[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Today’s episode is for anybody who is in a relationship or wants to be in a relationship, and you ever felt confused, frustrated, hurt, or just flat out exhausted trying to make relationships work. I have been there, and whether you’re dating, married, or healing from a heartbreak, or simply trying to better understand your partner, this conversation is going to give you real insight into how men and women think, what the differences are between masculine and feminine energy, what each of us need emotionally, what pushes couples apart, and what actually creates deeper connection, trust, and lasting love.

My guest is Mat Boggs. He’s a bestselling author, world-renowned relationship coach, quite literally, and co-founder of the Brave Thinking Institute’s Love and Relationships division. For nearly two decades, Mat has helped women around the world attract and create deeply connected, lasting relationships. He’s appeared on The Today Show, CNN, Oprah and Friends, and more, and his videos and coaching programs have impacted over 200 million people worldwide. His new book is called Cracking the Man Code. It’s the ultimate guide to understanding how men think, love, communicate, so that you can create passionate, committed relationships that you deserve.

In this episode, we’re talking about the biggest mistakes people make in love, what men and women often misunderstand about each other, and how to create more passion, safety, and connection in your relationship. Stay with us to the end because this conversation can literally change the way you love and the way that you are loved and the quality of the relationship in your life that matters most.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Mat Boggs, dude, it is good to be with you again.

Mat Boggs: You too, Hal. Great to be here, man.

Hal Elrod: We are going to talk about relationships today. Men, women, the misunderstandings between the two that cause conflict, how we resolve it, how we can create better, more loving, more harmonious relationships. But before we get there, I got to talk to you about your mom. I had your mom on the podcast, Episode 461, Mary Morrissey, for those that don’t know, and she’s a bit of a personal development legend, a spiritual legend in this space. And so, my first question for you, and it’s just my own curiosity, is what was it like being raised by, you could say a personal development guru, if you will, in your mom, Mary Morrisey?

Mat Boggs: Dude, it was so funny you asked that question because I will often joke because people find out, like in public settings, like, “Oh, Mary Morrisey is your mom?” I’ll go to masterminds and they’ll be like, “Oh my God, dude, what was it like growing up?” And so, I’ll joke with them. I have a longstanding joke that people were given good books to read like your parents maybe read you, like Green Eggs and Ham.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Mat Boggs: And for us, it was Seven Habits of Highly Effective Baby.

Hal Elrod: Let’s go.

Mat Boggs: You know, Rich Diaper, Poor Diaper, Robert Kiyosaki, stuff like that.

Hal Elrod: That’s funny, dude.

Mat Boggs: I actually remember my very first personal development moment, believe it or not. I’m like six years old. I don’t know if you ever played with He-Man growing up.

Hal Elrod: Of course, dude. I was a big He-Man fan.

Mat Boggs: He-Man, Skeletor. So, I’ve got the whole setup. I’ve got Castle Grayskull, and I have these epic battles and whatnot. Well, my sister decided, she’s two and a half years older than me, so she’s like eight or nine. I’m six. And she decided that she was going to take He-Man to tease me and set him up with Barbies, put him in a dress, and do Barbie teatime in her room. And I’m too small, I can’t get him back. So, she’s like got her hand on my face and like holding me back. I’m trying to get my He-Man back, and she’s like, “No, no. He’s enjoying teatime.” So, I remember I run into the kitchen, my mom’s in the kitchen, and I say, “Mom, Jennifer’s making me so mad.” And I was just pissed. I’m angry.

And I’ll never forget, she leans down, and she goes, “Matthew, nobody has the power to make you feel anything. You are choosing to get mad.”

Hal Elrod: Wow. Okay.

Mat Boggs: And now granted, like wow moment, but I didn’t get it. I’m almost like six years old. But I do remember this one thing, and then she said this, she goes, “She probably wants you to get mad. You’re playing right into it. Don’t get mad and see how quickly your He-Man comes back to you.” And I was like, “Yeah, she wants me to get mad.” So, I walked by her room, and I’m like, “Hey. Have fun. Play with He-Man all you want.” And I’m like faking it though. I’m really pissed. I’m faking it. And I go to my room, and I’m playing and then like 20 minutes later, He-Man’s at my doorstep or at the door, and I’m like, “Oh my God, that worked.”

And it was the first moment I felt this like little opening of empowerment of this idea that I am actually in control of my own experience, regardless of the circumstances that are happening around me, which is a big part of what you teach in Miracle Mourning.

