Episode #70
Settling in a relationship starts by settling within yourself.
Settling for the life you are living and your standard as a man.
We often complain about many things that lack in our relationships and we tend to blame our partners, but in reality, the problem is within ourselves.
The problem is not with the marriage…but with yourself.
In this episode, we talk about HOW to recognize your faults and be aware of what is ACTUALLY happening.
In order to make a change, you need to RAISE YOUR STANDARDS. If you don’t do the work and make the change, you will end up carrying the same pattern into your next relationship.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Finding your inner peace
- Raising your standard and stepping up
- How to settle in a relationship
- How to settle within yourself
- Knowing what is really important in a relationship
- How our behaviors affect or change the behaviors of the people around us.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Holt 0:00
I believe what happens nine times out of ten is, when the man raises his standards and steps up to the standards and completes them and achieves them and acts like that daily, then all of a sudden, they realize that they’re not settling for their partner. Their partner was paying for them, and they were settling for the relationship that they were in. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of “The Powerful Man Show.” I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthew. Tim, how is it going, brother?
Tim Matthews 0:37
Rolled off the tongue, man, didn’t it? And over the past few episodes, we’ve had a few bumps in the road with your intro, but it did well end. I liked it rolled off the tongue.
Doug Holt 0:46
I always aim to make you happy, my friend.
Tim Matthews 0:49
It’s a good rule to live by. If I were in your life, I would be happy to live by that rule.
Doug Holt 0:58
Awesome, Tim. Well, do you have a topic that you wanted to bring to the table for this episode? Let’s talk about it.
Tim Matthews 1:04
Awesome. So I put up a post in the Facebook community a couple of days ago. And he said, what is the number one reason for a relationship breaking? Now, a lot of the guys have commented on that. I think there were 100 plus comments because all the different guys shared their different experiences. And I looked through them, and there was a theme, there was an apparent common thread. And it was summed up well in one of the comments by one of the men, and he said, you settled in the first place. And I was like, oh hoo, Wow! he said that one thing that so many men sometimes, often, quite honestly, I think it works both ways too often think it’s sometimes crossed their mind did I settle when I married this person, and you have a fantastic marriage. So I want to bring this to the table and dissect this and pull this apart. So we can dive into the truth behind this in the hope of giving these excellent listeners some nuggets that they can take away and make use of.
Doug Holt 2:16
Let’s do it.
Tim Matthews 2:17
So tell me, how would you approach this? And I know we had a little bit of a chat. Before the episode started, you said something poignant, and what did you say?
Doug Holt 2:29
Well, first of all, thank you. Well, I’ve been in this situation, Tim, where I asked myself, did I settle in my marriage at one point, and to your topic, my wife asked this question to herself too, part of that maybe hard to believe. But what it comes down to or what it came down to, for me, and fast forward eight years later now to working with the men we’ve worked with, is it comes down to settling within yourself. You agree to your standard within you. As a man, you’re paying for the life that you’re living. And that’s really what we as men are worried about. We’re concerned about not living up to our potential. I posted that quote into The Brotherhood membership group that the definition of Hell is meeting the man you could have been. That’s the definition of Hell, the man you didn’t get to become, but you could have been this guy. And I think what we do is as men, in general, and I’ll just speak about men because that’s what we deal with, if we’re looking for something external of ourselves, okay, I’m not fulfilled, it must be my wife. She doesn’t cook or do the dishes or give me blow jobs, or she doesn’t have the butt as the girl does on the cover of the magazine, whatever that may be. And what’s going on is we’re looking outside of ourselves, for places that we’re settling, when the truth is, we’re deciding within ourselves.
Tim Matthews 4:11
Hmm, so true. We see, as so often done when the guys come into The Activation Method, struggling with their relationship. We’ve had it so many times when you probably don’t know this, but I’ve been on enrollment conversations with the guys, and I don’t know the time they tell me after they’ve joined the group, but their wife comes up to them, hands on the cards and says that you are doing this. Because they’ve just reached the point in their relationship where they just cannot continue in the way that things are. So the men come into The Activation Method. Usually, there’s a problem in the relationship. And often, the men are searching outside of the association for something to try and satisfy them and fulfill them. They’re not then able to give it to themselves, and that projection of blaming everybody else and looking outside of themselves, as you said, then goes on to their wife.
