TL;DR Summary:
The most-liked comment in this whole fight wasn’t on either side. It quietly proved the entire debate is about the wrong thing.
There’s one study where the requests that felt like they FAILED in the moment were the ones that actually changed people a year later.
There’s a 10-second test that tells you whether something is a “he should know” or a “you gotta tell him,” and most women have been sorting it wrong.
Repeating yourself isn’t the red flag. Re-explaining yourself is. The difference matters more than you think.
There’s a reason “teaching him” makes you resent him even when he’s trying, and it has nothing to do with him.
A 13-year study found the couples headed for divorce often didn’t start out fighting more. They started out better.
The War in My Comments Section
Ya’ll went to WAR in my comments this week.
I posted that you didn’t tell him what you want; you told him how you want to feel.
Here’s the full video if you wanna see it.
The replies split into rough two camps:
Camp one: “We shouldn’t have to give men a diagram on acting like a man.”
Camp two: “Just tell him what you need, it’s not that deep.”
And then one woman dropped what I genuinely think is the best sentence anyone has written on my channels all year:
“Your job in a relationship is not to teach someone that a tree is called a tree.”
This is a level of one-liner-ness that I aspire to reach one day.
Another woman wrote: “It’s not even like they don’t know. They do the right things for a few months and then shut down.”
Read that again.
He’s not missing information. He had it in month one.
I hear this all the time; it’s very common in relationship research as well!
So “he should already know” is usually TRUE. It’s also completely useless. Because knowing was never the variable :)
What you’re calling “teaching him” is three different jobs wearing one trench coat.
One is yours. One is nobody’s. And one is his, and he’s been quietly handing it back to you.
So, today, we’re gonna sort them, and then I’ll give you five rules for what to do with each pile.
Let’s dive in!
The Three Jobs Hiding Inside “Teaching Him”
Okay, before any rules, we gotta sort the pile.
Because every time you think “I shouldn’t have to teach him,” you’re actually talking about one of three totally different things.
And they don’t get the same answer.
(This is where the Yes, No, and Hell No in the title come from, btw.)
Here are the 3 piles:
YES: Preferences. How you like to be loved, what lands for you, the specifics only someone who’s dated you could know. That’s not teaching. That’s communicating, and it’s your job.
NO: Basics. Don’t vanish for three days. Do what you said you’d do. If you’re explaining this, you’re not communicating. You’re raising him.
HELL NO: Sustaining. Keeping alive the stuff he already did, beautifully, unprompted, in month one. That was never yours to maintain.
Camp one is right about the No pile.
Camp two is right about the Yes pile.
Nobody in the comments was talking about the Hell No pile, and that’s the one that’s actually breaking your heart.
So, let’s talk about how to sort the peeps you’re dating into these piles.
5 rules and then 1 process to use them IRL.
Rule #1: Explain It Once. Remind Him Forever.
A lotta advice tells you to “say it once, clearly.” I used to say some version of that too.
It’s kinda wrong though…
And doesn’t account for how brains build new behavior.
When he starts doing something new for you, like texting when plans change, it isn’t a habit yet.
It’s a decision. Every. Single. Time.
Decisions run on goal-directed control. That’s the slow, effortful system that has to remember the goal, notice the moment, and choose the new thing on purpose.
Habits run on something else.
With enough repetition in the same context, control of a behavior gradually shifts toward the brain’s habit circuitry in the basal ganglia (the dorsal striatum, if you wanna impress someone at brunch).
After that, the situation itself triggers the behavior. No deciding required.
The catch is how long that shift takes.
You’ve probably heard it takes 21 days to build a habit… FALSE!
In a study done by Dr. Phillippa Lally, people picked one simple daily behavior, like drinking water after breakfast, and tracked how automatic it felt.
It took a median of about 66 days to hit peak automaticity. The range ran from 18 days to 254.
For drinking water. After breakfast. With a built-in daily cue.
Now imagine “tell me when you’re overwhelmed instead of disappearing.” That one shows up randomly, usually mid-stress, with zero breakfast involved.
And stress is the other half of this.
Stressed brains do the trained behavior even after its reward stopped being worth anything. They tend to lean on habit over goal-directed choice!
