So, I came across this post this morning and (excluding the “children” part) thought it was relatable to my current relationship. Saved a draft and now I’m just editing to make it look nicer. I have provided the link to the original post here (Derek Hart/Facebook). Naturally, keep in mind that this can apply to any relationship, not just straight, married couples. I mean, I’M not married and it still sits heavy on my heart. Oh, and I guess the s*x part also doesn’t apply to my relationship, given the Addiction aspect and that he’s taken it completely off the table… and yes, I DO respect his wishes, but without in-depth context, I can’t really reveal why that boundary bothers me on a deeply intimate level.

Anyhoo… take it or leave it, I found the advice really poignant.

100 Things a Man Has to Unlearn Before His Wife Can Come Home to Him

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Strength

1. Unlearn that silence is strength. Silence is where marriages go to die.

2. Unlearn that handling it alone makes you a man. It makes you a stranger in your own house.

3. Unlearn that needing her is weakness. Needing her is the whole point.

4. Unlearn that tears are a failure of composure. Tears are a success of honesty.

5. Unlearn that “I’m fine” is an acceptable answer when you’re not fine.

6. Unlearn that vulnerability means losing ground. Vulnerability is the only ground worth standing on.

7. Unlearn that keeping it together is more important than letting her in.

8. Unlearn that she fell in love with the strong version of you. She fell in love with the real one. You just stopped showing him to her.

9. Unlearn that asking for help means you can’t handle your life. It means you’re handling your life honestly.

10. Unlearn that the man your father modeled is the man your wife needs. Your father modeled what he knew. You’re allowed to know more.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Emotions

11. Unlearn that her emotions are a problem for you to solve.

12. Unlearn that crying is an emergency. Sometimes it’s just Tuesday.

13. Unlearn that anger is the only acceptable male emotion. It’s the only one you were given a permit for. The permit was too narrow.

14. Unlearn that “calm down” is a helpful sentence. It has never once in the history of human relationships made anyone calm down.

15. Unlearn that feelings have to be justified to be real. They just have to be felt.

16. Unlearn that her bringing up a problem means she thinks you’re the problem.

17. Unlearn that if you can’t fix the feeling, you’ve failed the moment.

18. Unlearn that listening without solving is doing nothing. It’s doing everything.

19. Unlearn that emotional conversations are battles to be survived. They’re invitations to be close.

20. Unlearn that the goal of a hard conversation is to get through it. The goal is to be changed by it.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Control

21. Unlearn that you need to be right to be respected.

22. Unlearn that winning the argument means winning the marriage.

23. Unlearn that her disagreeing with you is her disrespecting you.

24. Unlearn that if you don’t manage the situation, the situation will fall apart. She’s not a situation. She’s a person.

25. Unlearn that planning everything keeps you safe. It keeps you in charge. Those aren’t the same thing.

26. Unlearn that her independence is a threat to your importance.

27. Unlearn that the house has to run your way to run well.

28. Unlearn that her doing things differently than you means she’s doing them wrong.

29. Unlearn that you get to decide when she’s overreacting. You don’t get to set the threshold for someone else’s pain.

30. Unlearn that your comfort is the thing the household should be organized around.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Women

31. Unlearn that she’s supposed to manage your emotional life for you.

32. Unlearn that she should know what you need without you saying it. She’s your wife, not your psychic.

33. Unlearn that her job is to make you feel like a man. Your manhood is your responsibility.

34. Unlearn that her body belongs to your schedule.

35. Unlearn that she owes you physical affection because you provide financial stability.

36. Unlearn that “nagging” is what it’s called when she asks for something more than once. It’s called asking again because you didn’t do it the first time.

37. Unlearn that she’s “too sensitive.” She’s exactly as sensitive as her life made her. Your job isn’t to diagnose the sensitivity. It’s to stop being the thing that triggers it.

38. Unlearn that her anger is irrational. Her anger has been building a case for years while you weren’t paying attention to the evidence.

39. Unlearn that she should be grateful for the things you do. Gratitude isn’t a substitute for being seen.

40. Unlearn that the woman you married is the same woman standing in front of you today. She’s changed. You didn’t notice. And the not noticing is part of what you have to unlearn.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Love

41. Unlearn that love is a feeling that should sustain itself without effort.

42. Unlearn that if you have to work at it, it’s not real.

43. Unlearn that the passion of the beginning is supposed to last forever. It’s supposed to be replaced by something deeper. But only if you build it.

44. Unlearn that “I love you” is enough without action behind it.

45. Unlearn that providing is the same as loving. You can provide a beautiful house and an empty marriage.

46. Unlearn that being faithful means you’ve done your part. Not sleeping with someone else is the floor, not the ceiling.

47. Unlearn that love means she should tolerate you at your worst. Love means your worst should be getting less worst.

48. Unlearn that chemistry is what keeps a marriage alive. Safety is what keeps a marriage alive. Chemistry is what started it.

49. Unlearn that you chose her once and that should be enough. You have to choose her every day. Every morning. With your behavior. Not your memory of a decision you made years ago.

50. Unlearn that love is something you have. Love is something you do. Daily. With your hands and your eyes and your presence.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Conflict

51. Unlearn that a fight is something to win.

52. Unlearn that silence after a fight is resolution. Silence is the fight going underground.

53. Unlearn that if nobody’s yelling, nobody’s hurting.

54. Unlearn that walking away to cool down is the same as abandoning her in the moment. Sometimes they feel the same to her body even though they’re different to yours.

