Essential Masculinity: Emotional Self Control

Essential masculinity for men and how maintaining emotional self-control is essential to achieving your personal and professional goals.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a female viewer whose boyfriend has an anger management problem. He is constantly losing emotional self-control, becoming enraged and is physically, emotionally and mentally abusive towards her.

She loves him but is tired of him losing it and going into a fit of rage. She wants to know what she can do to help him keep it together and show him that she won’t tolerate it without leaving him. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of her email.

This is a super important topic, especially for all men and really all human beings to understand, but extremely important for men, especially if you want to achieve your personal and your professional goals in life. So, I actually have an email here from a woman, and her boyfriend is just constantly losing it and getting upset, yelling and screaming at her, becoming mentally, verbally and sometimes physically abusive towards her. And it’s obvious that something’s going on with her boyfriend, that it sounds like he’s going to need some kind of professional help with.

And she loves him. She wants to help him. He’s promised to get his temper under control, but she’s kind of at the end of her rope. And so, just reading through her email, it reminded me of a football player who used to play for my home team, the Miami Dolphins, a few years back. He’s pretty famous and, you know, he had a similar problem.

It’s something that’s really super important, because if a man is unable to maintain his emotional self-control, he’s going to ruin attraction, he’s going to turn people off. He’s going to scare people. He’ll say the wrong things at work that may lead to his getting fired. If you’re in the middle of a negotiation and you lose it because you don’t have your emotional self-control, it can cost you a lot of money and cause you to lose the negotiation.

And especially if you invest in things like the stock market, or these days, investing in crypto currencies, if you don’t have your emotional self control handled, this is the kind of vibe, the kind of energy that can cause you to just completely lose everything. I was actually hanging out with an old high school buddy of mine over the weekend, and he lost close to half a million dollars about ten years ago investing in the stock market because he just got into a spiral.

One trade went bad, and he tried to do another trade to make up for the losses in the first trade, and it just went into an emotional spiral where he lost half a million dollars, just like that, in a matter about a week or two. When you’ve got big dollars at stake and you lose it, you’re going to lose your money. And if it involves women, you’ll chase them right out of your life, because you’ll just scare the crap out of them.

So the football player in question here is Brandon Marshall. He was a wide receiver, originally played for the Denver Broncos, played with Jay Cutler, and then he ended up coming to Miami. And I remember I was actually at a game with my dad — this is probably 2010, 2011, maybe it was 2012 — but I just remember a call didn’t go his way, and he picked up the football and he just chucked it as hard as he could towards the sidelines.

He just threw it in a fit of rage because he was ticked off. And this is where all the cheerleaders were. You can imagine these little petite, 5’2″, 5’3″, 5’5″ women that are on the sidelines, and he chucked it right where they all were. And I was thinking, man, he’s going to nail these girls in the face. And I don’t know if you’ve ever caught footballs. I had a guy that I hung out with in college. He was a roommate of some of my friends, and he played football. And he wasn’t that big of a guy, but man, when he threw that ball in, you could see it coming and you could hear the wind whistling off that ball.

And when it hit your hands, it hurt like hell. I mean, it was pretty common for my hands to be black and blue after, because the ball came in so hard and so fast. If you’ve ever seen guys that played receiver for a lot of years in the NFL, you’ll seen their fingers are all jacked up because they’ve gotten hit and their fingers have gotten broken, or dislocated, or just jacked up in general.

So, I remember seeing this and watching and I was like, “What is with him, man? He’s just totally losing it on the field.” And then there were things happening where he’d be in the media, there would be a problem. I think the police came to his house one night just because he was in a fit of rage. And so, I’m going to read you something from an article, because this is an extreme case of what happens when a guy can’t maintain his emotional self-control.

I’m going to read an excerpt from this article “The Stigma” from the Players’ Tribune, and it’s about Brandon Marshall. Let me read this excerpt, and then I’m going to go through this woman’s email. So, the article from the Players’ Tribune says,

“In 2009, during my last season in Denver, I was depressed. There were days when I would just sit at home in my theater room in the dark in a catatonic state. I never wanted to leave my house, and if I did, I wore a hoodie up over my head because I didn’t want anybody to recognize me. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. At the time, I didn’t know that I was depressed, and I had no idea how to deal with it. So I hid from the world.

I thought that I was trapped in that catatonic state because of my relationship with my coach, Josh McDaniels…”

He’s now the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots and was a big reason why Tom Brady has done so well over the last ten years. But Tom Brady is Tom Brady. Tom Brady is always going to do well, but Josh McDaniels is a great offensive coordinator. So back to our article, he says,

“…and the fact that I was due for a new contract and the Broncos weren’t coming to the table with the deal that I thought I deserved.”

