085|You're Going to Mess Up — And What You Do Next Is Everything

[00:00:00] When You've Messed Up and Don't Know What's Next

All right, so you said the thing, or you forgot the thing, or you snapped at her over something that 10 minutes later really wasn't that big a deal, and now you're standing there in the kitchen or sitting in the car or lying in bed next to her, and you can feel it, that cold space between the two of you that wasn't there an hour ago.

You messed up, and you know you messed up. So what do you do now? For most of us, it goes one of three ways. Some men panic, scrambling, talking fast, trying to smooth the whole thing over before it gets any worse. Other men grovel. They fold completely, apologize 10 times, promise the world, do whatever it takes to make the bad feeling go away.

And some men dig in. They decide that actually they were right, and now they're going to prove it because admitting fault feels too much like losing. Three different moves, same result. None of them actually fix anything. The wound is still sitting right there in the morning.

Here's what I've learned, both from the men I work with and from my own marriage. The question that matters when you mess up is not, how do I make sure I never mess up again? Because you will mess up again. I will too. The real question, the one almost nobody ever teaches you to ask, is this. When you mess up, how are you going to repair?

So that's what we're getting into today, what repair actually is and why it matters a whole lot more than never making a mistake. I'm going to walk you through where most of us go wrong in the seconds right after we mess up, the simple shift that gets you back onto solid ground before you say a single word, and then a clear step-by-step way to actually repair the thing instead of just smoothing it over or caving in.

And here's a second piece, because messing up isn't the only way you end up needing to repair. Sometimes you're not the one who catches it. You stay stuck, you stay hot, and she's the one who comes to you trying to get the two of you back. That's a different moment, and it asks something different of you, but the move is still yours to make.

So by the end of this episode, you're going to know how to repair when you're the one who messed up and how to step up and lead the same repair when she's the one who reaches for you first. Two ways it starts, one job that's yours either way. So stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

[00:02:11] The Email I Sent Too Soon

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

Let me tell you about a time I messed up, and this one is fresh.

This was just last week. Julie and I had an email we needed to send out, something about our finances, the kind of thing where the details matter. We were both at home. It was a calm evening. Things between us were good. So I'm putting this email together, and I do what I think is the right thing. I turn to her and I ask her, "Hey, anything you want me to add to this?"

And she starts telling me. She gives me a couple things, I'm adding them in, and then the conversation kinda drifts. We start talking about something else for a minute, and in my head, we were done. She'd given me her list, I'd put it in, so I figured that was that, and I sent the email.

And a minute later, she looks at me and she says, "Oh, and can you also add..." And she names a couple more things she wanted in there. And here's where I messed up. Instead of just hearing that, I said, "I already sent it. It's done." Now, on paper, that's a tiny thing. It's an email. But you could feel the shift in the room right away because what she heard wasn't really about the email.

What she heard was that I'd cut her off, that I'd closed the door before she was finished. And instead of seeing that, I went straight into defending myself. I said things like, "Well, I asked you what you wanted. You told me. The conversation moved on, and so I figured we were done." And all very reasonable, very logical, and all completely beside the point, because she wasn't angry. That's the part I want you to hear. She wasn't yelling, she wasn't attacking me. She was hurt. There's a difference. And the more she tried to tell me she felt shut out, the more frustrated I got that she couldn't see it from my side. I kept thinking, "Why can't she understand that I didn't do anything wrong here?

I asked, I followed the steps. This isn't fair." That's the version of me that shows up when I don't catch myself. Defensive, building my case, more interested in being right than in how she's actually feeling. So I did the one thing I've learned to do in that spot. I took some space. Not to stonewall her, not to abandon her, not to punish her with the silent treatment, but to get my own head straight, because I knew I wasn't in any place to do something good right then.

And while I was sitting in that space, I asked myself a question: How do I want this to end? Because I could see two roads in front of me. On one, I hold my ground, win the argument, prove that technically I didn't do anything wrong, and she stays hurt. We go to bed with that cold distance between us, and I get to be correct.

On the other side, I set down the need to be right, and I actually step into what she was feeling. And when I really looked at it, I saw something. I had asked her, "Is there anything you want me to add?" But I never once asked, "Are you done? Is that everything?" I just decided on my own that we were finished, and I sent it.

That part was on me. I could own that. I'm not going to tell you yet how the rest of that night went. I wanna come back to it at the end, because by then you'll have the actual tools I used to turn it around. But that moment, sitting in that space, choosing to step toward her instead of digging in to be right, was the first move, and that's where the repair started.

And that's what this whole episode is about. So let me show you what it looks like.