And then obviously if the wife’s arguments are going back and forth and you come home from working all day, you’re tired and stressed. You’ve worked hard, and you walked through the door, and she just doesn’t get it, she doesn’t understand how hard you’ve worked, and you know she doesn’t get that I’m doing this all for us I’m doing this I’m building our dream, and all the stories that go through your head are pretty easy for those projections to snowball. And the most significant shifts that we see in the men that come through that traditional method in a relationship is when they’re able to find that inner peace within themselves and rediscover their purpose and unlock their power. Because what happens is then they take control of their lives, and then they rediscover how powerful they really can be, and that doesn’t come from ego or force or hustle or grind. It’s really from knowing who they are and knowing what they want, and that always has a ripple effect in the relationship, so how did you shift through this in your relationship with Aaron.
Doug Holt 6:21
Great question. I was lucky enough to be doing the work, right the inner work on myself during this time we’re all on different journeys. We go through this, and I say this because I started to notice a pattern when I look externally at myself. I was smart enough to realize it’s like looking in the mirror. There’s one commonality: one person is staring back at you. I knew that was me, and I knew if I left this relationship or my relationship with Aaron because I was settling, you see the thought that I was settling at the time. I would take in the same baggage and error energy and everything else into the next relationship.
And once I realized that was true, I started to look where else in my life I was settling, and I started looking. I was settling; you know I wasn’t traveling as much as I wanted to hear. I’m in a hotel right now, and I just literally drove across the United States from New England to bend Oregon. Back then, I wasn’t traveling near as much as I wanted to. I wasn’t taking charge or ownership, and my finances, you know to the level that I felt. I should if I weren’t for your know-how, would have been for me not living up to the standard that I saw myself in this guy that I want it to be, and when I realized that it became one of those you know situations where it’s don’t throw rocks if you live in a glass house you know. When we talk to couples about, you know, marriage and relationship counseling, we often use the idea of don’t judge your neighbor’s house right, clean up your side of the street first.
If your house is perfect, and I mean perfect, guys. Immaculate. It’s edged that swept the house freshly painted, and the windows are sparkling clean. Not a spot on the inside is clean. Everything is perfect within you, then you can look at your neighbor, but let’s be honest, that never exists. And so Tim, that’s where I started to look like, what are my faults? And I know this may be hard for you to understand, but I found a lot of responsibilities within me, and I started working on those. And when I started working on those my faults. Suddenly, I started realizing all Aaron’s greatness, and it became more and more evident that I wasn’t settling. I was like, Oh shit, hopefully, she doesn’t wake up and realize all this stuff.
Tim Matthews 8:53
Yeah, I don’t know what it’s like to explore faults, and I live in that house. Now the immaculate home, that’s me. you’ve been listening to this show for a while, and you’ll know that I dive any
Doug Holt 9:04
you are perfect. Thank you.
Tim Matthews 9:07
Perfect. Yeah. And he’s as you say this Doug, it’s so true. When I was in a few episodes ago, we spoke about how I was navigating my relationship, growing pains. And I think one of the biggest things for me then and realizing that you know what, I’m just going to repeat the same pattern with the next woman and the next woman in the next woman. Because it’s got nothing to do with the relationship and everything to do with me. And the lack that I experienced in the relationship was a lack that was experienced in myself. But it was easier for me to blame the relationship because it was easier to go there, right?
It’s easier to blame everything outside of ourselves and to turn that mirror around and take ownership. All faces are tricky. One can be a bit of a dent to the ego, especially if you do anything. Like the guys that we work with who are typically high-flying businessmen, they used to call the shots, they used to be in charge, and they used to be the man. They used to have all the answers. And suddenly, they’re in this uncharted territory where things are not working, and they don’t know how to fix it. And if you are listening to this, and you are resonating with this. I said at the start, and I want to give you some nuggets. I think Doug’s giving you the first one there, realizing that first of all it’s not a problem in the marriage, or it’s doubtful, there’s going to be a problem in the union. And instead, it’s a problem within yourself, and you get to look at yourself first to find out where you are settling in the other areas. So when you did that, Doug, after that, then what did you do?
