Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
050: How to Handle Your Emotionally Immature Wife
What do you do when your wife is clearly overreacting?
When she’s being illogical or “crazy.”
It’s easy to throw up our hands and walk away. Or just get pissed.
But the truth is, that makes the situation worse.
Your wife is having a hard time in those moments.
She might not communicate it in the most adult-like way, but she can use some support.
It’s an opportunity to get closer and strengthen the relationship.
So we want to be the calm, supportive emotional adult in those moments.
We want to shift our perspective from, “she’s acting crazy” to “she can use my help right now.”
Today’s episode of the Durable Dad podcast teaches you what to do, and what not to do so you can access that mindset shift.
PODCAST ROADMAP to stop losing your temper HERE
This is the Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Durable Dad, episode number 50? It's Friday over here and I'm feeling good. It's been a productive week. A lot of movement going on here at the coaching business. Here in the coaching business, brenda and I are going to roll out our first couples workshop, which I'm pumped about. It's something that I'm excited about Brenda and I coaching together. We haven't done that yet. I'll actually probably be telling you more about that at the end of this show, so stay tuned after the show. So, if you're around here, it's what April 5th? Hit me up. It's a Friday. It's going to be like six hours getting a bunch of guys together, getting outside, pumped about doing something in person. So, yeah, lots going on. If you're interested in that in person day, it's not going to be on the website, so hit me up individually, go email me or find me on one of the social networks if you're interested, and go into that and I'll get you information. The durable duo is the marriage workshop. That's what we're going to call it. That's up on the website, so check out more details there. But yeah, all that to say is that we're moving and grooving over here and it's been really exciting and having fun along the way.
Speaker 1:And today the topic that we're going to talk about is emotional immaturity, and I'm actually going to frame it as emotional childhood and the opposite of emotional childhood being emotional adulthood. The title of this episode is probably going to be called emotional immaturity, because it's kind of the buzzword. If you Google it, people are more aware of that word. Emotional immaturity coaches, psychiatrists that's the term that's used a lot. I have this other coach that frames it as emotional childhood, emotional adulthood, and I think that's a little more respectful or less demeaning than emotional immaturity. So emotional childhood, emotional adulthood and specifically what we're going to look at today is, when our wife is operating from emotional childhood, how we can be there to support and respond in the most productive way possible. So what is emotional childhood? What does it look like when our wife is in emotional childhood? And before I describe that, I do want to say that guys are in emotional childhood all the time. So emotional childhood here and there it's something that we can slip into and then slip out of. So we're talking here today about how our wife can be an emotional childhood, but guys can also. So what does it look like when our wife is in emotional childhood?
Speaker 1:It's those moments when you notice yourself thinking that she's overreacting. Maybe she's giving you the silent treatment or she's taking digs at you. Your wife's just operating from a place of higher stress, maybe moving quicker, talking quicker, or on the other side, she could be checking out, not connecting. I'm speaking very generally here, but what I see guys thinking when their wives are acting in emotional childhood is she's acting a little crazy, or she's acting unreasonable, or she's acting illogical. Us men are interpreting behavior as unreasonable or illogical, but emotional childhood is a thing that happens to all of us. So in those moments our wife is a human and she's slipping into emotional childhood. For the time being that's not a problem. She's allowed to do that. The problem is how we respond. A lot of the times we'll be short, we'll get pissed off or we'll go into some type of defensive mode. The reason she's acting the way she is is because I should have done something differently and I need to fix her or I need to help her see the rationale here. Those are usually the responses that make the situation worse if we try to talk sense into her or try to change the way she is right now. So instead of making the situation worse when our wife is acting from emotional childhood, we want to respond as the wise emotional adult. So let me explain.
