Episode #1020
If you’ve been grinding to fix your marriage doing the therapy, the books, the talking but nothing’s changing… you’re not alone.
In this episode, we unpack why traditional counseling often leaves men feeling stuck, and what actually creates real connection at home. Doug and Chris share a real story of a man who spent 20 years trying to fix his marriage the “right” way only to find out he was missing a system built for men like him.
We break down the Triad of Connection a simple, proven framework that helps you rebuild trust, intimacy, and admiration in your relationship. If you want your wife to feel safe, seen, and desired again (without feeling like you’re dragging her through another exhausting “talk”), this episode is a must-listen.
Take the next step! Get your free training now. https://fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales
You’ll get tools you can use right away to start shifting things at home without waiting for her to change first.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
Look at Erin, my wife, who I love dearly. She’s stepping out in a big way outside of her comfort zone, but she can do that in her life now, because she feels safe, she feels seen and heard and desired. Home Base is taken care of, and as her man, I feel this is selfish. I feel incredibly rewarded because I provide that space for her and every guy wants that. You know, when my wife looks at me with admiration because I’m there, I’m supporting her dreams and her desires, as well as building mine, there’s nothing that feels better in that moment.
Hey guys, welcome back to the TPM show. Once again, we are going to be taking your questions coming in or your stories that are coming in. Chris Hansen is here with us. Once again. He is one of our top advisors at TPM, so he gets to be on the front lines talking to men each and every day. Chris, thanks again for being here. Man, glad we able to keep you around. Thanks for having me. Doug, yeah. We’re off camera. We are having a conversation. You were telling me about a guy you talked to recently, and I thought, You know what, there’s probably a lot of men going through the same situation. So let’s have a short dialog in here. I know you’ve got to get going. I know we kept you. So let’s rock and roll.
Christopher 1:23
for sure. So this gentleman actually just joined The Activation Method.
Doug Holt 1:27
Oh, congratulations to him. Yep, absolutely.
Christopher 1:31
And he was in, I wouldn’t say, a unique situation, but in a bit of a desperate one. When I when I got on, I started talking to him. It was evident that he was exhausted. For one, been beaten down. He seemed very hopeless, and was kind of coming to us as His words a last resort, because everything that he had tried in his marriage up to this point had failed, and we’re talking 20 years of him trying to figure out, wow, how to connect with his wife, how to not blow up at his kids therapy, counseling. It was pretty evident to me that there was an issue of tools. Really didn’t, didn’t have the tools to necessarily execute what he was trying to execute. Trying to execute. But, I’m curious, like, what would you say to a guy that’s found himself in a position like that? I’ve
Doug Holt 2:29
been there not 20 years. Consider myself a reasonably smart guy, certainly very resourceful. And so, you know, I started my first company in my early 20s. I’ve had many companies since then. I’ve exited or I share that, only to say, very resourceful. Figuring things out. You have to be right. You have to be a grinder. If I have a problem, I’m going to find that solution. Grind it out if I have to, and get to the top. But when it came to my marriage, that one was different for me. Man, grinding it out. Just doesn’t work. So I sympathize with this guy. There’s a lot of guys listening to this. We’re like crap. I tried everything, man, I tried counseling, not one, but two, marital counselors. And we did premarital counseling, right? And each time we go into the counselor’s office, Chris, I swear we’d come out more mad at each other, each and every time. I mean, you’re saying this like you’ve had this for sure. Well, you spend your time looking in the rear view mirror, and they want you to keep honing on that one problem or whatever is going up. And it’s like a hamster wheel. And I was talking and we have, as you know, we have men that are in the movement going through our programs that are also marriage counselors, right? They got taught a doctrine at school. Here’s how you do this, right? And I wanna say it’s antiquated. It doesn’t work for the guys I know. And as you know that we’ve had 1000s upon 1000s of men come through the program, so there’s a big data pool to look at. And I don’t blame the counselors, because I think they are doing their best. Their business model is such that it behooves them to keep you on that couch.
And I think some of them do it consciously, and some of them don’t. They’re they’re there to help. They just don’t have the tools. So I empathize with this guy, with what he’s going through, and it’s frustrating when you keep trying things that just don’t seem to be working. Now, previously, we did some episodes with my wife, Erin, who you also know, who coaches women, and one of the big things that she talks about all the time is energy, right? And how a man shows up energetically within the relationship, and how does he find himself in that energetic system? They don’t teach that in, you know, church counseling, marital counseling. And then second of I’ll tell you what man previously, if someone told me that I’d be like, What the heck you talking about? but at this point, I’ve seen it so often work, and then you have to have the right tools, right marriage. Counseling didn’t give me the right tools. The only tool it gave me was to parrot back what my wife said to her, okay. As an example, I’d be like, okay, Erin, what I’m hearing you say is, when I come home after a long day of work, you want me to do? X, Y, Z, you know, and that’s not truly listening. I wasn’t providing her an environment to feel safe, not I mean physically safe. Knock that one out of the park, I think, but emotionally safe. I grew up in a house with three guys. It was three. We all played sports. I knew my brothers loved me the more shit they talked about me. So that doesn’t work with your wife, by the way. I’ve tried it. My wife’s like, I like sarcasm, just not the way you’re doing it. Dial it back a little bit. Yeah. I don’t want to be not a none of my expense, yeah. So those things weren’t working for me, and there wasn’t anything out there.