[00:05:21] Messing Up Isn't the Sign of a Bad Marriage

So before I give you the tools, I wanna give you the bigger picture because it changes everything about how you see that moment when you mess up. The work I've done over the years and the work I take men through now didn't come from any one place. It's pulled from a lot of teachers, a lot of courses, and a lot of the hard experiences of my own.

But one of the biggest pieces comes from something called Relational Life Therapy. The man who founded it, Terry Real, wrote a book a lot of people know, The New Rules of Marriage. And out of everything I've learned from him, one idea has stuck with me more than just about anything. He says the essential dynamic of all relationships is a dance, a dance of harmony, disharmony, and repair.

Now let me break that down. Harmony is when you and your wife are close. You're connected, getting along, things feel good. And then disharmony is when that breaks. You mess up, she messes up, you misread each other, somebody gets hurt, and now there's distance between us. And repair is what brings you back.

It's the move that takes you out of disharmony and back into harmony again. And this is the part that most of us get completely wrong. We think a good marriage is one that stays in harmony all the time. No conflict, no friction, nobody messing up.

So the first time we hit disharmony, we panic, like something's gone terribly wrong, like we broke it. But you didn't break anything. Disharmony is not the sign of a bad marriage. It's part of every marriage. It's part of mine. That email thing, that was disharmony, and it's going to happen again. The dance has three steps, and disharmony is one of them. You can't skip it.

So if disharmony is normal, the question was never how do I avoid it because you can't. The real question is the one we started with. When disharmony comes, and it will, how do I get us back? That's repair, and repair is a skill. It's not a personality trait you're born with or not. It's something you can learn and practice and get better at, same as anything else.

Think about a car. You don't drive a brand-new one off the lot expecting to never change the oil. A car needs maintenance. The check engine light comes on. Something slips out of alignment, and you deal with it because that's what it takes to keep it running. Nobody looks at a check engine light come on and decide that they've failed as a man or failed as a person.

A marriage is the same way. Disharmony is the wear and tear, normal, and coming no matter how good a husband you are. Repair is the maintenance, the thing you do over and over to keep the whole thing running. So if you've been beating yourself up because you keep messing up, hear this. The goal was never to stop messing up.

The goal is to get good at repair. That's the skill that actually holds a marriage together, and most of us were never taught one single thing about how to do it. So let's change that, and let's start with what has to happen inside you before you can repair anything at all.

[00:08:01] Get to Center Before You Say a Word

Because nobody tells you this part. Before you can repair anything with your wife, you've got to do a repair inside yourself first. Because right after you mess up, you're almost never in a good spot to fix anything. You're flooded, you're defensive, or you're panicking, and if you open your mouth from there, you just make it worse. So the first move isn't toward her at all.

It's catching where you are on the inside, and when you mess up, you tend to fall into one of two ditches. The first ditch is going one up. This is the I'm right and she's wrong place. You climb up on your high horse. You start building your case, lining up your evidence, getting ready to prove that technically you didn't do anything wrong, and that was me with the email.

I wasn't thinking about my wife's hurt at all. I was thinking about how to win. I was up there looking down on her, treating her like she was the problem. The second ditch is the opposite. It's going one down. This is the grovel. You collapse. I'm the worst. I always do this. I'm so sorry. I'll do anything.

Just please don't be mad at me. It looks humble, but it's not really about her either. It's about making your own bad feelings stop. You're so desperate to get out of that, you'll say anything. One guy is up here looking down, the other is down there begging, and here's what you've got to understand. You cannot repair from either one of those spots.

What comes out of the high horse position isn't repair, it's control. You're still trying to manage her, manage the moment, come out on top, and what comes... Comes out of the grovel position isn't repair either. It's just you trying to make your own bad feelings stop, getting her to tell you you're okay. She can tell the difference every single time.

What you're aiming for is the middle, the center, the place where you can look at your wife as an equal. She's not beneath you, and you're not beneath her, and you can hold onto the fact that you matter and she matters both at the same time. That's the only place real repair can come from. So how do you get there?

Well, when you catch yourself flooded up on the horse or down in the grovel, you slow down, and you ask yourself two questions before you say a single word. The first one is: What do I actually want here? Not, what do I wanna win? Not, how do I make this feeling go away? What's my real goal? And the answer almost every time is, I want to get back to my wife.

I want us close again. The second question is: Is the thing I'm about to say going to move me closer to that or further away? Because that line I said to my wife, I already sent it, it's done, that moved me further away. The defending, the case building, all of it, further away.

