- 3 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai9T8UfPR6s Are you feeling like you’re always carrying the emotional or practical load in your relationship? 💔 In this episode of Rich in Relationship, Rich Heller dives into the concept of weaponized softness—when one partner uses emotional withdrawal, crying, or stress as a way to avoid responsibility.
This behavior isn’t limited to women or men—it’s a learned pattern shaped by cultural scripts and gender roles. But to build a healthy, lasting partnership, both partners need to grow: men learning softness, women embracing strength, and both taking responsibility.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
--The difference between weaponized softness vs. weaponized incompetence.
--How outdated gender roles still affect modern relationships.
--The hidden emotional and practical costs of an imbalanced partnership.
--How to recognize if you’re truly setting boundaries—or just avoiding responsibility.
--Practical steps to build confidence, celebrate small wins, and create balance.
✅ Why watch? Because building a safe, trusting, and intimate relationship requires more than love—it takes accountability, vulnerability, and teamwork.
👉 Don’t just listen. Start rebuilding.
🎯 Join our free community for real tools and support: www.richinrelationship.com
📌 Follow us for more relationship advice & insights:
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LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/rich-in-relationship
Website - https://www.richinrelationship.com
This behavior isn’t limited to women or men—it’s a learned pattern shaped by cultural scripts and gender roles. But to build a healthy, lasting partnership, both partners need to grow: men learning softness, women embracing strength, and both taking responsibility.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
--The difference between weaponized softness vs. weaponized incompetence.
--How outdated gender roles still affect modern relationships.
--The hidden emotional and practical costs of an imbalanced partnership.
--How to recognize if you’re truly setting boundaries—or just avoiding responsibility.
--Practical steps to build confidence, celebrate small wins, and create balance.
✅ Why watch? Because building a safe, trusting, and intimate relationship requires more than love—it takes accountability, vulnerability, and teamwork.
👉 Don’t just listen. Start rebuilding.
🎯 Join our free community for real tools and support: www.richinrelationship.com
📌 Follow us for more relationship advice & insights:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/richinrelationship/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/richinrelationship/
Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/richinrelationship/_created/
Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@richinrelationship
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/rich-in-relationship
Website - https://www.richinrelationship.com
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today at Rich in Relationship, we're going to talk about why is it that sometimes it seems like men always have to handle the tough stuff.
00:09True partnerships. Men need to learn to be softer. Women need to learn to be tougher.
00:14You can't have that kind of relationship if there isn't some softness.
00:19Also, celebrate the small wins. Celebrate growth. Celebrate baby steps forward. Progress, not perfection, is always the way forward when we're learning something new.
00:35Welcome to another episode of Rich in Relationship. I'm your host, Rich Heller, and today we're talking about weaponized softness.
00:44Or why is it that women and men feel like guys should handle the tough stuff?
00:51A listener asks, whenever I ask her to handle the bills or make a tough decision, she gets upset and she says she can't deal with the stress.
01:00Am I supposed to just do it all?
01:03This is the definition of weaponized softness.
01:08It's about using vulnerability or emotional withdrawal or overwhelm to avoid difficult responsibilities.
01:16Now, I want to be really clear.
01:18Men do this too.
01:20Some of the complaints we're getting today in 2025 about men is they're too soft.
01:26So weaponized softness isn't just something that women do.
01:29It's something that men and women do.
01:31But historically, because of the relationships set up by men in their male-dominated society,
01:41weaponized softness became a way to manipulate men and to get them motivated and to do things.
01:48Now, I want to be really clear.
01:52Softness is not bad.
01:55Lots of men feel like they can't be soft.
01:58The complaint many women have about men today is they won't or can't be soft.
02:05Softness is required if there's going to be vulnerability.
02:11And if you don't have vulnerability in your relationship, you don't have safety.
02:17And if you don't have safety, you don't have trust.
02:19And if you don't have trust, you don't have intimacy.
02:23Vulnerability is a vital part to an intimate, caring, loving partnership.
02:30And in case you haven't heard this before here on Rich in Relationship, the definition of a partnership
02:35is a marriage in which two people build a relationship together, a relationship that sustains them as individuals.
02:49So not only do they build the relationship, but the relationship sustains them through the tough times.
02:55You can't have that kind of relationship if there isn't some softness.
03:00Let's explore this some more.
03:02In the last episode, we talked about weaponized incompetence.
03:06This is when somebody pretends they just don't know how to do something or they're unwilling to do something.
03:12Emptying the dishwasher, changing diapers, taking care of the children, putting gas in the car.
03:18Weaponized softness is the flip side of weaponized incompetence.
03:22In fact, weaponized incompetence is I just don't have the ability to do it.