Now, notice what he says next, especially if you’re not able to keep it together in a negotiation. I mean, we’re talking millions, tens of millions of dollars here for this particular guy, are at stake. And he’s constantly losing his shit and throwing a temper tantrum and being difficult to work with to the point where people are like, “I don’t want to deal with this asshole anymore.” He says,

“(Now, looking back, I wouldn’t have given myself a contract either. At least not until I cleaned up my act.) So when the Broncos traded me to the Dolphins in 2010, and I signed a five-year, $50 million contract — the richest ever for a wide receiver — I thought that everything was going to be O.K. I had the security and stability of a long-term deal. What reason did I have to continue to be miserable?

But my depression followed me to Miami.

Sometimes I would go days without talking to anybody. When my brothers and sister would come to my house, I would say hi to them and then just sit there. They would stare at me like, What’s wrong with you?

I have a beautiful wife, Michi. She’s stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. I’m not saying that to brag. Believe me, I know how incredibly fortunate I am to have her in my life. But there was a time when I couldn’t even look her in the eyes and tell her how much I loved her, or that I thought she was the most beautiful woman alive. I felt all those things, but I couldn’t process them. So instead of showing her or telling her how I felt, I just didn’t say anything at all.

That’s how I was for my entire first year in Miami.

Then, in 2011, I had multiple friends and family members who spoke up and told me that they thought I needed help. So I decided to go the the McLean Hospital and undergo a clinical evaluation. That’s when I first heard about BPD.”

BPD stands for Borderline Personality Disorder.

So the problem is he just he couldn’t process his emotions and didn’t know how to express it, because he probably never learned that in childhood. So he bottle it up and he just goes into a fit of rage. And like I said, when I saw him chuck that football across to the sidelines, I thought he was going to nail one of those girls by accident in the face or, you know, he could really fuck somebody up. If the tip of that ball hit you right in the eyeball, as fast as that thing’s coming, that’s really dangerous. And he would have probably gotten kicked out of the NFL if something like that would have happened. And then, when it missed everybody, I breathed a sigh of relief.

So I’m going to go the email that I got, but like I said, that that article, if you’re interested, you can go check it out. It’s really interesting.

Brandon Marshall Article: The Stigma, The Players’ Tribune

Direct Link: https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/brandon-marshall-nfl-mental-health-awareness

It’s really important to read, because if you’ve got people in your life, or maybe yourself, that you just lose your shit, and when you see some of the things that this guy is doing with this woman, she’s also enabling his behavior, because she’s making excuses for what he’s doing, which is not a good thing. But she doesn’t want to leave him, because she loves him. But at the same time, she’s over it.

Viewer’s Email:

Hi Corey,

I need your advice.  I am engaged to a man that regularly loses his temper.  Last year, I got really ill because he would always blame his outbursts on me, smashing doors, shouting, calling me names, belittling me and pinning me down on the bed.  

We’ve broken up and got back together a couple of times after he banged the washing up bowl down with scalding water which went on my face and chest because I wasn’t looking at him when he was talking, (I was about to start washing up, but prior to that we’d had a disagreement). He apologized and promised he would work on his temper.

So, he promised to do something about it. How’d that turn out? A man, in order for a woman to trust, and this case, for her to trust his masculine core, he’s got to be able to take corrective action. When he says, “I’m going to do something about it” to work on it, he’s got to fix it. You can’t just keep blowing up and doing it over and over, because eventually everybody is going to get tired of it. Everybody’s got a breaking point. Or they’re just like, that’s it, screw this person, I’ll find somebody else.  

This past month has been perfect until yesterday. We woke up, and he wanted sex.  I wasn’t in the mood, and I told him so and that I needed a cuddle.

So, the other thing, as a woman, you’ve got to remember that we’re logically brained. So in other words, it’s like, you’re not a light switch. You’ve got to be able to explain to him, “You’ve got to take your time, caress me, cuddle me. Let’s not get to the bumping and grinding right away, but just take your time to get me aroused, so I get really dripping wet.”

You’ve got to be able to coach him on what you need to get turned on, because the way you’re saying it, obviously, he doesn’t know any better. He probably hasn’t read “How To Be A 3% Man,” so he doesn’t understand these things. So, you’ve got to be able to explain in a way, because men are like dogs, like step one, step two, step three, step four. Just guide him on what you need.

He lost his temper and told me how badly I treat him and threatened to leave me.  

They’ve done studies on couples that stay together. When one or both people, their solution to all problems is to threaten to leave, almost 100% of the cases, it never works out. The relationship will always end, because at some point, people reach a breaking point, like, “Screw it. You’re going to leave me? Fine. I’ll leave you instead.” So, that is not healthy behavior either.

