gave me a picture I've never forgotten. He said, "Think back to the hunter-gatherer days." Now, he wasn't making a scientific claim, and neither am I. It's an image. He said, "The men would go out and as a tribe and hunt, hard, exhausting work. They'd pour themselves out alongside the other men and come back drained, and the women would go out too to forage and gather.

And when the men came back, the women would meet them, not empty-handed. They'd come with a basket, a basket full of things they'd found, things they'd wanted to show the men." And that made me slow down and think, because what Shems was trying to describe to me was exactly what Julie was doing.

She wasn't coming to take from me. She was coming with a basket full of things she wanted to show me, her thoughts, her day, her worries, her hopes for us. She was excited to show me her basket because we had been apart all day, and I was standing there only considering what it was costing me, and that's when the question changed.

It stopped being about how much more can I give because that question has no good answer. There's no number that ends it, and the real question, the one Shems walked me into, was this. What kind of husband do I want to be for her, for that basket, and for the marriage I said I wanted? That's the question I wanna hand the man who emailed me, and it's the one I wanna hand you.

[00:06:34] Creating Space vs. Holding Space

So let's start with what the term holding space even means, because I think this is where the man who emailed me got tangled up, and a lot of us do.

He used the phrase creating space, and I get why, but creating space sounds like clearing the calendar, opening a hole in your day, and just being available, on call, whenever, however long, whatever she needs, and if that's the definition, then his question makes total sense.

How much? Two hours? Five? Because if it's an open faucet, the only thing left to figure out is how far to turn the handle. But that's not what holding space actually is. Now, most people have no idea where this phrase even comes from. Holding space didn't come from nowhere, and it didn't come from one person as far as I can tell.

The idea of being fully present for someone while they work something out runs through a lot of places, through therapists, through the people who facilitate retreats and group work, which is a world I've lived in for years. It got popular in the everyday sense within the last ten years, but you can trace it back a lot further.

Back in the 1980s, a man named Harrison Owen talked about holding space as the whole job of a facilitator, and his point was that holding space is not about filling it. It's about being present and not taking it over. Go back further to 1960, and you've got a psychologist, Donald Winnicott, describing what he called a holding environment, the steady, safe container a child needs in order to grow.

And you can go back even further than that too. And I'm not telling you this to give you a history lesson. I'm telling you because every version of it going all the way back points at the same thing, and it's the opposite of an open faucet. Holding space has a shape. In every one of those settings, there's a container.

There's a start, there's an end, and there are some ground rules. The facilitator isn't on call twenty-four hours a day. He holds a real, focused, undistracted space for a stretch of time, and then it closes. So let me give you the definition I want you to take with you. Holding space means giving her your full, undistracted presence inside something that has a shape, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It's being all the way there for a defined stretch of time. And if the words holding space don't do it for you, use plainer ones. Being present, giving her your full attention, being a safe place for her to land. Whatever you call it, the thing itself is the same, real presence with edges.

[00:08:55] Real Presence Goes Both Ways

Now there's a second thing buried in that man's email, and I don't think he even noticed it. Listen to how he describes the whole thing. She comes to him, she shares, he gives her his time. She wants, he provides. Every bit of it runs one direction. She's pouring and he's catching. And when that's the entire setup, of course it feels like a drain.

Of course he's counting hours. A man who's only ever on the receiving end of it eventually goes numb. But that's not what being present for each other is supposed to be. Notice the phrase, for each other. It goes both ways. Holding space is not you standing there like an empty container while she pours her day into you.

Real presence is mutual. She shares her world and you share yours. She tells you what's on her mind, and you tell her what's on yours, what you're wrestling with, what you're excited about, what you're afraid of, the stuff you usually keep locked up because you're the strong one, the steady one, the guy who's supposed to have it all handled.

And I'll tell you where this gets good. When it runs both ways, the conversation stops being a recap of chores and logistics and who needs to be where. It starts going deeper. You start actually talking about ideas, about what you think and why, about where the two of you are headed, and what you want your life to add up to.

You open up a couple of channels most couples never touch because they never get past the surface. That's the good stuff. That's the closeness people say they miss and can't quite name. So it goes both ways. She shares, you share. She's heard, and so are you. That's presence for each other. It's not a one-man rescue operation.

[00:10:38] Why One Person Can't Hold It All

All right. Now let me give you a next piece because this one takes some pressure off of you, so stay with me. Somewhere along the way, we started asking one person to be everything. Think about what we expect a spouse to be now. A best friend, a business partner, a therapist, the one who calms us down, cheers us up, hears every single thought, and helps us become who we're trying to become.

A hundred years ago, a whole village carried that. Extended family, neighbors, your church, the guy you work beside. That load got spread out across a lot of shoulders. Now we've piled all of it onto one set, yours and hers. And there's real research on this, and I won't get into the names and numbers, but the gist is solid.