55. Unlearn that bringing up the past is unfair. Sometimes the past is still present because it never got repaired.

56. Unlearn that, “I said I was sorry” means the conversation is over. Sorry opens the conversation. It doesn’t close it.

57. Unlearn that her remembering the details of old fights means she’s keeping score. It means the fights are still living in her body because they were never resolved in the room.

58. Unlearn that you get to decide when she should be over something.

59. Unlearn that repair means agreeing on what happened. Repair means both people feeling felt about what happened. Those are very different things.

60. Unlearn that if you’ve changed, she should notice immediately. Your body changed in a day. Her trust takes months to recalibrate.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About S*x

61. Unlearn that s*x is a need she’s responsible for meeting.

62. Unlearn that her desire should operate on your timeline.

63. Unlearn that the absence of s*x means the absence of love. Sometimes it means the absence of safety.

64. Unlearn that foreplay starts in the bedroom. Foreplay starts with how you spoke to her at breakfast.

65. Unlearn that initiating is your job and accepting is hers. That framework made both of you miserable and neither of you said so.

66. Unlearn that her body should respond to you the way it used to. Her body is responding to the accumulated experience of being with you. If the response has changed, the experience changed first.

67. Unlearn that physical rejection is personal. Sometimes her body is saying no to the last three conversations, not to you.

68. Unlearn that watching her body change over the years gives you the right to compare it to what it was. Her body grew your children. Your opinion of it should be on its knees.

69. Unlearn that s*x is the intimacy. S*x is the result of intimacy. The intimacy happens in the kitchen and the hallway and the way you looked at her when she was talking.

70. Unlearn that a good s*x life means a good marriage. Some of the most broken couples I’ve worked with were still having s*x. They were performing connection inside a disconnection. The s*x wasn’t evidence of health. It was the last room that hadn’t gone cold yet.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Parenting Together

71. Unlearn that she’s the default parent and you’re the backup.

72. Unlearn that “helping” with the kids is something to be praised for. You’re not helping. You’re parenting.

73. Unlearn that she should tell you what needs to be done with the children. You live in the same house. Use your eyes.

74. Unlearn that her way of parenting is the right way and yours needs her approval.

75. Unlearn that being the fun parent and leaving the discipline to her is a workable arrangement. It’s an arrangement where she carries the weight and you get the smiles.

76. Unlearn that quality time with the kids means being in the room while looking at your phone.

77. Unlearn that she’s supposed to manage the emotional lives of the children while you manage the logistics.

78. Unlearn that bedtime is her department.

79. Unlearn that school stuff is her department.

80. Unlearn that anything is solely her department just because she’s been doing it alone for so long that both of you forgot it used to be shared.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Her Leaving

81. Unlearn that her leaving would come with a warning. It doesn’t. By the time she says it out loud, she’s already left. The leaving happened months ago. You just didn’t notice.

82. Unlearn that if she hasn’t left, she’s not thinking about it.

83. Unlearn that her staying means she’s happy. Sometimes her staying means she’s too exhausted to leave.

84. Unlearn that the marriage is fine because she stopped complaining. She stopped complaining because she stopped believing you’d hear her.

85. Unlearn that her silence is peace. Her silence might be resignation.

86. Unlearn that if she’s still here, you still have time. You have less time than you think. The clock she’s running isn’t the one you’re looking at.

87. Unlearn that the threat of divorce is manipulation. Sometimes it’s the last bid she knows how to make.

88. Unlearn that couples counseling is what you do when things are broken. It’s what you do when things are starting to crack. By the time things are broken, counseling is triage.

89. Unlearn that asking her, “Are we okay?” is the same as doing the work to make sure you’re okay.

90. Unlearn that she owes you another chance just because you’re ready to change. Your readiness doesn’t erase her exhaustion. Her exhaustion has been building for years while your readiness took until this morning.

Unlearn What You Were Taught About Yourself

91. Unlearn that you’re not the kind of man who goes to counseling.

92. Unlearn that reading something like this is beneath you.

93. Unlearn that self-awareness is a soft skill. It’s the hardest skill you’ll ever develop.

94. Unlearn that your childhood didn’t affect you. It built you. Every wall you have was installed by someone else before you were old enough to choose your own architecture.

95. Unlearn that you’re too old to change. You’re too old to keep doing what you’ve been doing. Changing is the younger move.

96. Unlearn that you’re not emotional. You’re emotional. You’re just running the emotions through a filter that turns everything into anger or numbness. Those are emotions too. Just processed ones.

97. Unlearn that the man she fell in love with is gone. He’s not gone. He’s buried under years of performing a version of masculinity that was never compatible with intimacy. He’s in there. She knows he’s in there. That’s why she’s still reading things like this at midnight hoping something will reach you.

98. Unlearn that this list is about blame. This list is about awareness. Blame looks backward. Awareness looks around. You’re being asked to look around.

99. Unlearn that knowing all of this is the same as doing all of it. Knowing is the first step. Doing is the next ten thousand.

100. Unlearn the belief that you can’t. You can. You’ve been strong enough to carry the wrong things for decades. You’re strong enough to set them down.