Jocko Underground: How Long Would You Fight To Save Your Marriage?
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This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 160 sitting here with Echo Charles and a stack of questions from the troopers. So let's get into it. Hopefully helpful life advice. Oh, there's definitely some good life advice today. Right on. Okay. Hi, Echo and Jock. You both seem to be pretty good husbands. How long would you fight to save your marriage from divorce if you felt like the other person wasn't trying? My wife acts completely different than she used to.

In my mind, she's having a midlife crisis. After 15 years of supporting me and my military service, my wife became fed up and started focusing on her own happiness, which didn't include me. She took control of her life but doesn't want a divorce, probably because of our three kids. She's 44 and goes out about twice a month, sometimes late. She stopped inviting me places, Halloween parties, concerts, hockey games, even football.

Even on our dates, she brought a friend. I've worked on her complaints, texting more, bringing her coffee, being more thoughtful. But after two years, it hasn't helped. Marriage counseling feels like complaining in circles. I believe most women would be happy with me, but she's jaded from years of what she sees as neglect. I still want to fight for this marriage. She cries sometimes, so I know she still cares.

Jujitsu, which I started six months ago, is my main source of happiness right now. - Check. So what are we gonna do here? How long were we fighting? Okay, first of all, it's take ownership of what did you do wrong in the past? Sounds like you're taking ownership of that. You're trying to fix some of the shortfalls that you had. We obviously, we enact the laws of combat leadership. We cover and move. We keep things simple. We prioritize and execute.

We use decentralized command to kind of keep our family unit operating well as a team. We make sure that our ego is in check. These are kind of the things that we hope that you've already done, right?

So cover and move meaning, okay, you wanna go out, look, okay, I'll cover for you tonight. Or like simple, like hey, we're gonna keep things simple. Like we got kids to take care of, okay, cool, yep, we get that. Prioritize and execute, priorities are gonna change sometimes. We make sure we're focused on the same things. Decentralize command, you know, are the kids stepping up and helping with things? Are we doing a good, does everyone understand why they're doing what they're doing? So those are the things, and there's our ego in check. Once all that stuff is done, we got, and we haven't made progress,

Now we have to do something, we have to do an alignment check. This is a very, very big deal. It's a very big deal. Alignment check is the biggest deal actually in a business partnership, in a military scenario, and certainly in a marriage. What does she want? Where does she want to be? Where do you want to be? Where does she want to be in the future? Are you in that picture as a husband?

And everything that being a husband, you know, encompasses. And if she can say, listen, yes, I want to be married. I want you to be my husband. Not just to be married because I guess if you could, if you're in some kind of a weird like where you're just kind of financially connected but you don't sleep in the same bedroom and she's out there with other dudes and like to me that's not a marriage, right? That's not a marriage to me. But if she wants, and you're not a husband, you're just a person that's, you know, it's a business arrangement. Yeah.

And if the business arrangement is like she's like, oh you look we got kids I want our kids to grow up with two parents and I'm still gonna go out I don't love you and we'll sleep in the same room with you But I want to live in the same house and I want to present and you go, okay Well, if that's your goal and and you can accept that okay now what at least we're no we're going the same place and

That's alignment. Hopefully alignment is she goes, yeah, you know what? I see myself growing old with you as my husband. I want to get our kids raised together. I want to sleep in the same room with you every night. I want you to be my husband. Be husband. I want to be your wife, right? If you can get aligned to figure out where it is that makes sure you're actually both going to the same place and you can accept it, you'll be fine. If it's a business arrangement, it's a business arrangement.

Hey, listen, we're going to stay together until the kids get older. Once they're out of the house, we'll move around separate ways. Oh, okay, cool. I'm down with that. Okay. You know what? I'm going through a rough patch right now. I'm a little bit resentful because of the way you treated me in the past, but I want to be a couple. Okay. We can work through it. The problem comes if you're not actually aligned. That's where we can have a problem. Because if you're not aligned, you're trying to be two places at the same time, and that doesn't work. It's against the laws of physics. You cannot...

She cannot want to have a business arrangement where you both live together, but you're not actually a couple. If that's what she wants, but you actually want to be a couple, this isn't going to work. It's not going to work. So that's what we need to do. You need to figure out if you're aligned or not. Now, here's where another little problematic scenario is. She might not have any idea where her long-term strategic goal is, right? She might say, where do you want to be in five years? And she goes, okay.

I don't know. Okay. She might be focused right now on the short-term desires and goals and little feelings that she has, right? Because you ignored her for 15 years. She missed out on her ages of being 23 to whatever, 38. And those were prime years for her to go out and party. And she didn't do it because she was at home with the kids. And now she's feeling like she missed it. Now she wants it. So she's got a little short-term like, I want to go. What was it like? I missed it all. I was sitting at home alone, right? She might have some of that.

But you've got to or maybe she's like, oh i'm just sick of you and you bother me and you okay All right I was focused on the kids like whatever short-term things she might have going on right now You got to punch through that and get to like what is the long term? Where do you want to be? Where do you want to be? I get it I blew you off and I wasn't a good husband and you I was paying attention more attention to the military than I was to you and and you want to go out and get a little get a little bit of your uh

your expressiveness as a young woman out there, I get it. When you're done with that, where do you want to be? Now look, if you're going to go out and party with your friends, you're going to see what it's like, okay, and then you're going to come back to me, okay. I don't like it, but we're trying to get to the same place. If her idea is like she wants to go out and mingle around with a bunch of other dudes or other dudes, then it's kind of game over, right? Because now we're not husband and wife anymore. We took vows that...