Hal Elrod: Heck, yeah. I mean, that’s arguably the ultimate personal development, elevating your consciousness realization, which is, “I’m actually in control of my internal state and my experience, regardless of what’s going on outside of me.” And most people don’t teach us that, right? It’s like we’re conditioned to think, “Oh, bad things happen to me. I feel bad, and I’m only able to feel good when good things happen to me.” We’re just the victim of our circumstances. So, dude, amazing to learn that at such a young age. And, yeah, I was a huge He-Man fan. There’s pictures of me when I was probably four or five getting the — what was it? The Grayskull, what was it? The Castle of Grayskull. You mentioned it.

Mat Boggs: At Castle Grayskull. Yeah.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, man. I had the whole thing. Alright. So, your new book, Cracking the Man Code, it’s the ultimate guide to understanding how men think, love, and communicate, so that you, whoever’s listening, we can create their passionate, committed relationships we deserve. I want to dive into this, and I want to start here. You’ve spent the last 20-ish years, how many years in relationship coaching and expertise?

Mat Boggs: Yeah. I got certified in teaching in… My first book came out in 2007, yeah, so 19 years.

Hal Elrod: Nineteen years. Okay. All right. So, let’s start here. What do most women misunderstand about how men think, how men love, and how men communicate?

Mat Boggs: So, this was a, and I don’t think it was just women, but men and women in terms of understanding that we have a core energy that we’re coming from that is either masculine or feminine. Now, the big thing that we misinterpret is that we tend to think you’re either all one or all the other, but we’re actually both masculine and feminine, and it’s like a spectrum or a scale. We can slide up and down. And so, today life is so dynamic where we will use an energy. Usually, it’s masculine in the entrepreneurial space or the business world, to get ahead, to get stuff done, to be productive. And then we have a really hard time shifting into the energy that we want for relationships.

But to understand that masculine and feminine energy are polar energies, they attract one another, and because they’re polar and they attract one another, they also do the opposite, which is repel one another romantically. So, for me, I’m naturally home-based more of a masculine guy, but ironically speaking of my older sister, she was my mentor in dating when I was growing up. And so, I watched her date and have all this success using very feminine strategies and tactics. I was like, “Well, that’s working for you. I’m going to master those skill sets.” And so, I got really good, actually, at being way more feminine when attracting a partner.

But then I’d shift into my masculine kind of once things got grounded in the rhythm and whatnot, and because the women I were attracting were more home-based in their masculine, we would butt heads, we would have conflict, and I had no clue what was going on. I was completely blind to this idea of what these ways of being even looked like. And so, once I began to discover this and study it and learn, it completely changed my love life. In fact, in experimenting with my masculine energy that actually was the day that I met my wife. I was like learning this. Okay, I’m going to take the lead, I’m going to pursue, I’m going to actually risk, I’m going to go ask her for the number.

I got really good at like inviting women in and then waiting until they asked me for my number, and so on and so forth. But this particular day, I was like, okay, I saw my wife. I walked right up to her. I struck up the conversation. I asked her out. And it was so nervous-making, it was so much riskier for me, but ultimately, it led me to the greatest love story of my life.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. How long have you been married?

Mat Boggs: We have been married coming up on 17 years. We got married in 2007, or no, sorry. Met in 2007. Married in 2011.

Hal Elrod: Okay, got it.

Mat Boggs: Yeah. So, 15 years. We’ll be married 15 years.

Hal Elrod: What comes up for me right now, as you talk about masculine and feminine energy, which I, interesting enough, just read another book about, so this is top of mind for me. What is healthy masculinity? And what is toxic masculinity? That was a buzzword the last few years, this toxic masculinity. And so, what’s the difference between a healthy masculine, and I don’t know if that’s for men and/or for women. I’m thinking more men, but maybe for both. But what’s the difference?

Mat Boggs: Yeah. Well, men tend to live more just society, and the way we’re raised and our biochemistry, tend to live more in their masculine, and women can tend to live more in their feminine. But like we’re saying, it’s a decision we make, and a natural home base for us, and it’ll all be a mixture. So, toxic masculine is dominating, it’s threatening, aggressive, it’s controlling, often selfish, detached, like not emotionally engaged. These are all demonstrations of what people would perceive as masculine energy, but it’s distorted, it’s toxic, it’s not healthy, and there’s toxic feminine energy. Like, feminine energy, toxic feminine energy would be weak, submissive.

Like, people want to gag when they hear feminine energy because they associate it with being passive or needy or manipulative or submissive, all of these things, and that’s completely false. Where healthy feminine energy, for example, isn’t weak or passive. It’s incredibly strong. It can be incredibly proactive, but it’s receiving, it’s nurturing, it’s collaborative, it’s heart-centered, it’s invitational, whereas a healthy masculine, like feminine is receiving, masculine is providing. Where feminine is nurturing, masculine is protective. Where feminine is collaborative, let’s all work together as one team, which is highly valuable in the business sense, masculine is competitive, which is also valuable in its own right.

