Written by The Advancing Man - A Fellow traveler and co-creator of NeverthelessLA
I sat down to write an article about women.
Not this article.
I was frustrated with my wife, Annette. Something had happened between us that stirred a reaction in me, and I found myself doing what I think most of us do when we’re hurt or frustrated: trying to explain why I felt the way I did—and, if I’m being truthful, justify it.
At first, the explanation was simple.
It was her.
Then it became bigger than her.
It was women.
She is doing this. She is making me feel this way. This is something women do.
And I had plenty of evidence to build my case.
I’ve been married three times. I’m a confidence coach for men, and I’ve had hundreds of conversations with men about their relationships with women. I’ve listened to their frustrations, divorces, mistakes, the things they don’t understand about women and the things women don’t seem to understand about them.
I’ve also lived enough of it myself.
So finding examples wasn’t difficult.
And for the record, I still think men and women are different. There are patterns worth recognizing and understanding. This isn’t an argument that those differences don’t exist.
But then I caught myself.
I was so busy asking what was wrong with her that I hadn’t asked the more important question:
What did she just stir in me, and why was it there?
She hadn’t created the reaction.
She had touched the nerve.
That’s a very different thing.
When Annette and I first started dating, I can admit that I was too emotional. I overthought our interactions and projected my past onto her. If I felt like she wasn’t as invested in the relationship as I was, I questioned her.
A lot.
Eventually I understood that Annette is an extreme introvert and needs far more space than I do. I had interpreted her need for space as disinterest.
I could make excuses for it. I was coming out of a relationship where I had become accustomed to feeling dismissed, and I was looking for signs that it was happening again.
But Annette hadn’t created that fear.
She had touched the nerve of it.
It was already mine.
That makes it pretty difficult for me to condemn her years later when something inside her affects the way she responds to me.
“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” — John 8:7
I can’t cast it.
I’m standing in a pile of my own.
That doesn’t mean accepting everything. Accountability matters. Boundaries matter. There are things I will not tolerate.
But accountability is different from condemnation.
I can ask Annette to look at herself while being willing to look at myself. I can expect her to take ownership without pretending all the ownership belongs to her.
That’s also why I don’t believe in the 50/50 relationship bullshit people talk about.
I don’t want half of somebody while giving them half of myself.
I want 100% / 100% or nothing.
You can’t half-ass this.
I’m in 100%. That’s my decision. I’m loyal, and I believe that when you marry someone, you marry them for life.
I realize how contradictory that might sound coming from someone who has been married three times.
But I truly believe it.
My past doesn’t prevent me from deciding what commitment means to me now. If anything, it has forced me to think harder about it.
But I cannot force another person to live by the same standard.
If Annette decided she didn’t want this anymore, I wouldn’t beg her to stay. I wouldn’t chase her or desperately try to hold together something that no longer exists.
I can promise my 100%.
I can’t promise hers.
And 100% / 100% isn’t only about commitment.
It’s about ownership.
I own 100% of what I bring into this relationship. She owns 100% of what she brings into it.
Where our lives intersect, we both leave fingerprints.
That’s where my original argument about women started to fall apart.
The moment I make Annette—or women in general—the villain is the moment I lose myself.
Because blame is an easy way to skirt responsibility.
Someone may hurt me. They may betray me, lie to me, abandon me or treat me unfairly. Those actions matter.
But if I make another person responsible for who I become because of those actions, I’ve handed them something that belongs to me.
The Andrew Tates of the world will tell you it’s men versus women. Us versus them.
The moment you accept that framing, you lose.
If someone else is the reason I’m unhappy, then they control my happiness. If my ex is the reason I’m angry, then she controls my anger. If society is responsible for the man I’ve become, then society is in control of me.
That’s an incredibly powerless way to live while pretending it’s strength.
I keep coming back to something much simpler.
The sky is blue.
It’s a stupidly simple statement, but that’s the point.
The sky doesn’t need me to agree that it’s blue. Reality exists independently of how I feel about it. In philosophy, there’s an old formulation for this: A is A. A thing is what it is.
Reality comes first.
