Marriage Expert: "After 20,000 Hours Of Counseling, I Know What Kills A Marriage" | Ep. 450 with Tim Arrigo Co-Founder of Beyond Driven Enterprises

Founder's Story

In this episode, certified counselor and founder Tim Arrigo breaks down the core drivers of marital breakdown, identifying selfishness, self-centeredness, and unaddressed attachment

Key takeaways

• Tim Arrigo identifies selfishness and self-centeredness as the root causes of marital failure, often stemming from insecure early attachment patterns.
• Men frequently wait until a relationship is critically failing before seeking help, relying on external solutions rather than addressing personal blind spots.

Main topics

• Marriage breakdown dynamics
• Men's emotional intelligence development

Notable quotes

"Work addiction is the one addiction you can have where everybody calls you a success."

Conclusion

The episode delivers actionable psychological frameworks for entrepreneurs and partners seeking to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Work addiction is the one addiction you can have where everybody calls Speaker 1 (0:02) you a success. And I've worked with Olympic athletes in the past who have a very hard time with the wet Speaker 2 (0:07) line. Speaker 1 (0:08) Timurigo is a certified master's level counselor with over 20,000 clinical hours in mental health, marriage, and substance abuse. He's rebuilt Olympic athletes, founders whose businesses are quietly wrecking their marriages. But his own story is the wildest part. Speaker 2 (0:26) I grew up in a dysfunctional home. I had childhood trauma. I became an IV drug user in my teens. What Speaker 1 (0:32) really kills a marriage? A lot of guys, they'll wait until the house is on fire to call the fire department. What's one thing a struggling couple could do tonight that would change everything? Speaker 2 (0:43) Learning to understand that Speaker 1 (0:49) I would say the number one question that I have for you right now is what really kills a marriage? Speaker 2 (0:56) Yeah, good question. Honestly, selfishness and self-centeredness. And that selfishness and self-centeredness can come from a host of different issues. A lot of people aren't. They're not aware of how. our most, the formation of our intimate relationships begins with our parents. Right. And when there is not a secure base that's established early on, those patterns, they follow us into our adult life. And. The marriage is a living, breathing organism. It's always changing. It's always growing and it's always different, right? When people say like, well, I want to go back to what we had. The reality is you're not. You're always going to be in a different season inside of your marriage because. you know, the version of me, the young man, that version of me that my wife met. Speaker 2 (1:54) he's not around anymore, right? And I'm a different person now in a lot of ways. And so you have to constantly be able to fall in love with that person and prioritize your marriage. And so much of this world, it glorifies narcissism, right? Your boundaries, you're what you want, how you feel, what's right for you. And it's like, if somebody doesn't accommodate that, well then just throw away the relationship and label them or. label the relationship versus looking at yourself and seeing, okay, how can I be better? Where can I improve? Right. And. I'd say that's one of the number one reasons, right? Speaker 2 (2:36) is people make it all about them. When a relationship isn't about what you're going to get from it, it's about, right, what are you going to give? And it's a give and take. The reciprocity occurs based on the giving, right, and receiving. So I think a lot of people are just in a position where they're selfish and self-centered and that will, they get dug into their position. If it's resentment, if it's contempt, unforgiveness, self-destructive behaviors. Speaker 2 (3:05) Even victimhood. People will get stuck and entrenched in that. Speaker 2 (3:11) expect their partner to change, right? And that somehow that's going to fix it. So. I need my partner to X, Y, and Z in order for us to have a good relationship. Well. Some of that might be true, but your partner's change of behavior doesn't heal you. Speaker 2 (3:28) Right. And so we have to be willing to look at ourselves and not be selfish and self-centered and think about, hey, what am I bringing to this relationship and what is actually holding us back as a couple from from growing as Speaker 1 (3:39) a society? We're becoming more selfish, which is why a lot of people that I keep hearing, they don't want to get married. In fact, many of them are not even in serious long term relationships. Well, Speaker 2 (3:51) that's the hard part is this. The world, right, is constantly pressing upon us. Speaker 2 (3:59) individuality, autonomy, right? These things are, they're good and they're valuable. But if you ask anybody at the end of their life on their deathbed, right? If you ask them, what's the most important thing inside your life, they're always going to talk about their relationships. The, the, the happiness and the health of our life is completely congruent, right? With the quality of the relationships we have. So I think a lot of people are in the mode of right. Dopamine. right? Seeking, chasing, pursuing, attaining. And then they get to a point in life where they realize they're alone, right? Who can I share this with? The happiest moments in our life are shared with somebody else, right? You're in the ocean and you're swimming, right? And you body surf that wave with a friend and then you come up from the water. And that second you come up from the water, you turn to look at that person you're with to share that moment with them. Right. And. there's a big difference between feeling good and being happy. Feeling good is dopamine, right? It's, it's, it's visceral. It happens below the neck, right? It's, it's, you know, eating, shopping, drinking, binging, right? It's, it's, it's attaining, acquiring. It's, it's, it's, it's goal oriented, right? Where Speaker 2 (5:19) And that experience of feeling good is usually done alone, right? Usually experienced alone. It makes your brain say, this feels good and I want more. Whereas being happy, happiness, a lot of people think it's a feeling, right? Happiness is