Masculine is more head-centered. Feminine is more heart-centered. Masculine is pursuing. Feminine is invitational. Feminine is beautifying. Masculine is more practical. I talked to my niece and nephew recently. We just went to this wedding, and they’re in their twenties, and they just moved into this new place together. And he was like, they were talking about furniture that they had just bought and all of these things, and he was like, “Why do we need 10,000 pillows on our bed? I only use one pillow. I don’t need 10,000 pillows.” If it was me, it would be the big screen TV and the couch, and the house is done. And she’s beautifying the whole place. And that’s just more feminine energy. So, again, we all know men and women who have got all of these traits, the ones that we tend to gravitate towards, that’s where we’re either leading more masculine or more feminine.

Hal Elrod: And, yeah, it would think that in a harmonious relationship that, I mean, all of those qualities are important. Like, while the feminine energy is nurturing, there are times, as a man, you should be nurturing to your wife, right? Loving, supportive, caring. And there are times where you should be leading and protecting and providing for.

Mat Boggs: Yes.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. What do you think most men, and most women, being that your book’s called Cracking the Man Code, my brain keeps going toward this is for women, but it’s really for all of us. What do most men and women wish the opposite sex understood about them, but maybe they don’t know how to communicate it?

Mat Boggs: Yes. I love that question because we tend to love people how we’re wired up and how we want to love and be loved. And like Gary Chapman wrote The 5 Love Languages. It’s brilliant, but we talked a lot about that. So, we tend to give the love in the way that we want to receive the love, and the same thing goes if you’re more masculine or you’re more feminine. So, if you’ve got more masculine energy, one of the deepest needs that you have is to have your thoughts respected because your self-worth is wired up in what you’re providing and what you’re providing is directly related to the decisions you’re making, the strategy you’re bringing, the plans that you’re bringing, and so to have those around you.

So, how do we know that our thoughts are respected? Like, what does that look like? What does the other person doing that subconsciously communicates that either are respecting our thoughts and believing in us as a provider or not. One of the primary ways of being that supports the masculine energy is by trusting the plan. If you’re relaxed, if you’re trusting, if you’re not micromanaging or criticizing, then that says, “Hey, I believe in you. I believe you can do this. I believe you can provide. I believe that you’re the partner that I want you to be,” which is core to the masculine energy, core to most men.

Like, if we feel like that’s not in place, it is something that will either completely emasculate us, completely deflate us, or we’ll bust out and go find somebody else. I mean, it’s core. On the other hand, feminine energy, because it’s heart-centered, is about having their feelings respected. And I’ve coached thousands and thousands of women in helping them manifest their man. And when asking, “What qualities are you looking for? And how do you want to feel when you’re in this relationship?” And it’s so funny what men will say and what women will say, because one of the primary things a woman will say is, “I want to feel safe. I want to feel secure,” so that idea of being safe. And so, it’s feeling safe, and having her feelings cherished versus the thoughts respected.

And so, because the masculine is about providing, which is very much goal-oriented, achieving the goal that gives us this hit of dopamine, we want that, we will overlook when our partner, if our wife or the feminine energy, sometimes in same sex relationships, she’ll have one that’s more feminine and one that’s more masculine. So, the feminine energy will bring a problem like, “Hey, I’m struggling with this at work,” or so on and so forth. And we’ll immediately go and do, “Well, have you thought about this? And here’s the solution, and this and that.” And we’ll miss the deeper need of just feeling understood, feeling cherished, feeling validated. Whereas the masculine energy often we won’t.

So, one of the great techniques is if your man’s venting to you and he is like, “Hey, this is going on and that’s going on,” we can ask, “What role do you want me to play right now? Do you want me just to receive what it is that you’re saying, being a sounding board, or you…?”

Hal Elrod: You mean if your woman is venting or you said man is venting. Did you mean man or woman?

Mat Boggs: Well, actually, either way, either partners, what role do you want me to play right now? And generally speaking, if you know your partner is feminine energy, the first and most valuable thing we can do, and I’m sure you know this from being in your partnership, it’s validate what they’re experiencing.

Hal Elrod: I’ve messed this up more times than I can count. It’s like this is a huge area of conscious incompetence, which is like my wife has told me, “I just want you to listen. I just want you…” and then when I’m intentional and I’m conscious and I’m aware, I’m able to do that, but very often, right, like my nature is, “Oh, here’s how to solve the problem,” or, “Here’s how to…” I give the advice that your mom gave, which is like, “Hey, don’t let that other person affect your mental and emotional well-being. You’re in control.” And that never is what my wife wants to hear.

