Ep #20: Why Your Expectations Are Ruining Your Relationship

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, my brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. And today, we are going to continue our talk on women, relationships with women. And this is part-two. So, part-one was for my single guys, my single brothers out there who are looking to be in a relationship. That was last week.

This week is part two, for my guys who are in a relationship. Now, this could be a short-term relationship where you just met someone and you like her, you want to continue to be curious and explore things with her. It could be a long-term relationship where you’ve been together for many months, many years. And it is for my married guys out there, you guys that have taken that long-term commitment to your partner.

And what we’re going to talk about is something called – I’m going to call it the manual. So, last week, we were talking about sexual market value and how to approach women if you’re single, how to approach women with this concept out there called sexual market value. But once you’re in a relationship, then it’s no longer about sexual market value, right?

Now, it’s about how do you relate with this person? Now, I’ve talked to you about relationships already, and one of the tenets of being an alpha male is you’re never in a relationship with another person. You’re never in a relationship with people or things. You’re only ever in a relationship with your thoughts about people and things, because people and things are circumstances. They’re neutral, guys. They’re just there.

If we could see the world for what it really was, like if we were to see the world the way Neo does in the Matrix, we would see that really just what’s out there is data. It’s just energy. And all people are just cellular energy and things are just molecular energy, so everything is neutral, right? It’s just swirling molecules, atoms, and cells that are colliding and separating and dying and it’s just happening. It’s just happening in front of us like a kaleidoscope; constantly in flux, constantly changing, but completely neutral until we judge it, until we have a thought about it.

So, when you’re in a relationship, the key component of that relationship and how you relate to this other person is through what I call the manual. So we’re going to talk about the manual in this episode. Now, a manual is an instruction guide we have for someone in our lives about how we would like them to behave so that we can feel good and we can be happy.

Now, think about that. Other people’s behavior creating emotions for us, talk about disempowerment, right? I’m only going to feel good if you do a certain thing or if you say a certain thing.  That is the epitome of the beta condition. It’s giving your power away to other people.  It’s not having control over yourself.

We generally don’t tell the other person what’s in the manual, what’s in the manual we have for them. And we usually don’t even realize that we have a manual or that we see the pain that it causes us. We just kind of think, like, we feel like the other person should just know what to do and how to treat us. It’s like common sense, like, you wouldn’t treat a person this way, you should just know how to treat me.

And while it may seem justified to have expectations of other people, it can be very damaging when your emotional happiness is directly tied to their behaving a certain way. Other people’s behavior has no impact, no impact whatsoever, on us emotionally until we think about it, interpret it, and choose to make it mean something.

Guys, that is the universal truth. Our emotions come from our thoughts. it doesn’t come from what people do and say. It comes from the way we think about what people do and say. That’s the universal truth. That’s true for all human beings. It’s the same as what goes up must come down and day following night.

Our emotions come from our thoughts. Now, no matter what people do, no matter how they act or what they say, we don’t have to give them the power to determine how we feel.

Now, this concept may be mind-altering for you. You may know this intellectually and may not be applying it, or you may have never heard this before. And if you’ve never heard it before, it can be really jarring. It can be really, like, whoa, what did he just say?

If you have lived your entire life giving your power away, it will probably be difficult for you to realize that you have been doing this voluntarily and unnecessarily. And I know that can be a tough pill to swallow, brother. I know it can be a tough pill to swallow. It’s like, wait a second, you’re telling me that my emotions, the way I feel, has nothing to do with what this person is doing or saying. That can be tough. That can be tough to really wrap your head around, but it’s the truth.

It is the truth. It is the universal truth. And it’s what the alpha male knows in order to empower himself to keep his emotions stemming from his cognition, stemming from his mind, not from other people’s behavior.

Now, here are a couple of thoughts, a couple of manuals, like manual instructions, which essentially are thoughts that can create emotions, or do create emotions, in us that we may not want to have. They can be uncomfortable emotions. Like, she should call me back when I call her. Or, another one is, she should text me back when I text her.

I see this a lot with guys. I hear this a lot with guys that are like, well, she didn’t text me back. Does that mean she doesn’t like me? Does that mean she’s not interested in me? She should do this. It’s like, she doesn’t have to, right? But that kind of thought creates fear.

She should remember my birthday – when you’re in a relationship with someone and they don’t remember your birthday, or she should be kind and understanding when I’m frustrated, I’ve had a tough day at work, she should be kind, she should be understanding of my stress, she should support me. You know, your wife, your girlfriend, the person you’re in a relationship with, it is not their role to support you.

