My Wife’s Anger made me a better man.
The Cost of Being the “Good Girl”
Be the ‘good girl.’
Be the nice one.
Don’t be too much.
A lot of women have learned to suppress what they actually feel in order to keep the peace.
But that comes with a heavy cost.
Like how women make up nearly 80% of those diagnosed with auto-immune diseases.
What I’ve seen, over and over again, is that when anger gets pushed down, it doesn’t disappear.
It builds.
It leaks out sideways.
Or it eventually explodes.
And here’s something you should know. 👈🏽
You have a right to be angry.
It makes sense that you are angry.
It’s like a smoke detector going off, screaming: 🚨
HEY! There’s something here!
You don’t blame the smoke detector.
You get curious about what’s causing it.
A Slight Pivot in My Work
For the past few years, I’ve worked mostly with boys and men.
Teaching them the art of boxing. 🥊
Simple, powerful things.
Breathing properly. Nervous System basics.
Building a relationship with the warrior inside. ⚔️
And naming the elephant in the room.
Men and boys are struggling to say the least.
So the question becomes:
What are we going to do about it?
All while doing my best to cultivate balance within myself.
To be a strong, grounded man,
and still be kind, joyful, and open-hearted. ⚖️
I’m not going anywhere. I LOVE doing this work.
But I’m also feeling called to work more with women.
And to be really honest with you…
The deeper reason is this:
To help women stop tolerating bullshit from men.
Not from a place of hate.
From a place of honesty.
From a place of authenticity.
From a place of clarity.
In the subtle, small moments.
Can you speak up when something doesn’t feel right?
Can you stop enabling behavior that’s out of integrity?
Can you stay anchored in your truth, even when he gets defensive?
No easy feat, especially if you’ve been a good girl your whole life.
But that’s exactly why this matters so much.
So what I want to scream from the rooftops is this:
Men will rise to the level of what women tolerate.
When a woman truly honors her body, her time, her energy… when she treats herself as sacred, she stops entertaining the immature boy in a man’s body.
Not out of punishment, but out of self-respect.
And that changes everything.
Because a self-aware, connected, integrous man doesn’t want to manipulate his way into a woman’s life… he wants to meet her there.
To show up more present. More connected. More loving.
Not just to please her.
Not out of performance.
But because something in him recognizes:
this is the level I’m being invited into.
And if he can’t meet it… he’ll organically remove himself.
Or he grows along your side.
I once told a female friend who was struggling in her relationship:
“One of the most fragile things in the world is a man’s ego.”
I wasn’t just talking about the man she was dating.
I was talking about myself.
When I Couldn’t Run Anymore
A few years ago, when my now wife and her two teenage sons moved into my home here in Redding, everything got real.
There were many moments where she would bring her frustration or offer feedback…
and I would immediately get defensive.
“Why are you being such a bitch?”
“Why are you always judging me?”
“What did I do wrong?”
Those were the thoughts that would immediately pop up in my head.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but despite all the work I had done on myself, I was still operating from a deep lack of self-worth.
Anytime she brought something to me, I took it personally.
(spoiler alert, this still happens to me today and it’s an ongoing process of maturing, meeting each other’s needs, learning how to communicate more effectively etc)
I made it mean something about me.
And after years of being around hundreds of men in intimate group spaces…
I’ve seen this shared pattern in Men over and over.
A deep hole of unworthiness.
Back to the story.
My wife would get angry and want to work through our conflict.
“Let’s get this out of the way, let’s talk about it.”
Not me.
I wanted to RUN. 💨
Get me out of here.
Let me go smoke.
Be by myself.
This is too much.
You’re too much.
Then one day, in the middle of a conflict…
with tears on my face and anger written on my forehead…
I told her:
“I feel like you’re always judging me… like you’re always shaming me!”
She looked right at me.
Eyes watering.
“Baby, I love you… and that’s not my shame…That’s yours.”
Ohhh that hit me.
Like an uppercut right to the gut.
“I chose you. I’ve made a promise to myself not to shame you. I love you.”
And I could feel it.
Her love.
Her truth.
Her care for me.
Her care for us.
My body softened.
Like I finally stopped bracing.
That moment shifted everything.
Thankfully, my wife didn’t tolerate me running away from conflict.
She called me forward.
Brutally.
Lovingly.
She stayed anchored in her truth.
Not to attack me.
But because she cared.
Because she was invested in our relationship.
Because she wasn’t willing to settle.
And that changed me.
But for a woman to do what my wife did…
She has to be connected to herself.
To what she feels in her body.
To what she knows is true.
She has to be able to engage in conflict without losing her center.
To communicate clearly.
To assert herself.
To express herself with conviction.
And also…
To have compassion for herself when she doesn’t get it right.
When she gets messy.
When she reacts.
When she shuts down.
And then come back to herself again.
These are things we get to work on in our coaching.
Not just intellectually.
But in your body.
Now I’ll be honest with you.
Doing this work with a male coach may bring things up.
Old pain.
Old stories.
Old wounds.
You might shut down.
You might react.
You might get explosive.
And that’s okay.
All parts of you are welcome.
We get to meet them with curiosity, with compassion, with love.
We hurt in relationship.
BUT we also get to heal in relationship.
This is a space where you get to see it, feel it, and work through it in real time.
You don’t have to do it alone.
I’d argue you can’t do it alone.
We do this together.
One thing I want to be clear about.
I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman and will never know.
I don’t know what it’s like to walk to your car at night and feel that tension in your body.
But I do know this.
The world my daughter grows up in is important to me.
And if you look around, there’s a lot of chaos out there right now.
It’s heartbreaking. 💔
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” -Rumi
But I can help by…
By continuing my own work.
By mentoring men and boys.
And by helping all the women in my life feel safe, seen, and supported.
To a world where we honor and hold women in the highest regard 🥂
In service,
Alejandro