Mat Boggs: So, I’ve come up with a couple of good hacks for this, because if you’re conscious competent, like you’re saying, we know that we should listen and validate. The masculine, we so badly want to do something that achieves a goal. I don’t know if you do this, but so my friends and I, like, we were just at a wedding in Cabo. We can’t just swim in the pool and connect and talk. Like, we have to invent a game. Like, we invented this little Frisbee shuffleboard game. Who’s going to win? We’re just immediately playing a game and competing all the time. And so, we want to do something. So, if we’re not aware that listening and reflecting to our partner is actually doing something, we will get this incredible unrest in us.

Like, well, like I’m not doing anything. I need to solve the problem for her. I need to take her, like I need to fix this. But the hack is in our own brain to know that just by receiving her and honoring what it is she’s saying, or validate what she’s saying, well, you can imagine her being filled up with oxytocin. Like, we can imagine, “Oh, I’m actually filling her tank right now.” It is the easiest job in the world. On the other hand, ladies, if you want to help your man do this, it’s called goalify the conversation where you tell him what role you want him to play. Like, if you want him to help you brainstorm and solve, tell him that.

But if not, say, “Hey, honey, something’s on my heart right now. I’m feeling super stressed about this, or I’ve got this challenge going on. I would love to just vent for like 5, 10 minutes, and just have you hear this. And just empathize with me. Would you be willing to do that? I don’t want you to solve it.” Like, now we’ve got a goal to achieve and a timeline to achieve it, and your man will rise to the occasion in whole new ways if we put this on just by understanding this dynamic.

Hal Elrod: Now, what do you say to the woman who says, “My man should know that by now. I shouldn’t have to tell him”? Because I’ve heard that for sure before.

Mat Boggs: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s like saying, I should know math without ever going to school. Like relationship skills, these aren’t things that we are taught in school, and they’re not instinctual because your man wants to solve a problem. In other words, like one of the ways, one of the primary feel-good chemicals for the feminine is oxytocin. The way we get oxytocin is through connection and staring in each other’s eyes, or simply talking gives us oxytocin, because that’s more connection. So, you look at the way women talk in conversations, and they’ll often use way more words. They’ll elaborate the conversation. They’ll elongate. They’ll tell every single detail of this conversation.

And the man is going, “Where is this going? Like, what’s the point?” Why? Because for the masculine it’s not oxytocin, it’s dopamine. And the dopamine gets achieved by, or dopamine gets received by achieving a goal, hitting an outcome. And so, in a conversation, the point is the goal, and the outcome is, “What are we going to do about it?” And so, just understanding that, “Oh, we’re literally wired up with different chemical, like chemical makeups. that can help you understand, “Okay, he’s literally experiencing this differently than I am.” Like, there’s a technique called, “Give your man dopamine time.” Like, if you notice, he’s frustrated, and he’s kind of irritable, and like you don’t really like what’s going on with him?

Think back, when was the last time he went and hung out with the fellas or got time away going to do something active where he wasn’t in his brain doing business, or he wasn’t connecting with family or being dad to the kids. And often, one of the solutions is called dopamine time, where you’re like, “Look, you need to go surfing or golfing or go hang out with the buddies or go poker with them. Like, do something where you’re actually competitive. And he will come back feeling a completely different way because his feel-good chemical had gotten depleted and now it fills back up.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I love that. I just did that this last weekend. I don’t know that I’ve done this as an adult. I’m a part of Front Row Dads. It’s a mastermind. And me and three of the other dads who meet once a month, we decided, “Let’s do a sleepover. Let’s actually pick a guy’s house and stay the night, and watch movies, and talk, and hang out.” We played 18 games of pickleball in less than 24 hours.

Mat Boggs: There you go.

Hal Elrod: And we watched Old School. And we had a phenomenal conversation about life and business and marriage and parenting, and all of the above. And of course, I mean, we’re filled up. We’re like, “Dude, we’re doing this like at least once a quarter. This is amazing.”

Mat Boggs: Yes. And so, like in that moment where you come back, and your tank is filled up, and that dopamine is filled up, and we are way more wanting and willing to pour into our wives and meet their needs and so on and so forth, because you have that awareness to say, “Let’s do a sleepover, dude.” That’s so cool.

Hal Elrod: Well, and to be fair, the week before, my wife was in Cabo for four days with eight other women at a house also playing pickleball. You can tell what we like to do as a hobby, one of our shared hobbies, right? But, yeah, so it’s like we actually both, I didn’t really think about that until I’m saying it right now, which is like, she got four days with her friends. She got filled up, and I got one night with my friend. So, yeah. I think that’s so important to, well, in fact, let me ask you that. How does that look for a busy couple where it’s like, “We’re busy. We’ve got the kids”? I actually want to ask you, I guess, the topic would be rituals, right? Like, how important is date night? How important is getting time with your friends for a woman or a man? And what might that look like in a logistical, strategic scheduling, like how often? Any thoughts on that?

