For Men: 3 Ways Your Logic Is Hurting Your Relationship

13:40

13:40

For Men: 3 Ways Your Logic Is Hurting Your Relationship

by Noah Elkrief

Rated

4.5

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

14

Being logical and analytical has helped you solve many problems in life, but what if your logic is actually causing hidden problems in your relationship? In this video, you’ll see three specific ways that using pure logic can actually create more friction, even when your intentions are right. More importantly, you’ll understand what to do instead so interactions feel smoother, clearer, and less draining.

Relationships Emotional Intelligence Empathy Emotional Support Emotional Pain Emotional Validation Childhood Trauma Relationship Dynamics Empathy Development

Meet your Teacher

New York, NY, USA

Meet your Teacher

New York, NY, USA

Transcript

If you are a logical, Smart, Analytical man You may not realize it, But your logic is actually hurting the relationship, Causing your wife or girlfriend treat you with less love, Be less kind, And be more disappointed and resentful towards you. You probably don't realize that this is happening, Maybe because it's normal for you or it's eroding the relationship so slowly that you don't see it happening. The cause of why she treats you the way she does is very often because of some things you're unknowingly doing that's hurting the relationship. You might think you're the logical, Rational one. But your logic has some bunch of hidden fallacies. That's creating problems for both of you. My name is Noah Elkreef, And I'm the author of a number one bestselling counseling book. And I've been helping smart analytical men through my one-on-one coaching practice since 2010. And I'm really looking forward. To explain to you three ways your logic is sabotaging your relationship because these issues are very hidden. And it hurts us unknowingly. And I want to help you because I've been in this situation. So the first issue is perceiving emotions to be illogical. Now it might seem obvious that your wife or girlfriend's emotions are illogical. You might often judge her to be I don't know, Stupid. Crazy, Irrational, Illogical, And when you judge her in these ways, She feels rejected and abandoned even if you don't say it out loud. And this will cause her to close her heart, Cause you to treat you passive aggressive. Just make the relationship less enjoyable. But the question is, Are her emotions illogical? And there's two reasons why it seems that way, Even though that's false. Her emotions are logical. Every emotion is logical if you understand how emotions work. And there's two reasons why you might think they're logical. One, When you were a child, Your mother or father treated your emotions as illogical because they were viewing emotions through the lens of an adult instead of through the lens of a child. So, For example, Maybe they took you to school and you were scared to leave them or scared of strangers in the classroom if it was a new classroom. Now, If you're scared, They might treat you like you're being overreactive. It's safe. You're being illogical. But they're not understanding that from a young child's perspective who can't defend himself. The whole safety depends on the protection of their parents. That this is scary and dangerous to leave their protector and to go into a new environment that they don't know is safe. So, Or maybe the child you saw an ant and got really scared when you were young and your parents treated you like you're overreacting and being illogical. Maybe they know an ant isn't dangerous, But you don't know that. And so when we're treated as a child, Like our emotions are illogical or overreactions, Then that carries over into adulthood. Where we suppress our emotions because we view all emotions to be illogical. And then when our wife or girlfriend expresses emotions, We view hers to be illogical all the time. And this is wrong and inaccurate, Partially based on our filter from what happened to us as a child. But partially, The secondary influence is that We don't understand that emotions. . . Are almost never about this moment. They're always just triggering childhood experiences. So maybe you're five minutes late and your wife gets extremely reactive. And you know this is an overreaction, So you think it's illogical. And it is if this moment was a vacuum, If the present moment was all that existed. However. . . Her reaction is due to something that happened in her childhood. Maybe when she was waiting for her father when she was five years old to pick her up from school for two hours and she was terrified and not knowing what to do. And so that triggers her when you're five minutes late. And in that case, If you understand the cause, Then her emotion seems logical. Right? Oh, This is just a trigger. It's not about the here and now. So anytime you perceive her emotion to be illogical, It's just because you don't understand the logical cause of why she feels the way that she does. So when she expresses an emotion and you judge her to be illogical or overreacting, She gets hurt. She doesn't feel seen or heard. And you're being incorrect. You're being illogical and unkind to her. So if you perceive her to be overreacting and illogical, Stop for a moment and you can ask Is it possible there's a logical cause for this? And stop treating it as if this moment is all that exists and that if she's as though she's responding to this moment solely and fully, Which is never the case. Okay, Let's move on to number two. The second way your logic is sabotaging your relationship is Seeking a correct answer. To an emotional truth. All right. So when your wife or girlfriend is speaking. You might. Just be listening to the words. And hearing that the words are false. And then, Um trying to show her that her words are false. So she might say, You never listen to me. And what you say back maybe is, I just repeated back everything you said. I just listened to you So what you're hearing is that her words are logically false. Okay, You're correct. But you're not hearing the emotion underneath her words, Which is, I don't feel heard emotionally. So when she says, You never listen to me, You hear the words. I do, But I do listen to her. She is logically incorrect. But you're not hearing the