a state of mind. It's inner peace, right? It's having a sound mind and being happy. When you're happy, you're experiencing life. in the context of experience with other people, right? It's ethereal. It happens above the neck, right? It's being of service. It's helping other people. It's providing value, right? And I think it's important. We can have a balance of both in our lives, but if my life is just oriented around you know, feeling good all the time. And I'm confusing feeling good with being happy. I mean, there was times in my life where. Speaker 2 (6:15) I felt good all the time, but I was the most unhappy that I've ever been. And I would wake up depressed and unhappy because my relationships weren't healthy. They were toxic. And the first toxic relationship that I really had was the one I had with myself. And that then turned into... being attracted, quote unquote, attracted, right, to other people who mirrored and mimicked. And held the same kind of core beliefs and even the same behavioral patterns that I did. So to answer your question, I think. To Speaker 1 (6:51) some degree, yeah. Do you find that people will come to you or they'll seek help by trying to fix the relationship or fix the marriage, but they're not trying to fix themselves? Absolutely. It's Speaker 2 (7:05) extrinsic, right? Most people, especially men, especially business owners. Speaker 2 (7:11) If it's not broke, don't fix it. So a lot of guys, they'll wait until the house is on fire to call the fire department and wait until it's burning to the ground and it's almost completely eviscerated to actually do something about it. And their wife's contempt or anger towards them will motivate them in the beginning. They'll feel like their arm is twisted. Okay, I'll work on our marriage. I'll work on it. But because they have these blind spots and they've externalized a majority of what they've dealt with, they don't see clearly. They don't have clarity. So what they'll do is they'll externalize. They'll blame their partner. Okay, I'll work on the marriage. It's something I'm not doing. I'm not doing something. So what do I need to do? A communication hack. Do I need to take her on more date nights, vacations? Do I need to take her Speaker 1 (7:57) shopping? What do I got to do to change this dynamic? And Speaker 2 (8:01) the reality is... To change your marriage, you change the man that shows up to the marriage. And guys will say, well, why should I go first? Why should I have to go first? Because that's the natural order and design. You can't expect your wife. to be accountable like a man. Stop expecting your wife to act like a man. Men take accountability. We're leaders. Your wife blames you for the problem because, well, you're the guy who's ingenuitive. You're creative. You're intuitive. You solve problems. You find a pathway when no one can, right? And there's a reason she blames you. Ultimately, a lot of times wives blame husbands because she doesn't have a way to get you to take action or she doesn't have a plan to fix it. She feels helpless. Right. So in a way she subconsciously believing through blaming you that your change can actually initiate me, the catalyst to lead both of you out of the situation you're in. Right. But guys here, oh, my wife's blaming me. Why is everything always the guy's fault? Well, it's not. You're not as much the problem as you are the solution and your change of behavior. It's like if you can bring out the worst in each other, you can bring out the best in each other. Right. You can change your marriage through influence, the power of influencing people, right? And how to do this. And as entrepreneurs and business owners, we've done this. We've done this for a majority of our career. So for a lot of guys, yeah, they're extrinsically motivated and they think that the problem is out there, right? So it's something out there that I need to fix. And then through the process, they start to explore and understand that, oh, okay. There's a lot that's going on with me that I'm not even aware of or wasn't aware of that I'm gaining clarity on. And now I'm starting to go from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic. Right now I'm starting to see, okay. This is really for, it's, it's for our marriage. The marriage is the beneficiary, but it begins with me. And I should really want to do this for me because it's important because as men, we neglect our inner world a lot. right? We neglect our inner world. That's self-martyrdom, right? Falling on the sword, putting everybody's needs before our own. Because a lot of us, we were raised in environments where we were told to not look inside, to not be self-aware, don't identify feelings, especially in business, right? There's no room for emotions in business. So we push all of our feelings aside, right? And we use the same power through mentality that we use inside of our business in our home, which it backfires. Speaker 1 (10:32) I've read that over 50 % of marriages will end in divorce. Do you think there's something there that we look back to our parents and maybe it's 50-50 that they've been divorced. We say, well, I don't want to get divorced, so I don't want to get married. Do you think that has something to do with the impact of how we look at relationships? Absolutely. I Speaker 2 (10:52) think there's an element of fear. It's like why people don't want to have kids. Well, I don't want to repeat the same patterns, right? I don't want to. repeat these same patterns that I've observed or experienced or seen. So I think. I think for a lot of people, right? You don't have to settle for the marriage that your parents had, right? You can create the one that you always dreamed of and you can create that marriage by becoming aware of, okay, what do I want to change? Right? How do I want to show up differently? And is conditioning powerful? Of course. Are you going to struggle to fight against those patterns? Absolutely. Right? But we're all a work in progress. And I think we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, and just negate the necessity or the importance, right, of healthy relationships, especially intimate ones. Speaker 2 (11:44) just because we've been through something in our past or we've seen something our parents have done. And then we assume that we're just right.