Those two questions are like a filter. They catch the stuff that's going to dig the hole deeper before it ever comes out of your mouth. And here's something that helps me make that move. If you catch yourself in that one up position on that high horse looking down, I want you to picture yourself reaching up and pulling yourself back down until you're eye to eye with her. And if you catch yourself low on the ground, one down in the grovel, scrambling for her approval, I want you to picture yourself picking yourself back up until you're eye to eye with her again.

Not above her, not beneath her, right across from her. You get yourself to center first. Then, and only then, are you actually ready to repair. So let me show you exactly how that's done.

[00:11:17] The Four Steps That Actually Repair It

So now you've come to center, and here's the actual repair. There are four steps, and I want you to really hear all four because most men stop after the first one and then wonder why it didn't land. Step one, own what you actually did. Not a vague, "I'm sorry you feel that way." The specific thing.

For me, that was, "When you tried to add a couple more things to the email, I shut you down. I said it was already sent, it's done, instead of hearing you out." I want you to name the real action. Step two, own that it's not the first time. This is the one that most men skip, and it's a big one. You name the pattern, for me, that sounded like, "And this isn't the first time I've done this. I've got a habit of deciding we're finished before you actually are, and I don't even ask if you're done. I just make the call my own, and I move on." When you own the pattern, your wife knows that you really see it.

You're not treating it like some one-off accident. Step three, own the thing in you underneath it. This is the deepest one. You name the trait in your own character that drives the pattern. For me, that was, "I think I get so locked in on being efficient or just getting the task done that I'll steamroll right over you to do it, and that's something in me I'm working on."

You're not blaming her. You're not blaming the situation. You're looking honestly at yourself. And then step four, you say you're sorry, and you make it right. The sorry part sounds obvious, but a lot of men wanna skip clean over and go straight into fixing.

So say it plainly, "I'm sorry I did that. That's not the kind of husband I wanna be." And then you make it right, and here's the key, you ask. You don't march in and announce how you're going to fix it because deciding the fix all on your own, that's just being back up on the high horse in a nicer outfit.

It's still you running the show. So you ask her, "What would make this better? What do you need from me right now?" And then you actually listen to the answer. That's the whole sequence. You did it. It's a pattern. This is the thing that drives it. You're sorry, and you wanna know what would make it right. Four steps.

Now, let me be straight with you. The first time you try this, it's going to feel clunky. You'll feel exposed, especially on steps two and three because you're admitting things most of us spent our whole lives hiding. That's normal, and it gets more natural every time. And here's what you'll find. This kind of honesty doesn't make you smaller in your wife's eyes.

It does the opposite. It tells her you're safe, that she can bring you a problem, and you won't crumble, and you won't attack. That's how trust gets rebuilt, one repair at a time. So that's what to do when you're the one who catches it. You mess up, you see it, and you decide to lead the way back. But it doesn't always start there.

Sometimes you don't catch it. Sometimes you're too dug in to even want to, and she's the one who makes the first move. So let's talk about what to do then.

[00:13:58] Her Reaching Is Your Invitation to Lead

So picture the flip side of that night with the email. That time I was the one who caught it. I took my space, came back, and let us out.

But I'll be honest with you, that's not how it always goes. Plenty of times I'm the one who stays stuck. Something happens between Julie and me, and I go cold. I stay annoyed. I dig into being right, and I'm in no hurry to fix anything. And in a lot of those moments, she's the one who softens first. She's still hurt, nothing's settled, but she comes back towards me.

Maybe she brings it up gently. Maybe she just sits down next to me and tries to open the door. She's reaching, trying to get the two of us back. So what do you do there when you're the one stuck and she's the one who comes to you? Here's what most of us do. The second she opens her mouth, we get ready to defend.

We hear the complaint coming, and we start loading up our side. What she got wrong, what she's not seeing, what really happened, and the door she just tried to open slams shut. The move here is almost exact opposite of your instinct. It's a one-eighty on your own defensiveness. Instead of scanning what she's saying for everything that's wrong with it, you turn the other way, and you look for the part that's right, and there's almost always a part that's right.

Even if it's ten percent of what she's saying, you find the piece, and you say it out loud. "You're right, I did do that." You start with what you can own, and then you get curious because here's a line that has stuck with me for years. No one is irrational to themselves. Whatever she's feeling, however it's landing on her, it makes complete sense from the inside of her.

So instead of arguing with her reaction, you get interested in it. "Tell me more about that. Help me understand what that was like for you." You're not trying to win. You're trying to understand, and here's the part I don't want you to miss. When she comes to you like that, you don't wait for her to go first.