That's not acceptable. So if that's what she wants, that could be a real problem. And now we're not aligned. But maybe she just wants freaking adult human life, right? Maybe she wants some friends. She didn't have any friends. Maybe she wants to be self-centered for a while.

Which I could understand. She's been a military wife, which means she was not able to focus on herself ever. She wasn't able to focus on her own career ever. She wasn't able to focus on her own health and fitness ever. She wasn't able to focus on her own looks. She wasn't able to focus on having fun with other adult humans at any time. So for her to be like, you know what, dude, I actually want to go out. Like I want to work out. I want to get a job. I don't have a career. I want to try this. I want to try that. Okay. Understandable. And you need to see if you can get aligned with that.

And if you can get aligned with that, we can work through this stuff. And you can keep working through this stuff. And there's a decent chance because you got kids, right? And you got finances. And you've got your house. And you got, does anyone really want to get involved in like modern dating? You know what I mean? Like, sounds like a lot of fun to go get on an app and swipe people and meet randos. And like, it just sounds like, is that really what we're looking to do right now at age 44? Yeah.

At age 44, almost 45, she wants to swipe right or swipe left or whatever and meet a random other 52-year-old that's got a wife and kids. Like, dude, it's just not like really. Look, it might sound a little bit enticing at first. No, think about it. Think about it long term, not just short term.

He'll take me out to a nice dinner. Cool. And then you're going to meet, you know, the rest of his bullshit that he's got in his life. You got your life. It's just chaos. And by the way, we've messed up our kids. And by the way, we've messed up our finances. And by the way, we've messed up our house. And so we've, we've caused a lot of damage. You got to weigh that out. And I think most people, if you can get her through the short term, like, yep, I understand you want to focus on your career. You want to focus on your health. You want to work out in the morning. You want to work out. You want to go to the, the, the yoga class in the afternoon. You've never gotten to do that. Cause you were,

Taking care of me and I appreciate it. So now take care of yourself. And maybe she's like, thank you. And maybe we can get aligned. So there you go. If you can get aligned, if you can figure out a place that you can both want to go to, you're going to be fine. If you can't figure out a place where you can both want to go to,

Then you're gonna have to do your best to come up with a fair and equitable business relationship partnership through some kind of a divorce and if she Can't any you can't decide that you're going to the same place to answer your question How long would I fight I would fight as long as I could see that there was some Place in the future where we would be trying to get to together and if I saw that that didn't exist I'd be like, okay. This is not gonna work and that's my advice

Next question. You got no comment on that? Yeah, that sounds correct. Fair advice? Yeah, it's fair advice for sure, but I've noticed that, or I found this out a long time ago, where everybody's different, so therefore relationships are different. True. And they're different in literally infinite ways because, and then you have one paragraph of a question or whatever, so it's like, I don't know, like to...

It's like real ambiguous advice. I mean, I guess something that would seem obvious to you. Like, yeah, if she feels like she was neglected, take responsibility for that. I'd do the whole freaking Jocko, Leif, Babin, Steve, Ward, like, hey, this is what I did. Mm.

I made you feel this. You know, this is what I messed up. It's completely my fault. This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm going to do to fix it and then do it. Full ownership. Full execution of the principles. Yeah. We got to do the full execution of the principles. That's why I started with that. Yeah, fully. And here's what I would say is a commonality that I've seen anyway, is that, you know, when you get into a little argument with your wife, girlfriend, whatever. Not really.

But you've heard things. I've heard it happens. But, you know, getting defensive and be like, well, you know, and like, that's why arguments kind of escalate because it's like, oh, I can't believe you said that to me and blah, blah, you know, and you start actually fighting rather than looking at it as, okay, this is a problem. I just heard this freaking recently. Don't look at it as an argument to win. Look at it as a, as a, like a tangled up web to unravel, you know, kind of a thing, even though those weren't the exact words, but that was, that was essentially it.

Where if you look at it as an argument to win, when you take a hit, oh, you're looking to counterpunch, you know, to freaking get back on top, you know, kind of a thing. So I think that, so don't do that or be conscious of that and really not try to do that. Otherwise it's like, bro, what do you mean neglect? Like, what do you mean? How old are the kids? Like what? Twice a month doesn't seem like that much, but what is she doing? Like, how are you guys acting at home? When she comes home and she just ignore it. Like there's a lot to it, you know?

And then, shoot, then you got to continue. And then this I would know really not much about at all. He said, after 15 years of supporting me, right? And then he said she's 44. That means she was, what, 19? Is it? No, 29. 29, 39. Oh, yeah, you're right. Okay.

So, well, there you go. See, that goes to show exactly, you know, it's kind of part of my point where, like I said, everybody's different, but I think if you stick to the basics, you can improve the chance of things working out. I like that. What do you call it? Alignment assessment? Got to do an alignment assessment. Yeah. When you're in a relationship with someone or a business deal with someone or a negotiation with someone and you can't.

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