You might think that it is. You might be getting into a relationship with this person thinking that they need to support you, but that is a manual, guys. That is a rule that you have for your significant other. And it’s okay to have this rule. Like, if you want a woman that supports you, so be it. But if she doesn’t support you, then don’t make it mean anything about you and don’t make it alter your emotional state. Don’t allow it to determine how you feel and how you act.

Or, she should listen to me for as long as I listen to her – like, there are so many different thoughts that can create these manuals. And these examples are simple. These examples are simple and brief. But the truth is, most of our manuals for other people, especially for our wives, especially for our girlfriends, are pages thick. Like, this is the person that we are spending the most amount of time with. This is the person that we are most intimate with, the person that we’re naked around, you know what I mean?

And because of that, we tend to have the most amount of rules for them. They become complicated. They become intricate. They become incredibly detailed. And again, most of the time, rather than sharing these expectations with the person that they’re about, our manuals, we feel like the other person should just inherently know. It’s like one of those things where it’s like, well wouldn’t everybody want to be treated this way? Why wouldn’t you want to treat somebody this way?

And when we don’t share them and when we expect it and when we think that they’re common sense, that we mistake our thoughts for facts, then we’re very quick. The beta condition is very eager to interpret this as evidence that they really don’t love us, that they don’t care about us, that we’re not important to them.

So, that’s one of the problems with manuals. You’ve got to understand, here’s the thing, guys, and this is true for everybody; adults have the ability and freedom to behave however they choose. Now, this includes you. This includes your girlfriend. This includes your wife. But this includes you as an adult. You can behave however you choose to behave. There is nothing you ever have to do and there is nothing that anybody ever has to do for you.

Now, one common practice in modern couple’s therapy, if you want to call it modern couple’s therapy or marriage counseling or whatever, is for two people to sit down in front of this therapist, this counselor, talk about whatever circumstances happen that’s bothering them, and then share with each other what their needs are so that the other person can work to meet them.

I find this to be like emotional bondage. I find it to be like emotional blackmail. It’s like, the problem with this is it creates a setup for disaster. I mean, think about it, guys, and really kind of conceptualize this; the truth is, each of us is responsible for meeting our own needs. That’s all we can ever do. We can all ever meet our own needs.

When you’re in a relationship where you feel responsible for filling someone else’s needs and they feel responsible for fulfilling yours, there’s constant manipulation going on, right? And you can look at your own life in this. You can see it probably in your friend’s life, where they’re having difficulty with their significant other. There’s this manipulation that’s constant and this effort to control the other person’s behavior so that, in the end, nobody wins.

If you’re tying your emotional happiness to this other person’s behavior, then you’re going to manipulate them so they behave a certain way. Like, that’s the logical conclusion to the premise. But again, the truth is, you can’t control other people. That’s the universal truth, and you know this from previous podcasts. You cannot control another person, and there is nothing that they could possibly do that would make you as happy as you want to be.

All of the power to feel happy, to feel confident, to feel love, to feel like a man, like an alpha, your alpha is within you. So although your partner may do things that give you positive thoughts and positive feelings at times, that’s the illusion. Number one, they won’t be able to do these things all of the time and they may not want to. But it’s the illusion that it’s them giving you these thoughts and these emotions.

The truth is, it’s the way you’re thinking about what they’re doing. So if your emotional life is tied to your partner’s behavior, you have given away all of your power and you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Furthermore, just to kind of put a cap on this, furthermore, being in a relationship with someone who’s needy – think about that, you know that word, needy. You’ve probably been in a relationship with somebody like this before – it’s exhausting and it’s not fun.

Instead, if both people are responsible for their own cognition and their own emotion, then they can meet in the middle and they can have fun together. This, my brother, is how the best relationships function, whether it’s a short-term relationship with a woman you’ve just met, whether it’s a long-term relationship, whether you’re engaged or whether you’re married, this is how the best relationships function.

When you subscribe to manuals, when you have these manuals for your wife, your girlfriend, you are putting your emotion, you’re basically giving all of your power away to this other person, because if this person in your life doesn’t follow the manual – and I’m going to tell you, they usually don’t. there’s nobody out there that’s going to do everything you want them to do because they are not a robot.

So, when your wife or girlfriend doesn’t follow your manual, then you’re kind of guaranteed, you’ve guaranteed yourself, to feel bad. You’ve created your own suffering through creating this requirement, this manual for your partner. And then, what happens is you will, maybe knowingly, maybe unknowingly, blame that person for how you feel. You made me feel bad. Your behavior made me feel bad. That is the illusion. That’s the beta condition.

