“I don’t put the dishes away. “I don’t spend enough time with the kids. “She doesn’t feel like I’m on her team. “It’s endless. Sometimes I wonder why she even stays married to me,” Jack says. Does your wife complain about you? “Why does she stay married to you? Have you asked her?” I say. Jack takes a deep breath. […]
Dave’s head is spinning. His wife just told him that she doesn’t feel like he’s on her team. “Baby,” he says, “I work 10 hours a day, I do everything I can for us to have a good life.” “Yes, that’s fine,” she says. “But I don’t feel like you love me.” “What did I do wrong?” He asks her. […]
Philip, a high-earning financial consultant, taps his fingers on the small table next to him. I wonder how long he’ll last in this session. His wife Tamara complains about how he is checked out. How he can’t even be with his family for 10 minutes without being on his phone. Mincing no words, she says, “I feel like I’m in […]
Ok, warning. Bad wife joke. There are two times in his life when a man doesn’t understand women. Before marriage and after marriage. True or false? Funny or tragic? You decide. For me, it tends towards the tragic. That’s due to the depth of suffering I see in men struggling to understand their female partners. When that partner is your […]
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 […]
Tony’s been married for 12 years. He’s lost his identity in his relationship. “Some days, I just want to hit the eject button. To just get out of this mess I’m in.” Tony doesn’t understand how he’s landed at the age of 46 into a functional life – work, pay the bills, take care of the kids – and a […]
Rick wants his wife to know her place and stop nagging him all the time. He believes inherently by being a man that he has a right to peace and quiet. He is the old-school masculine guy. Tom, on the other hand, tries to not upset his wife hoping that she’ll love him back. He believes if he upsets her […]
Fear. It shows up often in relationship. I hear a lot of men saying things like… I fear her anger. Or, I fear I’ll never be enough for her. I also hear, I fear she’ll never want to have sex again. I fear that if I try to talk about it, she’s gonna blow up at me. Do you have […]
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 […]
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Ever heard the expression? If so, then you may understand like my client Mauricio did, that in relationship, the saying applies doubly so. Mauricio would get into an argument with his wife and then for hours afterward, he would beat himself up. He’d spiral into fear about how his wife would deprive him of […]