Mat Boggs: Well, one of the things I wanted to do when I started my journey of figuring out what the hell I was doing wrong in relationships and why it wasn’t working, and the realization that my mom, coming back to Mary Morrisey, helped me realize that I was at the center of every one of these failed relationships. Like, if you’re noticing a pattern going on, it’s typically not out there. It’s in here. And so, I went on a crazy, wild journey of interviewing America’s greatest marriages as a bachelor with my best friend. And we got in an RV, and we drove 12,000 miles, and we interviewed over 300 couples for their secrets to what makes love last. Now, these couples that had all been married over 40 years and reportedly had happy marriages.

And so, there’s an argument that, “Oh, well, it was a different era and a different time,” which in some cases was true. But I believe that principles that are timeless and work, they always work. And so, one of the elements was these rituals, where they talked about keeping the romance alive. And the only way to do that, the best way to do that, is to nurture the friendship. And having date nights. It’s an interesting dynamic that the romance, actually, the foundation of the romance is built on the friendship. And so, what are you doing that’s fun together that you both enjoy together, the common interest together? I mean, some people it’s, “Let’s go to the museums,” as other people they love movies.

Other people will say they want to play card games and so on and so forth. But having a regular repeated commitment on the value of connection that we’re going to do this. Like for us, it’s every Friday night, and so grandma comes, and we leave the kids, since the kids get mad or the kids get like, “Oh, I don’t want you to go.” And we tell them, we say, “Hey, we’re investing in each other so that we can come back.” We say it this way, “We fill each other up with love, so we can come back and give that love to you.”

Hal Elrod: Pour it out to you. How old are your kids, by the way?

Mat Boggs: And my kids are 7, 8, and 11.

Hal Elrod: Okay, got it.

Mat Boggs: Seven, eight, and eleven. And they get it, man, and they get it. And so, what’s something that you and your wife do on a consistent basis that…

Hal Elrod: Yeah, for us it’s pickleball. So, we were doing date nights for a while, and what would end up happening is they would get heavy. Like, all the things would come up that we hadn’t talked about, and then all of a sudden we’re fighting on a date night, or we’re just going to dinner. It just kind of felt robotic. And so, we both really like pickleball, and spending time with other couples also is, I think, that’s a really fulfilling experience as a couple. So, every Friday for roughly two hours, like 9:00 to 11:00 AM every Friday, we go play pickleball with a few other couples. And that has been transformative because we’re playing on the team, we’re having fun, and then we usually go out to lunch afterwards.

So, it becomes like an extended date day, if you will, where it’s like a couple of hours plus an hour of lunch. Really get to connect. And then something that we just added to our calendar, a few days ago. We haven’t even done our first one yet, so I’ll let you know how this goes next time we talk, but it’s a marriage reconnection walk. So, every evening, the goal, it’s in the schedule recurring seven days a week, and it’ll probably happen three or four days a week. But it’s after dinner that her and I are going to go on a 30-minute walk together around our property. And so, that way it’s a daily thing where we get to share appreciation, share anything that’s on our mind that we want to discuss.

And really creating like a safe environment where we go into it going, “Hey, alright, this is the part. First, let me share what I appreciate about you.” We start there. Then we’re going to go into like, “Is there anything that we need to address that’s like a challenge or a misalignment or anything in a really safe place, loving place?” And so, that container’s there. So, yeah, that’s the goal. It’s a daily thing, so that stuff doesn’t build up and then it comes out sideways, that kind of thing.

Mat Boggs: I love that you guys do that on a daily basis. The research shows, like, I’m a big student of Dr. Julie and John Gottman out of the University of Washington.

Hal Elrod: Oh, yeah. John Gottman is, yeah.

Mat Boggs: Yeah. And they’re brilliant. And they talk about a minimum is a once a week logistics meeting, so that your date night doesn’t turn into the logistics meeting where you’re just going through all the to-dos that you have to do and all of that. So, it’s a meeting, it’s usually on Sundays, or you pick whatever day you want. But it’s like we’re going to sit down, and we’re going to map out the week and get in connection, get in sync, and do all the logistics of running this house together. So, that whatever the connection time is can be fueled with fun, because that’s the whole thing is like, let’s make this fun.

I want to comment on something that you just said around like, “What if one of your needs isn’t being met?” Like, you guys have a say, have a container, where you can bring up the ways in which you want the needs to be met. And how do you bring up these ideas, even if you don’t have that container? And so, both the America’s greatest marriages reported and John Gottman’s research backs this up. The single greatest foundation for a loving relationship is respect. And both people. It’s not just men or women or masculine or feminine. Both people require this respect to be able to have this loving, trusting relationship.

