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Today I’m going to address the global phenomena, that is men being afraid of their wives. And I’m going to reveal what I believe is the secret cause of most divorces.

Comedian Bill Burr does a rant on one of his specials about how he can’t understand that stereotype of the men who go and sleep on the couch when they’re in trouble with their wife. He just doesn’t get how a man can be forced to sleep on a couch in his own house, when often he’s the one who paid for it. He just doesn’t get it because Bill Burr is not a classic Nice Guy. But nice guys get it.

But Bill Burr raises a real question,

Why are men afraid of their wives? And why is this so commonplace that we’ve come to accept it as a normal relationship dynamic?

First, we shouldn’t beg the question: Are men afraid of their wives? The answer is yes.

Not all men, of course. But you’ll know it because it’s a cultural running joke. “The ‘boss’ said I can’t do it.” That’s a classic thing a husband will say. He has to always check in, he has to keep the peace at home, and it’s not worth the “hassle” to challenge her.

Nice guys are constantly giving off this image of I’m afraid of my wife, I’m afraid of standing up for myself, saying what I want, doing what I want to do.

Now, of course, there are other extremes, there are guys who have no consideration for their wife and just do whatever they feel like, and the wife suffers immensely. But I’m not talking about that type of guy today. Today, I’m talking about the one who, even if he’s joking about it, the truth is he’s afraid of his missus.

Just like the kind of husband who never initiates sex – more here:

Why are men afraid?

Now, it’s not obvious at first why this is happening. In some cases yes, there is domestic violence, or there are the kinds of reactions from the woman that are objectively scary. She might actually harm you, or damage property, or go out of her way to make your life miserable.

But in most cases, the man hasn’t even tested it to see if that will happen. He’s afraid before he’s had any really major negative consequences. And of course, in most cases, women aren’t that crazy.

So why is this happening?

Well, the key is that men don’t even test it to see what will happen. A classic nice guy, when he gets into a relationship, quickly loses all assertiveness and all disagreeableness, especially once the relationship is officially established. It happens well before marriage, and escalates over time, until he’s a meek little follower.

But the fact is that he hardly ever brings it up. He never takes a stand and never finds out what will happen if he really goes hard on a point. He gets a bit of resistance at the start – an emotional reaction he’s uncomfortable with – and completely surrenders from there on out.

What are they afraid of?

First is they’re afraid that something big and final will happen, and it’s not even worth the risk of testing. You can’t test this because it’ll be such a devastating impact that you won’t be able to repair it. There will be no second chances.

Or they have come to the conclusion that isn’t worth testing because they’re sure of the predicted outcome. They’ve tested it before in some way, or they believe they have, and they “know how it’s gonna go.” They’re not going to bother testing boundary setting again because they see it as a guaranteed failure..

The fact is that they don’t really try at all. I work with these guys, 1000s of them. They don’t really ever try to take a stand and keep a position. They don’t really test what happens when they say no to being told to sleep on the couch. Or they try once and then retreat permanently just because she pushed back a little.

Abandonment fears

Now in many cases, the big and final thing they’re afraid of is abandonment.

Most nice guys are afraid that conflict and disagreement and dislike equals end of the relationship; total abandonment.

I used to actually think that if I was having an argument with a partner, or if for some reason she didn’t want to have sex, that the relationship was over. And quite often I’d create a self fulfilling prophecy where I was so hangdog about this disaster that the relationship would end. She’d be so upset with the way that I handled slight disagreement and dislike that she would get out of the relationship, which would only validate in my mind that I was right.

I’d think, “See, she didn’t want to have sex with me last Thursday, and now we’re broken up. Told you!” I didn’t realize, of course, the way I reacted to her not wanting to have sex is probably the reason we broke up.

Nice Guys have this idea from childhood trauma that if I am difficult emotionally, other people will withdraw their love, because this was a standard parenting technique that many of us experienced.

If you’re a parent, don’t fucking do this! Do not withdraw love as a training or discipline technique. You’ve got to understand you are completely fucking up that kid when you do that. That kid is going to struggle with relationships for the rest of their life if you do that kind of thing. And a lot of us nice guys experienced that.

We got punished for behaving badly, but this often wasn’t harmful behavior –  it’s just behavior that was inconvenient emotionally for the parent, like expressing ourselves loudly or wanting to go outside. We got the timeout, we got the cold shoulder, we got the “Well, we’re not going then”, we got this I’m going to take away love because you’ve behaved in a way that simply isn’t my preference. 

