Episode #793
Are you noticing changes in your wife’s behavior that are causing you concern?
Do you suspect infidelity in your marriage but are unsure how to address it?
In this insightful episode, relationship expert Doug Holt provides valuable guidance on how to approach suspicions of infidelity in a marriage with understanding and maturity.
Doug explores warning signs of infidelity, such as changes in social behavior, secrecy, and a lack of interest in family activities.
He emphasizes the importance of open communication, avoiding blame, and focusing on the health of the relationship.
In this episode, you’ll learn practical strategies for addressing suspicions of infidelity, rebuilding trust, and fostering a healthy, communicative marriage dynamic.
Tune in to gain insights on navigating challenging relationship situations with grace and wisdom.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 00:01
So let’s just say an infidelity has happened. Your wife’s had an emotional affair. She’s had a physical affair. We want to do here, instead of blaming, we have to forgive. If you do not forgive, you do not move forward. Period. End of story.
You need professional help. You need to learn forgiveness. Otherwise, it’s not going to work. Let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, you have forgiven. Now you want to reset the agreement or reset the boundary. This is what I would. I want to be in a marriage. Marriage where we show up for each other in such a way that all our needs are being met by each other.
So in other words, I meet all your needs. You meet all my needs. Physically, emotionally, intellectually, or what else we need to do. We don’t have to go outside the relationship and certainly not any secrecy. Does that work for you? And now you can have dialogue. She might say, well, I don’t need intellectual stimulation for you. I get that somewhere else. And now you can talk. But once you have an agreement, reset that boundary, because the boundary has been broken. Now we need to reset it. We need to reset it officially and not make any assumptions here.
Hey, guys! Welcome back to another episode of the TPM show. So today I want to give you a trigger warning. And what I mean by that is today’s topic is going to be a little bit more sensitive for some of you. What I’m going to talk about are signs that your wife might be cheating on you, keywords might hear, and how to effectively address it. So I got some notes here. I’m going to be going through this today, but first, I do want to warn you. So I know when I’ve had this conversation with some men, it can cause some upset. Also, these are potential signs, right? So this doesn’t mean she is definitely cheating on you. These are warning signs that you want to look at.
Now, I’m going to give you ten warning signs that you can look at. We’ll talk about them in a little more detail. Stick to the end, because I’m also going to talk about how to effectively address some of these so you can get clarity in your marriage and your relationship. So first, let’s talk about infidelity. What is infidelity going through here? And we all know what infidelity is. Infidelity is breaking an agreement, usually a romantic agreement, coming through here. And there’s two main types of infidelity that I see with the men we work with. And I’m going to talk about a third one. That’s not talked about quite as often.
Now, the first one is obviously what we will call an affair, right? A physical infidelity. Now, this is obviously going to be when your partner, your wife is having sex with another man. Now, you get to define what this physical infidelity looks like for you. For some men, it could be a kiss, right? A kiss could be infidelity. For others, they say, oh, you know what, Doug? A kiss, that’s okay, right? It’s just a mishap, but it actually is intercourse. And you’ll see this come up. The reason I bring this up is I’ve talked to a lot of men who have found out that their wife has kissed, hugged, cuddled, slept with another man, but she does not consider that infidelity because there’s no penetration. This also goes with oral sex, right?
So couples sometimes will use it as an excuse, hey, a b****** or something like that. That’s not really cheating because there was no actual penetration. And you’ll see this also through stories and movies where people will. A woman will try to remain a virgin, if you will, and she’ll have a*** sex, oral sex, kissing, things of this nature. So you want to define what that physical infidelity is for you and also make sure it’s clearly defined by you and your partner.
And again, for some of you, shaking your head right now, going, Doug, you don’t need to talk about this. Like, if my wife touches another man, that’s infidelity. I get it. But I am going to tell you, because I’ve seen this so many times play out, that if you do not have a clear understanding of what infidelity means for you and an agreement with your wife, then this can cause problems. So this can cause problems if you start asking questions or addressing it, she could answer, no, of course I’m not cheating or being unfaithful. When in her mind’s eye, she’s thinking, no actual penetration. Vaginal penetration is happening. Right? And again, this is just a point of clarification you want to make sure you have so that you’re clear.
Now, the second type of infidelity I actually see far more often. This is emotional infidelity. Right? An emotional affairs we’ll typically talk about. Now, this can look in a lot of ways oftentimes. Now, with the prevalence of social media, it could be that your wife is talking to another man on social media and she starts to develop feelings for him. She starts to share intimate parts of her life, pictures. She could be sharing pictures, videos of herself, naked photos, could also be done via text message. So I usually see this the most with the men that we work with with text messaging. But oftentimes it really starts in the social media realm.
So an ex-boyfriend or a guy reaches out via messenger or some app on any one of the social media platforms. Find your wife in a vulnerable moment, right? Typically, what’s happening here, when I hear it from the woman’s point of view, is she’s feeling abandoned or she’s not feeling seen, heard and desired. Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you’ll know that we always talk about a woman needs, obviously, to feel safe emotionally, but she needs to also feel seen, heard and desired. If she’s not getting those needs met by you, her man, her husband in the marriage, she is going to seek that elsewhere.