Speaker 1:I'm going to use an example of something that happens in our house. Has happened in our house for the 16 years that we've been together and Brendan and I kind of talked about this. She actually brought up this scenario and teed it up as a time where she falls into emotional childhood and the scenario is when her parents are coming to visit We've lived in a bunch of different places together and no matter what place it is, when her parents are coming to visit, brenda gets really self-conscious about the cleanliness of our house, something about when her parents are coming over, brenda gets into this cleaning frenzy and unless the house is spotless and by spotless our current house maybe not spotless, because I think Brenda's done some work on her slipping into emotional childhood when her parents are coming, but years ago, when her parents were coming over and actually a lot of guests you would walk into our house and think that it was a show house Like this was an open house and everything was perfect and put away and immaculate and no dust anywhere. And it's not how it is anymore, but that's how it was. And the process from getting our house to how we usually live in it, to what Brenda wanted it to look like when her parents walked in the door from point A to point B, was a frenzy and what used to happen.
Speaker 1:Brenda would say something like my parents are going to be here in 10 minutes and we haven't even gone to the store. And I would kind of come in and be like it's not that big of a deal, like calm down, it's just your parents, they'll be fine, they'll be happy. And I thought I was being helpful by trying to show her that she was overreacting. But in the moment it wasn't helpful. It would just create more tension and we would argue and things would be even more heated. I would try to act like it was no big deal. I'd be moving slowly through the house, like if I was calm and chill, then she would chill out. I would try to fix her high stress by not making as big a deal out of it and that didn't help the situation either, and by help the situation I just mean get us on the same page. It would still be a frenzy. We wouldn't be smiling, we would just be pushing through and separate, like when her parents got there. Everything would be good, we'd be fine and cordial, but the process wasn't fun and it was a part of our relationship that the same argument kept coming up and we wanted to get better at it.
Speaker 1:So what happens now is I just get on board, I flow with it when her parents are coming and it's time to clean the house. I know that Brenda's going to be a little triggered and she's operating from emotional childhood, and I can put myself in her shoes, because when we're acting from emotional childhood, we're actually acting from some old patterns and old beliefs that we have about how we're seen in this world. So what changed my actions was my perspective of what she was going through. I used to think why is she making such a big deal out of this? She shouldn't take this so seriously. And then, when I start to learn about emotional childhood and why she might be feeling stressed when her parents are coming, I can put this other perspective on, and I don't know if I've ever said this to her, but I just picture the house she grew up in. It was always very clean and what it must have been like when she had a messy room. Did she get in trouble for that? Were her other siblings really clean? And she wasn't, and she made that mean that she wasn't a great person. Our behaviors now were shaped a long time ago and I know Brenda pretty well and she's not a slob, but that's not a huge priority for her that everything's put away perfectly. So growing up she was probably like that and she was kind of the one person that didn't have a clean room all the time or misplaced some of her things, and that was probably a sticking point between her and her parents.
Speaker 1:So now fast forward to an adult Brenda. In her subconscious, when her parents are coming to visit, she wants to be accepted by her parents. She wants her parents to love her and like her, and it sounds maybe ridiculous, but in her brain she's equating a clean house to her parents accepting her, and that comes from old patterning. I don't even know if what I'm saying is correct or not, but that's the perspective I put on. I have to change my perspective in order to show up differently for her and to act with some empathy and understand. Okay, brenda's triggered, something's going on here. Her parents are coming over. Maybe I realize that her parents love her no matter what, but in those moments Brenda isn't there. Brenda's acting from her subconscious brain has regressed in the emotional childhood and the best thing I can do to support is just clean the freaking house and just help out, do what I can, and that's where we've kind of evolved to in our relationship in this scenario, and there's times I'm in emotional childhood and she supports me through those times. We don't always get it right, but that's just painting a picture of how I've made some shifts to get through those times when Brenda's an emotional childhood.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give you a few other ideas, things to keep in mind when your wife is an emotional childhood. And as I'm saying this, I'm going to disclaim again that men can totally fall into emotional childhood as well. We probably actually do it more and I'm going to talk about that maybe in a future podcast, but today we're talking about how a man can support his wife when she's an emotional childhood. So a few things to keep in mind. One is that her actions, the way she's behaving, has nothing to do with you In that moment. She's struggling with something, she's triggered by something in her past that is making her act the way she's acting right now and it's in the subconscious and there's nothing you can do to change that in the moment. And when we remind herself of that it takes us off of the defense and we don't blame ourselves, we don't try to fix anything that's happening. Now we can look at her and be more supportive.