The effects of the trauma

Nice Guys get into relationships when they’re adults, and they think, “Man, if I behave in a way that is non preferential, if I behave in a way that creates any kind of unpleasant emotion and hurt, I’m going to lose her forever.”

And they actually believe that, even though it might not be like a consciously held believe. They’ll think things like, “If I fight back she’ll divorce me” (and occasionally that is the case for some guys). It’s a sense of resistance or reluctance, like it’s not worth it.

They don’t really know where the feeling comes from, because they haven’t dug into that childhood trauma. They just do the typical “Yes, dear.” There’s just this impulse to agree and just go with it. Any sense that resistance is getting stronger, they back down.

This unresolved childhood trauma often manifests as a Pick Your Battles mentality; a horrible, harmful cliche that they interpret as “never fight back ever”.

Some guys are plagued by an “I’m always wrong” narrative. There are some nice guys that have been so punished for trying to be authentic when they were children and teenagers that they have the assumption that if someone disagrees with them, that’s evidence that they must be wrong.

They think other people’s reaction to them tells them if they’re on track or not. That kind of nice guy will back down, not because he’s thinks it’s good for the partner but because he thinks if they’re resisting this much that he must be incorrect, so backing down is actually seen as the noble position.

They use the Pick Your Battles narrative to make it sound like they’re being philosophical. But if you watch their behavior, what you’ll see is they don’t find anything important enough to fight for. It’s just an excuse they use to look noble when they’re actually being cowards.

Another main reason that men are afraid of their wives and their behavior, which often coincides with the first reason I just spoke about, is the foregone conclusion that being assertive definitely will create what they call negativity: negative emotions, bad results, disagreement and hassle, which is not worth the effort.

They think it’s harmful to be assertive. They think they hurt the other person and it’s pointless. Why would you throw money away on something that isn’t valuable? Why would you assert yourself if it only harms a relationship?

The smooth, problem free life belief

This all comes from a belief that often leads nice guys to live the path of least resistance, at least emotionally. The belief is the smooth, problem free life. An ideal life for a nice guy is one where there’s no tension or conflict.

This is at the heart of nice guy syndrome, the desire to create this life, this life that doesn’t have any effort, or struggle, or unpleasant emotions, especially in any sort of social context.

They think, “Well, if the perfect life has no conflict, then the way to achieve it is to not have conflict, obviously. So if I am having conflict, I’m doing it wrong.”

So most guys always think if I’m assertive, and that creates resistance, I must be doing this wrong because a perfect life wouldn’t have this resistance. They’re always trying to find this way where there’s no conflict at all.

When I was in a relationship, my first ever long term relationship, I’d proudly tell people that we never had any arguments. I used to feel superior and smug, like it’s my first relationship and I’ve already nailed it. We don’t have any arguments.

I know a lot of nice guys, probably some reading this right now, are actually proud that they do not have conflict in their relationship. They don’t realize that they are sitting on a fucking time bomb, that the lack of conflict in the relationship shows they are afraid of their wives, and that somebody, probably both people in the relationship, aren’t being honest.

Justifying with philosophy

I had a great session with a client the other day, where he tried to justify it philosophically, referencing Stoicism and talking about Marcus Aurelius and so on, all these great Stoics who talk about trying to avoid having conflict, or great martial artists who say you learn to fight so you don’t have to fight, and all these kinds of philosophical ideals about preventing conflict, which they interpreted as meaning, don’t be assertive, don’t stand up for yourself, be like water, just get out of the fucking way. That’s how they interpret it.

And as I said to him, “Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome. He was spent nearly his entire rule in warfare. This is not a pussy. This is not a man who can’t assert himself. He was in the most complex and dangerous political sphere at the time, but he was the boss of it. You don’t do that spinelessly. He wasn’t a coward. He was asserting himself probably on an hourly basis. He was somebody who was constantly in battles, either emotionally or politically or physically. He was also a great wrestler, from what I understand, as were many philosophers.”

So the idea that it’s philosophical to avoid conflict is not only incongruent with the philosophy, but it’s a cop out for being unassertive.

Assertive is not the same as Aggressive

Aggressive is going to someone and harming them when they there’s no reason to. It’s crossing the line. It’s trying to cause damage in somebody else’s life, trying to control somebody else.

When you’re simply stopping them from doing that to you, creating a wall to your fort that they can’t get past – you don’t actually go over and invade their fort but you don’t let them invade yours – that’s assertiveness.