Now, she may seek that from girlfriends, from family members, and that’s still something you want to limit, and you want to be the one to provide that for her. However, all too often, she also is going to be looking for this in another man, or it may just fall into her lap, so to speak. There’s a lot of guys out there, and I know there’s a lot of pickup games, and I know there’s whole courses on how to pick up women just on Facebook. I actually know guys that have gone through that type of course material. And then it’s a numbers game for these guys, right? They’re messaging hundreds of. Right, and some guys that are going to be less scrupulous, they’re going to do it to married women, right? Or maybe they don’t know she’s married. Maybe it’s an old fling from back in the day or a co-worker. Proximity has a lot to do with this, right? That’s what you want to look for.
So now you have this emotional affair that happens where your wife’s needs emotionally are getting met by another man. Now this jumps up in elevation again when there’s nude photos, videos, digital sex is happening, but no actual physical sex has happened at this point. It’s still just in the emotional stages.
Now, emotional affairs can last hours or they can last years, and I’ve seen them. And oftentimes, if the emotional affair lasts, a physical affair is the next step to happen. And both can be equally as damaging. In my experience, dealing with men, the physical and emotional affair, because basically your wife is going to another man to get her needs met. So these are two things that happen.
The third one, like the bonus, so to speak, one that’s not talked about infidelity is financial infidelity. And I see this happen. A lot of people say, Doug, well, that’s not really infidelity, but it can be. A lot of couples have problems when it comes to lying around finance. I’ll talk a little bit about this, but mostly I’m going to stick to the infidelity as it relates to the physical affair and the emotional affair.
And I want to give you guys some warning signs and to give you some context at The Powerful Man, we literally have thousands upon thousands of men who come through our programs. These are amazing men just like you that are coming through our program because right now their marriage isn’t working or they’re feeling stuck and unclear on their lives.
Now, today we’re going to talk about the emotional part, the relationship in the powerful man. We talk about five territories, self-health, wealth, relationships and business. And today is going to be about relationships again. So I’m going to go through that as we go through.
So what do you look for? What do you look for? To understand if there is an infidelity. Right? What are some of the common side effects or signs? I should say one is a change in communication patterns. Right? So you want to notice that if your partner has changed the way that she talks, her daily routines, when she talks to you, is she shutting down more? Is she no longer talking to you about her days? Even worse. And guys don’t realize this. Guys, even worse. If your wife stops fighting with you or arguing with you, this is a big warning sign. Right?
And why is that? Well, if you guys are in a very harmonious relationship, a very loving relationship where you’re having sex, your intimacy is great. You guys are laughing together, you’re having fun, great. Then that’s okay. But if you’re not, if you’re not having regular intimacy, connected sex and regularly sharing things, and your wife pulls away, stops arguing with you, that’s a sign that she’s completely shut down. That is a sign that she has walked away from the relationship. Also, increased vagueness and responses. Right? If she’s not answering specifics, where she’s been, how her day is, she’s giving you what we call bro answers. Good. I don’t know. Hey, how was your day? Okay. These are like, what kids would give, right? I have little kids. You ask them, how was school? Fine. They’d make those kinds of responses.
When your wife goes to this kind of energy in her communication, it is a red flag. There is certainly something wrong. Now, again, it does not mean that there is an infidelity here. But it does mean there is an issue. There’s a warning sign. Most men miss this. Why do most men miss it? Because that’s the way we talk as guys. Oftentimes, if you ask your friend, hey, how you doing? I’m doing good. How are you doing? Fine. Cool. You move on.
But that’s not the way that most women communicate. And when a woman starts shutting down, gets a little bit more vague in her responses, she starts really avoiding the conversation. That is a red flag that there could be an instance of infidelity coming through. And if she also starts reducing her interest in the daily activities and showing general disengagement, that is another sign. Another one could be if she starts texting or calling less and or you notice that she is taking in more text messages.
I’ve heard so many guys, you know, when I come home from more work, my wife is just on her phone all the time, texting or messaging on Instagram or on Facebook or wherever it may be. Whatever social media platform, you pick it, all of them are communication platforms. And nowadays you have so much private messaging that you can know you have Telegram. Gosh, I don’t even want WhatsApp. I could spend a whole podcast just listing communication platforms that people can use.
Some of them allow you to be more secretive. They’re actually basically invented for this type of activity that’s going through. If you notice that she is on her phone a lot more, there’s been a sudden change of behavior in her communication patterns. Maybe she’s sitting in the corner, or she doesn’t want you to see her phone as much, or she hides her alerts, or she takes phone calls outside when she used to take them inside.
These are all little warning signs that something is happening now, especially when it comes to communication. When she’s on her phone and she starts to have erratic behavior, especially when you are in the room, this is definitely a warning sign, guys. So number one communication, something to look out for or changes in that patterns.
Another one, altered routines and habits. Right? Does she all of a sudden have unexplained changes in her work schedule? Is she all of a sudden staying late at work or taking longer lunches or going to work earlier? And she doesn’t have really a good reason for it, or at least not a clear reason, one that just doesn’t add up. And this kind of what I talk about doesn’t pass the sniff test. There might be some logical reasons to it or potential things that she might throw your way, but when you see this start to happen as a pattern. That’s something to look for.
Also, of course, increased work trips. Right? Is she all of a sudden increasing her work trips or her out of town trips as it relates to her work or visiting friends, something she normally wouldn’t do? Now, sometimes I know guys who said, hey, look, all of a sudden, my wife, I’m going to make up this town because I don’t want to call any guys out. All of a sudden she started going to Houston on work trips and it seemed really odd, and she said that they opened up a new part of a division, but she never talks about it. And that was a red flag for this guy. He didn’t pick up on it at first, but he put those pieces together afterwards and it was really rough to hear from him because it seemed so clear in retrospect. Right? Hindsight is 2020.
