I didn’t mean to say it.

We were standing around after a meeting, talking about marriage, relationships, and what it actually looks like to stop fighting. Another fellow—a guy clearly caught in the thick of a painful, exhausting power struggle with his wife—looked at me and asked what it was really like for me when I chose to yield to mine.

Without thinking, my mouth blurred out the rawest, ugliest defense mechanism my ego could find:

“It feels like getting your balls cut off.”

We laughed, because it’s a jarring phrase, and recovery rooms are built on that kind of unfiltered honesty. But when I woke up this morning to do my usual routine—praying to squash self-ambition, trying to stay responsible for my phronéō (disposition)—the phrase came roaring back.

I realized something profound. That graphic, visceral phrase wasn’t a description of weakness. It was my ego’s exact, panicked reaction to true humility, surrender, and love.

The Ego’s Death Groan

To a culture obsessed with “manning up” or staying in control, yielding feels like total emasculation. The old groove in my brain tells me that if I don’t win the argument, if I don’t dig my heels in, if I let her “win,” then I am losing my power.

But the Big Book reminds us that our very survival depends on our constant thought of others. When I demand to be right, I am operating out of the old pattern: fear, then control, then perfectionism, then shame.

When we yield to a spouse, the part of us that feels like it’s being severed isn’t our strength, our dignity, or our manhood. It’s our pride. It is the literal execution of self-will. True surrender doesn’t mean becoming a doormat; it takes massive, bone-deep spiritual strength to lay down your armor when every instinct demands you fight to the death to defend your point.

Putting on a New Mindset (Phronéō)

In Philippians 2, we are commanded to have the same mind—the same phronéō—that was in Christ Jesus, who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death.” Christ’s ultimate act of love looked like total defeat to the world. It looked like he lost everything. But it was actually the ultimate victory of love over self-preservation.

There’s an old line from Jim Foote that I keep coming back to: “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?”

To the man who is struggling with his wife right now: I hear you. When you drop the grievance, when you choose to listen instead of documenting a defense, it is going to sting. Your ego will scream that you are losing. It will tell you that you’re being diminished.

But as Bill Dogterom taught me, “Pretending to be a nice person is a lot like being a nice person.” Sometimes we have to fake [love] it till we make it. We practice the action of love—dropping the argument, helping meet their needs—long before our stubborn feelings decide to catch up.

Surrender doesn’t make you less of a man. It makes you a mensch. It frees you from the gravity of your own self-centeredness and opens the door to real connection. It turns out that what feels like losing your life is exactly how you find it.