Episode #859
Do you ever feel like your wife has built a wall around herself, making it hard for you to connect? Are you struggling to understand why she seems critical or distant, despite your efforts?
In this episode, we explore the dynamics of how women can become “hard” and how this impacts marriages. Our guest, Mo Parks, shares her insights on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways women develop protective barriers and how men can help soften these defenses to rebuild intimacy and trust.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The signs of a “hard” woman and the underlying reasons behind her behavior.
- How men may unintentionally contribute to their wives’ emotional walls.
- Practical strategies for husbands to take the lead in softening their wives and fostering a more emotionally safe environment.
- The importance of consistency and owning past mistakes in breaking down barriers.
Join us for an insightful discussion on creating deeper, more meaningful connections in your marriage.
Hungry for more?
Head over to our BONUS page for special access to some of the deeper tactics and techniques we’ve developed at The Powerful Man.
Also listen on:
Transcription
Mo Parks 0:00
In my friend groups and in marriages, and watching marriages is women becoming harder and harder and harder.
Tim Matthews 0:07
So describe to me what it looks like for a woman to be hard. One
Mo Parks 0:12
of the most defining factors of a hard woman is a woman with a wall a wall up. And I was talking to some of the guys in The Brotherhood about this, and they were like, yeah, like, I’ve done my clean slate letter, like I’ve done the right things, and she’s just hard and or she has this wall up, she has this wall up. And I said, Well, have you owned your side of the wall?
Tim Matthews 0:43
You guys, do you ever struggle with a wife who is being critical, domineering and maybe just a little bit hard? You find it difficult to open her up, for her to be affectionate, for her to be understanding, and as a result, the bedroom has become more like a desert, and no matter what you do, it just never seems to be enough. Well, if any of that resonates, then today’s show may help. Miss mo parks. How are you?
Mo Parks 1:16
I’m doing good. How are you?
Tim Matthews 1:18
I’m great. You’re relaxed.
Mo Parks 1:21
I’m relaxed. I don’t know anything about a domineering woman at all.
Tim Matthews 1:26
Good. Don’t think you would. So you brought this topic to the table, yeah, which is a great one. I’m curious. Why did you want to talk about this?
Mo Parks 1:34
Um, honestly, I just have a vision one day of us being able to serve women and in correlation with the men that we already serve and their marriages. And one of the things I see most often in my friend groups and in marriages and watching marriages is women becoming harder and harder and harder again, kind of like how you described it, but I think it’s one of the biggest things that stands in the way for a lot of women to creating the marriage that they want. And yeah, I think there’s ways that guys can help soften that.
Tim Matthews 2:12
Okay, so describe to me what it looks like for a woman to be hard.
Mo Parks 2:19
When I think of hard women, I think of two different ways. One is like, what most people would perceive kind of very angry, very stiff, very like kids get in the car. It’s just like rigid, controlling. But then I think there’s another, harder woman, who’s kind of just totally detached and shut down and just kind of deactivated completely, and she’s more withdrawn, she’s more quiet, she’s more like, Man, I never know what’s going on in my wife’s head, type of hard. She’s more of just like a shutdown, kind of hard.
Tim Matthews 2:52
Okay, and does this tend to happen for women quickly, or does it happen over time?
Mo Parks 2:58
Most of the time it’s over time, I feel like, particularly in and I’m not going to say this is entirely due to relationships. I think this can be due to many other factors, stuff from childhood. I think that there’s just a bunch of, if you’ve been like, been through a bunch of distrusting situations, if you’ve been through a lot of just hard, rough life stuff. I think you learn like to be hard is to survive. And I think that’s the key. Is that might have served you at one point as a woman, but it doesn’t any longer, and it’s coming out and destroying your life almost. So what, what did serve at one point just no longer is okay?
Tim Matthews 3:41
And what are some of the signs that a guy can look for? Two things. One, what are some of the signs that a guy can look for now to understand whether his wife has hardened? And two, what are some of the warning signs a guy could look for that illustrate that his wife is beginning to harden. Oh, that’s tough. Okay. I’m trying to think of, okay, there’s a guy who wants to identify it now, yeah. And there might be a guy listening that might be able to see this, be able to prevent it from getting that far.
Mo Parks 4:14
So signs that a woman is already hard to kind of have been over. I think there’s just, like, an edge, like a sharpness, maybe a harshness.
Tim Matthews 4:23
So let’s dive into that a little bit, yeah, and give the guys some specifics. So one of the specifics you were talking about was how she may be with the kids. Okay, yeah, right, very, you didn’t use this word, but a bit stressy. Yeah, edgy. Edgy kids get in the cow we need to go now. I imagine her rushing around, yeah,
Mo Parks 4:48
on the same side, a hard woman who’s more withdrawn would could be really nice to the kids, but then when their husband comes around, she’s just more edgy then.