So if your wife really does have to go to Houston in this example because she opened up a new division of her company or a new branch, she most likely is going to talk to you about it, right? She comes back, she’s going to talk about restaurants, about the people she met, the people she works with. Again, this goes back to communication as well. If she’s all of a sudden going to Houston, again, just using Houston as my example here, guys. So insert any town or city in the world and she doesn’t want to talk about. You’re getting these kind of short answers from her, these answers that are not very well defined.
These are red flags, guys. She’s changing her patterns. She’s changing her routines coming through or new hobbies, right? This is another one that comes up. She takes up new hobbies but doesn’t include you in them or doesn’t seem to want to include you in them. So it’s winter here, right? So if all of a sudden my wife started going skiing and doesn’t want me to go with her, doesn’t want me to go and do anything, that would be a red flag.
Now, it’s one thing for her to have her own hobbies or own interests, totally fine. But in this example, that would be something that would interest me, right? In fact, my wife and I are going skiing this week together. But if she all of a sudden starts doing that and hanging out with new friends and new hobbies and she doesn’t want you to know about it, or she doesn’t want you to participate or go if she starts playing pickleball but you’re not included in any of these pickleball games, and she has no mention of, like, oh, that’d be fun for us to play together. And she also doesn’t tell you who’s there. These are things that are going on.
And then, of course, any routines that change that seem to be out of the ordinary, one that I’ve seen quite often is all of a sudden, your wife starts to change her diet, she starts to get more fit, starts changing her dress the way that she dresses out of nowhere. You haven’t changed anything. She’s not talking to you about it, that she’s just not feeling as sexy as she used to, and she wants to for herself or for her man, but she just starts doing it. You notice that she starts eating cleaner, she’s working on her body, but it’s not for you. You know, it’s not for you. Then these are all little, again, red flags that we go through here.
The third one, right? The third one is going to be emotional distance, right? Is she pushing away from you? Does she feel more distant? Now, this is one, again, can be harder for guys because sometimes their wife might say, I just need my space. And as a man, we instantly go, okay, I’ll give you space. It’s a common thing. It’s a common reaction for most men.
However, we want to get to the reason of why does she need space? What is the root cause of what’s really going on? And if she starts to push away, she could be emotionally distancing herself from you because of guilt, shame, and of what she’s doing, right? She’s having an affair, she’s having extramarital activities, if you will, and she’s not including you in them.
So therefore, there’s naturally going to be some guilt and shame. There’s also excitement, there’s adventure and all these things that come into it. But she needs to distance herself. She needs to distance herself from you to make herself feel okay about the action that she’s coming into. Along with this is a reduction in kind of the excitement about shared plans, right? Does she stop getting excited about trips that you might be going on, or does she stop planning trips altogether? Maybe you have trips that you normally go on, maybe a spring break or a summer vacation, and all of a sudden she’s not interested in them all. She could care less if you guys are talking, if you start mentioning going to Turks and Caicos or wherever else it is that you might want to go, a place that she would normally get excited about.
If all of a sudden she’s just not interested, this is another warning sign she’s not looking at the future with you anymore right now. Of course, it doesn’t mean she’s cheating, right, guys? I want you all to understand that, but these are warning signs that something is happening. These are certainly warning signs that something bad is going on in your marriage. No doubt about that. Doesn’t mean she’s cheating. But these are ten things that I’m going to give you to watch out for that are definitely signs I see in infidelities for the guys that are going through.
And the last one with this emotionally distance is, does she just not seem present? Does she seem distracted? You might be talking to her and it kind of feels like she could care less. She’s got other things on her mind. Not you, not what you’re talking about. She’s thinking about other things in the outside world. Probably this guy, right? But not you. These are things that you just want to pick up on. Look at the subtle clues. Start noting what’s happening here. And again, I’m going to talk to you guys after we go through these ten on what you can do to communicate some of this so you can get back on track.
Number four that I have written down here on my sheet is increased secrecy. Now, this one probably sounds obvious on the offset. However, a lot of guys miss this. There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy. If you didn’t go back, go listen to the episode I did with Coach Andy Tor. He and I talk about this. The difference between privacy, which we all deserve, our privacy versus secrecy. That one’s a really good one.
But if she’s being protective of her phone or a computer, right, she’s changed her passwords. Maybe you used to know the password to her computer or to her phone, but she’s changed it. Maybe she grabs her phone every time she leaves the room to make sure you don’t see any alerts. Her phone’s always down. This is a common one. I can’t tell you how many guys I know that have found out that their wife’s having an affair, emotionally or otherwise, because for some random instance, their wife left the phone or the phone flipped over, or the guy checked the phone and found messages on there from another man, and sometimes it’s been from another woman who is a man.
There’s all kinds of things that I’ve seen happen here, but increased secrecy, unwillingness to share details of a text conversation. There’s no reason that I wouldn’t share with my wife a conversation I was having with a buddy of mine, or unless I was doing something perverted or talking trash about her, or if I was doing something secretive. Right? If I was doing something I didn’t want her to know about because I felt shame or guilt around it. Otherwise, I have no problem with it.
Now, there is a right to my own privacy, as there is to your wife’s. But again, a difference between privacy and secrecy here, as we go through. Another one, and I don’t see this one as much, but is one I wanted to note, is because guys do this more than women, in my experience, is deleting browser history. Right? There was that big thing that happened when Ashley Madison got hacked and everybody’s data got put out there into the ethos. And I knew several guys that got their hand slapped because of that. They got caught. They got caught because that was put out into the world and their wives found out. And I also know of stories of men that found their wives on that site, right. Using the email addresses. So clearing browser history is another one.
