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
094: 3G Model – Control Your Response When Your Wife is Stressed
Ever been ready to relax after a long day at work, but your wife is stressed and so there’s tension in the house for everyone?
It’s tempting to tell her to calm down. Chill out. Explain that mud on the carpet isn’t a big deal. But usually this ends up in a full-blown argument.
In today's episode, you'll dive into the 3G Model to help you respond in a way that actually strengthens your relationship. Here's what you'll learn:
1️⃣ Grrrr Mode – You snap back when she snaps at you. Not pretty.
2️⃣ Guarded Helper – You help around the house, but keep a safe distance, hoping the storm passes.
3️⃣ Grounded Husband – You get curious, check in with her, and show her you're on the same team.
Think of it like climbing a ladder. The higher you go, the stronger your connection with your wife—and the better your relationship.
When you level up your marriage, you level up in EVERY area of life.
Stop Losing Your Temper Road Map
This roadmap will teach you how to have more patience.
To give your kids more time and attention.
Anger isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility.
Learn how to manage it so it doesn't get the best of you.
https://www.tommygcoaching.com/roadmap
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? Episode number 94. Got a topic today that is going to apply to anybody, men or women. But guys, I'm really talking about you because this comes up in a lot of my coaching sessions and it's how to respond when your wife is stressed.
Speaker 1:I had a guy that I was working with that he was coming home from work and as he was getting to the front door of his house, he could hear the commotion inside and he could hear his wife elevated and he knew that she had had a tough week at work and he was hoping to come home to a chill, relaxed evening after a day of work. And it just wasn't going to happen. Relaxed evening after a day of work, and it just wasn't going to happen. So our expectations are rarely met. Especially when we want to come home to a house with kids in it and we want it to be chill. That expectation usually doesn't happen. And when our expectations aren't met, this is an opportunity for us to decide how we want to handle the situation. So these moments when your wife is snapping at the kids she's short with you, she's just stressed out you have a choice. You get to decide how you're going to respond. And I want to give you this 3G model to take and start applying and you can think of it as a ladder. So the three G model is ger mode guarded helper and grounded husband. So bottom of the ladder, ger mode, ger like an angry bear. Because when you're in ger mode and your wife's stressed, you snap back. You're tired of her negativity, you're thinking that she's overreacting and she should be doing things differently. You try to fix her, you try to tell her how she should be looking at the situation, that she's overreacting and this is grr mode. Usually grr mode ends up in a full-blown argument. That calm, relaxed house that you were looking for is no longer an option. And this grr mode when you're choosing to respond in grr mode, what's happening is you become dysregulated with her, and that word dysregulated simply means emotions are heightened, dysregulated that term comes from psychology, it comes from neuroscience, it has to do with our central nervous system. So when our nervous system is regulated and everything's kind of flowing and moving thoughts in our brain are calm. They're slow, our emotions feel open. We're curious. That's regulated.
Speaker 1:And there is this thing called co-regulation, where one nervous system regulates with another person's nervous system. So this is why, if your kid is freaking out because they scrape their knee and they're really upset and you stay steady and calm, you start to co-regulate with him. You can help your son or your daughter calm down when they're heightened because they're scared of this big scrape on their knee and the blood that's bleeding everywhere. If you stay chill, they're more likely to calm down, not right away, but eventually. Your nervous system helps their nervous system regulate. If you have a baby, an infant that's crying and you're holding it, the more you can take some breaths and slow your heart rate down, the easier it'll be for that baby to get more calm and be able to go to sleep. Co-regulation Now there's also co-dysregulation.
Speaker 1:So co-dysregulation is that when there is someone heightened, with a stressed out nervous system, you match theirs. So in grr mode, you're basically matching her stress with your own stress. It's the. I was in a great mood until you got home. It's the. I was in a great mood until you got home. You brought your stress in here and now I'm stressed out, and this is super common. It's a subconscious thing that happens. Someone else is worried, someone else is nervous and their nervous system affects you Co-dysregulation. So this happens a lot in relationships and what we want to do is we want to stay calm, we want to decide to work on our nervous system, regulate ourself so we can have that spacious house, that calmer house. So GER mode, level one we want to move up. We want to move up the rung to level two guarded helper. So the guarded helper looks better from the outside. There's no arguing happening. The guarded helper is doing things around the house. His wife is stressed, arguing with the kids. He's doing dishes, he's cleaning up, he's packing up lunches for the next day. Emotionally, the guarded helper is checked out. He's quiet, he's careful, he's walking on eggshells around his wife.
Speaker 1:For me, when Brenda is stressed out, I'll go into the guarded helper realm and when I'm there, if she tries to engage with me, if she tries to bring some of that stress towards me, my guard goes up right away. And I'm doing it right now because I know it's almost like I put my hands up and I'm like whoa, you're overreacting right now. Don't bring that shit over to me. I'm helping out, I'm doing what I can over here, but I do not want any of that craziness that you have. And the guarded helper means well.
Speaker 1:But everything I just said is not going to help your relationship with your wife. Your wife is stressed out and you are so disconnecting when she tries to connect or tries to say something to you, thinking that she's crazy. Having those thoughts in your head does not help connection. But before we dive into how to take it up to that next rung of being a grounded husband, I want to talk about how the guarded helper is an okay place to be. Helper is an okay place to be Because if you're not grounded and open, knowing not to engage, being aware enough to know that if you do engage with your wife, you're not going to help her out at all because you're in a state where you can't be open and curious, this is guarded helper could be significant growth for you in your relationship.