So the exact moments you need the new behavior most are the moments his brain is most likely to default to the old one, unfortunately…
That’s not him not caring. That’s a decision losing to a habit, which is what decisions do until they become habits.
So what does a reminder actually do? It’s the cue. It does the job his brain can’t do on its own yet.
Oh, and just to be clear, this is how all brains work, not just his, keep that in mind for later… (Ooooo, ominous foreshadowing during Spooky Season).
It gets better too (or worse, depending on how attached you are to “he should just know”).
Research on empathic accuracy, how well partners can read each other’s thoughts and feelings, found it reliably dropped after the first year of marriage. Another study found couples together for less time read each other more accurately.
Which means three years in, he’s probably reading you less precisely than he did at the start. Not because he stopped caring. Because people stop studying what they assume they already know.
So, repeating yourself isn’t proof he failed. It’s maintenance.
The line isn’t the reminders; it’s the re-explanations.
A reminder sounds like: “Hey, text me if plans change, yeah?” Ten words. No backstory.
Re-explanation is the full TED talk, every time, about why it matters, how it makes you feel, what your dad did in 1998, and how you’ve told him this before.
If you’re reminding, that’s normal.
If you’re re-explaining, you’re not communicating anymore. You’re auditioning for a role you don’t want.
Remind freely. Explain once.
Rule #2: Run the Stranger Test Before You Call It “Basic.”
Okay, this is the one that’s gonna sting a lil.
Camp one’s whole argument rests on the word “basic.” And they’re right that basics shouldn’t need teaching.
The problem is who gets to decide what counts as basic.
(Spoiler: it’s generally you. In your head. Without telling him there’s a list.)
There’s actually research on this.
Communication researchers studied people who hold “mind reading expectations,” the belief that a partner should understand your needs without you having to say them.
They found that the more someone held this expectation, the more likely they were to get combative or give the silent treatment when their partner didn’t notice they were upset.
And the reason they found was simple, these kinds of people got more upset by the miss.
Meaning, the expectation itself turns an ordinary miss into a betrayal.
Which is why you need a filter. I call it the Stranger Test:
Would a decent roommate or coworker know this without being told?
Don’t disappear for three days without a word. A roommate would know. Basic.
Do what you said you’d do. A coworker would know. Basic.
Plan a date without me having to manage it. A roommate would have no clue you want that. Preference.
Text me during the day that you’re thinking about me. Preference.
Know that I want to be held, not fixed, when I’m crying. Preference. (A beautiful one! Yet, still a preference.)
So if a roommate wouldn’t know it? That’s not him failing a basic. That’s a preference. And preferences are yours to say out loud.
But “say it out loud” doesn’t mean “tell him how you wanna feel.”
“I want to feel prioritized” gives him nothing to actually do.
Turn it into something you could literally watch him do. “I want to feel prioritized” becomes “Plan one date a month where I don’t have to organize anything.”
If a camera couldn’t catch him doing it, it’s still a feeling. Keep translating until it’s an action.
And lemme be really clear, preferences aren’t lesser needs.
They’re often the most important ones. They’re just not things anyone can know about you from the outside.
Rule #3: Basics Get a Condition, Not a Lesson.
Now, for the stuff that DOES pass the Stranger Test? Camp One is 100% right.
You shouldn’t have to teach a grown man that disappearing for three days, three years in, is not it.
But here’s what I see my clients do… They treat a basic like a preference.
They explain it. They contextualize it. They make a lil PowerPoint about how it made them feel. And then they do it again next month.
Basics don’t get a lesson. They get a condition.
A lesson: “When you go quiet for days, it really triggers my abandonment stuff, and I need you to understand that…”
A condition: “I don’t do relationships where someone disappears for days. If you need space, tell me. If it happens again, I’m out.”
One is asking him to learn. The other is telling him where the floor is.
And the condition gets said ONCE. Not because you’re cold, but because a basic that needs a second lesson isn’t a communication problem.
It’s a capacity mismatch.
His nervous system, for whatever reason, can’t currently sustain the presence this relationship needs.
That’s not a moral failure on his part (no villains here). But it’s also not something your third explanation is gonna fix.
You can’t explain someone into capacity.
Rule #4: Judge the Second Response, Not the First.
I wrote a whole blog on what to do when you told him exactly and he still won’t; here’s the link, so I’m gonna keep this one tight.