And then, of course, expenses with credit card charges. Right? So this happens more often than I would have thought of. But I see this where a woman is having an affair with a man, emotional. Otherwise, she starts buying that other man gifts. She starts spending money on the other man as she would a new boyfriend or a new person, and the guy finds out by looking at his credit card statements, going, wait a minute, what is this? I didn’t buy these things, or I didn’t get these things, so my wife bought them. This doesn’t make any sense. And they put two and two together and found out over time that she was buying gifts for this other man.
Again, she was buying gifts with his money, their money for the other guy. So unexplained credit card expenses is another one going through. And again, this is a no brainer with secrecy, but just being excluded, if she starts to exclude you from her life more and more, and her life becomes more mysterious than it had. And I get it. We want to shake it up. We want our life to be mysterious for our partner. We don’t want them to know our every move, so to speak, because you got to keep some spice in there.
But there’s a difference, again, between secrecy, right? If she is kind of lurking in the shadows, if you will, doing her own thing, really away from you and not really including you in the life, but also not telling you what she’s doing, that’s a major red flag, guys. It’s a major red flag. Here we go through here.
Now, I touched on this before, but number five is unusual expenses. Right? So again, expenditures, receipts that you see that are out of the ordinary. As an example, if she’s buying lingerie and you’re not seeing it, you might want to look at that. But also, if she’s shopping at stores that have men’s wears or men’s types of things, for lack of better term here. Again, I see this all the time literally. This is one of the things I see. Shock. It would shocked me more often than not when I’m working with men who are going through or have dealt with an infidelity is their wife spends a lot of money on these other guys, right? She’s trying to keep this other guy and allure him because she’s feeling seen, heard, and desired by this guy. So she spends money on there.
Another one is unexplained cash withdraws, cash coming in. Now, there was one story that I heard that was kind of secretive. So the wife would go out with her girlfriends, right? And they go to dinner, and then she would put the credit card down, pay for the dinner for all the girls that were there, and then have the women Venmo her the money. So she told her husband that she just paid for the ladies night out. Meanwhile, she’s getting hundreds, thousands of dollars in Venmo charges. And she’s using that money to buy this other guy, the guy she’s having an affair with, gifts to support him, to buy him food or whatever else it is, just to support this other guy using her husband’s money. So this is another one just to look for.
Okay, what’s going on here again goes back to a secretive behavior, especially around finances. Now, this also talks about financial infidelity. I mentioned that earlier, the three kinds of infidelity. I do see financial infidelity quite often.
And then privacy over financial statements is pretty obvious. But then again, new clothes and lingerie, as I explained, that’s another one. If you start seeing bags in the closet that are being hidden, that’s, again, secretive, right? She might be hiding them because you give her a hard time every time she buys something. However, if she’s buying sexy clothes and not wearing them with you, who is she wearing them with? Who is she buying them for? This becomes the problem, guys. This is where you want to look at and really understand.
Number six, changes in appearance. Again, if you start noticing she’s changing her hair color, all of a sudden she’s doing her nails where she used to not do it. She’s taking care of her physique, she’s going to the gym more. She’s hired a trainer. She’s really counting calories. She’s going, no carb, but it’s not for you. These things, as you see, they’ll stack. If she starts working out a lot, she starts buying sexy clothes, but yet she’s not talking to you about her life, and she’s pushing you out, being emotionally distant, she’s being secretive around her phone. They start to stack and they start to paint a picture of what we can believe most likely is happening, especially if they’re drastic changes.
Now, this is something a lot of guys have told me that they see in retrospect, is where their partner will make a drastic change. It’s almost as if she’s changing her identity to allow herself, to accept herself for the actions that she’s doing. So I’ll say this another way, because I think it’s an important point. Oftentimes a guy will say, in hindsight, crap. My wife changed her hair color. She started going to the tanning salon. She started working out. She dressed from business casual to something really sexy dresses or flowy dresses. Really the flowy thing I hear a lot.
And then she did all these changes. I didn’t see it coming. I thought they were for me or she was going through a phase. But reality is she is changing the way she physically looks, one to be sexier. But I also think it’s to change her identity, to really accept this new version of her. Right? It’s a new start. She has her with her husband, and now that she’s with this other guy, she starts to change who she is. And I think it allows the person to feel better. Men do the same thing, by the way. I see that happening a lot.
Coming through number seven. Man, I can’t tell you how much I see this one. Defensiveness or gaslighting. I see gaslighting happen 90 plus percent of the time. It’s something to really watch for. Guys, gaslighting is a huge sign because we don’t gaslight usually the people that we love, unless there’s something going on. So notable or increased intention and physical appearance, grooming or, excuse me, gaslighting, overacting to simple things like asking her, hey, babe, where’d you go? I noticed that you were gone or if you normally track each other’s location on your phone. My wife and I share our locations because we’re with the kids. If there’s an emergency, we don’t share it to track people, but some couples do. Right?
And maybe she has an unexplained disappearance, if you will, that’s something you want to look at. And if you ask her, just like, hey, how was lunch? Where’d you go? And she starts gaslighting you. Or if you notice receipts and you start asking her questions and you get gas lighted. Or if she just seems extremely defensive over the small things, right. It’s because she wants to make sure you don’t get to the bigger things. And a lot of times, guilt and anger are there. So this may sound counterintuitive, but your wife might blame you for her affair. She might blame you for her affair.