Doug Holt 10:48
Well, I got to work on myself. Tim, it comes down to standards, like where are your standards within you, and what you’re willing to tolerate in a relationship, because some guys are settling, quite frankly. But what they’re settling for is they’re settling for their standards within themselves. And I’ll share my story as well. But I think what’s happening is they’re settling for what they’re allowing their partner, how allowing their partner to speak to them, how they’re allowing their partner to treat them. And what we forget, guys, is we train the people who are trained here on how we’re to be treated. Instead, another way if your wife is nagging you, you’ve been that way. For some reason, she found that nagging you gets the result that she wants. If your staff doesn’t, don’t listen to you, you’ve trained them not to listen to you counter that with your staff listens to you, and jumps, whenever you say something, you’ve trained them to do that as well.
So in recognizing that whatever you’re complaining about settling, you have most likely trained that person to perform in such a manner that has gotten you that result, the result you have. So for me backing up Tim, once I realized with my wife I’m settling, I started to realize my faults; I set out to list the things I didn’t like, but also the things I loved about my wife kind of that classic, I can’t think of what’s it’s called, I’m going to call it T chart, for some reason. But you have on the left-hand column, you have your pros on the right-hand column, the cons, right. I’ve done these in relationships before. Sometimes we either always remember the bad things or always remember the good. I started to list all her amazing qualities, all the amazing things that she has currently had, and at the time, of course, and in looking at that, I saw that she had everything that I wanted. There were a few things here and there I didn’t like, or thought could be improved, or what least wanted to be improved upon, or things that were different than I’m used to, or my expectations of what a partner or wife, in this case, should be doing. And I used that word on purpose. And I started to look at those from an analytical standpoint, in a perspective of Okay, is this true? It’s kind of like cognitive therapy. Is this true here of what my thoughts and actions are? And it’s easy to get attracted to another woman. Especially a woman who possesses those traits you see missing in your partner, and then think, wow, I’m settling because this other woman over here, she does that, right. And I could have that, whatever that may be.
Now, again, that could be because she laughs at my jokes, too. She’d be willing to give me massages and blow jobs all day. But we don’t know what’s on the other side of that; we don’t know all the things she may not do. this other woman next to this case, or we may not know, all those things our current partner is doing that we take for granted, especially if we don’t realize our love languages and our partner’s love language. Right? That could be she could be giving me complete and total love. But I could be completely missing its reception or receiving it because she may be doing it in a way that’s just foreign to me. A perfect example is my wife shows love by spending time with you. Right? So in this case, spending time with me is the way that she showcases her love. It’s also the way she gets it. Conversely, quality time is almost the lowest on my list. Doing things for people is expensive.
So I’ll run around the house. I’ll do things I’ll fix things in the house I’ll you know, do things to help her out or work on her marketing for her own coaching company, everything that she’s doing, and she’s like, Great, awesome. And then she’ll just want to sit down on the couch and hang out. And I’ll be like, Well, what do you mean? It’s horrible. So we’ll miss each other there and miss the actual unsaid communication, which can lead somebody to think that they’re settling. Even though that’s not the case at all, you have to get into awareness of what’s happening. So for me, Tim, what I did in a situation was take stock in all the things that I had and had to be grateful for in the relationship. And that looked at those things I felt I should have that didn’t write those I felt I was settling for. And so, where could I take ownership of these? Where was I training my wife or my partner? To treat me this way? Or to do these things? And do they matter? Do they matter to me and the end game? And the answer was no, and they were all just little things anyway. Right? Those things, we complain about just a little stuff. And that’s really what they were. And lastly, what I went through this process is I looked at where I was? not stepping to the line in The Powerful Man, we talk about standards, but what we say is, why e are you not stepping to the line? Why are you not stepping up? And that list was much, much longer than the list of complaints that I had for my wife.
Tim Matthews 16:20
Guys, I’m interrupting this episode because I want to know, do you feel bored, burnout or broken? Discover the system that over 300 businessmen use to let go of the grind, find inner peace, and unlock unlimited personal power. So they can have more time, more intimacy, and better sex while living a life they love. Without stressing about work, or feeling like a fraud, head over to ThePowerfulMan.com/11 to see what this is all about. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
Tim Matthews 16:59
I love it. And I’m glad that you ended on that point. Because I think the most significant shift that we see for the men is when they return home after The Alpha Reset. And obviously, alpha reset is all about stepping into the line right in their three vision, getting clear on what they want, feeding into what you see here, identifying why not step into line. And then, when they go home, they step to the bar and take care of their side of the street without pointing blame at their wife or even trying to change their wife. What happens you’ve seen the messages we get of time and time and time again, with sex three times on the lawn in the middle afternoon, don’t even care about the neighbors.