Bottom line, what he knew walking in tells you almost nothing. What he does with information once he has it tells you almost everything.
Dr. Gottman’s newlywed study found that husbands rejecting their wives’ influence was one of the patterns that predicted divorce.
Other research found that when the partner being asked to change responds with hostility, the partner who asked starts feeling less sure about their commitment over the next year.
Which tracks, right? You don’t learn he doesn’t care when he gets it wrong. You learn it from how he reacts once he knows.
So sort his response into one of these:
Information + effort. Green flag. Even if the effort is clumsy. Especially if it’s clumsy, honestly. Clumsy means he’s actually trying something new.
Information + debate. He re-litigates whether your need is reasonable every time it comes up.
Information + amnesia. “You never told me that.” (You did. Twice. There are texts.)
Information + the month-one special. He does it great for a few weeks, then it quietly evaporates. (We’re coming back to how to handle this one in a moment)
How to See It Early
Ask for one small, Camera-Testable preference in the first month. Something low-stakes. “Send me a text when you get home.”
Then don’t track whether he nails it. Track what happens when he forgets, and you remind him.
Does he go “oh shoot, my bad” or does he go “why are you keeping score”?
Then listen and accept the answer :)
Rule #5: You Can Hand Him the Book. You Can’t Be the Book.
This is the one where “coaching him” quietly turns into mothering him, and most women don’t notice the switch until they already resent him.
There’s a sociologist named Allison Daminger who studied what she called the cognitive labor of running a household.
Not the physical chores. The thinking work: anticipating what’s needed, figuring out options, deciding, and then monitoring whether it got done.
In her interviews, women did more of it overall, and especially more of the anticipating and monitoring.
And because that work is invisible, often even to the person doing it, it became a constant source of conflict.
Now look at what “teaching him how to love you” actually involves:
Anticipating what he’ll miss
Planning how to bring it up
Monitoring whether he did it
Following up when he didn’t
That’s not a relationship. That’s a full-time job. And you’re the only one who knows it exists.
Let’s bring in some IFS, because there’s usually a Part of you running this whole operation.
I call her the Project Manager. She’s brilliant. She probably got you through school, through promotions, through a childhood where if you didn’t track everything, things fell apart.
And she’s convinced that if she just manages him well enough, love will finally feel safe.
It won’t.
Every lesson you give him makes him a little less of a man you’re attracted to and makes you a little more of a supervisor he’s avoiding.
So here’s the line:
Handing him the book: “This podcast on attachment helped me a ton, you might like it.” Once. Then let it go.
Being the book: Sending him the podcast, asking if he listened, quizzing him on episode four, and explaining the parts he “didn’t get.”
The exit signal isn’t that he doesn’t know. It’s that he needs you to be the one who makes him know.
His education is his job. Your job is noticing whether he’s doing it.
Month One Is Not His Baseline
Let’s go back to the comment: “They do the right things for a few months and then shut down.”
What’s up with this?! Why does this happen?
There’s a long-running study by Ted Huston and colleagues that followed newlywed couples for 13 years.
What predicted who ended up divorced wasn’t mostly couples fighting more and more over time.
It was disillusionment. Love fading. Affection dropping off. And a slowly shrinking belief that their spouse was actually responsive to them.
Even wilder, one group of couples who eventually divorced had started their marriages on a particularly HIGH note.
The faster and more passionate the courtship, the more affectionate the spouse seemed as a newlywed, and the steeper the decline in affection over the next two years.
Here’s how I’d translate it.
Early romance lights up the brain’s dopamine-rich reward system.
Everything is new, he’s motivated, he’s on.
A lotta the effort you got in month one was borrowed capacity: real behavior, funded by novelty, not by who he actually is on an average Tuesday.
So when it fades, it feels like he stopped loving you. Sometimes, though, what you’re seeing is simply the loan coming due.
Month one wasn’t his baseline. It was his highlight reel.
And that changes what you’re actually asking for.
You’re not asking him to learn something new. You’re asking whether he can sustain what he already knows how to do when there’s nobody left to impress.
That’s not a teaching problem. That’s a capacity question. And it’s his to answer, not yours to keep alive.
The Yes / No / Hell No Sorting Tool
Ight, enough theory. Let’s get practical!!