So I’ve said another way. She might be feeling guilty. So guilt. And if she feels shame, which is a much deeper emotion, right? So the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt. I can feel guilty of an action. I overeat ICE cream, right? I can feel guilty about that. Shameful would be if I think it’s an identity or a character flaw within me. So using cheating as an example, I can feel guilty about maybe, let’s say it’s looking at other women, but maybe the shame kicks in if I act upon that, right? And I realize, oh, I am somebody who cheats on my wife or whatever it is, the I am type statement. When that shame comes in, anger quickly follows.
Well, if I don’t want to be angry at myself, I need to be angry at you, right? I need to be angry at somebody else playing the victim card, and this will happen a lot. So when that shame comes in that anger, then the defensiveness, just really quick defensiveness can come in also making you feel guilty for asking, why are you being so controlling? Why are you always trying to figure out what I’m doing and kind of really putting you down and making you feel like it’s your insecurity that’s the problem here.
Now, again, we do have a lot of guys that will come through that. I’ll tell them, hey, man, you’re being controlling, right? Or, hey, your neediness or insecurity, that’s really the problem here. However, there’s also a reason for that. Oftentimes, guys will start to see these signs. They want to know where their partner is and if she is gaslighting him when she’s having an affair. This may come up. This may come up. I was just on a call with a guy today who found out that his ex-wife had an affair.
He knew that she had one affair, but now he found out through other means that she had multiple affairs, and they’re still in communication. He gave her the opportunity of cleaning things up. She said, no, of course, that’s the only one you know about it now. Again, remind you, they’re split up now. They’re not together. And he still finds out that she had been kind of gaslighting him, telling him essentially that he’s being crazy for thinking that there could be anything else. Right?
And again, they’re separated, so all is fair and love and war, so to speak, at that point. And he’s finding out that there was actually a lot more that he wasn’t aware of, and meanwhile he was meant. Or she made him feel crazy for asking all these questions. He was being gas light the whole time. Twisting facts to make your doubts of your own perception. Right. Again, gaslighting in another way. And I also wrote down just something I also think is an increase in arguments. If you guys start arguing a lot about these little things like her whereabouts or inconsistencies in her story and she really gets mean about them, that’s an issue.
So again, another example, if I’m going over our finances and I see something in there that’s an irregularity, and I ask my wife, she’s going to just, oh, I went to this store to buy X, Y and Z, right? Or I went to this restaurant to do this, she’s just going to tell me it’s going to be an easy, flowy conversation. Maybe there could be a charge if we’re having fights around money or so, or something like that. Or maybe if she’s buying something that she knows she shouldn’t buy. Yeah, I’m just trying to think of examples here, guys.
However, it’s going to be a pretty chill conversation. However, if she’s buying something for another man. Right? She’s going to be defensive, she’s going to defend herself, she’s going to get angry. Why are you questioning me? These kinds of things are going to come out going through.
Number eight, it’s a pretty obvious one, right? Absence without explanation. Right? And these, again, are very similar to if all of a sudden she doesn’t answer her phone when she normally does at certain times, or doesn’t explain where she is or where she went, doesn’t want to talk about it, or she doesn’t show up for dinner when she’s normally there, maybe she doesn’t show up to work and you find out from her work that she called in sick, yet she wasn’t home.
All of these things, I’ve seen them all happen or heard them all happen from men that we’ve worked with and talked to. Also know from women as well as you guys all know. My wife coaches women, so I get to hear the woman’s side of some of these, too. And all of a sudden, here’s one that a lot of guys don’t pick on is all of a sudden, if she starts going out with her friends, right, maybe she went out once a month, but all of a sudden she’s going out twice a week. That’s a huge change with her friends.
Another thing that I’ve seen happen a lot is a man’s wife’s friends become single ladies, right. She starts hanging around with more divorcees, more single women. Right? And the idea of hanging out with other married couples becomes less interesting to her. But she also used the friends as an excuse. I’ve seen this with several guys where the wife will go out with the friends, have a drink, and then she leaves her friends.
Let’s say she goes out with her friends at 06:00 they have a drink, hanging out at 07:00. She goes her own way, the friends do whatever they do, and she comes home at 11:00 p.m. saying that she was out with her friends the whole time. This is another situation that can happen because she’s out with the other guy. Not really.
Yeah. Unwillingness to share plans, schedules, that’s another thing that I’ve seen come up quite a bit. These are all behaviors and mechanisms that we want to look out for. We want to look out for in our partner and what’s going on. And again, I talked about this with friends.
Number nine, I wrote down, I got ten here for you guys. Number nine is shift in her social circle. So this again is if your wife all of a sudden starts having new friends, but she doesn’t want to introduce you to her new friends, that’s a sign. If her new friends are guys, that’s a sign. If her new friends are single women, that’s another sign. Right? Birds of a feather flock together. So you want to look at all of these things. And I’m not saying having your wife, having single friends, or even guy friends is an issue. That’s up to you to decide.
But I am saying the sudden shift in friends is a warning signal. It’s a warning sign of something going on. If your wife’s recently shift jobs, this can also happen quite a bit because proximity, right? The people that she’s close to, she’s going to want to start hanging out with, but typically she’s going to want to include her husband, her friend, her buddy, her lover, with meeting these people. And if she doesn’t want you included, that’s an issue that you also want to.