Tim Matthews 4:58
And so you mean by edgy, like with the husband.
Mo Parks 5:00
Sharp, yeah, rough.
Tim Matthews 5:04
Short, this is how she talks to him.
Mo Parks 5:05
Yeah. So how she talks to him would be more critical, more logistical, I would say, like women who are hard are only going to be talking about logistics. Are not going to be talking about themselves or anything deep that may be going on. It’ll be, how was your day, honey? It was good. Or what’d you talk about with your friends? Nothing really like it’ll be short, it won’t be descriptive. I’d say that. It’s just a, you know, like a roommate.
Tim Matthews 5:31
Do they avoid intimacy? Oh, yeah, 100% How do they do that?
Mo Parks 5:38
Headaches? No, I’m just kidding. They would, I mean, wouldn’t make time for it so they would get in bed. I’m so tired. I’m just done. I’ve been with the kids all day. I’m exhausted, and I’m just kind of done. Can we watch a show instead? Or can we like, they don’t want to talk at night, they want to just kind of have only space for themselves, or they’re going out with their friends and their girls and be like, well, I plan on these things my friends, but they’re not planning time with him. And it’s all about spending time with basically everyone else but him, to avoid the intimacy. Basically, it’s avoiding any sort of connection so that there would be no real reason to have intimacy.
Tim Matthews 6:18
A woman that’s hard has she stopped taking care of herself?
Mo Parks 6:26
Not always. I think some hard women like over prioritize working out. It can be one of their escapes, but I would say for the most part, yeah, there’s gonna be a lot of hard women who’ve stopped taking care of themselves, particularly from a physical aspect, like working out. But, yeah, I mean, I don’t think any woman that’s hard is really emotionally taking care of herself.
Tim Matthews 6:49
So if she’s not emotionally taking care of herself, yeah, what does that look like?
Mo Parks 6:59
So not seeking any help if she’s having any problems, potentially, uh, showing up pretty depressed, not wanting to really do all the activities that she used to want to do, just kind of sticking it out, doing the day to day routine and being unhappy about it, but not really doing anything different about it, not journaling, not, uh, seeking a coach or a counselor if she needs help, just kind of dead and just letting life live her instead of living her life.
Tim Matthews 7:29
Just imagine in this this particular woman that you’re describing, yeah, so let’s just keep on playing with that scenario, this woman that we’re talking about that has become hard. How has the man contributed to her hardness?
Mo Parks 7:43
Yeah, I think letting her carry the mental load is a big reason why women become hard. I think guys can be like, Well, I’m taking care of the finances, so delegate you and all the kids to everything else. And that’s a lot that’s like, bills, that’s laundry, that’s dishes, that’s the kids that’s taking care like, it’s just a lot, and it’s not just like, Oh, she can handle it because I’m delegating it to her, but like, eventually she feels responsible for those things because he’s delegated them to her. So then she takes on the load of whether they’re successful or not, which, as you can imagine, having kids, there’s not a real good bar for success or not success, you pretty much feel like a failure every day. I’d say a lot of women feel that way because they’re taking on all this other mental load, right, of the dishes, laundry, the house. In some way, you end up feeling like a failure as a wife or as mom, and so that can just create, like, just a resentment that, oh, man, I feel like I have to do it all. When we get to a restaurant and my husband’s actually home, it’s like, oh, but I still know the kids orders, and I still have to order them, and I still have to take the kid to the potty and change the diaper and and so I just think they can kind of get home and neglect a lot of that at times. Some guys, obviously, not all guys.
Tim Matthews 8:58
What about those women who resist getting help. Because I know a lot of guys who have recognized this, yeah, and have said, hey, well, let’s get some help. I will find it. I will pay for it. I want to get some help around the house so you don’t have to do those things, so you’ve got a little bit more time. But they often resist it. Yeah. Why is that?
Mo Parks 9:23
I think it goes back to like feeling responsible for the success of it. It’s like, No, you gave me something now I have to do it, and I have to do it well, and have to do it perfect, partially because of cultural standards around women, asking way too much of them and wanting to achieve and succeed at those things in the same way that men feel an identity around being successful at work. Women feel it an identity around being successful and all those other things that they’ve been delegated and tasked with. And so it’s like taking away someone for identity and taking away like, well, you’re basically saying I can’t clean by offering a cleaner.
