“When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s bad, it can feel like hell.” Tom, a successful CEO, was not talking about his company but about, you guessed it, his marriage of 18 years. Does your marriage sometimes feel like hell? Maybe you can relate to Tom’s experience. “It’s just like we cross wires. I say one thing. She totally misinterprets […]
Let’s face it. We men want to make our woman happy. In that effort, many of us fall into a pattern. Ask yourself if this pattern applies to you. Your partner complains about your behavior or who you are. You get the message that you’re not enough for her. And you may even feel like you’ve failed her. You don’t […]
It’s a silent epidemic. Guys getting beat up in their marriages. Trounced emotionally and verbally. It happens behind closed doors. Of course, it does. It doesn’t fit the politically correct public narrative of men as perpetrators, so it stays under the lid. Are you getting beat up in your marriage? It’s also concealed because guys want it that way. As […]
Jake’s a big-shot engineer. An engineer who travels the country and lectures internationally. The rock star of engineers who trains other big-shot engineers. He’s brilliant. But like so many other successful men I speak with, his marriage is falling apart. Jake can’t reconcile himself to his own failure at home. He loves his kids but he refuses to fully acknowledge […]
This is firsthand. I’ve been there. The brutal nature of feeling like the one person – your wife or partner – to whom you’ve limited your sexuality has closed the door on that part of your life. She’s no longer interested in sex. She says she can’t be physically intimate if she doesn’t first feel emotionally connected. Or she just […]
Fear. An emotion that goes underground for most men at a young age. It happened to me when I was just 5 years old. It was then that I first learned fear wasn’t okay for a boy. I remember my older brother, who was eight at the time, said to me, “What are you afraid of, you little baby? Little […]
Men. Many of us often cruise along in our marriage. As long as we’re having sex occasionally and the house isn’t on fire, we’re fine with how things are. We don’t think much more about our marriage. Then there’s another group of guys in the marital battle zone. No sex. The house is on fire. And in response, they try […]
Ben was a successful account executive in his company. A fierce competitor. He pushed hard to go after what he wanted. He was a great connector when it came to people. At work, he was confident and capable. He loved what he did. Yet at home, it was a totally different story. At home, he lived in fear. Fear that […]
You’re struggling in your marriage. You fear divorce. You fear even more the impact on your kids. What do you do? In the past month, two clients told me a version of this story above. Both were stunned at their kids’ responses when they told them that they might be headed for divorce. Can you imagine what the kids said? […]
In marriage and relationship, at a certain point, things flatline. It’s inevitable. It is not cynical. It’s just how it is. At a certain point, we get so safe in the relationship that we stop aspiring towards what lights us up. And often we can’t put our finger on when that happened. Then one day, we live into a future […]