So I had to scramble and search and books courses, whatever I could. And then when I started think, seeing these things work, one thing I got really good at was putting it just like business, put it into a system. And now fast forward. Gosh, here we are at TPM. We’ve been doing this for eight years with coaches from all over the world. We have a proven methodology. It’s a system that we’re able to put in. So one, you got to your energy. Your energy is a big deal. More than this guy probably knows, though, he just joined The Activation Method, so congratulations to him. Look forward to meeting him. He’ll learn this. Two is, you need a system, right? We’re men. As a businessman, you don’t just show up every day at the office or at work in front of your computer and just do whatever comes to your mind, you would have the most unsuccessful business ever you put systems in place that you know are going to be repeatable and reliable, and that’s why we call it The Activation Method. It’s a methodology that people can use, and so that’s where he can have some solace just knowing that 1000s of men have come before him and come out the other side of this, which I think is incredibly important,
Christopher 7:10
for sure, and that’s what I shared with him, is really all we need from you is just to show up honestly, authentically, and allow us to just plug you into The system. Yep, you don’t need to know anything. You don’t need to, like, just show up as you are and allow us to walk you down this path.
Doug Holt 7:29
I wanna buy you a gift. Look, if your marriage is struggling, and let’s be real, every marriage struggles at some point, but yours is struggling where you’ve lost that love, admiration, respect, I want to help you. I want to buy you a copy of the book that I wrote, A Man’s Guide On How To save your marriage without talking about it. In here, I’ve distilled over eight years of programs that we’ve developed at TPM to help men, just like you, save their marriages without talking about it. There’s no fluff, no BS. It’s an action plan that you can start using today to actually save your marriage and bring that love and respect back into your family, back into your house. You deserve it. Look, all I ask is you pay the postage. You pay the shipping. I’ll buy the book for you that way. You can take massive action today. Click the link or find it in the bio and get your copy. Now, I think
Christopher 8:22
that was the thing that really like allowed him to settle because he was coming in having done years and years of the books and all of the different things. And, you know, took a minute for us to see each other in it and recognize that he was like, why? Know all this stuff. I’ve heard all this stuff. Sure. imagine you have, if you’ve been reading and doing all of these things and exploring in this space, how do you execute them?
Doug Holt 8:49
I get it, man. I was that guy I go from. That’s why I used to sign off this podcast. Don’t go from podcast to podcast that’s emotional, or, excuse me, that’s basically educational masturbation, I used to make myself feel good by listening to like, four podcasts a day, right? I’ll listen to it on 3x or whatever it was. So have you ever skydived? I have not. Okay, so you probably understand the concept of skydiving, right? And understand probably heard stories about skydiving. Maybe even read some articles about skydiving. I have skydived, and I will tell you, my friend, it is a very different experience actually jumping out of that plane. For me, it was even going up in the plane. Every cell in my body was shaking. So I’m naturally afraid of heights, so that’s something I battle every time we go on these events and zip lining. Phil picks zip lining a lot for these events. I swear he’s I apologize, Phil for whatever I did, but you can explain skydiving to somebody, but until they jump out of the plane, they’ll never experience skydiving. Now, when I went skydiving, did I go by myself? Myself, no, there are rules. For a reason. I went tandem, and I asked that guy, how long you’ve been skydiving, same thing we talked about in a previous podcast. How many people have died along the way? How many hours do you have? I asked them similar questions as we talked about when choosing personal development. This guy had a lot of experience, years doing it, I jokingly asked him how his life was going, everything going well, just wanna make sure.
And so I had the safety of him. And so as soon as we went out of that plane, I was attached to him. I laughed the whole way. It was such a magical experience. I loved it, because I had an expert guiding me, and that’s what this gentleman’s gonna get. He’s gonna be surrounded by one he’s gonna have a head coach that’s gonna be there with him. He’s gonna have client success reps that’s two people, two professionals, that’ll be guiding him through the program. Plus he’s got the whole community wrapped around him, so when he goes to try the triad of connection. So if guys are new to this podcast, one of the things we teach is what’s called the triadic connection. It’s three things that allow your wife to feel safe, allow her to feel seen and heard and desired, which all women need. The first one is the Clean Slate Method, right? The wife’s the slate clean that gets rid of the looking the rear view mirror. Right? Now you’re starting from scratch, like, just like a newly married couple, and that’s great, but not great, not where we want to be. So then we teach the guys The Hidden Motives Technique, right? And so that’s the second part of the triad, and that allows your wife to be seen, heard again, right? She’s now most women that we talk to, because you and I have the benefit of actually talking to some of these guys.