And if she’s having secret activities with these new friends, she’s going to events that she’s not really telling you much about, she’s not letting you know the where about of the house party she’s going to, or maybe she’s going to a Gala or whatever it is, but you’re not invited. These are all warning signs, certainly, as I’ve said with every one of these, these are certainly warning signs that your marriage is on the fritz if not done, but definitely warning signs that there’s another man who is in the picture.
The last one at number ten is lack of interest in family activities. This is when you can see a woman distancing herself from her role or identity as the wife, as a member of the family. Now, I don’t see this one quite as much as I see the other nine. However, it does happen, and the reason I don’t see it quite as much is, in my experience, the wife will want to be with the children, but she will distance herself from you and your family’s activities.
Now, sometime when shame and guilt kicks in, she’ll distance herself from her own family. The children tend to be last, unless they’re grown children, then that may happen, but the children tend to be the last person they distance themselves from. But they will push their own family away. They will push your family away, and certainly you as you go through here.
So, guys, again, you want to look at all of these ten things and just kind of check. Do a little gut check here of are these occurring in your life with your wife? Are they happening now? These are warning signs. These aren’t absolute signs that something’s happening. They are ways that you want to check if you’re in our private community with the powerful man and you’ve gone through our flagship program, which is called The Activation Method, we’re activating you as a man, getting activated, then that methodology. You want to post and share some of these in our private community, what you’re seeing and get some real perspective from not only our coaches, like all our coaches are in there, but also the community. We have thousands of men that are in there to help you out with that.
So how do you address this right? How do you address this moving forward, addressing your suspicions and making sure that you have open communication. Now, the first thing is, if you don’t know and you’re just suspicious, the key here is to check yourself, right? You don’t want to just come out your wife and point fingers and blame her, right? That is not the way you want to go. I remember being accused of cheating myself, which I wasn’t.
And I remember specifically after many times of being accused of cheating, of saying, look, if you’re going to accuse me of it and treat me as I’m cheating, I might as well go out and do it. If I’m getting all the punishment for cheating, but not the, quote, reward, if you know what I’m saying, then I might as well just go do the thing. It’s kind of like if you’re dieting and I don’t know, that’s a bad analogy, but if you’re getting accused of something over and over and punished for the action and you’re not doing it, and you might as well do it right at some point, like, screw it, I’m just going to do it.
So make sure you don’t come at this from an accusation point. Now, if you have hard facts, you have text messages, you have documentation, video, whatever it may be totally different story, right? I would get my ducks in a row. There’s a lot of things I would do if that was the case in my shoes before I actually brought it to fruition. I would also see a lawyer or a solicitor before I did any of that to make sure I was in a good position, because for me, that would be an ender to our marriage.
But I got to tell you that I’ve seen countless men, by the way, guys, I’ve seen countless men find out that their wife has cheated or is cheating, still join our activation method and turn things around in the marriage. I mean, it’s been absolutely phenomenal. These are all guys that swore up and down, as all of us do. If I catch my wife cheating, it’s over. I’m done. I’m out of here. But that’s not reality. You can’t make a decision or judge a man until you walk in his shoes, till you’re in that actual situation. And I get that.
So I’m just telling you, for those guys that are in this situation think you have no hope. I’ve literally seen hundreds upon hundreds of men turn this around quickly because then they change who they are. They become activated. They become somebody their wife wants to be with. They become the man that she’s always seen in him, in you and that sways her. Right now, she’s feeling seen, she’s feeling heard, she’s feeling desired, she’s feeling safe. She wants to be with her husband. Right? The man that she married, and she gets rid of the guy instantly. It doesn’t always happen, but I would say in the upper 90 percentile. I see that happen when the guy becomes activated.
So you want to approach this in a very calm manner. So we teach something in The Activation Method called the Hidden Motives Technique. It’s a specific technique. We’re going to have a whole training course that’s going to be available, men all around the world, business owners or not.
And I’ll let you guys know that’ll be available here probably in March of 2023, if not April. Excuse me. 2024, if not April. So that’ll be available. We’ll put that out, but we’ve done a lot of podcasts on that. You don’t want to go into this conversation. Charged. What do I mean by charged? You don’t want to come into it p*****. You don’t want to come into it where you’re not feeling your best self. This could take time. I recommend breath work. Sometimes when I need to have a difficult conversation that I’m triggered, I’ll watch comedy beforehand, right? Try to get myself in a lighter energy before I enter that conversation. I do this in business a lot, so if I’m in a tough business conversation or I’m mad that somebody didn’t follow through one of my staff, I’ll watch a little bit of stand-up comedy or something to change my perspective and my mood. Take some breaths, and then I’ll go into that conversation. I generally get a much better outcome than me just charging like a bull in a china shop.
So you want to make sure you’re calm about this. You also want to make sure you express your feelings without blaming. Right? So not saying you do this, you did that. You want to explain what’s happening on your side of the street. So I’ll give you an example of what that could look like. This will be just an example. Hey, babe. I noticed when I come home, it seems like you’re on your phone all the time and you’re not really talking to me about what’s going on. Let’s understand what’s coming up, what’s happening here, because I’m starting to create stories, and that’s not what I want for us.
So can we sit down and have a conversation? It can be something like that. I’ve never blamed her. I did say she’s on her phone a lot, but that’s something I’m just noticing. But I’m also describing what’s happening for me. I’m starting to create stories, and I don’t want that. I’m also future pacing what I do want in the future, which is for us to be together. And the key here is to encourage honest dialogue and let her know this is a safe space. I just want to let you know this is a completely safe space. I realize that maybe we haven’t been as connected as we used to be, and I just want to let you know this is safe. Let’s just have an open and honest dialogue as people who fell in love with each other back when we got married, or I really just want to know your side of things, and then you got to do this, guys.