You don't wait for her to own her part or say her sorry before you'll say yours. Her reaching toward you is your invitation. That's the moment you stand up and lead the repair. Same four steps. You own what you did. You own the pattern. You own the thing in you underneath it. You say you're sorry, and you ask what would make it right.

She made the first move. You make the next move. Now, will she own her part too? A lot of the time, yeah. We've been at this long enough that we both usually get there, but that was never the thing you get to control. The only question that's ever really yours is whether you'll be the one to start, whether you catch it yourself or whether she reaches for you, and either way, you get to be the man who leads the way back, and when you do, something changes.

Repair stops being a contest. There's no winner and no loser, nobody keeping score on whose fault it was. It's the two of you on the same side against the problem. You're a team. One of you started it, sure, but you're both after the same thing, getting back to each other. So that's both ways in, the time you catch it yourself and the time she's the one reaching for you, and most of us were never taught what to do with either one.

So let's talk about what to do with all of this.

[00:16:57] Awareness, Action, Accountability

Now, I don't want you to just have this be a nice idea that you nodded along with and forget by tomorrow. I want you to actually use it. So here's how I break down your awareness, your action, and your accountability for this week.

Let's start with your awareness because you can't change a pattern you can't see. So here's your question. Think back to the last few times you messed up with your wife. When the heat hit, which way did you go? Up on the high horse, defensive, building your case for all the reasons you were actually right?

Or did you collapse the other direction into the gravel, apologizing all over yourself just to make the bad feelings stop? Most of us have a default. One of those two is your go-to move, so name yours and be honest about it and write it down if you can, because once you can see which way you tip, you can start to catch yourself next time before it runs the whole show.

Here are your action steps I want you to take this week. Number one, the next time you feel yourself getting flooded after you messed up, don't say a word yet. Take a beat, and if you need more than a beat, you ask her for it. Tell her you need a few minutes, and you're going to come back. Five minutes, ten, twenty, whatever you need.

That way, you're not walking out on her. You're stepping back to get your head straight. Then in that space, ask those two questions: What do you actually want here? And is the thing you're about to say going to move you closer to her or further away? That one pause will save you from half the mess that comes after the initial mess.

Number two, practice the four-step repair. You don't have to wait for a blowup. Find something you know you dropped the ball on and walk it through. Own what you did. Own that it's a pattern. Own the thing in you underneath it. Say you're sorry and ask her what would make it better.

Say it all out loud. Get your reps in while the stakes are low. Number three, the next time your wife comes to you and she's trying to bring you closer together, do the one eighty. Before you explain a single thing, find the one piece of what she's saying that's true and say it.

"You're right. I did do that." Just start there and watch what it does to the rest of the conversation. And finally, number four, when you feel that itch to defend yourself, trade it for one curious question instead. Help me understand what that was like for you. You don't have to agree with all of it. You just have to want to understand it.

And that brings me to the last piece, which is accountability. Now, let me be honest about everything I just handed you. Repair is a skill, and a skill only gets better with practice and with other people in your corner. You're going to forget half of this the next time you're flooded or your blood is up.

We all do. That's not a character flaw. It's just being human. What actually changes things is having a place where you work on it on purpose alongside other men working on the very same thing. That's exactly what we do inside Better Husband Academy. It's where men come to practice this stuff for real, get honest about where they keep tripping over the same patterns, and get back to what most of us never had: real support from other guys who get it.

So if this one landed for you, come join us. Go to betterhusbandacademy.com or just click the link in the show notes. I'd love to see you in there.

[00:19:55] Closing Takeaway

So here's what I want you to take away from all of this. Remember that night with Julie and the email?

I told you I'd come back to it. Well, those four steps I just gave you, that's exactly what I used. Once I'd taken my space and gotten myself back to center, I came back and I owned it. I told her I shut her down. I told her it wasn't the first time that I've got this habit of deciding we're done before she is, and I named the thing in me that does it. I told her I was sorry, and then I asked her what she needed, and she just let it in. The wall came down, and we were back. The rest of the night was easy, the way it is when there's nothing sitting between the two of us.

That's the whole thing. And if I'd stayed up on my high horse believing that I was right and she deserved to acknowledge that, that little wound between us would've just sat there and festered, and we both would've gone to bed in disharmony and woken up the next morning in the same place.

Instead, we repaired, and we got back to each other. You're going to mess up this week. So am I. That was never really the question. The question is what you do next, and now you've got something real to do with it

I just wanna say thank you for being here. Thank you for spending this time with me and for taking home something you can actually start using this week, one repair at a time on your own path toward being a better husband.

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