Wives will say this the first time I’ve ever felt seen in my whole life. So his wife, he’ll be able to apply that to his wife, which is, every guy wants that man, every guy wants to be that guy that gives that to their wife. Yeah. And the third thing we do is, we call it the live like a king system, and that allows the man to anchor all of this and anchor himself in, to be grounded, to be rooted. Those three things alone, there’s other stuff that’s taught are fundamental to our methodology and what we’ve developed over the years to bring this guy to a certain place so he’s going to have access to all of that new technology, information and support coming out. Again, it’s easy to theorize what it’s like jumping out of a plane, but to any guy that’s listening to this that’s jumped out of a plane, he’s going to understand there’s a difference. I mean, especially if you’re a scaredy cat like me, a guy like me, it’s like, I don’t want to be up there
Christopher 12:28
for sure. One that aligns with exactly how our conversation went today. he his, his big fear in all of this was like, he wasn’t looking forward to it. Yeah. It’s like, this, you know, this is going to be work that I don’t really want to do, and I’m going to be doing this work with my wife for the for the rest of our lives, and I’m not going to be happy. And I reframe for him. It’s like, actually, like, once you understand these tools and you start to implement them, this becomes fun, just like your skydiving experience, man, this, like you’re creating fun in your relationship, connection, intimacy, things you haven’t felt in a very long time, which sounds scary, I’m sure, right now, but the moment that you start to experience that in your relationship, everything opens up, and you get to actually have fun, with your wife.
Doug Holt 13:20
Look at Erin, my wife, who I love dearly, she’s stepping out in a big way outside of her comfort zone, but she can do that in her life now, because she feels safe, she feels seen and heard and desired. Home Base is taken care of, and as her man, I feel this is selfish. I feel incredibly rewarded because I provide that space for her, and every guy wants that. You know, when my wife looks at me with admiration because I’m there, I’m supporting her dreams and her desires as well as building mine, there’s nothing that feels better in that moment.
Christopher 13:54
absolutely, I’m in a similar space with my wife right now, stepping out and doing some things that in the past, she’s she’s struggled to do, and it is really interesting to see where that emotional safety and that support for me comes in. and it’s incredibly rewarding.
Doug Holt 14:12
I don’t think I would have known that was missing until I actually had it for sure. You know, it’s like a new experience. Your wife starts looking at you with that admiration. I don’t want this to sound degrading, because it’s not, but she looks at me almost like with these childlike admiration eyes like a little girl. Because she looks up to me, she she sees me in a different light. And we were talking about what women find sexy and what they don’t find sexy, I’ll tell you what, man, like your wife’s girlfriends, they’re looking at you as sexy. I know that’s not why you do it, but at the same time, they’re seeing her grow and she’s talking about it. And as a man, you know, we married these women, or we told these women, hey, I got you, and to have them trust in us. Because as a man, there’s nothing more rewarding. yeah. Agree 100% dude, this is why you’re such a great advisor. So when you get on the call, you’re on the front lines. I mean, these men, like this gentleman you’re talking about, first of all, kudos to this guy. Like, if I was in a situation, would I? Would I be open to getting on a call and trying one more thing that’s tough. It’s tough. As you know, we have 1000s of guys in choir every month. Of those, only a few guys actually even get on a call.
So when you they get a chance to have just a conversation with you, that’s all it is. Conversation. You’re able to just give so much wisdom from your personal experience, but also all the other men you’ve helped. So thank you for all you do man, thank you Doug, absolutely. Well, gentlemen, as I say, in the moment of insight, take massive action. And you know, if you enjoyed this conversation, Chris is one of our advisors, that’s all it is. Just get on a call, talk to the advisor and see if what TPM offers could work for you. See if it’s the right fit, and if it’s not, guys like Chris, what they do is they send you resources and they recommend other programs that might be a better fit. Or they might say, hey, you know what? This isn’t the place for you, but you might want to check out X, Y and Z. You know, we’re committed here. We’re on a mission to save children by saving their fathers first, right? I do the work not only for my wife, but I do the work because my kids, I want my kids to grow up with the best father they possibly can have, and that involves me stepping to the line each and every time, and maybe that’s for you too. But I’m gonna recommend getting on a call with Chris or one of our other advisors, and I’m just gonna make one request, man, if you book a call and you sign up guys like Chris, Chris has got two beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, I happen to know him well, you know, show up to the call, right? Just give the man the courtesy of showing up to the call and having the conversation. That’s simply all it is. There’s no commitment required. It is just a conversation. We’re here to help guys like you, whether it be from the podcast, whether it be from our other resources, whether it be from a conversation with an advisor like Chris, or maybe even something else, we’re here for you guys. Make it a great week. We’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