Also, those crazy stories because they rediscover that spark and that passion for one another. And it mainly comes from the guy taking care of himself, rediscovering who he is and what he wants, and where he’s not stepping for line, stepping into the bar and then for the woman that she then feels a sense of freedom where she can then be herself as well. She feels relief because finally, her man is stepping up and all of that nagging. Those arguments are only the things they may have experienced before, one knowledge no longer stands for that, like communicating that with love, and that’s sexy as Hell to the woman anywhere. But there’s much less of that anywhere. Because the blame game isn’t going on. There’s so much greater environmental energy that’s been experienced between the two. So it’s, I always love receiving those text messages. You can be guaranteed after every offer reset, there were like five or six that come through from the guys will continue to come through for two or three days afterward is excellent. I love it.
Doug Holt 18:57
Well, absolutely. And when it’s interesting that you say that, Tim, because what happens for us is when we change our behaviors, magically, I say it sarcastically, but magically the people around us change. And really, they’re reacting to our energy. As a man, if we’re leading from the front leading our family, our businesses, the people around us change. So if you were always an asshole, for example, and even if you didn’t think you were, if you kind of look back at it. One way to check is how many friends do you have? Right? A common complaint about men is I don’t have any friends. Well, one of the reasons you might be a jerk, he may not think you are but maybe believe you are sarcastic and funny.
It comes down to just not being a good person, but the point is suddenly, and you become loving. You’re friendly, and as you said, they go back without judgment and do the little things right. They didn’t realize that they were leaving their underwear all over the floor, and their wife had to pick up after him like their mother. They clean these little things up, and then they make a drastic change in their energy. Right in their inner way, in their way, and then they notice the people around them all shift. It’s like this magic happens, their whole world changes, everybody, all of a sudden that their wife that they were settling for becomes this as you said, this amazing sexual goddess for them. And it is impressive.
The only thing that’s changed in them. They’ve raised their standards; they stopped settling for the man they were being and changed the way they were, which created a space for their partner, their wife, to change and step into something new. And that’s when we talked about the beginning of the show you brought up it’s my settling for my wife, I believe what happens nine times out of 10, it’s almost like a 9.8 type thing at a ten is, when the man raises his standards and steps up to it, that’s a huge difference. You can have means and not step up, Tim. But when they grow their standards, and step up to the standards and complete them and achieve them, and act like that daily, then all of a sudden, they realize that they’re not settling for their partner. Their partner was settling for them, and they were settling for the relationship that they were in, for sure—100%. But the relationship is three things. It’s the man, and it’s the woman in this case. And the third entity is the relationship as a whole. Right could be man and man. But in this case, it’s the third relationship, and the connection is what they’re settling for. It’s not the partner that they’re paying for.
Tim Matthews 21:45
So true. And we see it. Well, time and time again, though, this also filters into the other areas of life because, as we know, all the territories are touching, right? And often, the reason why the men have wound up in The Activation Method in the first place as maybe you’re experiencing this, too, I know, this is my approach for many years, is that we have the territory’s foot on the head. So the guys are focused on the business territory first. And whereas once they go through the off reset, business comes last, it’s not that they’re striving to achieve in this area they do. But they realized the truth about themselves that they need to focus on the first territory of self first. That’s number one, then it’s health, then it’s relationships, then it’s wealth, and then it’s business. And by doing this, thus, this is when they’re able to live a life, they’re able to take charge of their life, instead, and lead the life and enjoy their success with the people that they love , then finally feel fulfilled, without worrying about work or feeling like they don’t deserve it. It’s so simple when you’ve been through it. But looking back, it seems so simple, but it just doesn’t feel like it at the time does it. I mean, I remember when I was there, it was the relationship. I felt like that was the problem. And I was trying to fix the problem by doing more things there. But that wasn’t where I needed to spend my time and energy. So the great thing about this, like I said, Guys, as well as experiencing considerable changes in their relationships, they then went and experienced a vast increase in profits. Working less business runs more accessible opportunities opened up for them to lose weight, the happier is just fantastic to see.