People do better and their marriages do better when their emotional support is spread across a few trusted relationships instead of routed through one. One person who's good at taking you off a ledge, another who lifts you when you're low, a group that gets the deepest parts of you.

Nobody's built to be another human being's entire support system. It's too much for one person to hold, and it'll crack the strongest marriage there is. Therapists have therapists. Coaches have coaches. Helpers have help. So let's look at that email again.

His wife is bringing him hours of rumination on the weekend, and I don't think the real problem is that she wants to talk. The problem might be that she doesn't have anywhere else to take it. When you're the only outlet, everything comes to you. Every worry, every loop, every replay of a conversation with a friend.

Of course, it feels like a lot. It was never meant to run through one pipe. So the way through, and it goes for both of you, is this. You need your own people. This is exactly why I do the work I do. Why a place like Better Husband Academy exists, so a man has other men. Men he can bring his real stuff to so he's not dumping all of it on his wife or swallowing it until he goes cold.

When his marriage is the only place he can be honest, it buckles. And she needs her people too. When Julie and I were rebuilding, one of the healthiest things she did was build her own life outside of us.

Women she trusted, places to take the parts of her that I was never going to be able to hold, no matter how much I loved her. And I wanna be really clear about this, because it sounds backwards. Her having other outlets did not pull her away from me. It brought a lighter version of her back to our marriage.

Less alone, less overloaded, more free to enjoy me instead of needing me to be everything. Yes, I was still the one she came to when she needed me, but I wasn't the only person in her life who could be the support she needed. That's the whole idea here. Not less connection, more support spread out so the two of you aren't the only lifeline either of one of you has.

[00:13:27] Give It a Shape You Both Agree On

Okay, so if holding space has a shape, let's talk about how you give it one, because this is the part the man who emailed me is missing, and it's the part that would take the whole thing off his back. You give it a shape with an agreement, not a rule you drop on her, not a wall you throw up when you've had enough.

An agreement, something the two of you decide out together, out loud, ahead of time. When we do this, how long it goes, how we start it, and how we wrap it up. That can be as simple as, "Hey, after the kids are down, let's take 20 minutes, just us, no phones, really talk." That's it. That's an agreement. You just named the when, the how long, and how you open it and close it.

And if at the end of those 20 minutes one person asks for more time, then you can renegotiate the agreement and decide where to go from there.

Now, this next part is the one I really want the email guy to hear, because it's his exact stuck point, and it might be yours, too. He said every time he tries to set any limit, his wife hears it as him breaking a promise, and I get why that stings for both of them.

But listen to me on this. A limit you say out loud in advance with some care is not you breaking a promise. It's you being honest. The broken promise is when you say yes with your mouth and check out with your eyes. When you're sitting there nodding, and she can feel that you're a thousand miles away.

That's what actually breaks trust, not the honest kind of here's what I got for you tonight. There's a line I picked up in all the work I've done, and I think about it all the time. More assertion up front, less resentment on the back. Say what you actually need now, clearly and kindly, so you're not stacking up a pile of resentment to dump on her later.

Most of us do it backwards. We give, and we give past our limit, saying yes when we mean no, and then we get short, we get cold, we snap over something small. That's the resentment on the back end. The agreement is how you stop letting that build up. And one more thing. These agreements are not carved in stone.

You're not signing a contract for your life. You made it together, so you can change it together. What you need this month might not be what you need next month. You revisit it. You adjust. The point isn't to lock the marriage down. It's to give your presence a shape the two of you can count on.

[00:15:42] Hold Your Limits and Be Generous Anyway

Now, I've spent this whole episode handing you permission to have limits, and I know exactly how that can land in a tired man's ears. "Great, Angelo, so I can cap it at 20 minutes and clock out. Finally, a reason to give less." But let me close this out by pulling hard in the other direction, because everything I've said only works if it's sitting on top of a real generosity.

So let me be straight with you. That question the email guy asked me, how much time should this be? I can't answer it for him, and I can't answer it for you either for your marriage. I don't know your wife.

I don't know what you're up against right now, what you've got left in the tank, what your history together looks like, how many years she's gone feeling alone, how many times you've blown her off when she wanted to talk. Only you can answer how much. What I can give you is a better question to answer with. Because there's a big difference between a boundary and an excuse.

A boundary protects the connection so you can keep showing up for it. An excuse borrows the language of a boundary to give less than your marriage actually needs. Same words, completely different energy, and you know which one you're running. You always know. So if you've been blowing her off for years, if things are tense, if the marriage is shaky right now, I need you to hear this next part.

This is not the moment to get precise about your twenty minutes. The real question isn't how little can I get away with? It's what does my marriage actually need from me right now, and what am I putting ahead of it? How generous with my time, energy, love, attention can I be? Let me tell you where I land on this from my own life.

