[ 🤟🏼 ] Mindset Shifts in Marriage: From Victim to Victor
What to do when you're married to a victim mindset
On (most) Mondays, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity here.Question
from Mar:
I’ve been married for 45 years to my husband, who was competitive when we met. Over the years, he has developed a victim mindset.
My sister is the same. Between the two of them, I'm like a cheerleader, pointing out either an optimistic or realistic mindset.
It's easier to avoid my sister than my spouse.
I try not to respond, but the coach in me doesn’t want to see him go down this path. Do you have any suggestions?
Answer
BEN: It's a challenging situation, right?
It puts her up against one of the things we think is super important, which is to surround yourself with people who share your values and approach and who lift you up. We want no drama, no gossip, no toxicity — just positivity and good vibes.
That's what you want your life to be like.
And when the people super close to you aren’t that, we should do what we can to change that — as she’s doing.
To do that with your spouse, though, it has to be done super tactfully, and you also have to understand that the number one goal isn’t to change the other person.
The number one goal is to continue having a strong relationship with your spouse.
So, if you feel like going off the rails a little, you don't keep driving and driving until you speed right off the cliff. You realize you’ve taken a wrong turn, and the course is correct. You remember that the number one goal is to maintain a strong relationship with the people I care about.
So, that’s where I would start.
Then, I would remember our five phases of mindset, which we can think about on a continuum:
The lowest level is the victim, and we don't want to spend much time there.
Above that is the pessimist, where we’re focused on what isn’t working, bad luck, and how the future will surely be worse than the past.
Above that is the optimist, where we think everything is all sunshine and rainbows - but, hey, at least they're not complaining.
Above that's the realist, where we understand that there's good or bad and that we can deal with whatever comes. It’s where we don't get rattled when things are bad because we know that’s always possible.
Above that is the competitor mindset. This is where we get excited when things go sideways because we see them as opportunities for growth.
So, back to Mar’s question: how do you work someone out of a victim mindset?
The first thing is to remember that it took them decades to get there.
So it's not gonna get fixed in days, weeks, or months. That's just the way it is. What you're trying to do is unravel programming, and programming is deep-rooted. It's probably systematic of some pretty meaningful events that happened in people's lives.
The other thing is timing.
You don't want to try to help someone out of a victim mindset in a moment when they are deep in it.
You don't try to change character traits during battle. You try to do that outside of battle.
Think, literally, of a soldier in a battle, in a moment when they’re not being courageous or acting virtuously, when they’re not living to the standard you’ve set for your troops. That's not the time you have a character lecture because it won't help. It’s probably only going to make things worse.
You have that conversation in peacetime.
Now, it's hard because you don't want to disrupt peacetime. That's why people don't do it.
But you wait until peacetime because that’s when they’re more receptive to listening and when you’re not on edge.
And then you drip this thing, bit by bit. Opportunity by opportunity. Day by day.
You're trying to raise awareness of these ideas, the different phases of mindset, what they sound like, and the benefits and dangers of a particular mindset.
When you can create that awareness, you’re really helping them change their environment — you’re helping them clean up their mental kitchen.
And there are plenty of different tactics for this.
You can make bracelets that say, Never whine, never complain, never make excuses. You could make it a habit to talk about one thing you’re grateful for every night at dinner. You could get identical journals and spend the last 10 minutes of every day in silent reflection together. You should share podcast episodes that resonate, get tickets to a speaker series, and watch movies together. You can get yourselves to a CrossFit gym.
It’s the analogy of boiling a frog.
You want to slowly dial up the temperature on these ideas because dropping them into a pot of boiling water won’t work. They’ll jump out.
PATRICK: One quick recommendation is a book called Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg, which is based on the idea of recognizing that great conversations are what he calls learning conversations.
It’s about starting to recognize and lean into these learning conversations.
I think that a lot of what you're saying is about going into these conversations that Mar is having with her husband or her sister first with a curiosity mindset and not a judgment mindset.
The difference is between: You’re in a victim mindset, and my job is to fix you, and How did you get here?
The first is potentially very triggering, while the other is an open door you can walk through together.
BEN: The team here was talking recently about being humble, hungry, and happy, and about being curious, not judgmental, and Dan - you know Dan - he goes, “Yeah, you don’t want to say, ‘You’re an asshole.’ You want to say, ‘I wonder why you’re an asshole.’ Be curious about it.”
PATRICK: There’s one thing you said that’s worth double clicking on, which is that during peacetime is when we want to have these conversations, and it's also when we don't want to have these conversations because it's actually, finally, peaceful.
You’ve got to put pressure on yourself to say, Okay, we're calm. He's not doing that thing that ends up with him in the victim mindset, but now's the time to have this conversation because it's the only time he might be receptive.
BEN: What's really interesting about that is it highlights you and puts the focus back on you.
If you muster up the courage to start this conversation during peacetime, and they do get triggered, can you not get triggered?
Because they're going to say something back to you. They’re going to push back, to deflect, deny, or argue.
Are you able to stay centered? Are you able to keep calm? Are you un-rattle-able?
This is a good litmus test for ourselves.
Are we able to have hard conversations?
Not: Can I change them?
Bring it back to us and to what we can control.
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Love the new visual on the mindset continuum 😎