Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: How Long Would You Fight To Save Your Marriage?

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<How long would you fight to save your marriage?  How to not drown in negativity after you get demoted.  What do you exactly mean by "immoral"?  How to repair your reputation and the damage after telling someone off.  Memories of my ex girlfriend haunting me. How to get over it once and for all.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 160 sitting here with Echo Charles and a stack of questions from the troopers. Yep. So let's get into it. Hopefully helpful life advice, by the way. Oh, there's definitely some good life advice today. Right on. Okay. Hi, Echo and Jocke.

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 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.

Jiu-Jitsu, which I started six months ago, is my main source of happiness right now. Check. So what are we going to do here? How long were we fight? Okay, first of all, it's, you know, take ownership of, you know, 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 want to go out? Okay, I'll cover it for you tonight or like simple.

Like, hey, we're going to keep things simple. Like we got kids to take care of. Okay, cool. Yep, we get that. Prioritize and execute. Priorities are going to change sometimes. We make sure we're focused on the same things. decentralized 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 things, and there's our ego and 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. The 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 a that's not a marriage to me. If you want to, if she wants and you're not a husband, you're just a person that's, you know, it's a business arrangement. And if the business arrangement is like, she's like, oh, you look, we look, We got kids. I want our kids to grow up with two parents and I'm still going to go out.

I don't love you and I'm going to 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, that's your goal and you can accept that. Okay, now we're at least no one going the same place. That's alignment. Hopefully alignment is, she goes, yeah, you know what? I want 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 make sure you're actually both going to the same place, you can, and you can accept it. You'll be fine. You'll, like, if it's a business arrangement, it's a business arrangement.

Hey, listen, we're going to stay together until the kids are older. Once they're out of the house, we'll move around separate ways. Oh, okay, cool. I'm down with that. Okay. Oh, you know what? I'm going through rough patch right now. I'm a little bit resentful because the way you treated me in the past, but I want to, I want to, you know,

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 it 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 goals, right? She might say, where do you want to be in five years? And she goes, ha, God. 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, you know, 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 to. 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 kid. It's like whatever short term things she might have going on right now, you've 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 you want to go out and get a little, get a little bit of your, your, uh, your, uh, 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, if you're going to go out and party with your friends, you're going to see what it's like, okay, and they'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 a 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 want to 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've 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 does that really what we're looking to do right now at age 44? 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 it's it look it might sound a little bit enticing at first like oh 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 gonna meet you know the rest of his bullshit that he's got in his life you got in 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 yoga class in the afternoon you've never gotten to do that because 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 both 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 going to have to do your best to come up with a fair and equitable business relationship, partnership through some kind of a divorce.

And if you can't, if 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. get two 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's on that's on fair advice I mean yeah it's fair advice for sure but I've noticed that or I found this out long time ago where like everybody's different so therefore relationships are different true and they're different and literally infinite ways because

and then then you have one paragraph of a question or whatever so it's like I don't know like it's like real ambiguous advice I'd I mean I guess something that you would that would seem obvious to you like yeah if you if she feels like she was neglected take responsibility for that you know I'd do the whole

freaking Jocco Leif Babin Steve Ward like hey this is what I did I made you feel this you can 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 to the principles. That's why I started with that. Yeah. Pooley. And the, here's what I would say is a commonality that I've seen anyway is that, you know, when you get into a little arguments 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, you know, 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 pro. I just heard this freaking recently. Don't look it as an argument to win. Look at it 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 essentially it. Where if you look at it as an argument to win, when you take a hit, oh, you're looking a 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, 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 contend. And then this I would know really not much about at all. He said after 15 years of supporting me, right?

And then she said she's 44. That means she was, no, what, 19? Is it? No. 29. 29. 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. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jocco underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast.

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