And this is the hardest thing for most men. You’ve got to listen. That’s right. You got to listen. Do not interrupt her, do not blame her. Do not fly off the handle. Just listen. This is where we use the analogy of being the lighthouse in the storm. The lighthouse doesn’t turn on its lights and off its lights when it’s convenient for the lighthouse, regardless of the weather and the storm, the lighthouse always remains on, always remains consistent. That’s what you want to look at for here. So don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t interrupt, just listen.
The second thing is getting coaching, right? And I know I’m biased on this, but it’s worked so well in my life, and I’ve seen thousands and thousands of other men just like you and work with through our programs. But you don’t have to do our program, right? You don’t have to do The Activation Method. Maybe that’s just not the right fit for whatever reason. But do something. Get some third person professional help, right? Get some third person advice and help on how to have these conversations. How exactly, based on your situation, should you approach this? And this is where you could bring in somebody with your wife if you want to.
Now, for me and most of the men I know, marriage counselling just doesn’t work. It didn’t work for me. Tried it three times. It sucked. It made things worse. And I would say 85, 90% of the men I talk to, same thing just makes things work. Looks like it feels like you’re looking in a rear view mirror bringing up the past time and time again, and you end up arguing more.
But get a coach, get some third person advice. Could be a clergy member at your church, could be somebody else, temple, synagogue, wherever you go to worship. That could be somebody. Maybe they have a program there or an elder you can talk to. Maybe there’s a family member that you can speak to. That you deeply respect a coach is great. If it’s a really good, well trained coach, they’ll be trained in what to do to help you through this. Our coaches are specifically trained for this situation so they can help you be the best version of yourself as you bring this to the forefront.
Number three, avoiding confrontation. Again, this comes back to communication. Right? Don’t become accusatory. You did this. I noticed you bought this lingerie, and I haven’t seen any of it, so you must be cheating on me. Maybe she’s waiting for a special occasion with you. There’s all these possibilities that could be there, guys. So don’t fly off the handle and let your emotions take the best of you. It’s good to be emotional, but do not be accusatory on this. But do talk about the impacts. Right? The impacts of her behavior. Like if she’s being secretive or it seems like she’s going out with. I use that skiing or pickleball reference, she’s playing these new sports or activities, or she has a new social circle, talk to her how it impacts you.
Not what she’s doing, but what impacts for you. Right? Don’t say, well, now you’re going out with all these girlfriends to God knows what hour, to where you’re going, and this is ridiculous. Don’t be that guy. Talk to her about it. Right? Hey, babe, when you’re going out at night and I don’t know where you are, it really makes me feel uneasy because my job as your man is to be your provider and your protector, and I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are.
Does that sound reasonable to you? So the way I did that, I’m inviting her in. I’m telling her why this is an issue and what’s occurring for me on my side of the street there. So you definitely want to stay composed while you’re doing this. Again, breath. Work is really good. Deep breaths. What I used to do when I first started this journey in my relationships is I would count to ten before I spoke. I’d hold my breath and count to ten, and this prevented me from interrupting. I talk fast, I think fast. And so if someone pauses sometimes, I want to jump in and talk. That was my behavior or my habit. So what I did in heated conversations is I’d quietly sit there and count to ten. Now, some people say, just count for five, right? But I needed for myself to be 10 seconds. That worked well for me. Again, some people do 5 seconds, whatever works for you, but give her that time. And there’s magic in that silence. In that silence, some people start sharing deeper secrets or other things that are going on now.
Number four, what I want you to do is focus on the health of the relationship. Focus on what you want, right? Emphasize what you want in there and acknowledge your wife’s needs. If you start to notice these things coming up where she’s withdrawing, she has a new circle of friends, she’s on her phone more, whatever it may be that’s changed or disrupted, or maybe you have all of these address her needs, something you might not know because we’re not taught about marriage and relationships really is.
You might say, hey, babe, I’m listening to this podcast on relationships, and I realize that at the core, all women need to be seen, heard and desired by their man. And I noticed I haven’t been showing up in that way to make you feel seen, heard and desired. Yes, I can repeat the words you say, but not heard to a level that you really want to. And I want to just let you know that I’m here to do that. I’m going through a program called The Activation Method, which is teaching me all these things or whatever it is for you, but you want to focus on the relationship health. Like, what’s the health of the relationship and what do you want? What are the things that you want? I want us to be connected. Talk in the positive, not, I don’t want this to happen. I don’t want that to happen.
Start telling her what it is you do want. I want you to come home and feel like you’re safe. I want you to come home and be excited with me. Make sure that she understands what it is you do want, not just the things you don’t want coming in and reflect the values you have and reflect how you can build trust. Now, if trust has been broken, right, she’s had an emotional affair, she’s a financial affair, a physical affair, or just trust has been broken, start talking about how you can rebuild that trust. And maybe the trust has been broken both ways. A lot of women I’ll talk to will say, well, I don’t trust my husband will do what he says he’s going to do. He said he was going to fix the sink. He said he was going to do this. He said he takes out the trash, but he doesn’t do it.