Tim Matthews 9:59
I don’t feel this way, but I know a lot of women feel. Makes sense, yeah? Okay, so as you describe in this women being hard, what I’m basically hearing you say is they’ve kind of become more masculine, yeah, that’s a good way to say it. Okay, I imagine then the polarity goes away,
Mo Parks 10:15
right? Yeah, that’s the intimacy loss.
Tim Matthews 10:19
Okay, so what can a guy do to soften a woman that’s become hard?
Mo Parks 10:28
I mean, I feel like you have a lot of experience like, you know, probably a lot of these things better than I do. What would you say?
Tim Matthews 10:33
Well, not a woman, but
Mo Parks 10:37
you do things I feel like that make it a lot easier. I think first thing that comes to mind is creating, like, a emotionally safe environment for her. And I know that that’s like 1000s of definitions probably just popped up into everyone’s head, but the moments where I soften, it’s like where I truly understand and believe that when he says I got it, I’ll take it from here, that he actually got it and will take it from here. So it’s like a proven, a proven trust that when you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it. So keeping, I guess, keeping the promises that you made to yourself and keeping the promises that you made to her, definitely one way I can think of of starting to soften.
Doug Holt 11:20
Hey guys, I wanted to interrupt this episode because it’s dawned on me that many of you guys aren’t aware that we actually have a book on how to save your marriage without talking about it. Now, 1000s of men have read it. They’ve reviewed it, and I want to give you the opportunity to do the same if you’re interested in grabbing it. It’s a short read, but it’s helped a lot of men, just like you, and maybe you’re not interested in The Activation Method yet, but this is a small entry point that can really turn things around for you. Go over in Amazon. We have it priced as cheap as Amazon will let us, and that way you have a resource that you can use right now to start getting some results in your marriage. Now let’s get back to the episode.
Mo Parks 11:57
One thing that actually just came to mind that was big in our relationship was when my husband was willing to just own all of himself and not put it on me to make him feel like he was enough. That took that softened me a ton, because I think it was putting the mental load on me to not only do all the things that I just said women have to do, but then I also have to take care of him and take care of him, making sure that he feels like he’s enough, but it’s like when he knew he was enough,
Tim Matthews 12:24
how does that make you feel, when you felt like you had to take care of him and let him know he was enough? I was looking at your body language, and I’m just curious how it makes you feel. It’s important for guys to get this Yeah. Don’t think they understand, yeah. Air that is even happening that they we did Mark Handsworth and I did a podcast a few episodes ago on the importance of men maintaining male friendships, and the pitfalls when they don’t and how they often then put that burden onto their wife, yeah, to for the wife to meet a lot of the needs that the guys are meeting for himself. Yeah, I think it’s a trap that a lot of guys fall into, and I don’t think they realize that it’s happening, and I don’t think they realize how the woman feels about it and the effect it then has,
Mo Parks 13:11
yeah, yeah. And I wouldn’t even actually known I was doing it until I wasn’t doing it anymore, because I felt so much of the freedom from not doing it. And when I saw my husband start to show up in that way, I was like, Oh, there he is. And it was like, that’s the guy I know he can be, that I was waiting for him to believe that he could be. But before that, I was holding all that weight. I felt responsible for allowing him to feel like he was enough. And I took that on. That’s on me.
Tim Matthews 13:39
How did I make you feel?
Mo Parks 13:44
Truthful, like he was more unattractive and and it felt burdensome.
Tim Matthews 13:54
It felt like that’s why I was getting at like, your body language when you first went there was kind of like, like, Yeah, I think that’s how a lot of women would feel.
Mo Parks 14:03
Yeah, and you feel, I mean, I think I feel bad that I feel that way, but I think it’s built into who we were intended to be. And it’d be the same thing if I wasn’t like, when I get all scrappy and pissed off that, if I don’t own that, then they feel like they have to take care of me and, like, restore me and make sure that the kids are like, protected from me. Like it’s it goes both ways.
Tim Matthews 14:26
Is that what happens when a woman gets becomes hard, the kids need to be protected from her.
Mo Parks 14:31
Yeah? I mean, I think in some cases, like I said, in some cases, they’re like, super kind to the kids, but I get that way when I’m I’m really frustrated or if I’m overdone, yeah, I can hear my husband say, like, kiss, don’t mess with mom.
Tim Matthews 14:47
Okay, so going back to the previous question, What can a guy do to help woman soften? Yeah, you’re talking about taking the lead, taking the mental load, taking the mental load. Yeah, part that is taking the lead, part that is. Keeping promises. Because I imagine, if you break promises, then the woman’s going to struggle to let you take the lead, yeah? Because she doesn’t trust it’s going to get done. It just adds more to her plate when she has to pick it up. Yeah? What else?
