The Husband Coach: Why Your Wife May Resent You

Meaningful People - Meaningful Minute

In this episode of 'Meaningful People,' Josh Livingston, a husband coach, explores why many wives may resent their husbands despite their efforts to

Key takeaways

• Wives often become controlling not because they want power, but due to a lack of trust that their husbands will follow through on commitments.
• Men can unintentionally create emotional burden by failing to take initiative, forcing wives to constantly remind or manage tasks.

Main topics

• The role of masculine energy in marriage
• Why wives may resent their husbands despite good intentions

Notable quotes

"She doesn't want to have to carry that burden all the time. She wants to be able to say, 'My husband's going to get this. I don't have to worry about it.'"

"Why does your wife ask you 50 times to do something? Because you didn't do it."

Conclusion

The episode concludes that healthy marriages require men to step into their role as intentional leaders—not through

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) But you Speaker 2 (0:00) focus specifically Speaker 1 (0:01) on husbands. Yeah. Why husbands? They wear a mess. Speaker 2 (0:05) A woman often will get controlling when she doesn't feel safe that he's going to lead. Why does your wife ask you 50 times to do something? It's annoying. Do you know why she asks you? Because he Speaker 1 (0:15) didn't do it. Josh Livingstone primarily works with husbands. Husbands who want good marriages, who love their wives, but often don't understand what their wives are trying to tell them. Speaker 2 (0:26) People call it communication. I don't think it's exactly communication. What it is, is not understanding the world of where your wife is coming from. Speaker 1 (0:34) And sometimes a husband can work incredibly hard to give his wife everything. and still completely miss what she's asking for. Speaker 2 (0:41) They were very wealthy. It was a very, very wealthy couple. And he was constantly hearing from her. We don't spend enough time together. He worked a tremendous amount of hours. We started working together and like right away, he's like, I have the solution. I'm going to take her to the French Riviera, just me and her for two weeks. So I brought her in the next session and she said the most amazing thing. And he heard it. She said, I don't need you to take me to the French Riviera. I need you to walk around the block with me at night for 10 minutes. Speaker 1 (1:04) But that raises a much deeper question. What is something that wives desperately want but have a hard time communicating to their husbands? Speaker 2 (1:12) Okay, so I'm really glad you asked that. Speaker 1 (1:15) This episode is sponsored by PZDeals. Never ever pay full price. Again, download the PZDeals app right now on your phone. About to make a purchase, about to get some goodies or whatever it may be. Maybe even like Uber Eats. There's discount codes. There are savings waiting for you. So download the PZDeals app right now and never pay full price. Again, wow. This episode is with the husband coach, Josh Livingston. And he primarily meets with husbands to tell them. Why would you say that? This is what you need to be saying. This is what you need to be doing. When she says this, she doesn't mean this. She means that. Plus so much more. This is an incredible dialogue. So if you're a wife, this is worth listening to. If you're a husband, this is definitely worth listening to. And if you're a wife, you want to send this to your husband. A little passive aggressive, but I think just go for it. This episode is also sponsored by my friends at Kol Chabad. Download the Pushka app right now. 143 days straight. I'm giving tzedakah on the Pushka app. Let me tell you something. It's not about how much you give. It's the frequency in which you give every single day. Every single day. It's so simple and so easy and it feels so accomplishing to do it through the Kol Chabad Pushka app. So download that app right now, pushka.cc forward slash meaningful. You've heard me talk about this many times and today's the day that you're actually going to download it and you can start giving tzedakah every single day. This episode is also sponsored by Shimmy J. Thank you so much for sponsoring this episode of Meaningful People and making it possible. free to the public. A big thank you to you, my friends. Thank you for watching, for listening, for keeping us number one in the Jewish podcast category. We appreciate it. Make sure to send this episode to a friend of yours. Speaker 1 (2:55) and Speaker 2 (2:56) enjoy the episode. Speaker 1 (2:57) So this topic today is exciting because many times you bring on someone to talk about marriage, talk about marriage as a whole, but you focus specifically on husbands. Why husbands? We're a mess. Speaker 2 (3:13) No, it's a very good question. The idea is that a lot of people, I think you're exactly right. We talk about marriage. Speaker 2 (3:22) As a whole, which is great. But for men, it's also kind of useless in the sense that we do much, much better when we have tactical things that we can do, processes that we can follow. We're much better with the Shulchan Aruch. And again, this is true in all of life. Shabbos is beautiful. All right, well, but how do you make Kiddush? That's like important, right? Like how do you bench? That's also important. So we can talk about these ideas in