When my own marriage was falling apart, the hard truth I had to face was that anything I put ahead of it back then was taking away from the possibility of honestly healing my marriage. Anything. The work, the hobbies, the scrolling, the staying late because it's easier than going home. Every bit of it was taking from the one thing I said I wanted most.

Now, I'm not telling you to pour twelve hours a day into your marriage forever. That's not sustainable, and it's not the point. But back then, when it was on the line, my marriage needed me to over give for a while, and I'm grateful I figured that out before it was too late.

So yes, have your limits, set your agreements, and be generous. Hold both at once because the goal was never to give her the least you can. The goal is to become the kind of husband who gives freely from a full place and can still be honest when he's truly got nothing left.

[00:18:09] To the Wives Listening

And now I want to talk to the wives listening. First, I'm really glad you're here. When I started this podcast, I thought it would just be me and the guys. But since then, I've gotten plenty of messages, comments, reviews from all of you listening along , so thank you for supporting me and the podcast.

And here's what I want to leave you with. Wanting to connect with your husband is not you being needy. It's not nagging. You are not overstepping or asking for too much. Wanting his presence is a good and healthy thing. But let me ask you a few honest questions. When you go to him, what are you actually looking for?

Do you want him to listen? Are you hoping he'll open up and share more about his inner world with you? Do you know what your desires are in that moment? And have you made it clear to him?

And don't skip this one. Do you have other outlets? Because as much as he loves you, he can't be everything for you. Julie couldn't get everything she needed from me either, as much as I wanted to be the one that could do it all.

She had to build her own life, her own trusted friends, her own places to be poured into. It's the same reason I want men to have a place like Better Husband Academy. And you get to ask for a shape, too. If phones or distractions keep getting in the way, say so. Come to him with what you want and a real willingness to make it work together.

None of it is locked in forever. More assertion up front, less resentment on the back. Get clear about what you need, and be generous with him, too.

[00:19:35] Awareness, Action, Accountability

Now back to everyone listening. That's the whole episode. Now let's get it out of your ears and into your actual marriage because that's the only place any of it counts.

Here's your awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this week. First, your awareness question. Be really honest with yourself on this one. The next time she walks over with her basket, what's the first thing that fires off in you? Is it, "Good, I get to be here for her," or, "Oh no, how long is this going to take?"

Just notice which one shows up. That first reaction, whatever it is, is your honest starting point. From here, you get an idea of what needs to come next.

Now, here are four things you can actually do with this.

One, get honest about what's draining you. If you're too exhausted to be present for your wife, something is eating your capacity before she ever gets to you.

Make a list of what's pulling on you right now, and be honest about what you've quietly put ahead of your marriage. Then pick one thing to move down the list so there's room for her again.

Two, ask her what she's actually looking for. Does she want you to just listen, or to hear what's going on with you too, or something else altogether? You might be surprised how much that one question can help you show up better.

Three, propose one agreement this week. Pick a time, a length, and how you'll open and close it. Something like, "After the kids go down, let's take 30 minutes. No phones, just us." Then show up fully ready to be together and bring your own basket into it. Share one real thing going on inside you, not just a recap of your day. Be generous.

And four, build up one outlet outside of your marriage, a men's group, a good friend, one place that isn't your wife where you can be fully honest, so you're bringing her a fuller version of yourself home.

And last, a word on accountability, because this is the kind of thing that's hard to hold on your own alone in your head, hoping you'll remember in the next time as she walks over. That's exactly what Better Husband Academy is for. It's where men take work like this and actually keep it going alongside other men who get it.

Come take a look at betterhusbandacademy.com, or just tap the link in the show notes to find some accountability around this episode. It's an open door for whenever you're ready to walk through it. I'm there waiting for you, and so are the other guys.

[00:21:56] Closing Takeaway

So let me leave you with one thing sitting underneath all of this.

Whatever you wanna call it, holding space, being present, being available, it all comes down to the same thing. Being there for each other while still holding your boundaries and respecting them, both of you. Her presence for you, your presence for her. Firm edges on both sides and a real generosity inside them.

And to the man who emailed me and to every man sitting in that same spot, I know you were hoping I'd hand you a number. I'm not going to because there isn't one. But you are not stuck. You've got a better question now, and you've got a way to give your presence a shape. And when you stumble, and you will, when you catch yourself counting the cost again, hear me on this.

That's you in the messy middle. That's the work, the good, ordinary, unglamorous work of becoming the kind of husband you actually wanna be. Nobody gets to skip this part. You just keep showing up for it

I just wanna give a special thank you to the man who emailed me. I hope this episode has been helpful for you, and thank you all for listening. This one asked you to really look at what happens in you when the person you love reaches for you. So keep going. This work works, and it counts more than you know.

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