Speaker 1:So another thing to keep in mind is that when your wife is in emotional childhood, it's not the time to discuss their behavior, how they're acting, not the time to pick apart. Hey, you said this, hey, you're overreacting. When someone is operating from emotional childhood, they're moving so quickly in their subconscious, their thinking cycles are moving so fast. There isn't that space to evaluate.
Speaker 1:And there's this parenting coach author that we listen to a lot. We listen to her podcast. Dr Becky is her name. The podcast is called Good Inside. I've probably mentioned it before. On this podcast she teaches when you're parenting your kid to never teach in the moment of big emotions, when there's a tantrum, when there's a big crying fit. That's not the time to teach. You just survive those times, support, survive and then afterwards you talk about it and how can we do better the next time? And it's the same thing with adults Survive, support during the emotional childhood situation and then discuss afterwards. So those are two things to keep in mind. One, it has nothing to do with you. Another one is it's not the time to discuss their behavior.
Speaker 1:And then the last one I'll bring up is to never point out that she's being crazy. The way your wife is acting when she's an emotional childhood, she's not proud of it. You can think about when you're flipping out at your kids In the moment. You're not proud of it. You almost know you should be acting differently, but something in your programming isn't connecting and allowing you to stop acting that way. So don't say you're overreacting. Don't say you're acting crazy. This was a tough one but don't look at her like she's crazy. I know for me that's something that I've had to work on Like Brenda can pick up real quickly if I raise my eyebrows or something like that. We want to be there to lift her up, not to judge her in those moments. So those are a few things to keep in mind. I've been noticing that a lot of men can be better in this area. I think I'll probably do a podcast about how us guys fall into emotional childhood. But with this message I want us men to be more supportive of our partner and then we'll move through it faster. We'll be more productive. We don't disconnect during these difficult situations. We can come together.
Speaker 1:One of the guys I'm working with. It was his wife's birthday and they were hosting a party that night. Some people were coming over to celebrate and it was a Friday I think, because it was in the middle of the workday and he came home and she's decorating and makes this comment I guess I'm just going to decorate for my birthday by myself. And he interpreted what she said and her tone as kind of a dig on him and he was annoyed. We started coaching on this and he was annoyed. He was like I've already done a lot for her birthday. He took offense to her comment and I get it.
Speaker 1:Those kinds of comments can feel like our wife has taken a shot at us and it's really easy to turn and walk away or to react with some anger and argument and go back and forth. He could say how much he's already done for her. In this case, he decided to just walk away and go back to work and since we're coaching on it, we evaluate how we responded. Is there anything you would have done differently? And he just said I would have stuck around and helped out a little.
Speaker 1:And when we look at it we could see like, yeah, she was feeling hurt when she made that comment. She might have been feeling sad because it was her 40th birthday and maybe it's not coming out in the most adult-like way, but she was sad. She was asking for some connection. Can we be the emotional adult that can allow our wife to not act in the most adult-like way? But we are still there to support Instead of getting pissed and moving each other further apart. So if your wife is acting from emotional childhood, she's having a hard time with something. See if we can be that wise, calm, supportive husband, not the super playful, flirty husband that tries to get her out of that emotional childhood.
Speaker 1:Because I was talking to one guy and that didn't work for him. It's not the time. It's the time to give extra care, be extra helpful. And if you listen to that and you're like, oh, that sounds soft, I just want to say that men have the caring and nurturing bones in their body also Like, yes, we're productive, yes, we're competitive, yes, we get things done, but think about how you care for your kids and turn that lens onto your wife when she's going through a hard time.
Speaker 1:Whenever anyone is stressed out, what they really want is support and help, even if they're not asking for it. So the goal here is to see through the behavior and look at what might really be going on for your wife and when you can do that, you can be there for maybe even think a few steps ahead. And whatever's stressing her out, how can I help without asking what she needs me to do? Like that's going to create a really solid relationship. So emotional childhood is when we regress into these actions and behaviors that are from our subconscious and they don't really make sense. And when our wife is there, can we remind herself that it's not about us that she's struggling with something. Remember that we're not going to discuss the behavior in the moment. We're not going to try to fix anything, just support. All right, hope that helped. Have an awesome week and I'll catch you next time.
