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

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe 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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  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.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Hopefully helpful life advice, by the way.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's definitely some good life advice today.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Right on. Okay. Hi, Echo and Jocko. 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's, she stopped inviting me places, Halloween parties, concerts, hockey

• 0:59Speaker 01

  games. Even, 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.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, so what are we gonna do here? How long were you fighting? Okay, first of all, it's something, 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. Uh, 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?

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  So cover and move, meaning, okay, you want to go out? Look, okay, I'll cover for you tonight. Or like simple, like, hey, we're gonna keep things simple. Like, 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. Decentralized command, you know, are the kids stepping up and helping with things? Are we, are we doing a good? Does everyone understand why they're doing what they're doing? So those, those are the things. And there's our ego in check.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  Once all that stuff is done, we got, and we, 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. A very big deal. Alignment check is the biggest deal, actually. In a business partnership,

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  in a military scenario, and certainly in a marriage.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  What does she want? Where does she want to be? Where do you want to be?

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Where does she want to be in the future? Are you in that picture?

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  As a husband, and everything that being a husband, you know, encompasses.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  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, if she want, and you're not a husband, you're just a person that's, you know, it's a business arrangement.

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  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, I'm 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 we're at least we're no more going to 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, you know, our kids raised together. I want to, you know, sleep in the same room with you every night. I want you to be my husband, the husband. I want to be your wife, right?

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  If you can get aligned to figure out where, 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 gonna stay together until the kids are get older. Once they're out of the house, we'll move on separate ways. Okay, cool. I'm, I'm down with that. Okay. Or you know what? I'm going through rough patch right now. I'm a little bit resentful because of the way you treated me in the past, but I want to, I want, 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 is, doesn't work. It's against, it's against the laws of physics.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  You cannot, 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, you, this isn't going to work.

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  It's not going to work.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  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, I got.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. Okay.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  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 kids. Like whatever short term thing 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?

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  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,

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  your, uh, expressiveness as a young woman out there? I get it.

• 7:02Jocko Willink?

  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, 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,

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  that that's not acceptable.

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  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 like 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.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  And you need to see if you can get aligned with that.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  And if you can get aligned with that,

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  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, oh, uh, 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?

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  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 like, whoa, 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 gotta weigh that out.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  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 because you were taking care of me and I appreciate it. So now take care of yourself and maybe she's like, yeah, thank you. And maybe we can get aligned.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. If you can get aligned, if you can, if you can figure out a place that you can both want to go to, you're going to be fine.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  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 she can't, and you, 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 to together. And if I saw that that didn't exist, I'd be like, okay, this is not going to work.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  And that's my advice.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  You got no comment on that?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that's on, that's on.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Fair advice?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fair advice for sure, but I've noticed that.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Or I found this out a long time ago where.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Like, everybody's different.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  So therefore, relationships are different.

• 11:11Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  And they're different in literally infinite ways because.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  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 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 Jocko Leifbav and Steve Ward like, hey, this is what I did. I made you feel this, you can, you know, uh, 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.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  Full ownership.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Full.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  Full execution of the principles.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  We gotta do the full execution of the principles. That's why I started with that.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And, and the. I, 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.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  Not really.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  But you've heard.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  I've heard it happens.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  But you, 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, a pro. Oh, 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 counter punch, 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?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  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, um, shoot, then you gotta, 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, what, 19? Is it?

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  No. 29.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  29, 39. Oh, yeah, you're right. Okay. Boom. 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, uh, what do you, what do you call it? Alignment assessment?

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  Gotta do an alignment assessment.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  When you're, 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 jacood 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're doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way.

• 14:15Jocko Willink?

  But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you. More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.

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