a general sense, which is fantastic. But ultimately the man's got to show up with the masculine energy. He's got to lead. He's got to take charge and he needs to know how to do that. There are things you need to do in order for that to show up. And we don't necessarily know what those are. We don't necessarily live in a framework in which that's talked about or taught to the degree that it really needs to be. So I try to focus specifically on working with men. And I also find that men have the ability to hear things in a different way than women do. Right? There are certain ideas that can come across to women that they understand. Men tend to be, for good or for better, we tend to be much more concrete, which is fine. But we have to be able to translate the beautiful ideas into actions that are going to actually affect. Transformation, which is what we're going for you Speaker 1 (4:39) mentioned masculinity. Yeah, what is the um? I guess what happens if the opposite is true? What happens if the man is not the masculine one in a marriage? Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:49) so that's the disaster that we see all the time, right that when Somebody has to lead. So if the man's not going to step up and do that, it's going to be his wife. Speaker 1 (5:00) And Speaker 2 (5:00) she's going to resent that. Why? Because that's not her role. She doesn't want to be that. What if Speaker 1 (5:04) a wife wants to lead? Speaker 2 (5:06) So she does in certain ways, but not in others. Again, I'm not talking about being domineering. I'm not talking about being controlling. But what I am talking about is that it's the man's obligation to create a vision and a tone for what the house is going to be like and to take care of his wife. I'll give you an example. Speaker 2 (5:24) Let's say a wife comes to a husband, right? And she mentions, oh, hey, we haven't been on a date in a while. You want to do something? So being a nice, kind, wonderful husband, we say, sure. And she says, well, where do you want to go? Anywhere you want, right? Well, when's good for you? When's good for you? It all sounds great. They hate it. They hate it. And we're like dense because we're like, I don't understand. How could you possibly? What's another word for dense? Speaker 2 (5:55) Dumb, thick, slow. That sounds, yeah. Again, it's not that we're badly motivated. It's the opposite. Meaning we're thinking to ourselves, what could possibly be nicer than that? Like, we'll literally go wherever you want. Like, what could you want? And the answer is, they don't want to carry the mental load of deciding. They don't want to have to figure out when it's going to happen. They want you to lead. I'll Speaker 1 (6:18) give Speaker 2 (6:18) you an example. This is what you say. Nachi, next time your wife says, okay? You're going to be the... Speaker 1 (6:22) Okay. Right. So what you want to say is something like this. First of all, realize. You could test me. I'll probably have the right answer. You want to do a scenario? Watch the podcast? Some of the episodes. She's definitely watching this one. Speaker 2 (6:33) Okay. We'll see. Speaker 1 (6:34) All right. This is Naki. Okay. Speaker 2 (6:36) So. Speaker 2 (6:38) You want to say something like this, okay? First of all, notice that you haven't been on a date in a while. That's number one, like, hello. Don't say like, oh, what about last week? Like, it was six months ago. Exactly. First of all, you have to know, okay? And then what you want to do is something like this. If you want to lead, you want to be masculine, you want to show up with something like this. Hey, you know what? We haven't been on a date in a while. I know you mentioned that Italian place that you really like. So I know you're not usually busy on Thursday. I made a reservation for this Thursday at seven. I didn't know if that works for you, but if it does, I already took care of the babysitting thing. You're not going to have to worry about it. All you need to worry about is showing up. I'd love to take you out. Speaker 2 (7:13) That's nice. That's nice, right? It's not controlling. It's not demanding. It's not domineering. But what it is, is masculine and creating a vision and Speaker 1 (7:22) taking charge of the situation. So interesting. So people think of the word masculine, it sounds so like rough and tough. And this is what you're going to do. But it just what it sounds like it really means is just. Our wives are, they have enough mental load when it comes to family and the kids and everything else they're dealing with. They don't want to also have to view their husband as another child. Speaker 2 (7:46) Yes, that's correct. And they do. Not every wife, but it's a very common problem. And again, I don't want to slam the men too much because for most of them, it really is coming from like an accommodating, nice place. But women don't. always, I don't want to get killed for this, but women don't always want accommodating and nice. They want you to be able to take that mental load off. Say, honey, I got it. We can do this, this, and that. Not controlling, but creating a vision. She doesn't want to have to carry that burden all the time. She wants to be able to say, you know what? My husband's going to get this. I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to bear this all the time. That's stepping into a masculine energy and creating a vision. It has nothing to do with strong or