Assertive is: The buck stops here. I’m not tolerating their behavior. Stop it right now. I’m gonna do what I want. You do what you want. I’m not harming you, so leave me the fuck alone.

A lot of nice guys will say that, “Everything assertive is aggression and always harms other people, and philosophy says you shouldn’t do that, so I’m likable for being a pussy.”

And once a nice guy gets married, you get into this inter subjective cultural idea, which is that this is what being a husband is – the wife is the boss. You’re this browbeaten little coward, and you just kind of roll your eyes and joke with your mates and talk about how the missus won’t let you do this and won’t let you do that and you have to hide this from her because otherwise she’ll throw a fucking fit.

This idea like you’re scared of her reacting to you being honest and that it’s okay because everybody else is. Just because you all drink poison doesn’t make it healthy.

The Nice Guy backfire

This whole thing is a great example of what I call the nice guy backfire. A backfire is a strategy that actually causes the thing that it’s trying to prevent. And nice guy syndrome is just rife with this. I’ve made other pieces of content about this, that you can go and check out:

Basically every strategy that a nice guy has was formed in childhood by a child who didn’t know shit and had an immature mind. When they get into adulthood, it just backfires.

If you have a strategy to stop people leaving you, you end up lonely. If you try to avoid conflict, you end up in more trouble. If you try to make people happy, you end up depressed.

The strategy of like being fearful of their wives to avoid conflict only leads to divorce. It causes the abandonment they’re afraid of, and leads to the horrible emotional rift of a dead relationship where people are just staying together out of sort of moral obligation, and there’s no love. The very thing that you’d hate to be in is what you’re causing.

Break the cycle

What you don’t understand as a nice guy husband is that you need to stand up for yourself and cause short term conflict in order for long term results like being respected, being trusted, being relied on as a protector, and being seen as a real man that is attractive.

All of these things come from you being assertive to your partner. When you’re trying to avoid and prevent conflict you doom the relationship. You make her unsatisfied, you make her feel unsafe, you make her very unlikely to want to stay, you make her much more likely to cheat.

The instant gratification of her not being upset right now comes with a terrible long term cost. I work with the guys who are in their 40s and 50s and now they’re divorced. I know where this leads.

Even if she brags about how lovely you are to her friends, that’s actually a red flag. If you’re doing things right as a husband, she should have something to complain about. There should be that bit of behavior you do that just annoys her and you still won’t change, and the thing you said that offended her, and that thing that you do that she doesn’t understand and she wishes you did something else. There has to be a bit of that for you to be authentic.

If there’s none of that, if she just goes to her friends like, “My husband is the greatest guy in the world, he never steps wrong, he’s so lovely, I just feel so happy all the time…” you’re in trouble. Yeah, you’re in trouble for real.

Dealing with extreme reactions

For those of you where the reaction is something extreme, it’s what we call in manipulation the extinction technique.

If you’re dealing with say a narcissistic or antisocial personality, and they’re deliberately manipulating you and deliberately holding you down with fear, and you try stand up for yourself, they’ll do what’s called an extinction, which is they’ll have such an extreme overreaction to you standing up to yourself that it just absolutely decimates you and makes you never want to do it again.

If you find that you being assertive leads to that kind of thing – plates being thrown, threats of divorce, cheating, horrible behaviors, and overreaction to you just standing up for yourself, not even trying to change the other person just standing up for what you believe in – then it’s very likely that you are in a totally toxic relationship, and the other person you’re with is very unwell. The relationship needs to end.

When you first start asserting yourself after many years or perhaps decades of never doing it, yeah, you’re gonna get a bad reaction. She’s used to this little housecat and suddenly she’s got herself a Rottweiler. She’s going to fight back.

She’s going to fight back partly out of the hope that this is real. What wives do with husbands when they start standing up for themselves is they push back to see if he stays strong. This might look negative, but what she’s actually hoping you’ll do is hold your ground so that she can finally say, “My husband has a spine!”

The best advice

One of the greatest pieces of wisdom I ever heard from a man about relationships, and has held me in good stead ever since, was:

If you stand up TO her, she’ll know that you can stand up FOR her.

The fight starts at home. I mean this.

Even if it’s not with me, get coaching. Your relationship will not survive you being this nice guy, it will not survive you being afraid of your partner. It might look good now, it might seem to be working, but the bomb is ticking away and you don’t want to wait until you’re elderly and you can’t do anything about it. If you can’t repair this relationship, at least you might be able to have better ones in the future.

Or you can take this relationship, which might actually have a lot of good elements to it, and make it great by adding assertiveness. I can help you do that.