No one is making you feel anything. You’re making yourself feel everything with the way you think, with your thoughts. You’ve given your control of your emotional life to someone else, which has basically put you in that beta conditioned powerlessness.

Now, the first step, the best first step, is to realize that these manuals you have, these rules you have, are based on other people and to recognize the benefits of taking responsibility for your own rules, by creating personal operating manuals for yourself. That’s the only thing you can really ever control anyway.

The truth is that most of us have a tough time even controlling and managing ourselves, and yet we want to control and manage other people. We want to control and manage our wife, our girlfriend, and that’s ridiculous. Controlling our own behavior is challenging enough. I’ve seen this. I know this in myself. I’ve seen this in my clients. I mean, that’s the essence of elevating your alpha is to control your own behavior through your cognition, mastering cognition in order to create emotion and determine action.

But trying to control other people is inevitably frustrating for both parties, and ultimately ineffective, because it is an impossibility. Now, once you acknowledge that you have a manual for your wife or your partner or your girlfriend, you’ll want to explore what it is that you want this person to do differently, and why. So here’s the thing; check this out. The answer is that you think that if the other person changes their behavior, that you’re going to feel better, right? Because again, you think that their behavior is what’s creating your emotion. However, we know that another person’s behavior doesn’t control our emotions, ever, that’s the universal truth. It’s only our thinking that affects how we feel.

When someone does follow our manual for them, you may choose to think, this person likes me and cares about me, and that feels good. And when someone doesn’t follow it, then you interpret it negatively and feel bad. And that is when you don’t take responsibility for your own cognition. That is the beta condition, giving that power away.

So you’ll want to remind yourself that when you want someone to act differently, say something different, do something different so that you can feel better, that is the beta condition. It’s not even possible, number one, and number two, it’s completely putting you in a place of powerlessness. It’s not possible and it’s taking away all of your alpha state.

So instead, what you want to do is you want to create. You want to decide what you want to think about this person, about your wife or girlfriend’s behavior, because that’s your alpha. Your alpha is the one where you are in control, where you get to choose. You get to take responsibility for your thoughts and emotions, regardless of what they’re doing, regardless of what they’re saying.

This is an empowering way to live and it creates better results for your life, because when you’re choosing your thoughts and determining your emotions, that’s when you will create massive action and get the results you’re looking for. This doesn’t mean that you stay in a relationship that’s harmful or not serving you.

You need to do what’s necessary to create the results you want. Boundaries are appropriate and you can set up your boundaries the way you want, but trying to control and manipulate other people doesn’t work. Tying your emotional state to other people’s behavior doesn’t work. It only makes you feel and act like a crazy person, like a crazy dude. It essentially makes you a beta man, it makes you a beta male.

Like I say the beta condition, but you manifest it as a beta male. You get to decide what you’re going to do with your time, how you’re going to respond, and when you want to make changes in your life. That’s the alpha state; your control, your decision, your deliberateness. You’ll want to make sure that you’re thinking about those changes and what you want based on what you have control over.

So remember, brother, the alpha state is never about the other person. You never control the other person. The alpha state is about mastering your own cognition. It’s about being a master of yourself and not allowing the circumstances, not allowing the situation, to determine what you do, what you think, what you feel.

So, when you release all of the rules and expectations you have, then you can start to listen to your wife or your girlfriend and you can hear what’s really going on for them. And that is when your relationship will change for the better. You can start to understand them from a different perspective that isn’t clouded by your own thinking and expectations, that beta condition.

Do me a favor real quick.  Let’s run this here. Think about your wife or your girlfriend and three things that you want that person to do because it would make you feel good, because it would make you feel happy, it would make you feel like a man, whatever it is, make you feel confident. Maybe you wish that she would have sex with you three times a week. Maybe it’s that she would text you during the day while you’re at work. Maybe it’s that she would remember you on your birthday or that she would have a Martini waiting for you when you get home, I don’t know.

Whatever it is for you, just think about three things that you wish your wife or girlfriend would do for you. Now, you’ve got these three things, and I want you to consider what you think you would feel, like, how would you feel, what emotion would you have if your wife or girlfriend did these things voluntarily and happily? Like, you didn’t have to say anything to her, she just did them.

Now, remember, all of your emotion, every emotion, comes from your thinking. What would you be thinking if this person behaved in line with the way you want them to behave? What would you be thinking? Really think about it until you can identify the main thought.