Here’s a 5-step process you can run this week, whether you’re single, dating, or three years in.
Step 1: Dump the List
Write down everything you’ve ever thought, “I shouldn’t have to tell him.” All of it. Don’t filter. (Yes, even the petty ones. Especially the petty ones.)
This works because your Project Manager Part has been carrying this list in her head for years.
Getting it on paper takes it out of the anticipating-and-monitoring loop so you can actually look at it.
Step 2: Run the Stranger Test
Next to each item, write Y, N, or HN.
Y: A roommate wouldn’t know this about you.
N: A decent roommate would.
HN: He used to do this without being asked.
Most women find their list is way more Y than they expected. That’s not bad news. That’s the most fixable pile.
Step 3: Camera Test the Yeses
Turn every Y into something a camera could capture.
“I want to feel prioritized” becomes “I want you to plan one date a month without me organizing it.”
Then ask, once, clearly.
Remind as needed. No TED talks.
Step 4: Write Each No as a One-Line Condition
Not a paragraph.
One line. “I don’t do relationships where someone disappears for days.”
Say it once.
If it needs a second lesson, you’ve got your answer about capacity, and you got it in a week instead of two years.
Step 5: Watch the Hell Nos for 90 Days
Name what faded, once, without the lecture: “You used to text me good morning. I loved that. I miss it.”
Then stop managing it.
For 90 days, don’t remind, don’t hint, don’t build a plan.
Just watch what he does with what he already knows how to do.
This is the only way to find out whether you’re dating the man or the highlight reel.
So… Should You Have to Teach Him?
“Should I have to teach him?” was always the wrong question.
The real one is: what does he do with what he already knows, once he’s not trying to get you anymore?
Your preferences are yours to name. His basics are his to bring. And his month-one effort is his to keep alive.
Your only job with that last one is having the guts to notice when he doesn’t, and then DO something about it.
And if you’re reading this thinking, “Okay Cody, but I noticed all of this in month two… so why TF was I still there in year two?”
Great question, and the topic of next weeks blog :)
You were never supposed to be his teacher.
You were supposed to be the woman who knows what she wants, and stays only where it’s given freely.
You’ve got this.
And as always, until next time…
Live Heroically 🧠
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Leave a Comment
What’s on your list that you’ve been calling “basic”? Run it through the Stranger Test in the comments, and I’ll tell you which pile it’s in.
Supporting Research
Overall, N. C., Fletcher, G. J. O., Simpson, J. A., & Sibley, C. G. (2009). Regulating partners in intimate relationships: The costs and benefits of different communication strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 620-640.
Overall, N. C. (2018). Does partners’ negative-direct communication during conflict help sustain perceived commitment and relationship quality across time? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(4), 481-492.
Gottman, J. M., Coan, J., Carrere, S., & Swanson, C. (1998). Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(1), 5-22.
Stanley, S. M., Bradbury, T. N., & Markman, H. J. (2000). Structural flaws in the bridge from basic research on marriage to interventions for couples. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62(1), 256-264.
Wright, C. N., & Roloff, M. E. (2015). You should just know why I’m upset: Expectancy violation theory and the influence of mind reading expectations (MRE) on responses to relational problems. Communication Research Reports, 32(1), 10-19.
Kilpatrick, S. D., Bissonnette, V. L., & Rusbult, C. E. (2002). Empathic accuracy and accommodative behavior among newly married couples. Personal Relationships, 9(4), 369-393.
Thomas, G., Fletcher, G. J. O., & Lange, C. (1997). On-line empathic accuracy in marital interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(4), 839-850.
Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609-633.
Huston, T. L., Caughlin, J. P., Houts, R. M., Smith, S. E., & George, L. J. (2001). The connubial crucible: Newlywed years as predictors of marital delight, distress, and divorce. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 237-252.
Niehuis, S., Reifman, A., & Lee, K.-H. (2016). Courtship progression rate and declines in expressed affection early in marriage. Journal of Family Issues, 37(11), 1487-1511.
Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (2020). Research on marital satisfaction and stability in the 2010s: Challenging conventional wisdom. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 100-116.
Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94(1), 327-337.
This article is educational in nature and not a substitute for therapy. If attachment wounds or relational trauma are impacting your well-being, working with a trauma therapist can help your nervous system relearn safety in connection.