Last time, in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://app.axisbrotherhood.com/blog/she-doesnt-know-shes-testing-you/">She Doesn't Know She's Testing You</a>, we discussed how the feminine in a woman tests the masculine in a man for love. There is often a test running the other way, inside the same relationship, and it gets talked about far less.For a man, it often shows up in how he sees his partner. Somewhere along the way it can start to feel like she has the final say on what he can do. There is a thing he wants for himself, and before he has said a word about it he is already sure how it will go.In his head, or to his mates, it sounds like She won't let me, or It's not worth the fight, or I'd never hear the end of it.He comes to see her as controlling, or naggy, or on his case. From where he stands, she is the reason he can't have the thing he wants.I have watched this in the men I work with, and in a lot of cases the man has built that situation himself. He sets things up so that he isn't free to do what he wants, and then he holds her responsible for it. He almost never knows he is doing it, the same as a woman almost never knows she is testing whether a man's love will hold when she pushes against it.The masculine wants freedom more than anything else, and the masculine tests too. What it tests for is that freedom. In these cases the man is the one setting the test up, and he is creating his own lack of freedom.<h2 id="26526fbc-5e5d-4d53-9746-32c7e046634d" data-toc-id="26526fbc-5e5d-4d53-9746-32c7e046634d" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">A Year of One Marriage</h2>A recent and clear example comes from a client of mine. He is married, and the example runs across roughly the past twelve months.Gaming was the thing he loved and did for himself, and over the past year he mostly stopped. For most of that time his life was work and home, with almost nothing in it that was just for him.He kept what he wanted to himself because he expected a fight if he raised it. He made gaming into something that needed a conversation with her first, and then he didn't have the conversation.On one of our calls I asked him whether he knew it would blow up if he talked to her about it. He said he didn't know.For most of a year he held it in, and it built up. He told me: I try and be that person I think she wants me to be, and then eventually I just lose it.When it got too much, he would either stop talking to her and stew on it, or tell her he was going to do what he wanted. She reacted to those moments, and her reaction became his evidence that she was the one restricting him.One recent evening shows it. He was watching a gameplay video on his phone. He wasn't gaming, just watching, and she got upset and walked away. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him she wasn't trying to control him and wasn't telling him not to watch it.He told me afterwards that it did feel like a little bit of control. He couldn't talk to her for the rest of the night, and in his head it ran as I do all this to keep you happy and you do nothing for me to have fun.Her upset was real. He had still spent most of a year keeping what he wanted to himself, and that night he was holding her responsible for it.He only saw that he was the one creating it when we talked it through on our calls. He knows that saying exactly what he wants would help, and that conversation scares him.<h2 id="e336a280-74cf-4c4e-8b6c-0432fd12bb22" data-toc-id="e336a280-74cf-4c4e-8b6c-0432fd12bb22" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">What He's Actually Testing</h2>My client's year was never really about gaming. For another man it might be the bike, or a weekend away, or an hour to himself.What sits under all of those is freedom. The masculine wants freedom more than anything else, the way the feminine wants love more than anything else. Some men carry the masculine more strongly than others, and for a lot of men that description fits.In Part 1 we discussed the question that often runs under a woman's words when she tests a man: Will your love stand up when it's tested? A man in a relationship tends to have one of his own running under what he does: Am I still free in this?He puts that question to her, usually without ever saying it. He takes the thing he wants and hands her a say over it, a say she never asked for. Then he watches what she does with it.She often has very little to go on while he does that. She often doesn't know what he wants, or that the decision has been handed to her. Most of the time he hasn't told her plainly, so the first she sees of it is usually when it bursts out of him. By then it is coming at her as a mood or an announcement, and she responds to what is in front of her.He tends to read whatever upset she shows in that moment as a no. He hasn't asked her anything, and he takes an answer from her anyway.In Part 1 we discussed how a woman testing a man's love isn't running a tactic or playing a game, because most of the time she has no clue she is doing it. The same goes for him. A man doing this usually has no idea. As far as he is concerned, he just can't do what he wants because of how she will take it.