Issue #79: Answer the Call: Reclaim Yourself to Transform Your Relationship

She's made a request, a suggestion, an ultimatum, even.

"Do something, open up, talk to someone, get some help, please, because I can't keep going on like this"

She might have been banging that drum for a while, but now it's hit a breaking point.

She’s threatening to leave if things don’t change.

Or she’s already left. 

My first note to that man is compassion for a tough and shitty situation.

Then it is congratulations. For answering the call and taking action.

Many don't.

For over 12 years, I’ve been in the trenches with men. Not theory. Not Instagram quotes. Real conversations, hard truths, and hard, uncomfortable practical training.

In that time, I’ve coached over 3,000 men across 20+ countries:  husbands and fathers, everyday men, dozens of business owners who were frustrated, stuck, and quietly wondering:

“Is this all there is?”

I wrote the book on becoming an Everyday Legend; a man so secure that life can’t knock you off course.

I built the Everyday Legends Academy, a proven system explicitly designed to take men from Nice Guy: overly agreeable, stretched, full of self-doubt, and unfulfilled. To be respected, unapologetic, and powerful in life, love, and business.

I’ve seen what doesn’t work. I’ve seen what’s missing.

And I know what actually transforms men because I’ve been that guy, and now I’ve led men through it. Thousands of times.

The men I work with don’t just “feel better” or “save the relationship”. They create lives where their relationships feel alive again: passionate, connected, peaceful.

When these men answer the call that their soul is whispering - sometimes screaming - when they knock on my digital door, they step into possibility. Of potential. Of more. Of better.

They enter the realm of peace, depth, personal and relational leadership.

Yet, many will make this crucial mistake: trying to chase the relationship.

Trying to get her back on side or to restore the relationship to how it once was.

It will never be back there. You won't be the man you were.

She won't be the same person she used to be.

You've changed. She's changed. Life has changed.

The relationship has certainly changed.

Different responsibilities. Different cares.

You're different people now.

The work isn't to get it back to its glory days.

It's to allow it to evolve into what it now needs to be.

It's about becoming the man you need to be, so you can be the man the relationship needs you to be.

What you can't control is what your partner (or ex) does, what she chooses, and the relationship status.

All that we can do is explore and work on the man; you.

For the Nice Guys who come knocking on my door, so much of what we invariably see is how much he has slowly moved away from and abandoned himself.

In continually centring his partner’s needs, he's become a stranger to himself.

All the people pleasing and appeasing, all the sweeping under the rug and avoidance, all the insecurity driving the bus.

All the ways he has sacrificed himself - and his self-expression - to 'keep the peace'. In doing so, he lost himself—and her.

All the ways his unprocessed shit is/was the third party in the relationship.

He feels like she no longer respects him. Her care for him has gone down.

The lens through which he views the relationship has changed. It's so easy to see what she does and doesn't do for him.

It's even easier to be hard on himself - yet that rarely turns into positive self-respect-based choices.

It becomes the cycle in which he spins. In which they spin.

Ultimately, his work is on coming back to himself - to a man he values and respects.

It means visiting his depths, meeting himself there and learning to like the man he sees in the mirror.

Making choices he respects despite the risk of upsetting or disappointing others. Risking rejection or disapproval.

It means changing the relationship to all the pain and fear that lives under the surface that runs his life.

Until he can do that and become strong enough to hold it, it will show up in his actions and patterns.

It will flavour his life and the relationship. Yet he'll keep throwing his arms in the air as if he doesn't know why.

She'll move further and further away from him. And the inevitable will happen.

The thing is, that first knock on my digital door is just one step. An important one, but it's just one.

What happens next, the choices he makes - the choices you make - from that point on determine everything.

At some point, you will have to move past the surface-level awareness of the problems and crack into the shit that lives under the Nice Guy veneer.

That's where coaching, guidance, and loving challenge come in.

These men might come to me for some 'confidence' or 'to communicate better', but they stay to create an actual solution and build the foundation of the man they want to be. The man they can be: strong, confident, clear, solid, assertive and compassionate, able to stay in a relationship when it gets difficult, connect with depth and maintain their sovereignty.

As one client put it, “Mike has X-ray vision to see through men's shit and into what's really there.”

When we have that, we can get to work. We can create actual change.

We can bring you back into union with yourself.

To be a solid, secure home for yourself.

Everything else in your life, from relationships to your work, is downstream from that.

If you want to win her back and strengthen the relationship, your connection, you must turn inward.

When you are solid and secure in yourself, everything reflects that.

Do your work. Meet your edges. Learn to be comfortable in your own skin.

Understand: you can't beat yourself up internally and live a happy, peaceful life externally.

Men - Nice Guys - if this is you, don't wait for her to have to ask again.

Don't wait for her to leave.

If you know you're not living up to a standard you'd like to, if you know there is more in you, if you want to finally feel deeply calm and peaceful in your own skin, if you want to create a ‘Fuck yes’ relationship, then I suggest that it's time to do something about it.

This matters so much. It is your quality of life.

If you feel like you don't have the answers or even know where to start to uncover your patterns and what drives you, if you struggle to hold yourself accountable for doing what you need to, I suggest finding men who can help you see beneath the surface and guide you to your edges and beyond them - into the man you can become.

Doing this work might be the bravest and best thing you do - and it can simply start with knocking on my digital door.

Mike

P.S. You might be this guy - you might not be, but you might know someone who isn’t watering the grass of their relationship and suffering for it. Someone you could pass this message on to with a loving invitation to contemplate the message - and an open invitation to discuss it together. No judgement. No comparison. Just space to see it more clearly and get in a position to work it out. 

My invitation to you is to pass this on to any men who might be suitable for this message - ‘Man it forward’ is a term my friend Connor Beaton uses, and I’m going to borrow it here today.