Speaker 1:So this is where my client was at when he got home and his wife was at the dinner table arguing with the kids about crumbs on the table. In his head he's like they're just crumbs, they're just kids, like chill out, don't argue with the kids about it. If he went and decided to say those words out loud, that would be ger mode, that would be trying to fix how she's feeling. He didn't do that. He stayed disengaged. He went and he helped out around the house, whatever that looked like, but he stayed emotionally checked out because at the end of the night, when the kids had gone down to bed, he walked into the bedroom and she was sitting on the bed and she was like what are you looking at? And his first reaction was to put up his guard and he kind of turned away. He was like nothing. I just walked into our bedroom and he went into the bathroom when we reflected on the whole scene.
Speaker 1:This is the moment walking into the bedroom, when everything's quieted down, that you could take it up to the top level of the model grounded husband. The grounded husband is ready to connect. So we have, at the bottom rung, gurmaud, who's going to fix, who's going to try to argue and get his wife to change in the moment. The next is the guarded helper that is avoiding his wife like she's a crazy person. And then we have the grounded husband who's curious, who's open doesn't have to necessarily connect in that moment that your wife's super stressed, but makes an attempt to move towards her, connect with her. So your wife is having a hard time, she's stressed out. It's not about the crumbs. There's something going on under the hood. He knows that work has been stressed. When we're stressed out and dysregulated, it's not about work, it's not about the kids, it's about something subconsciously and they usually need to get something off their chest.
Speaker 1:And a grounded husband can pause and be like hey, I notice like something's up right now and I want you to know that I'm here with you, I'm on your team and if you want to talk about what's going on, let me know. And that night at least, let's use this client as an example. That night, when he walked into the bedroom and his wife said what are you looking at? That's an opportunity to be that grounded husband and connect. Maybe you're that guarded helper most of the night, but here in bed, a little bit out of the moment, this is your opportunity to be the grounded husband. So instead of turning and walking to the bathroom, we kind of brainstormed what could that have looked like? He could say nothing. I'm just coming into the bedroom, like it seems like you've been having a rough day and I'm here for you, like what's going on? Maybe in that moment she's ready to be like, okay, take a breath, she lets her guard down a little bit and they have an awesome conversation. Maybe, maybe she's not, maybe she's still defensive and that's okay. So the grounded husband knows that, okay, she's not ready to talk right now. I'm going to move on to the bathroom and maybe he checks in the next day.
Speaker 1:This is next level. This is the highest rung of the 3G model. It's the same thing with our kids. We're not going to be able to connect or teach our kids in the moment. Right, if my daughter I've been doing this lately if she is freaking out and acting like an asshole, I'm not going to tell her how she should be acting in the moment when she's heightened and dysregulated. I'm going to follow up with her later. I'm going to weather the storm while we're in the moment and try to co-regulate and be relaxed, and then later I'm going to check back in with her and I use Siri as a reminder. Hey, siri, remind me in four hours to talk about X, y, z, whatever it was. You can do the same thing with your wife. Hey, siri, remind me tomorrow morning to shoot a text to my wife because she seemed a little stressed last night and just check in, let her know I'm there for her. That is going to help your wife feel supported, seen, heard, like that's the basis for some next level marriages. And when you have that kind of relationship where your wife feels supported and then you feel supported by her, you can maximize the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:This is where we want to get to. We want to live in that grounded husband area as much as possible and you're not always going to be there, of course, but we want to move towards there. Why we don't? There's a lot of reasons why we don't, but one reason is connecting like this feels unproductive, because we actually have to pause. We actually have to not be productive in the sense of checking things off of our to-do lists. We have to give some space for a conversation, for those emotions and that energy to move, and you'll notice there's an inner voice in you that knows when to connect with your wife. But you'll hesitate and then you feel like, oh, I missed the moment, I'm not going to do it, too late. What you want to start doing is recognizing those moments where it is an opportunity to check in hey how you doing, and breathe into it Feels unproductive, shit.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a long conversation. I just want to go to bed. Right now I don't have time for this conversation. I need my sleep. Sometimes some nights we have to allow that space. I mean, one of the guys that I'm working with.
Speaker 1:I think there's something about late night conversations in bed when the house is quiet, when you're laying there you're in the dark, you're under covers, you know, maybe it moves into some sex. But the other kind of intimacy, the emotional intimacy, there's a feeling of safety at that time of night where you can open up and have those conversations. Don't back away from them. Move towards them, because that's what makes our marriages better. And if our marriages are strong and tight, everything else in life we're just able to freaking. Take it to the next level because we feel safe, supported at home, we feel like we're doing a good job as a husband and then we can crush it at work. It's a lot easier to move through life when our relationship is tight. Okay, so we got the 3G model of how we want to respond to our wife when she's stressed out, when she's having a hard time.
Speaker 1:Level one the bottom rung of the ladder, grr mode. Want to move it up to level two, the guarded helper. Live at the guarded helper. Don't engage. Help out, support where you can and in those moments where you can be curious and open, step up to the grounded husband. That's when we go to level three. Next level not going to be there all the time, but train for it. All right, just like everything else in life.
Speaker 1:What do you have to do to be that grounded husband more often? Usually we had to live in uncertainty a little bit. We have to be okay with uncomfortable emotions, we have to give space, we have to ask questions, we have to listen. How do you train to do that? And if you're not sure, we can talk about that. But next time the room gets tense, just ask yourself what gear am I in? Use this tool as a awareness tool. Where am I right now? Which mode? Where do I want to be? Okay, that's what I got for you guys today. I hope you have an awesome week and I will catch you next time.