03:28Weaponized softness is I don't have the emotional strength to do it.
03:33You see what I'm talking about?
03:34It's either about ability or emotional strength.
03:36These are both ways to avoid things maybe we don't want to do.
03:41They're both ways to manipulate the other person.
03:44They're both ways to control or dominate the situation.
03:50They're both ways to escape into ourselves.
03:53A woman writes to us,
03:55I grew up hearing that men should handle the tough stuff.
03:58Am I just falling into old patterns?
04:01Yes.
04:02This is an old pattern.
04:03It's an old cultural script.
04:05The old cultural script is that women socialize and focus on nurturing, not on leadership, not on confrontation, not on achieving goals, not on moving forward.
04:15That's for guys to do.
04:17If we're going to have true partnerships, men need to learn to be softer.
04:23Women need to learn to be tougher.
04:25A lot of my clients are what you call alpha females.
04:29They're super tough.
04:30Actually, for a lot of them, it's about learning to be soft.
04:33Because in their work environment, if they aren't tough, they get run over.
04:38And when they come home, they have trouble being soft because they are so conditioned in their work environment to deal with a certain kind of man in a certain kind of way.
04:48In previous, actually even current gender role conditioning, the way a lot of us were raised, maybe up to the last most recent generation, men are viewed as providers and decision makers and women as peacekeepers.
05:02And the truth is that there are some men who are awesome peacekeepers.
05:06I'm a peacekeeper, a bridge builder myself.
05:09And there are some women who are awesome providers.
05:13Now, truthfully, we've talked a lot about brain development here at Richer Relationship.
05:18We've talked about how brains that develop in a genetically female body and brains that develop in a genetically male body tend to be on the genetically male side more linear and on the genetically female side more emotionally attuned.
05:30So it might be that women, in some ways, are better suited to emotional attunement, but that doesn't mean they can't be tough.
05:37And it might be that men are better wired for following a path and being tough about following that path.
05:46But it doesn't mean they can't stop and be emotionally aware.
05:50It may take more effort on both sides, and it will.
05:54But what that effort will deliver, because there is such a thing as neuroplasticity, is the brain will become more complex and more evolved.
06:03And the more complex and more evolved the brain is, the better it functions and the better it cares for the organism.
06:10So we want this.
06:12In 2021, Pew Research did a study.
06:15Even in dual earner households, men are twice as likely to be the financial decision makers, especially when it comes to investments and risk.
06:25Does it have to be this way?
06:27No.
06:28I've got some female clients who are amazing risk takers.
06:33They make their decisions about taking risks very differently than men.
06:37Well, a better way to put it would be they look deeper and further, but they take risks.
06:45I want her input on our future, but she says it makes her anxious.
06:50Am I asking too much?
06:51Says John.
06:52He's 42 from Cincinnati.
06:54The emotional cost of this weaponized softness is that men feel isolated in leadership roles.
07:02It's true.
07:03Some men embrace it as a form of control.
07:05And we're going to talk about that more in the next episode.
07:09But really, underneath the control is insecurity, right?
07:13If we desire to control others, it's because we're deeply insecure within ourselves.
07:18When we're confident in ourselves, we don't need to control what's on the outside.
07:22It is actually disempowering for men to always take on the tough things.
07:27It disempowers them with their children.
07:30It disempowers them in their partnership, just as it's disempowering for women to not
07:36take on the tough jobs.
07:37It disempowers them with their men.
07:39It disempowers them in their day-to-day careers.
07:43The practical cost is that decisions skewed toward one worldview, leading to an imbalance
07:50in the long-term vision of the family.
07:53Couples where only one partner makes financialistic logistical decisions report lower overall satisfaction
08:02and higher stress, says the Journal of Family Issues in 2020.
08:07How do I know I'm honoring my limit or just avoiding responsibility?
08:12Asked Jackie in New York.
08:14This is a great question.
08:16How do you know you're honoring your limit or just avoiding responsibility?
08:20There's this great book by David Goggins.
08:25I can't remember what it's called.
08:26He's a former Navy SEAL.
08:27And David Goggins' whole mission for the first half of his life was to prove that his body
08:32could do so much more than his mind thought it could.
08:35He's like the ultimate leader in toughness.
08:39And so what makes this question so great is our conscious mind often believes in the limits
08:47that the unconscious mind is complaining that we have.
08:50But Goggins proves in his book that we can often press ourselves way beyond what we think
08:57we can do physically.
08:59Well, this is true in every aspect of our life.
09:02The truth is that our minds are conditioned to believe in the limitations that we have.
09:07But often our actual limitation is far, far beyond that.
09:12And so even when we're honoring our limits, there's a form of avoidance going on for men
09:20and women in all aspects.
