Psst. Men. Share Your Innermost Thoughts and Feelings With Your Partner

Women should do this too, of course. It just so happens, very few of them need this pep talk.

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5-Star review of my book This is How Your Marriage Ends:

“If your husband hates this book it’s probably hopeless. I’ve never heard someone explain how I feel in terms my husband could understand (and believe me I’ve been trying to explain how I feel to him for years.) I think the author does the best possible job explaining marital unhappiness to clueless or defensive husbands in a way they can hear it.” - Seattle Politics Junkie

This is How Your Marriage Ends is 40% off on Amazon, available in local bookstores, or you can order an author-signed copy here from my friends at Islandport Media.

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Image/Inman.com

“My husband isn’t honest with me,” she says.

“Do you mean that he lies to you?” I reply.

“No. He’s telling the truth when he says things,” she says. “It’s what he doesn’t say. He has thoughts and feelings. About me and about our life together. And he often doesn’t share those with me, and I don’t always know why.”

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Here’s the math formula for healthy relationships between two people who trust each other:

X = Partner A
Y = Partner B

So your relationship should look like X + Y = [all of the decisions you make (even the really small ones)].

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Step 1 - Inclusion

The first thing to usually go wrong in a coupled relationship is that one partner (men more than women, if we’re being honest about it) starts making decisions that do not include the other partner, or the second variable.

They’re minding their own business, not intending harm, but they did something where the math was X = [the thing they did], leaving out the Y entirely.

Sometimes the thing they did was problematic for the other person. Sometimes, it wasn’t. Either way, what typically affects relationship partners (often painfully) is the being-excluded part. Left out. Circumvented. Avoided. Ignored.

And no matter how noble or innocent your X = [the thing they did] happened to be, it’s the being-left-out part that consistently brings insecurity and trust erosion to the relationship.

Example: When I was in college and in the first year of dating my ex-wife, if I got hungry, I would just eat food. Seemed obvious to me. And if my friends were having a keg party later that week, I would commit to going.

Sometimes, she would find out about these decisions and feel upset, as if I needed to always run dinner plans and my social calendar by her (we didn’t live together, not that that’s excuse-worthy). And I had zero tolerance for any of it. I was 21 years old and not the least bit interested in feeling bossed around or mothered by her.