The number one thing, there are actually four things that erode respect. The number one is criticism. So, if you feel, and it’s not even if the person’s actually criticizing you, if you feel they’re criticizing you, like your interpretation, your hallucination, or whatever they’ve said is, “I’m not enough for this other person. I’m dropping the ball. I’m falling short,” is that over time erodes respect. And oftentimes we’ve learned and the feminine particularly will learn to request things in a way that the masculine interprets as criticism. I’ll just give you an example. Let’s say she wants to spend more time together and feel more connected.

So, she’ll come up, and she’ll say, I mean, this one that literally is from something my wife and I, a couple years ago, we’re brushing our teeth at night, and she goes, “Honey, I’m feeling really distant from you right now.” And I was like, I could feel my heart just sink, like my stomach went in and nuts. And I was like, “Holy sh*t, man. I’m failing as a husband.”

Hal Elrod: Failing. I get that. Yep, I get it, man. Yeah, keep going.

Mat Boggs: Like, all these alarm bells went off. In other words, I misinterpreted that as, “You are not doing a good job as my partner right now. And so, I’m feeling really distant from you.” And so, it’ll come out, like things like this. “We never go on date nights anymore. Like, you never take me out anymore. You used to be so romantic, and you’re not, you’re not, you’re not.” Those things get misinterpreted as criticism, as you’re failing. And that sparks the biggest fear the masculine has, which is inadequacy. If the drive is to provide and to protect and to accomplish and to be everything that you want us to be, if we’re falling, if we’re inadequate of that, so what most the unconscious pattern is defensiveness.

And we will then argue for why we are still, which is immediately, and I know this stuff, and I still slipped into this pattern where I was like, “What do you mean you’re feeling disconnected from me?”

Hal Elrod: “I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this.”

Mat Boggs: So, anytime you hear your man argue for why what you just said is wrong, you can have what’s called x-ray vision, argument x-ray vision to say, “Oh, he’s not trying to prove me wrong. He’s trying to argue that he’s actually doing a good job as my man.” Like, he’s trying to argue that he’s enough for me, because subconsciously, that’s why we’re saying I did this, this, this, because we don’t want to be the guy that you’re going to leave because we’re not enough. And so, the idea is, instead, ask for what you want.

Like, knowing that he’s got masculine energy, knowing he’s mission-driven, is to goalify the request where you say, “Hey, honey, I would love to feel even more connected to you. Would you be willing to create some time for us to connect this weekend, whether that’s a walk or we go out to a cool new restaurant, or would you be willing to create some time for just you and I? Would you do that for me? That would help me feel so loved.” Boom. Your man is going to respond in a 180 degree from, “I’m not feeling connected to you. You’re doing a bad job.” And I hear women will say this all the time in my coaching. They’re like, “I want to spend more time with you.” Okay, but that’s a really bad request. What does that mean?

Like, how do we know if we’re actually hitting the mark? Like, “Hey, I would love us to hang out. I would love to do at least one more date a week, or one more fun thing that we’re doing a week. Like, what does more time actually mean?” “I want you to be more affectionate.” “What does that mean?” Like, my wife said, we had this conversation a couple of years ago, and she was like, I said, “Well, what is that…?” I’ll give you another example. She said, “I want you to talk dirty to me on text. I want you to like text dirty to me.” I was like, “All right.”

Hal Elrod: That’s the greatest text you could get from your wife, man.

Mat Boggs: I got like, I’m in, dude. I’m in. So, I start like in the middle of the day. I’m like, da da da, send her this text. And I give this response back. “Yeah. No, not that dirty.”

Hal Elrod: Ouch.

Mat Boggs: Oh, my gosh. Like, fail, right? Like, what is this? Like, talk dirty is so vague. What does it mean? So, we had to get really clear on like, what did she want out of that interaction? “So, I want you to be more affectionate. Like, I would love it if you came up behind me in the kitchen and gave me a hug from behind. Like, it’s one of my favorite things.” Like, my wife made that request. Well, now I can do that. I can hug her and squeeze her, and she melts into me. And it’s one of the greatest things ever. Now, I know I can hit the mark.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, I love that. Man, I relate to everything you’re saying so much as a man, and I’m actually curious on an example, if you could give an example of the opposite, right? So, you just gave the example that when a woman is telling her man, “I feel distant from you,” and that’s where I’m like that’s my unconscious reaction interpretation is I’m failing, I’m letting her down, and then I always go to defensiveness. I always start listing off all the things that I have been doing or done to try to make her feel loved and connected, right? And then it just creates this conflict. So, what does that look like for the man? Meaning, when the man criticizes, because I know that for me, if I tell my wife, for example, “Hey, I really would love if you didn’t get this food. I’m looking at the ingredients, and it’s got this unhealthy ingredient that I don’t want our kids to be eating.”