09:22But here are some signs of weaponized softness.
09:27If you're avoiding tough conversations by crying, stonewalling, stonewalling is when you
09:33just don't respond or claiming incapacity.
09:37I'm just not up to it.
09:38I'm too stressed out right now.
09:39The chances are there's some form of weaponized softness going on.
09:45If you're delegating decision making with you just bear at this, the chances are you're avoiding
09:52rather than honoring your limits.
09:56If you're consistently stepping out, when conflict or complexity arises, you're avoiding.
10:03You know, so many of the couples who come to work with me have been avoiding conflict.
10:09Both of them have been avoiding conflict one way or another for so long that they're stewing.
10:15And then periodically they explode because you can't avoid conflict endlessly.
10:21Eventually the differences become so great.
10:23The built-up emotion becomes so great that some form of release has to happen.
10:28Or instead of exploding, they lead completely separate lives.
10:33And then their children grow up and they get divorced because they don't feel like they
10:36have a grounds for a marriage anymore.
10:38Studies on household labor show that when women claim overwhelmed to opt out, men's domestic
10:44contributions rise.
10:46But so does relationship dissatisfaction.
10:49And that's the American Sociological Review in 2008.
10:53Domestic contributions, that's not necessarily housework, by the way.
10:57That's everything regarding the home.
11:00That's the tough decisions.
11:01That's the tough choices.
11:03So the evidence is, from all the studies we've cited, that this is a common pattern.
11:10It's a pattern that's been passed on from generation to generation.
11:13It's one that we're in the process of overcoming as we embrace the equality of men and women in
11:20their differences.
11:21And the point of this episode and the last episode is, we can't use those differences
11:25as an excuse not to step up.
11:28We can't use those differences as an excuse not to cross boundaries, not to stress.
11:34We need to continue stretching.
11:36We need to continue growing.
11:38We need to, as human beings, we need to test the boundaries.
11:44We need to stretch our limits.
11:47I'm afraid I'll mess it up if I take over.
11:49How do I build confidence?
11:51Says Juanita from the Bronx.
11:53Wow.
11:53That's a tough question.
11:55Building confidence takes time.
11:57It takes effort.
11:58It takes building new habits.
12:02It takes, and I'm curious whether we're talking about confidence or whether we're talking about
12:06self-esteem.
12:08If we're talking about self-esteem, that's a little different than confidence.
12:10But confidence is when we know that we can do something well.
12:14So as we described in the previous episode, the steps for learning to do something well
12:18are number one, knowing what the best way is to do it, consciously attacking that task
12:23through the best way known to do it, and then getting to the point where you become unconsciously
12:29competent at it.
12:30That's how you can have confidence.
12:32Once you become unconsciously competent, you can be confident.
12:35It's like how many of us drive without thinking about it.
12:39We're unconsciously competent.
12:40We're confident.
12:41Not everybody, but many of us.
12:43Start with shared leadership.
12:45Then move into solo responsibility.
12:47So if you're moving into an area of toughness that seems tough to you, whatever it may be,
12:53if it's child rearing, if it's finances, move into it together.
12:58Watch how your partner does it.
13:00Read about it.
13:02Learn about it.
13:03We all have our own learning styles.
13:04Some people learn by reading.
13:06Some people learn by doing.
13:07Some people learn by watching.
13:09It's good to do all three because we learn something in all those three processes, but
13:13we all have one central way that we learn.
13:16So start by working with your partner if they have strength in this area or someone else who
13:22has strength in this area.
13:24And then use planning tools.
13:27Figure out what parts are you going to do.
13:30As we said in the last episode, it's really important for one person to be charged of
13:34each silo or area, but it's also really important for each person, for both people to work in
13:40all areas.
13:41Both people should be involved in child rearing.
13:43Both people should be involved in finances.
13:45Both people should be involved in cooking, etc.
13:47It's important to cross-train, to use a business metaphor.
13:51Also, celebrate the small wins.
13:55Celebrate growth.
13:57Celebrate baby steps forward.
13:59Progress, not perfection, is always the way forward when we're learning something new.
14:05Women who actively participate in financial, logistical decision-making report higher relationship
14:12satisfaction and a greater sense of equality, says a study in 2022.
14:18Now, it is fully possible when we're learning these new skills that we may become victims
14:25of mansplaining or maybe emotional oversharing.
14:29And that's what we're going to cover in the next episode of Rich in Relationship.
14:33Hey, if you like what you're hearing, like us, subscribe, share this podcast with other
14:39people, help us to fulfill our mission of 10,000 families touched in 10 years.
14:45I'm Rich Heller, wishing you an amazing today and a fantastic tomorrow.
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