tough voice or anything like that. It has to do with being a leader, seeing Speaker 1 (8:32) what needs to be done and making sure that it happens. What does a husband do though if the wife does not allow him to be the masculine one and that she just wants to be the one to take control? Okay, very Speaker 2 (8:44) good. So let's go real slow, right? Because it's going to depend on what do we mean? What do we mean by she doesn't want him to be masculine? Speaker 1 (8:52) We all know that guy who's a little lemel on his marriage. Yes. Speaker 2 (8:59) Right. Okay. So the idea is that a woman very often, this is really important, a woman often will get controlling when she doesn't feel safe that he's going to lead. Okay? A woman will take control if she feels like if she's not in control, they're going to have a problem. Speaker 2 (9:23) I made a video actually about this the other day, right? That why does your wife ask you 50 times to do something? It's annoying. Like, stop, I'll do it. Do you know why she asks you? Because Speaker 1 (9:33) you didn't do it. Speaker 2 (9:34) Because you didn't do it, right? So she knows that when she says do it, and you're like, yeah, sure. You don't mean it. Or maybe you think you mean it at the time, but it doesn't get done. So what winds up happening is that she has to continually ask you, right? That's annoying. She doesn't like that. So now that's put her in a position where not only is the thing not getting done, but she now has to baby you, which you find annoying because leave me alone. That's on you, right? If she says take care of something and you're like, okay, and then you do it, you know who's not going to bother you about doing it again? Her. And you're going to feel much more masculine and Like the guy you should who lives up to his responsibilities. A lot of times when women are controlling, it's because they feel if they're not, the situation is out of control. It's not good. So a man has to realize he has tremendous, tremendous power in terms of creating the energy in his house. And a lot of the things that he puts on his wife, he can fix himself. That's why I really focus on working with husbands specifically. We have a tremendous amount of power and we have a tremendous amount of responsibility also, by the way, because it's not on them. It's on us, right? So when we can do that, we can change the energy in the whole house, in the whole dynamic between both of us. Speaker 1 (10:50) Okay, so let's talk about a couple of scenarios that... That a husband can change what his house looks like if he just does it. Yes. And what the contrast is. Yes. If he doesn't do it, if he does do it. Great. Give me like three scenarios. Let's go one. Great. Speaker 2 (11:09) Okay. Speaker 2 (11:12) First and foremost, if you're not settled, you're going to show up, your house is going to be chaos. Before anything, before any interaction with your wife, before any interaction with your kids, forget it. I teach guys something. It's called a transition ritual. For example, you go to school, it's my river, you come home, you're tired, long day at work, whatever. You're about to walk into the house. You are a mess. And the fact is, if you walk into the house as a mess, That mess is coming right into the house. You can't walk into your house like a mess. You have to walk into your house like a man and like a leader. I'm not saying not to take time for yourself. But if you walk through that door, you have an obligation to show up in a certain way. That's really hard. Take your time before you walk. That's right. So what I teach husbands, and there's different versions, but what I teach husbands is that you have to have a transition ritual, something that's going to allow you to transfer from one to the other. I'll personally, right? So personally, I'll come home from my... I'll be exhausted, right? So literally, I'll pull into my driveway. I'll turn my phone off, not silent, off, right? And I'll just blast the air conditioning on my face for two minutes. I'm from Chicago. I have to have a cold or I get stressed out. Baltimore is like obnoxiously humid. But so, and I'll just sit there for two minutes and say, that's all gone. I don't have to deal with any of that anymore. Forget it, right? I'm going to come into the house. Now, Baruch Hashem, I have an incredible, incredible wife and two incredible teenage daughters, an incredible six-year-old daughter. But if you're keeping score, that means there's four women Speaker 1 (12:42) and me in Speaker 2 (12:42) the house. Speaker 1 (12:43) Okay. So I'm kind of there with our three daughters. How old? Six, three, and like one and a half. Beautiful. Okay. Speaker 2 (12:51) Amazing. And a wife. And a wife. Okay, good. So I can walk in. It could be amazing. It could also be. Two teenagers and a six-year-old. So I don't know what I'm walking into, but I do know I need to show up, right? So what I need to do is make sure I'm in a good headspace. So I need to take that time ahead of time before I show up. You want to hear an amazing story? I heard a story, that he was walking with his students once, and the time he walked them up to his front door, and before he knocked on the door, he was schmoozing with them, and he took out an apple, and he ate an apple. Speaker 2 (13:31) And when he was done with the apple, he brushed off his frock. He stood there for a minute. He said, OK, gentlemen, I'll see you tomorrow. He