<h2 id="bf580113-c0ca-4127-926b-0a5e62367b10" data-toc-id="bf580113-c0ca-4127-926b-0a5e62367b10" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Why He Builds It</h2>David Deida's reading in Blue Truth is that freedom itself is blissful for the masculine, but the struggle for freedom is what makes a man feel important. In his words: "Working your way out of the trap gives your life meaning."He also describes a man with no problem to solve. That man feels free for a while, and then he feels bored and useless.So a man can need something to get free of. When nothing is holding him, he can go looking for something that will. Inside a relationship, she is often the nearest thing he can reach for.My own view of why he keeps building it is that a man feels what he wants most sharply against its opposite, and for freedom that means the lack of it. A man who wants to feel free can end up needing a restriction to push against, so he tends to keep arranging one.It is the same thing we discussed in Part 1 from her side. She tends to create moments of unlove to feel love hold. He tends to create unfreedom to feel freedom. Each of them is testing the thing they most want by producing its opposite.Where the Restriction Really SitsA man usually doesn't see himself creating the restriction. In Part 1 we discussed my view that a woman doubts a man's love because she assumes it comes and goes the way her own feelings do, mostly without knowing she is assuming it. He is making an assumption of his own: he is running a rule on himself, and to him it feels like hers.Her reactions are real. She may be upset, or sharp with him, or wary, and a man is right that he is seeing those things. He has still set the situation up, and she can be upset inside it without being the one who set the restriction.This holds even when she is the one saying no. Each of us is the predominant creative force in our own reality, and for a man that includes the relationship he is in. Where she has become the one who decides, or the one who refuses, he had a hand in creating the situation that allows it, and we discussed how that happens in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://app.axisbrotherhood.com/blog/slow-death-of-polarity/">The Slow Death of Polarity</a>. When a man stops saying what he wants and stops deciding, she tends to fill the gap he left, because someone has to. Her deciding can then read to him as control.<h2 id="39420ff3-f2ed-4e3b-a975-597b3b3ff34a" data-toc-id="39420ff3-f2ed-4e3b-a975-597b3b3ff34a" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">The Loop</h2>Whether she says no often or hardly ever, what he is doing tends to run as a loop.A man holds back what he wants. He predicts how she will react, and he treats his prediction as her ruling. What he is holding builds, and eventually it comes out as a mood or an announcement. She reacts to that. He takes her reaction as proof that she is the one restricting him, blames her for it, and holds back more.Each time around he has more evidence, and she still hasn't been told what he wants.The outburst can look like the way out of the loop. A man who has held it in for long enough finally announces What I want, I'm going to have, and it can feel to him like he has taken his freedom back. I think it is the same thing, louder. The announcement still treats the rule as hers, and he is still waiting to see what she does with it.<h2 id="0d444936-0a38-4a8b-8701-e6b22c7d0256" data-toc-id="0d444936-0a38-4a8b-8701-e6b22c7d0256" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">He Will Do It Again</h2>In Part 1 we discussed how a woman tends to test whether a man's love holds again and again, however well it held the last time. The same holds on his side: he will probably build the restriction again.So when a man catches himself at it again, it usually doesn't mean something is wrong with him, or with her. The masculine tends to keep doing this across the whole relationship.If he keeps building it, the part a man can get better at is how soon he sees that the restriction is his. In Part 1 the skill was a man recognising that she is testing his love while it is happening. Here the skill is a man recognising that he is the one doing it.There is often a tell, and it is the resentment itself. When a man catches himself resenting her for what he can't do, that is the moment to look at what he did to create the situation, whatever she has or hasn't said.The question I asked my client is one any man can put to himself in the moment he is sure how she will take something: Do you know she'll react that way? My client's answer was that he didn't know.My own view, and what I told him, is that the way she responds affects how a man feels, but his freedom is still in his control. So he gets decisive and clear on what he wants, and then he says it.When he does say it, she may well get volatile. A lot of the time that will be her testing whether his love holds, the test we discussed in Part 1, and the answer to it is the same as it was there. He stays calm and grounded, and he loves her through it.I think at some level she can feel when he is holding something back, even when she doesn't know what it is. The conversation probably won't be comfortable, and her first response may not be kind. But her respect tends to come when he stands for what he wants.So the next time she feels like the reason you can't do something, look at your own part in creating that situation before you look at hers.My client couldn't see what he was doing until our conversations drew it out of him. Other men can do that for you. The King's Table at Axis Brotherhood is where I'd point you: groups of ten to twelve men in a closed circle, meeting weekly.You will probably build the next restriction. Whether you look for who built it is up to you.

Men can unknowingly create the restrictions they resent in relationships. Real freedom begins with recognizing the pattern and owning what they want.

You Don't Know You're Testing Her

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You Don't Know You're Testing Her

You Don't Know You're Testing Her

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