Episode 200 | The Grief Series
For episode 200, I did something I’ve never done before. I brought my husband on the podcast with zero prep, zero warning about what I’d ask, and zero safety net.
And he showed up.
Jake has been my husband for 12 years, my partner for 16, my baby daddy, my best friend, and the person who has watched me build businesses, file for bankruptcy, travel the world full time, burn out, rebuild, and do it all over again. He knows things about me that nobody else knows. And in this episode, he said them out loud.
This one is for every ambitious woman who has ever wondered what her partner is really carrying. And for every man who has felt it but never had the language.
The Identity Crisis Nobody Talks About
I’ve been open on this podcast about the seasons in our marriage where I was the primary breadwinner. When we were traveling full time, Jake had left his job to be present for the experience, doing some side work but nothing full time. I was building and producing and making the money that kept us going.
And I thought that was a gift I was giving him.
What I didn’t fully understand until this conversation was the grief it created on his side.
He described it as feeling rudderless. Like he had this natural instinct to provide, to contribute in a specific way, and it just wasn’t there. The kids were amazing. The travels were extraordinary. And he was wandering around inside all of it wondering what the hell his purpose was.
He told me he didn’t grieve it well. That it came out as unhappiness, unfulfillment, not enjoying the things he should have been soaking up. That there were Saturdays in Italy where his head was so far elsewhere that he couldn’t take in what was right in front of him, and he looks back on that now with real regret.
He said: I don’t know if I would’ve made it to the airport if you’d sent me home alone that time in Costa Rica. I knew what he meant. And I’m so glad I didn’t.
The Resentment He Buried
I asked Jake directly: have you ever resented me?
Yes.
He didn’t hesitate.
And then he explained something I think a lot of couples feel and almost none say out loud. When he wasn’t where he wanted to be, when he felt lost and purposeless and like he couldn’t find his thing, he didn’t have enough introspection at the time to put that on himself. So he put it on me. It came out as resentment when I had to work on weekends. When I had to take calls. When my business needed something that pulled me away from what we had planned.
He wasn’t mad at me. He was mad at himself and I was the closest target.
What struck me most was what he said about my success during that season. He told me that when something good happened in my business, half of him was genuinely happy for me. The other half went: oh Jesus, here we go again, I’m even further behind. Your success didn’t feel separate from his lack of it. It felt like evidence of it.
He’s not there anymore. He was so clear about that. But he said it out loud, which is more than most men ever do.
What I Had to Stop Doing
Here’s my part in this, and I want to be honest about it because I think it’s the piece ambitious women most need to hear.
For years, I carried everything. Not because Jake wasn’t capable. Because I was convinced at a bone-deep level that nobody was going to catch me if I fell, so I had better not fall, which meant I had better not need anything, which meant I had better not leave room for anyone to try.
That belief came from somewhere real. My mom left an abusive alcoholic when I was small, and it was just the two of us. The seed that got planted was: never need anyone. Never depend on anyone. You are your own hero in this story. And I ran that program through college, through grad school, through building businesses, and straight into my marriage.
What I didn’t understand was that my hyper-independence wasn’t just protecting me. It was crowding Jake out of the space he needed to become who he wanted to be.
A year and a half or so ago, I came to him and said: I need you to do more, and I need to be able to do less. And I started, slowly, to create room. To lean in. To let myself be held instead of just holding.
And the thing that happened next was one of the most profound things I’ve ever witnessed in our marriage. He stepped into that space so naturally. Like it had been waiting for him. His confidence grew. His sense of purpose came back. He started working in a way that felt motivated rather than obligatory. And he told me in this episode that being able to provide, being the one I come to for safety, has been one of the most fulfilling things of his life.
I didn’t slow down to fix the marriage. I didn’t even think the marriage needed fixing. I slowed down because I was overwhelmed and I needed help. But it turned out that me finally asking for help was the thing that gave him back something he’d been grieving for years.
What He Sees When Nobody’s Watching
I asked Jake some questions at the end of this episode that I’ve never asked out loud before. And I want to share his answers here because they hit me in a way I didn’t expect.
Who am I when nobody’s watching?
He said: you cry at commercials. You talk shit to your friends’ faces and then you’re their biggest cheerleader when they’re not in the room. You are an unbelievable mother in the quiet parts of the day that nobody sees, and if people could watch you in the mundane moments, they’d know.
What do I struggle with that people would never guess?
Confidence.
He said it without hesitation. That I care what people think more than I let on. That when someone pushes me out or holds a bad opinion of me, it lands harder than I show. That I struggle with how I look in my body and I’ve been carrying that quietly (his word, not mine) for a long time.
He wasn’t wrong on any of it.
When am I the least like myself?
Around people I think are judging me. He said I put on a version of myself in those rooms, softer around the edges, less willing to take up full space, and he can see it happening in real time.
When am I the most?
Around him. Around the two or three friends who know all of it. That’s when he gets the whole person.
What Had to Die
I asked Jake what needed to die for our marriage to become what it is today.
He said: the resentment. The belief that your success was somehow taking something from mine. The idea that we were working from the same finite pie of success and you getting more meant I had less.
I said: my need to be everything to everyone. My inability to be held.
And then he finished the episode with a lightning round, && I’ll leave his last answer here because I think it’s the whole thing:
Finish this sentence. Being married to you has taught me…
Being married to you has taught me what it feels like to truly be safe.
“Deep down they want your success just as bad as you do. They just don’t know how to deal with it. It’s their own stuff that gets in the way. Not you.”
If you are an ambitious woman in a relationship with someone who is struggling to find his footing, this episode is for you. If you are the partner on the other side of that, trying to figure out how to say what you’re feeling, this is for you too. And if you have been holding everything so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to put something down, I really, really hope this one lands.
Two hundred episodes. I can’t believe it. Thank you for being here.
This is The Grief Series. Listen now!
xx, Ash
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