The story I tell myself about reality comes second.
Sometimes it rains.
I don’t stand outside screaming at the clouds because yesterday was sunny and today isn’t. The weather didn’t betray me. Conditions changed, nature did her thing, and rain was the result.
It isn’t personal.
We make this mistake constantly with people.
We can only experience the world from inside our own heads, so naturally we put ourselves at the centre of what happens around us.
Why did she do that to me?
Why did he say that to me?
Why are they treating me this way?
Sometimes those are legitimate questions.
But sometimes the uncomfortable answer is:
They weren’t thinking about me nearly as much as I think they were.
Most things aren’t about me.
Someone can make a decision that profoundly affects my life without me being the reason they made it. Their fears, history, insecurities, desires, habits and circumstances may have far more to do with their decision than I do.
That doesn’t erase the effect it has on me.
It just means I shouldn’t confuse this affected me with this was about me.
People aren’t weather. They have agency and responsibility for their actions. But the lesson is similar.
Understanding the rain doesn’t mean I have to stand outside and get soaked.
I can put on a jacket. I can find shelter. I can change my plans. I can even decide I don’t want to live somewhere where it rains this much.
What I can’t reasonably do is stand in the rain screaming at the sky for being rain.
Understanding people works the same way.
Understanding doesn’t mean accepting.
Recognizing patterns doesn’t mean creating villains.
Taking responsibility doesn’t mean pretending the other person did nothing wrong.
If someone betrays me, that betrayal belongs to them. If someone lies to me, that lie belongs to them.
But relationships are more complicated.
If a relationship ends, the road that brought us there belongs to both of us.
I have to look at my part in that road.
What did I do? What didn’t I do? What did I ignore? Where did I fail to listen, change, speak or understand?
The fact that I stayed doesn’t automatically make me right, just as the fact that they left doesn’t automatically make them wrong.
Their decision is theirs.
The relationship that preceded it was ours.
That’s responsibility without blame.
And none of this means becoming emotionless.
It means equanimity.
I can feel anger without becoming anger. I can feel hurt without allowing hurt to decide what I do next. I can experience fear, jealousy, rejection, disappointment or betrayal without immediately turning those emotions into actions.
And I have to allow other people that same space.
Sometimes someone needs to be angry. Sometimes they need to vent. Sometimes they need to tell the whole story from where they’re standing before they’re capable of stepping outside of it.
I don’t have to correct them.
I don’t have to win.
I don’t even have to agree.
I can be what I think of as a fellow traveller.
To travel beside someone doesn’t mean I have to see the road exactly as they do.
Maybe they’re angry. Maybe they’re hurt. Maybe their version of what happened is completely different from mine.
I can listen. I can ask questions. I can let them follow the thought all the way to its end.
Listening isn’t agreement.
I’m giving another human being room to work through what they’re experiencing without making their emotion something I have to defeat.
And when the emotion has run its course, maybe we can meet somewhere more useful.
Reality.
I can offer myself the same thing.
My emotions deserve to be felt.
They don’t automatically deserve to be obeyed.
The emotion is real.
I just don’t have to hand it the steering wheel.
And that’s really where all of this ended up for me.
I started by writing about women.
I ended up looking at myself.
Men and women may be different. Different things may trigger us. We may express those reactions differently. Those differences are worth understanding.
But understanding other people will only take me so far.
Eventually, I have to look inward.
If another person can destabilize me, I need to understand why.
If I keep finding myself in the same kinds of situations, I need to examine what I’m bringing into them.
If I repeatedly react in ways I later regret, eventually I have to stop explaining those reactions by pointing at the person who provoked them.
Someone else’s behaviour is information.
My response is my responsibility.
And maybe that’s the question worth asking yourself the next time somebody stirs something inside you.
Not:
What is wrong with them?
But:
What did they just stir in me, and why was it there?
The moment you need a villain to explain who you’ve become, you’ve given that villain far too much power.
Their choices are theirs.
Your choices are yours.
Where your lives intersect, you both leave fingerprints.
But the reins are still in your hands.
Your life belongs to you.