emotion underneath. I don't feel heard. And so when you hear her and only. . . Value and listen to and evaluate. The logical truth of her words, You're missing the emotional truth and the emotional validity that's underneath it. So she might say, I feel like you don't prioritize me. And you might respond with, I spent all weekend with you. What are you talking about? Her words are clearly logically incorrect. But we're not hearing what's underneath it, Which is, I don't feel valued. I don't feel like. . . I don't feel like you want to spend time with me. So maybe you did spend time with her, But you didn't feel you really wanted to be there. So when you only listen to the words and assess the logic based on words, You're missing the deeper logic. And women are almost always correct in the deeper logic. It might be shocking for you, But it's true. So when she says, I feel you're not listening to me. You say, I just repeated back everything you said, So you did hear every word perfectly. But you might not be feeling her. So she wants to be heard differently than you're listening. So her intuition is correct. That you're not hearing her. Receiving her, Seeing her. Caring for her in the way that she's looking for on an emotional level. And when you just focus on the logic of her words, You miss that. And when she expresses a deeper need, An emotional need, And you're only assessing the logic of her words, She feels not understood, You feel frustrated that she's wrong and she's being immature or she's being illogical, Then she's even more upset because you're viewing her to be illogical and you're frustrated with her when she's just trying to express a call for help. Like that I need something from you or I feel like one of my needs aren't being met. This causes a lot of problems in relationships. This makes you feel distant, Makes her treat you worse, It makes you annoyed by her, And that gets in the way of laughter and love and ease in a light, Loving sexual relationship. Okay, The third issue is thinking. That emotional pain can be proven wrong. This is so, So common for logical, Analytical men. We hear a woman share an emotion and we try to prove them wrong. When a woman shares emotions, If we perceive emotions to be overreactions, Illogical, Stupid, Bad, A problem that needs to be fixed, Then we're going to try to solve it instead of hear her. And when we try to solve it, One of the common ways we do it is by assessing the logical words or illogical words and try to point out how they're illogical. So for example, Our girlfriend might say, I don't feel appreciated. And we might express all the ways that she's wrong. So when she says, I don't feel appreciated, What she's saying is, I feel sad, I feel hurt, I feel abandoned. And we don't want her to feel that way because we think it gets in the way of love. We think it's annoying. We think it means then we're a failure or inadequate. So we try to fix her feeling. And the way we try to fix her feeling. . . Is by telling her she's wrong, Basically. So we might say, What do you mean I don't appreciate you? I did this for you. I took out the trash. I made dinner. I paid for you. I took us there. Plan the whole trip. I took care of the kids. So basically, We're trying to fix her emotion by telling her she's wrong in every way. You understand why that probably isn't going to go down very well? And so when we just focus on the words she's speaking and the illogical, Incorrect falseness of her words. Then we try to change her mental belief to make her feel better when that's not addressing the actual emotional issue when she says i don't feel appreciated What she's saying is I don't feel it. Maybe her mind also knows all the things you did, But she doesn't feel appreciated. And so if we don't take it personally and we don't make emotions wrong, The way we respond is more like, Tell me more about it. How does that feel for you when you don't feel appreciated? What does it feel I'm not doing that would make you feel appreciated? We can be curious. Or express to me your feeling of abandoned or rejected or lack of appreciation. Explain to me what that feels like. And then she has an opportunity to let out her emotion and then she can feel seen in it heard in it And then we can understand it, That there's a logic behind it. There is something true in it, Even though her words are completely false. If we just look on the superficial, Practical, Physical level. Or maybe she tells you something totally not about you, That she's so sad that Someone that she knows died. And for us, We don't know how to be with emotions. We don't know how to be with her sadness. It hurts us to watch her sad. Or we think sadness is wrong or bad. Or just gets in the way of happiness so she shouldn't feel it. So instead of being with her and her sadness. . . We'll tell her why her sadness is wrong. Incorrect well yeah that but she was suffering so much it's so much better for her and her family that she died because everyone was struggling Now, Logically, That might make sense what we're saying. It doesn't help the relationship or her in any way for us to tell her that her emotion is logically wrong. That's not what she's looking for from us. She's looking for love, Validation, For us to hold her in her sadness. When a woman feels emotional pain, She wants to be loved in it, Validated in it, Seen in it, Not told that her emotion is wrong. Not told that it's incorrect. The reason she feels sad is valid always. So maybe if someone was struggling with cancer for a year and it was causing them so much suffering and their family so much suffering, Yes, Logically, In some way, It makes sense that it's better for everyone if they pass away. However, It also makes sense to feel sad when we lose someone we care about or when someone we care about lost someone that they love and care about. That's healthy to feel sadness. So by just focusing on the words and trying to correct our girlfriend's thinking using logic alone. We're invalidating their emotion, Making them feel not accepted and not helping the situation at all. That makes our girlfriend feel more distant, More unappreciative, And then she's not going to give us the love and kindness and nurture that we long for. Or the ease, Lightness, Sexuality, And joy we all want in a relationship.