Can you think those thoughts about this person without them having to do what’s on your list, without them having to behave this way? And if the answer is yes, if you have controlled your cognition, if you can think those thoughts regardless of what she does or doesn’t do, then you’re the man.  You’re the alpha. You’ve elevated your alpha.

You don’t have to go around changing other people to feel better. You can feel better on your own accord. You can have an amazing relationship just by using your cognition, just by elevating your alpha, using your alpha mind. You can decide, look, I’m not going to make my life about the way I believe I’m entitled to be treated.

The only thing I’m entitled to is taking care of my own life and my own brain to make sure that I’m thinking the thoughts that serve me. That’s the alpha mind. That’s the alpha taking responsibility for life. If you really want something done, make sure you do it yourself. Get it done.

At times, you may need to ask yourself why you’re not willing to do it, and do you really want someone else to do it when they don’t want to? If they don’t want to do it, then they’re not really doing it for you. They’re being manipulated. They’re kind of in this space of, “I don’t really want to do this for him but he’s making me do this. He thinks that I have to do this. If I don’t do this then he’s going to leave me…” All of a sudden, she’s in a mental place of suffering and you’re in a mental place of suffering because you know that she’s being manipulated into doing things she doesn’t want to do.

It is truly possible to let go of all of your rules, all of your manuals, all of your attempts to control other people, and specifically your wife, your girlfriend. Really consider, brother, consider letting these things go and making requests if you want to. There’s nothing wrong with making requests. I want to make that clear as we kind of wrap this up.

I want to make that clear, there’s nothing wrong with making requests. You can certainly ask your wife to have a Martini prepared for you when you get home. Like, if that’s what you want, you can make that request, but only with no strings attached. Let’s make that clear; only with no strings attached, only with no emotional connection to whether she does it or doesn’t do it.

And then, genuinely notice what she does when you don’t try to control her. If you focus on trying to control only yourself and your responses to how other people behave, your responses, your cognitive and emotional response to the circumstance, what do you imagine your life would be like? How do you imagine your life would be different?

You know, when it comes to our personal relationships, it’s much easier to let go of the manuals because we start letting people just be who they are.  When we don’t try to control our wife or our girlfriend, they feel safe to be their true self, to be their best selves, to be their alpha. And this is what authentic intimate genuine relationships are made of.

You are your best self, you are the alpha male, and she is free and safe to be herself without judgment from you so that she can elevate her alpha. We can be much calmer when we don’t make other people’s behavior mean something negative and we can really start to hear them out. We can start to understand and listen. We can get their perspective on things. We can hear their side of the story and understand why they do or don’t do what we’ve requested.

Brother, this is so much more effective in your relationship with your wife or your relationship with your wife or your girlfriend than pounding your fist on this manual and allowing this beta condition to manifest in ways where you have expectations and want to control how she behaves. If you throw away your manual, you may end up doing things you don’t want to do. But your relationship with your wife or your girlfriend will improve dramatically.

If I go back to the Martini example, you may be happy to make that Martini yourself, bro. You may just have to do it. She may not be the type of woman or she may not want to make you a drink. She may have just had a long day herself. She may be busy with other things. Her own mind, her own thoughts are creating her emotions and driving her actions and she may not have that in her brain to have a Martini ready for you when you get home.

So you may have to do it yourself and you may not want to do it. So, you may have to end up doing things you don’t want to do. But your relationship with your wife or your girlfriend will improve. And the truth is, you, just like other people in your life, don’t have to follow your manual. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do either.

So take the time to consider this. This is what I want you to do. I want you to take the time to consider this idea. Are you willing to give up all of your manuals, all of your expectations, all of the beta thoughts that are running in your brain about how other people should behave in order for you to feel good?

Are you willing to let go of all of your expectations, and instead, focus all that time and energy, both physical and mental energy, on creating the best life you can? What you’re going to find is that your life is enhanced by being around people who genuinely do things they want to do rather than doing things because you are emotionally manipulating them.

If you’re willing to give it a try, if you’re willing to do this, you’re going to find that everything changes; everything, for them, for you, and for the both of you. Your thoughts about yourself, your thoughts about her, and your thoughts about the relationship will change because you will be elevating your alpha state. You will be supervising and subduing the manual that comes from the beta condition.

And that’s what I’ve got for you today, my brother; end of part-two, relationships with women, short-term, long-term, and wives. I will see you next week on The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. And until then, my friend, elevate your alpha.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.