This ended with him pinning me on the bed screaming at me.  I told him to go and he apologized, but I am still upset. He says I’m ruining the relationship by not accepting his apology, and that he says and does things when he’s upset that he doesn’t mean.

Well, you can’t excuse it. It’s not okay to pin you to the bed and be verbally and physically abusive and scream at you. He’s got the emotional maturity of a four or five year old kid that never had a father figure to teach him how to be calm.

And I don’t know what Brandon Marshall’s back story is, his behavior, but typically you see guys like this that just lose their shit and can’t control themselves because they never had a father that would put them in their place and teach them how to be calm, process their emotions, talk about what’s going on, why they’re upset, and then deal with the issue, solve it and move on.

If there’s no father there, then they just lose their shit. And as they grow up, everybody is trying to deal with them, “I don’t want to upset them too much,” and they kind of coddle the person. So they grow up thinking, “Hey, this is acceptable behavior. This is totally normal,” and it’s not normal behavior.

I really love this guy when he isn’t being abusive, but what can I do to stand up to this behavior and show him I won’t put up with it anymore without leaving?

Thanks,

Jessica

Well, the strongest negotiating position is being able to walk away and mean it. And if I were you, I would definitely have him read this article about Brandon Marshall. You’ve got to tell him, “I love you, but obviously your behavior is not normal. And if we’re going to stay together, you’ve always promised you were going to fix it. And I will love you and support you all the way through it.”

But I would highly encourage you and your fiancee to seek out some kind of mental help, probably with an emphasis on BPD, borderline personality disorder, because what they do in group therapy is they get them to talk about their emotions and what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. And they give them strategies to teach them how to feel their emotions, experience them, express them, deal with them without just losing their shit and to be able to process that.

You know, I’m just a coach. My goal, my job is to help people achieve their outcomes. And this topic here, obviously, you’re going to need somebody that’s a licensed medical professional in whatever country or city you live. And obviously, the laws are different everywhere, but somebody that can understand that. I would call around, find a few places and go with him, go talk to the to the doctor. It sounds like he’s probably going to need some kind of therapy and help, and seek out somebody that’s an expert.

I know for Brandon Marshall, this is a big part of his life now, because he’s a big advocate for people who have BPD to get help. You can you can just Google his name, “Brandon Marshall BPD,” and there’s a ton of things that’ll that’ll come up. But this is a really good article, because you kind of understand what he was doing, what he was thinking, and what he was feeling, because he was relieved. That’s one of the things he says in the article. He was totally relieved when he got diagnosed, because now he has a problem that he can recognize what it is, and there are professionals, or doctors, or people that can help him overcome this, so the resources are there.

And so, if your fiancee means what he says, if he really loves you and says he’s going to change, the only way I would go through with marrying him is if he goes and gets counseling and therapy and help for this, because this is not normal behavior. And if you just go ahead and marry him, hoping it’s going to change, and keep making excuses for him, you’re enabling his behavior, because there’s no consequences for it. But if you do it in a loving way and he’s willing to get help, then give him a chance.

If he is unwilling to get help, it’s like, “You know, I’ve given you years and I can’t do this. It hasn’t gotten better. It’s like you’re good for a while, and then you lose it.” At this point, he needs some kind of professional help with somebody that’s an expert in this particular issue, so he can get properly diagnosed, whether it’s BPD or some other mental health issue. Once you know what it is and what the problem is, then you can fix it and you do it together as a team, which is the way it should be.

So that’s what I would do if I were you, and I would definitely, have him read “How To Be A 3% Man,” which you can read for free at UnderstandingRelationships.com. You can also read my second book, “Mastering Yourself “ totally for free as well. All you’ve got to do is subscribe to the email newsletter. It’ll be the first icon, the first box that you see when you get to my website. Just look for the free e-book information. It’s pretty simple.

So, if you’ve got some kind of challenge in your personal or professional life and you’d like to get my help, you can go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab on top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly. And remember, no drama.

“For men, learning to maintain emotional self control is essential to being masculine, attractive to women and creating the conditions that make all personal and professional goals possible. Whether it’s negotiating a business deal, pay raise, keeping your job, investing in the stock market or simply having loving and healthy relationships with people you love and care about, emotional self control makes it all possible. Without it, anger, fear, rage and hopelessness take over and can destroy your life by turning the women you desire off and causing other people to not want to have anything to do with you. It’s always better to take your time to analyze and contemplate your options and future actions, so you can respond in a superior way by remaining calm, peaceful and relaxed, instead of becoming hijacked by your emotions, which never leads to desirable outcomes.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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