How Do I Get Him To Stop Playing The Victim?

“It’s easy to get on that bandwagon because it feels empowering when the very power you’re supposed to be entitled to have in your life has been taken from you against your will.”

How Do I Get Him To Stop Playing The Victim?

This is a question I've been getting in my inbox a lot lately.

It's a completely understandable question, coming from a woman who is at her nervous system's wits end.

And I know exactly what she means when she says it.

He's the one who did this, and somehow you're the one apologizing.

He tells you that you'll never let this go. That the way you asked was the problem. That he can't do this if you keep bringing it up. That he's trying and nothing he does is ever good enough for you. That your reaction and questions are what's killing the marriage, not what he did.

Somewhere in there he starts sounding like the one who got hurt, and you're standing in your own kitchen wondering how that happened.

Here's the part nobody wants to hear. That's usually shame and protection doing the talking, not strategy.

Shame is a terrible witness. It cannot hold its own wrongdoing and its own worth in the same hand, so it drops one, and it's always the same one.

When what he did and his sense of being a decent man can't exist in the same body, the version where he's the one being wronged is the only story that lets him stay standing.

That explains it. It does not excuse it, and it does not make it one bit less exhausting to live with.

Some of them know exactly what they're doing in the moment and still have no idea how to do anything else. That's not the dividing line.

The dividing line is whether he'll learn a new way once he's been shown one, and some men won't.

You usually know which one you're living with, even when you talk yourself out of knowing. Because there's never a glimpse of compassion for your pain.

The answer still seems so black and white.

"You know this is hurting me, hurting us, hurting our relationship. So you either stop, or I’m done."

Simple, right?

How many of us have tried that approach? *me raising my hand 🤚

At the start of all this it's hard to understand what could possibly be so complicated about it.

And meanwhile you're watching other women take a stand, saying these men are weak, incompetent, disrespectful, disgusting narcissists, and that we should all just leave - because that will show them, and then they'll have to change.

It’s easy to get on that bandwagon because it feels empowering when the very power you’re supposed to be entitled to have in your life has been taken from you against your will.

Your femininity.
Your safety.
Your sense of yourself.
Your sexual allure in your own relationship.
Your ability to trust what's real.
Your security.
Your focus.
Your interest in anything outside of this.

And so much more.

The injustice is real and it is valid.

But I have never once seen degrading someone, seeking vengeance, being controlling, punishing, judging or scolding them into submission lead to a close, connected, repaired relationship.

Not once.

And I've never seen a woman heal herself that way either, even after she left.

Why?

Because that method teaches you to disconnect instead of reach.

To numb instead of understand.

To shut down instead of soften.

To assume instead of get curious.

To be less of yourself, because the hardened version of you that shows up to protect you is nowhere close to the intricate, infinitely complicated human you actually are.

And the simplified version of him you've labeled incompetent or disgusting is nowhere close to the infinitely complicated human he actually is either.

Telling him he's playing the victim will not make him do it less. It will however invalidate everything he's experiencing.

And that truth does not invalidate your pain, or take away one ounce of his responsibility for causing it.

So here's the honest answer to the question.

You can't make him. There is no sentence you can say, no boundary you can follow through on, no amount of pain you can make him feel that reaches in and does it for him.

If there were, you would have found it by now, because you have been trying harder than anyone knows.

What you can do is stop spending yourself on the one lever that was never going to move, and put that energy somewhere it actually goes.

And I want to be really clear about something, because this gets twisted constantly.

This is not about coddling him and sacrificing yourself to be nicer to him so he'll finally change.

It is not your job to hold in what hurts. It is not your job to caretake and regulate both of you. You didn't cause this and you can't carry the responsibility to fix it.

But when two people are both in fight or flight, nothing gets through. Not your words, not his.

When we reject because we've been rejected, it draws a line down the middle of the room.

We do it because we don't know what else to do. It feels like the line is the only option, or the right thing to do for ourselves.

It isn't.

Rejection needs two nervous systems learning how to come back toward each other. Not completely distancing. Not defending. Not punishing. Not name calling.

Rejection has to be tended to. Otherwise it turns into resentment, and then into hopelessness.

If what you need is tenderness, the work is not to silence yourself, and it's not to fight harder to be heard, and it's not to shut down or run.

It’s to slow your reach so you don’t overwhelm the very closeness and compassion you’re longing for.

It's to start by finding the one place where the two of you can share any compassion at all. And it doesn't have to be compassion for him. Not right now. Not yet.

You're hurting. He's hurting. This is brutal and confusing and neither of you really knows what you're doing, and you are both desperate to feel close and not alone.

Compassion for THAT is a starting point.

So here's an opportunity that I want you to consider.

On Sunday, September 27th at 6pm PT | 9pm ET, our men's coach Drew Manning, is leading a live breathwork session for couples.

Ninety minutes. No talking, no sharing your story, no hard conversation, nothing you have to explain. You lie down in your own house and you breathe, and he guides the whole thing.

It's a chance to practice the slowing down. The pause that makes room to feel what's really been going on inside of you both, that has never been safe or convenient to allow through.

This is ninety minutes of being somewhere for yourself, with him in the room, doing the same thing at the same time for himself.

It's free if you're a Men's or Women's Circle member. $27 per couple for everyone else.

Raise your hand in the comments if you've ever tried the ultimatum. 🤚

And if you want in on the 27th, with or without your partner, comment the word BREATHE below. I'll send you the link with everything in it, what happens in the session, what it costs, and who shouldn't do it.