Doug Holt 23:43
Yeah, it is. And it all started at the same Time when the guys come in, they go through the system, and it’s self-reflection, and seeing things in different ways and doing it in a very systematic, orderly fashion. Because if not, you need to get caught spinning the wheels. You don’t have optics on yourself. We were talking to a man recently, who had the story about how everything was going great. Yeah, I’m doing the work; everything’s going amazing. And all these, all these state things. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to call this person out personally, but they were delusional. And by all accounts, I mean, you could see it like the perception or at least the story they were telling us about themselves was 100% false, and I think they believed it. But they were wondering why everything their relationships included was crumbling around them. And that’s where optics in somebody else really helping you outcomes in handy because you don’t know what you don’t know. Right? A common question is Tim, I’ll ask you this, but if you had the opportunity to understand what Amelia thought of you, would you want to know.
Tim Matthews 25:00
Yes.
Doug Holt 25:02
We all do. But what would you do if you had the option of really knowing about yourself? By the lies you were telling yourself, the bravado, the fake truths you’re telling yourself? Would you want that?
Tim Matthews 25:18
For sure, yeah.
Doug Holt 25:19
Oh, that’s 10x clarity right on yourself because you can’t affect Amelia, your partner, but you can influence yourself. And it’s all too often that men aren’t willing to invest the time and resources into that kind of development. And it’s a shame. Everybody says, Yeah. God, I’d love to have those optics and, and that insight of knowing that seeing my blind spots, but all too often, men don’t take the steps because they’re scared. They’re afraid to dedicate too much time is too much money. Or what will people think of me? It’s usually one of those three things. This falls directly into settling, settling for your partner, and settling for yourself.
Tim Matthews 26:04
And to be fair, I can understand why they can get stuck as well. I can remember when I was there, and I was afraid to ask for help because I felt like I should do this. And I felt like asking for help. Man I’d failed. And he meant that if there’s something wrong with me. And I was a failure, and I wasn’t good enough. So it was like, Oh, no, I know, I need to ask for help. I’m not going to do this on my own. But at the same time, I go there, and I’m admitting defeat. But what you want to do is there are two types of guys is; the guy that goes out and realizes that asking for help isn’t a failure at all. It’s a real success. As a guy who wants to continue being a lone wolf on the path on his own, and there’s a guy that’s coming to mind for me right now who has gone through, I think he’s been married five times. And each time, the divorce cost him 200,000. Because he’s gone through this exact scenario, it felt like he was settling. He didn’t know himself and didn’t know what he wanted. And he just moved on to the next person but took everything with him.
Doug Holt 27:09
Because he never listens
Tim Matthews 27:11
He, you tell me, because he never took time out to reflect like, holy shit, I’m the common denominator here. It’s a to-do. To summarize, leaving these beautiful people with three actionable items that they can do right now, what would they be?
Doug Holt 27:33
Well, first of all, guys, I’ll say it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. If you’re down this path, and you’re catching yourself in any of this. These are society movies; they’ve made you believe in this construct, mainly so they can sell you stuff. And so it’s not your fault. It’s getting clearer. So what are the top three things? Let me think about that. The first one is, get clear on where you are. Get radically honest with where you are. The second one is, what are the complaints where you think you’re settling with your partner? Right? Is it just looks? Is it something else? Like, get clear on that? Ask yourself multiple times.
I wish my wife or my partner were sexier. Okay, if she was sexier, what does that mean to you? Well, if she was sexier than I’d want to have sex with her more, okay, then go down that line of thinking, then when you get clear on that, ask yourself, where if I’m asked, this is what I’ll do. Flip the script, read and answer those two questions. The third one, if Doug interviewed my partner, what would my partner say about me? And where am I not stepping to the line? And then get clear. If the answer is your partner, if your partner wouldn’t tell me anything, because you’re perfect, well, then great, move on. But if there are things for you to work on, that’s where I would focus. That’s where I would focus my energy, not on Am I settling, but where can I as a man get better. And what will happen, guys, is if you can work on those areas, the things that you complain about, your partner will disappear, not because they’ve changed, they may change I hope they do for you know if they need to, but because you’ve changed, you’ve made the shifts. And that’s where the magic is.
Tim Matthews 29:25
That’s fantastic. I’m going to come back and re-listen to this. I love listening to our episodes. So guys, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you’ve taken some value from this. Please do leave us a review. We’d love to get this out to more men and even women to help better the movement. So wherever you are, wherever you are doing, I hope you have a terrific dead dog. Thank you for your time, and we’ll catch you next time, guys.