Well, that does not go well for my wife. She now feels like she’s failing as a mother, and then she gets really defensive and protective. So, I’m wondering if it’s just kind of universal for both sides, based on how you frame it, that we both feel criticized, or if there’s any nuance or difference in how a woman interprets a man’s criticism, even if it’s constructive, and how a man might shift. You just kind of give an example of how a woman could shift, right, instead of saying, “I feel distant from you.” It’s like, “Hey, I would love to feel more connected to you, and here’s specifically what that would look like. Are you open to that?” What does that look like for the man reversed?

Mat Boggs: So, there are two examples that require two different frameworks. Okay. And so, one of them is where, like she’s bringing a criticism, so just like interpreting the man’s defensiveness with x-ray vision that he’s trying to be enough for you. If our partner who has feminine energy, if it comes to us and says it’s often one of the techniques that they’ll use is using very emotionally charged words because they’re heart-centered and they want to express how they feel. So, for example, my wife, when we were dating, came over to hang out, and she was feeling really frustrated that she had been driving more to my house than me to her house, and it was a 40-minute drive.

So, I get in the car, and she’s pissed off already, and she says, “I always drive to your house. You never drive to my house. I’m carrying all the weight in this relationship. X, Y, Z.” And I literally just learned, I like read a book and learned this particular principle that afternoon. And so, it’s the iceberg technique. So, it’s what’s the presenting language? It’s like above the water but then realizing that there’s all this emotion below the water, that that’s really what the feminine wants validated. It comes back to validating the emotion. And so, instead of getting defensive, reactive, justifying ourselves and our position, the first move is to reflect what you hear them communicating, not even saying.

And so, I said, “Really, what I hear you communicating is that you’re feeling really frustrated, and so you acknowledge the feeling. I’m noticing you feeling really frustrated, and you feel like you’re driving to my house way more than I’m driving to your house.” Because there was a part of me that wanted to get defensive. I had driven to her house twice that week. But was it true that she had driven way more to me? A hundred percent. A hundred percent true. And so, the moment I just reflected that back, I could see her entire energy like her guard just dropped. She was like, “Yeah, I’m super frustrated.”

And then I said, “And so, what I’m hearing you ask for is you would love to share in the responsibility, or have me carry it for a while, and me drive to you. Is that what you want?” And she was like, “Yeah, that’s what I want.” And I said, “I’m in for that. A hundred percent in,” and she was like, okay, then we had a great date night. It almost went sideways if I had responded unconsciously and just defended my position. So, the technique is, and this comes from Dr. Gay Hendricks, give credit where credit is due. He is one of my mentors. It’s called, how do you ask for a need to be met? Like, you want your kids to eat a healthier cereal than the one that you guys are currently buying, right?

So, how do you ask for that request? And so, there are five steps, and most people miss the first one. The first one is to set the intention for the conversation. And it often goes something like this, like, “Hey. The reason I want to bring something up. It’s a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation, but the reason I want to have this conversation is though that you and I feel even more close, even more on the same page, have an even stronger relationship.”

Hal Elrod: I love that.

Mat Boggs: And it’s a really, really good phrase, “Even stronger,” versus, “So that we have a better relationship,” means like the relationship…

Hal Elrod: It’s not good. Yeah.

Mat Boggs: You have an even better relationship.

Hal Elrod: Even stronger. That’s amazing. That’s ninja right there. I love that. And it’s universal. Everything you bring up, ideally, should be so you have an even stronger relationship. You’re even more on the same page. I love that.

Mat Boggs: Yeah, totally. So good. And then the second one, so it goes, set the intention. Second is state what you see, then state how you feel, state what you would love, and then ask for their perspective on it, and create a common agreement. So, it’s something like in this cereal example is, “Hey, honey, I want to have.” It may not even be an awkward conversation, right? But you can say, “Hey, honey, I want to talk to you about something, so that you and I can be even more on the same page in terms of how we’re parenting our kids. Is now a good time?” So, then they want that same thing. So, you’re both now, instead of adversarial, you’re coming from the same position.

You say, “Hey, I’m noticing that we have this cereal, and it’s got this particular ingredient in it, and I’m feeling scared, or I’m feeling concerned because I read these articles that are saying that these things create this result in our kids. And what I would love, and I know you want the same thing is our kids to be healthy and our kids to this and that. And so, I would love either to find a different kind of cereal or for you and I to brainstorm another solution to this. Would you be up for that? And what’s your perspective?” And then it gives them the ability to meet us. So often, what’ll happen is one person just criticizes the other person out of the gate.