Mo Parks 15:17
I think, once you’ve taken a lot of the stuff, you then have to start investing in very much like, an emotional way with her, where that’s, you know, planning. The basics would be planning dates, and not just planning where do we go, but planning what is the activity we’re going to do on the date, and what is the schedule going to look like. And I’m going to tell her what to wear before she asked me, Hey, what should I wear? And I’m going to make sure I’ve taken care of the babysitter, and I make sure that the babysitter knows they can stay like they we might not know when we’re coming back. Um, and just like the ease, like taking so much of the pressure off can be really helpful, so just planning intentional time with her. But I think a lot of those things, like those three things, I’m like, I think a lot of our audience, honestly, already knows some of those things, so I’m trying to think of something that might be,
Tim Matthews 16:02
one thing, knowing it, another thing, doing it. Yeah, that’s fair. I Yeah. I think a small percentage will be doing it, and a large percentage of probably heard it a
Mo Parks 16:13
lot. Yeah, if you’re doing it, probably didn’t need to listen to this podcast.
Tim Matthews 16:18
Yeah? So which is an issue, right? Because I think a lot of people will complain about the fact that there isn’t any polarity. So the wife has become more masculine. She’s hardened. Yeah, she’s so she’s showing no interest in the guy. She’s avoiding doing things with him. She isn’t, uh, seeing and sharing in his wins, quite the opposite. She’s been critical of them. Yeah, he then always feels like what he does is never enough. No one’s really speaking about this because they don’t understand this dynamic is going on. Obviously, if the guys are listening to this, I think I’m just trying to think, Okay, well, what would prevent a guy from doing these things, I think some of it could be a rejection. I think the guys, well, guys won’t admit this, but they become afraid of rejection. They’ve been rejected by their wife so many times that is hurt and it’s stacked, and the idea of putting themselves out there again is just too much, whether it’s suggesting a day at night, whether it’s asking how a day was, and being able to sit in That moment and ask more questions until she does soften and open up, and in doing so, actually, genuinely showing a curious, authentic interest in what she has to say. So yeah, I think that’s a big one that they’re worried about putting themselves out there, and it becomes a stalemate at that point, the woman doesn’t want to open up because she probably feels something similar.
The guy doesn’t want to open up because anything he suggests, like, hey, let’s get someone to take care of the house gets met with the response of, why would we do that? Or whatever it may be. But what I’m learning from you is the inline story there is what aren’t I doing a good enough job. And the guy’s version of that his hair, I’ve been thinking about what I could do to take the Lord off you, and then when he suggests it and gets shot down, it’s just another rejection, which, over time, becomes tough, and it can be tough to recover from it. It can take a lot of courage. You know, 2.2 episodes ago, Stu and I spoke about the importance of self care and overcoming feelings of guilt so that you do self care. I think in this scenario, if a guy isn’t taking care of himself. It’s going to be even harder for him to try and make another bid for connection, essentially, which is what it is, because is his love tank, the emotional bank account. All those things are just going to be empty.
Mo Parks 19:16
Yeah, you kept saying a word there, and I kept in at it. It was the word suggest. The guy suggests. I was like, Don’t suggest it. Just do it.
Tim Matthews 19:27
There’s about taking the lead and getting someone to come in and just like, Yeah, okay. Just okay. So guys, if you’re listening to this, just do it. Take the risk. So I think, genuinely, if a guy led right, yeah and just organize someone to come in, you think the woman would be clean the house or do whatever job it may be, yeah, either one without telling the wife. Uh, just taking the lead or two by telling the wife and her resisting, but him doing it anyway. I can imagine that could go one or two ways.
Mo Parks 20:13
I think for some women, the resistance, they’re already resisting,
Tim Matthews 20:15
yeah, that could not be received very well. I think for others, initially, it may not receive very well, and then at all, but then I think later that day, that soft and be like, you know, actually, that’s really been that’s really helped, yeah, but I think it very much depends on.
Mo Parks 20:33
Yeah, the context, and take your risk where you will. I think, though that’s the thing, is not doing those things and then being like, am I enough? Did I do it? Am I good? Like, yeah. Because then again, you’re putting it on her to make you feel like you did good boy, like you did a good job. And that’s not what we want. Strong
Tim Matthews 20:49
Women need strong men, yeah. And the reality is, there is a lot of strong women, which is a great thing. I love that. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all. I think it’s a wonderful thing. Yeah, and at the same time, think as guys we get to, I think we forget all the guys that I have worked with who who see themselves as powerful guys. We’ll just use that word. All of them have an either an equal or more powerful wife, yeah, and they don’t realize that. I think if they actually realized what they were dealing with and who they had on their hands, I think they could quite easily use that in their favor, yeah, rather than trying to put, you know, make her wrong, or make her be smaller, or dim her light, or whatever, when they’re able to detach from making whatever’s going on personal and a reflection of them, and then the stories come up, I’m not good enough, you know, whatever it may Be, able to let go of all that stuff and just hold space. Which thing is another piece of how a hard woman can soften the guy is able to just hold space without making it taking it personally about him, yes, and just let it be without trying to solve it, without trying to fix it, without reacting to it.