Now, these are small things, granted, but those small things add up also. The perception now is she can’t trust you. And maybe you can’t trust her because she’s on her phone or whatever else might be going on. So you got to find out what’s one thing we can do together to rebuild our trust. What’s one thing I can do for you to rebuild my trust with you and start working towards those.
And the last one I’m going to throw here is things you can do if post infidelity, if things happen, you really want to start talking about what agreements are available. Boundaries and agreements. So boundaries. We did another podcast on the differences between the two of these recently. So the difference or what we want to talk about are what are hard boundaries for you guys? So let’s just say an infidelity has happened. Your wife’s had an emotional affair. She’s had a physical affair. What we want to do here, instead of blaming, we have to forgive. If you do not forgive, you do not move forward. Period. End of story. Right? Just let’s stop there. You need professional help. You need to learn forgiveness. Otherwise, it’s not going to work.
Let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, you have forgiven. Now you want to reset the agreement or reset the boundary? I want to be in a marriage. This is what I would say. I want to be in a marriage where we show up for each other in such a way that all our needs are being met by each other. So in other words, I meet all your needs. You meet all my needs physically, emotionally, intellectually, or what else we need to do. We don’t have to go outside the relationship and certainly not in any secrecy. Does that work for you? And now you can have dialogue. She might say, well, I don’t need intellectual stimulation for you. I get that somewhere else. And now you can talk. But once you have an agreement, reset that boundary, because the boundary has been broken.
Now we need to reset it. We need to reset it officially and not make any assumptions here. That’s going to be huge. And then highlighting the importance of healing. Right? Healing is a process. Talking about how you’re going to do this, are you going to tell the children? Are you going to tell your kids about this? Are you going to tell family members about the infidelity? Are you going to tell friends? What are you going to do to work on yourself? Don’t think you can just sweep this under the rug, guys. You do have to do your work. Otherwise it’s going to rear its eagle, it’s going to rear its ugly head at you again. You have to do the work. Have to do the work to clean up your side of the street. You have to do the word, the work to make yourself a better man, or it’s going to come up, and it might come up in this subtle way of you avoiding it or what have you. She’s going to pick up on that energy.
And unfortunately, I’ve seen this time and time again. The pattern reproduces itself. She goes out, she cheats again, she has another infidelity because you’ve withdrawn. She’s not getting her needs met. And this just happens again and again.
So really, the key here, if you look at this, is really taking into consideration all of these, right? What exactly is going on in your marriage to cause these things to happen? What exactly are you on those ten points that I gave you? What is happening? Look at it. Look at the whole picture. Sometimes we have to remove ourselves, and one way you can do that is imagine that you’re sitting in a theater watching a movie, and that movie in the screen in front of you is your marriage.
If you were to watch that marriage on that movie screen, how is that couple behaving? Give yourself a scale of the traditional one, one to ten. If you are below an eight consistently, on a scale of one to ten, then you need to do something and you need to do something today. Right in the moment of insight. Take massive action. I always say, do something today. Now, you don’t have to invest in the powerful man. That’s fine. Do something else. Do something to continue your education, continue your growth, but you need to do something today.
If you’re slipping in and out of an eight, but you’re mostly there, you’re good. You’re probably good. You might want some skills to keep you up there. I’d recommend it. Always sharpen the saw, right. Stephen Covey talks about this. Always want to sharpen the saw. However, if you’re like most people, like a guy I talked to earlier said, we’re usually a three. Doug, if I’m being honest, well, that’s huge. That’s a huge red flag.
Now, there might not be an infidelity in his case, there was. But if there’s not an infidelity involved, there’s going to be something coming up and that’s going to be what we want to avoid here, right? There’s going to be a divorce. Or if there’s not a divorce, then you’re living a life in quiet desperation where she just thinks, this is my lot in life and I guess I have to suck this up in this marriage. You don’t want that for her, you don’t want that for you. You don’t want your kids to emulate that your kids will copy what you and your wife do. They will. They just will.
How many times as a man, have you got yourself acting or doing mannerisms as your father does? I catch myself doing that right where I swore I would never do it. But it happens because of the programming. Your kids are going to repeat the patterns of your marriage as well. So take action.
Now, guys, I hope you don’t find yourself in this situation. Unfortunately, statistics tell me differently. A lot of us will. So I’m going to tell you right now, look for the warning signs. Nip it in the bud before it becomes a problem. Ideally, get to the bottom of things, remain calm, get some help, and take massive action. Gentlemen, that’s a wrap for us today. I’ll see you next time on the TPM show.
All right, guys, that’s a wrap for this episode. But as I always say in the moment of insight, take massive action. You see, there are two types of men that listen to a podcast like this, those that go on from one podcast or show to another just hoping things are going to change and realizing that they’re going to be in the same place month after month, year after year.
You see, I was this guy so I completely get it. You may just not be ready. But there’s also a second man, a second man that listens to a show just like this. And this is a guy who takes massive action so they can shorten the learning curve, compress time, and get RESULTS to be the WOLF. See, WOLF is an acronym for Wise, Open, Loving, and Fierce.
Now ask yourself, which one am I? And just be honest with yourself there. And there’s no judgment on my end. But if you’re ready to move from deactivated DEER mode, which is Defend, Excuse, Explain, and React to activated WOLF, Wise, Open, Loving and Fierce, then go over to thepowerfulman.com/grow. And go there now. In fact, I’ll make it super easy for you. I will even put the link right in the description here so you can just click it and go over there now to learn more. Guys, in the moment of insight, take massive action. Go from deactivated to activated, because like I said, life is too short for average and I’ll see you on the next episode!