Hal Elrod: “Why are you buying this for the kids?” That doesn’t work.

Mat Boggs: Yeah. Like, “This is horrible,” or, “You’re doing the wrong thing, or this and that.” But they’re doing like, “We don’t spend enough time together,” but they don’t actually say what they want. And that’s the next step. So, step number four is, here’s what I would love is the solution to where we’re going because there’s a great phrase Dr. Pat Allen said, and I agree with this. The way we know we love each other is by the agreements we’re willing to make and keep with one another. And so, having a great relationship is all about making clear agreements and then both living into those agreements, knowing that we don’t have to be perfect. We might drop the ball. We might make a mistake.

But seeking to then reestablish the agreement and live into it is so important because that’s how people can feel safe and trust that we’re both going to get our needs met in this relationship.

Hal Elrod: So, right now, I can tell your depth of expertise around relationship through this conversation, and that we could keep going on and on and on. And also, I’m like, “Man, I’m going to go back and review the transcript from this conversation because there are so many, just the words, the language, the nuance in how you phrase things, that’s so valuable.” And that leads me to your book, Cracking The Man Code, right? Having this in writing, ideas that we can underline, circle, dog ear, revisit, talk about this book specifically, who is it for, what are they going to get out of it, that kind of thing.

Mat Boggs: So, I have been asked by my coaching clients who are women who want to create phenomenal relationships with their partner for years to write this book. And so, I’m so grateful that it’s out. And what’s funny, too, is I also wrote it for my two daughters. So, eventually, they’re going to want this as well. And so, this is the deeper psychology of the masculine and feminine and how to create really beautiful deep connection and attraction, and best practices for those relationships. And so, like you said earlier, it’s framed and written for women, but the truth of the matter is that men and women will get a ton of value out of this.

And so, really understanding when we talked about like the x-ray vision, why the other person is coming from that position, what the deeper psychology and the deeper biochemistry is that drives it, because if we can understand the why of the motivation, it helps decharge our own reactivity. We don’t get nearly as triggered by other people’s behavior. We’re able to keep our own center, our own groundedness, and we’re able to understand our own selves better and the needs that we have. So, that’s one beautiful dynamic that comes out of this. And then the second are communication frameworks for, let’s say, your husband’s working on something or your partner’s working on something.

And you want to give a suggestion, but you don’t want it to come across as micromanaging or criticism because you know that that is going to create distance. So, how do you actually phrase it in a way that ignites him and draws him in, versus pushing him away? So, it’s got a ton of examples of actual verbiage, things to say, how to turn conflict into closeness, all of these, how to get your needs met in a way that brings you closer together versus further apart. All of these scripts is really, really good.

Hal Elrod: I love it, man. I know you also have an event going with the book. Where’s the best place to get the book, connect with you more, learn from you, be part of the event, all the things?

Mat Boggs: Yeah. So, to be part of this experience in the event and the movement of really increasing love in the world, starting with ourselves, is CrackingTheManCode.com. And we have the book launch is on March 24th, and then on the 26^th, we have a live virtual three-hour event where we’re going to go deep into these concepts. We’ve got exercises. We’ve got tons of value coming out of that event. It’s a free virtual event for anyone who wants to attend. And so, that’s the best place to go because we’ve also added a really beautiful compilation of resources that are free bonuses, like $300 worth of free bonuses when people buy the book. And so, they can grab all of that at CrackingTheManCode.com.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. Well, I will be going to that site to get all of the bonuses. This is a book that I feel like I need right now in my life and my wife. In fact, I’m going to see about us reading it together. This is one that, occasionally, as a couple, we get on the same page and read a book together. And so, yeah, man, thank you for the work you’re doing in the world because I do believe that, arguably, the most impactful thing in our lives is the quality of our relationships, but specifically the quality of our relationship with our significant other makes more of an impact than anything else. When that is going well, and I love what you said earlier about friendship being at the core.

That’s one thing that this weekly pickleball, since my wife and I started it, I don’t know, four or five, six months ago, our friendships developed, or it’s deepened, right? It’s like we’re having fun, we’re playing, we’re high-fiving, we’re winning. So, it’s like I love that as the core. And, yeah, CrackingTheManCode.com, everybody, head over there. And, Mat, I’m so grateful that we got connected and look forward to just deepening our relationship, our friendship, man. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and putting this book into the world.

Mat Boggs: Thank you, Hal. I appreciate it, man.

Hal Elrod: All right. Everybody, we love you. We’ll see you next week.

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