Mo Parks 22:27
Just hard, huh? It’s hard. It’s hard thing to do. But yeah,
Tim Matthews 22:31
I mean, yeah, in the beginning, for sure. Yeah, getting I think once you understand the dynamic, I think even just understanding that a woman doesn’t want to be solved in that space, that she can solve it herself, that she’s capable. As guys, we are so used to solving the problem, but understanding that we don’t need to can actually be quite a mind blowing idea, because it makes life a lot easier for both people. Yeah, so I think as guys, just understanding we don’t need to solve it, and sometimes there’s nothing even wrong. Yeah, it’s just the woman being feminine. And the more that as guys, we can invite that femininity and and hold space for that femininity and just be with it, the more it’s going to be welcome, and the more the woman will know that it’s welcome, and I think the more of it she will bring, yeah. Conversely, the guy reacts, dear, defend, excuse, explain, react. The guy falls into DEER. If the guy tries to rush in to fix it, the guy tries to be the hero. If the guy doesn’t listen, if the guy does all those things for the woman, imagine what she feels and senses is that her femininity isn’t welcome, and therefore, actually the air, take it elsewhere, or B should it down, which I think both of those scenarios lead to her hardening.
Mo Parks 24:05
Yeah. And some women, we might do all the right things and they’re not ready to D to UN harden. That’s a great point. Yeah. And it just takes a lot of consistency and do your part. But I think one of the last, just last thing here, one of the most defining factors of a hard woman is a woman with a wall, a wall up. And I was talking to some of the guys in The Brotherhood about this, and they were like, yeah, like, I’ve done my clean slate letter, like I’ve done the right things, and she’s just hard and or she has this wall up, she has this wall up. And I said, Well, have you owned your side of the wall? And they’re like, What do you mean? And I was like, Well, you have treated her a particular way over years that has just built the bricks on top of the wall higher and higher and higher and higher. And while you might have, like, apologized ones for these previous actions, there are still ways that those years are. Affecting her right now, like in the moment, in the present moment, because she is distrusting of you because of a history of distrust that you’ve created for her.
And so in a moment where you see her walling up, you say, hey, I can see how my previous ways of handling this particular thing have led to you walling up. And I just want to say, like, I own that, and I’m sorry, and I’m not that guy anymore. And then she can see like, Oh, I’m distrusting. And she just kind of lets it down a little because she sees that she has part to own, but because he is taking away the wall in between them, and he’s owning his piece of it. I’m not saying go around apologizing all the time, just saying where you see her struggling in a lot of hard own your part of where she might be have hardened from the previous distrust that you’ve created in the relationship. And a lot of the guys light bulbs went off and they’re like, Oh, I see. And it was hard, because they have to go back and own their crap and own a piece of it. And why are you smirking?
Tim Matthews 26:00
I think it’s very easy to do for us guys, for us to think, Okay, well, I’ve done the thing once. It should now be fixed. Yeah, doesn’t quite work that way. It’s like saying, Hey, I’ve gone to the gym once. Surely I should now just be ripped.
Mo Parks 26:21
Not how it works. Yeah, I think even as we were talking about that, I was like, Oh, I love that feeling like, that feeling of like him, just like because I feel so stuck and I feel hard and I hate it, and I don’t like that feeling. But when he is willing to say, like, Hey, you’re not feeling at all because of your drunk, that’s actually partially I’ve created that in our relationship, and I’m sorry, and I don’t want to do that anymore, and him just owning that. I just feel like her body language is just like, you know, like it’s like a melting in, and it might take a couple times of owning that in different ways, different spheres where that comes up, but, yeah, it’s, it’s a piece of the leadership that I think gets missed a lot.
Tim Matthews 27:03
So guys, you’ve heard it from the woman herself. If you’re in a position where you feel like your partner is hardened, then stick with it. There’s a lot that you can do that definitely is within your influence. But the key is you’ve got to make sure that you are gonna welcome the feminine, because if you don’t welcome it, then it’s gonna go elsewhere and find a place and a space where it is welcome. So we’ll see you next time on the TPM show.