went to the house and his tummy to mass. And the next day, they're like, Rebby, like. Speaker 2 (13:44) what's with the apple? What are you doing? So he said, you have to understand something. He said, I get up very early. I got up very early all day. I'm with you guys learning and answering Shilas and dealing with the community and whatever. When I come home at night, it's really the first time my wife has seen me. He says, and she's been waiting for me at home all day, right? I have an obligation to show up looking my best. And the truth is I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm fetchy, right? So I'm not going to come in with a half-hearted, hi, honey, where's dinner? He says, I'm not going to come in starving. So I eat an apple so that I'm not starving. So I give myself some sugar. I have some energy. And I have to look nice because it's the first time she's going to see me. So I clean myself up so I look decent. I'm not Richelieu Mazaman. I need a lot more than an apple, right? But the point is that we have to show up the right way. When we show up the right way, that's important. That's number one, okay? Number two, again, very simple, crucial, okay? Everybody needs to be acknowledged and appreciated, period, right? Every time somebody, in your own life, all of us, right? We all feel energized and valued when somebody acknowledges our work and what we go through, okay? Every day, every day, you need to acknowledge what your wife does, thank her, show your appreciation. When you do that it has to be real and it has to be specific it can't be stick can't be thanks, honey Who cares? Thanks, honey. See Wow, you know what you were running late and what's your six-year-old's name Speaker 1 (15:12) Rosie Rosie Rosie's amazing, but Rosie was gonna Kill everybody this morning or Speaker 2 (15:17) you were gonna kill Rosie. It was not going well, right, but she handled it really well, right? Sweetheart, that was amazing. Thank you so so much for handling Rosie. That was great. Shout out Rosie Rosie. Rosie. Rosie's the best camera. Hey, Rosie. Awesome. Right? So that's incredible, right? When it's real and when it's specific, that makes a difference. That is a positive deposit that you're bringing into the house. No matter what, that's always good. I mean, this goes on and on about stuff that you can do, but those are just general, always good, right? You always want to show up your best. You always want to be bringing. positive energy into the environment with the connection with your wife. There's a million things, but those are two universals that everybody can apply immediately because they're not hard. And the contrast is like, imagine Speaker 1 (16:00) I basically, like I left my house earlier this morning. I come home after my long recording day and I go into my house, how I feel, which is exhausted, burnt out. I just had six hours of conversations with people and my brain is mush. Yeah. But like, that's not fair. No, it's not. And maybe she's even more mush than you are. Speaker 2 (16:17) Right. Right. And let me tell you something, even if she's not, You're still the man. Right. You're still the husband. Even if she is more mush, it doesn't matter. Right. You have an obligation to show up for her. Right. You have an obligation to be your best for her. Speaker 1 (16:30) Right. Right. Speaker 2 (16:30) So even if she's less mush, more mush, it doesn't matter because now he's the man. This is the Gordon house. Right. And you're going to show up like that. Right. And you might not always live up to it, but that's got to be the headspace. This is what I try and train men on when I'm, when I'm working with them. I'm really trying to train them on. tactics of being able to show up in a way that embraces that masculinity, right? And have a shift in headspace toward, hey, this is part of my Avodah Seshem. This is an incredible thing. I need to know what I'm doing here. And I want to show up in a way that's going to bring the vision of my home to where I want it to be. And I want to show up the best way I can. for my wife, and there are ways to do that. That's why, again, that's Speaker 1 (17:12) why I specifically work with men in the context that I do. It sounds like because they have such a strong influence on everything in the house. Yes. So yeah, of course, marriage is 50-50, but it's not really. You don't think marriage is 50-50. Speaker 2 (17:25) 50-50 depending on the issue, meaning 50-50 what? When it comes to certain things, it's 70-30. When it comes to certain things, it's 90-10. When it comes to certain things, it's 50-50. The energy and the mood in the home. It's both. Both affect both. Both affect both. Obviously, if you come in and your wife's in a good mood, that's going to make it easier for you to be in a good mood. And that's fantastic, right? If you come in in a good mood and she's in a good mood, you know, that's going to vibe back and forth, right? That's great. But ultimately, as the leader of the home, you bear the responsibility for making sure that you're putting in your best regardless, right? So it's not that it's 50-50 or 60-40 or whatever, right? The reality is that it comes down to a headspace of showing up using all the skills that you have as a husband. in order to create the energy and the environment that you Speaker 1 (18:08) need and that she needs. Let me give you a scenario. Please. Husband walks into his house. He says, I