3 Things to Stop Doing in Your Relationship In 2026

So let's start with probably the most notorious thing that every man needs to stop doing that I see so many of you being guilty of, which is stop performing and pretending to be fine.

You get home from work, you got some stuff going on in your life, you're stressed about whatever it is, finances, maybe you're stressed about the relationship, and your wife, your girlfriend comes over and she says, how you doing? How was your day? And you say, fine.

Now maybe you say fine because you just genuinely don't really know what's underneath the frustration, the bitterness, the discontent that you seem to be carrying around.

And so you just give the general answer, right? No, I'm fine, right? And we all, I don't know if you've heard the acronym, right? It's like fine stands for like fucked up, insecure, needy.

And I don't know what the last one is, maybe emotional.

But that's the kind of essence, right? The truth is that in your relationship, your significant other, if they actually care about you, and they've been with you for any period of time, they'll know you're not okay, right? Anytime that you say, I'm fine, but you're actually not, it creates this kind of discrepancy.

where they start to, their trust in you and their trust in your ability to be able to express where you're truly at begins to slowly get chipped away.

And so for every fine that you give, for every, I'm okay, yeah, I'm fine, but what they feel is you're disgruntled, you're upset, you're disconnected, you're shut down, Maybe you're a little bit anxious or you're kind of jittery and you're hypervigilant about certain things.

What they're going to receive is you're incongruent.

You're telling me one thing, but what I experience from you is the exact opposite.

And that puts your significant other on edge.

It's going to make anybody start to feel like, oh, I don't know if I can trust you to really tell me how you're feeling.

Now, maybe you don't know.

That's okay.

Maybe it was like, I'm upset.

Well, trade fine for something more transparent, something more accurate.

You don't need to give some speech about how you're feeling.

You don't need to self-diagnose like, oh, I'm having a... an anxious day, you just need to be accurate about what's happening inside of you.

Hey, babe, how you doing today? How was your day? You know what? I'm irritated.

I don't really know why, but I just know that I'm a little agitated today.

Or you know what? I'm having a great day.

I feel incredible.

Not even too sure why, but I'm just feeling wonderful.

right? Be accurate with where you're at and start to really own what it is that you're feeling, how you're actually doing inside of yourself.

A lot of times, especially in heterosexual relationships with women, that goes a long way because their nervous system, their relational scanning system can quiet down when you're just honest about what's happening inside of you.