Episode #1163
Do you keep telling yourself you'll work on your marriage when life slows down? If so, you're not alone. Many successful businessmen pour everything they have into growing their business while convincing themselves there's no time left to improve their relationship.
In this episode, Doug Holt and Christopher Hansen unpack what's really behind that mindset. They explore why so many men avoid working on their marriage, how fear of rejection and identity can keep you stuck, and why hiding in your business never solves the problem at home.
You'll also hear why trying to compartmentalize your work and marriage doesn't actually work, how the quality of your relationship impacts your performance as a leader, and what happens when you start making your family a real priority instead of something you'll get to later.
If you've been feeling disconnected at home, questioning where your energy is going, or wondering why success at work doesn't feel as fulfilling as it should, this conversation will give you practical insights and a clear place to start.
Want to understand what's really keeping your marriage stuck and learn the first steps to rebuilding connection? Get the free training at https://thepowerfulman.com/scales and discover a practical framework you can start using today.
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Doug Holt 0:00
I just don't have the time right now. It's just not the good time,
Christopher Hansen 0:03
right? She'll see me for who I am, and then she's gone.
Doug Holt 0:07
What does that say about me, the man? What does that say about me as a husband, as a father?
Christopher Hansen 0:11
They claim to not have time.
Doug Holt 0:14
That's an identity issue.
Christopher Hansen 0:17
How inefficient are you actually operating
Doug Holt 0:19
when home base is bad, that's on my mind all the time.
Christopher Hansen 0:23
The terror of having to go home creeps in.
Doug Holt 0:27
They can't do it. They lie to themselves that they can do it.
Doug Holt 0:42
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show. Once again, we are joined by the most amazing man, Christopher Hansen. How you doing, brother?
Christopher Hansen 0:50
I'm good, Doug. How are you?
Doug Holt 0:51
Good. How'd you like that intro?
Christopher Hansen 0:52
That's perfect. Just the one I prefer.
Doug Holt 0:54
I'll follow you around and just say that repeatedly. Awesome.
Christopher Hansen 0:57
Awesome. Thank you.
Doug Holt 0:58
Especially in front of your family, right?
Christopher Hansen 1:00
That's all I ask.
Doug Holt 1:02
"Are you arguing with your dad? He is the most amazing."
Christopher Hansen 1:04
It's great. Well, I'm happy to be back, man. Thank you for having me. We were talking off-camera, and I I wanted to bring a couple of topics to to the podcast. So I'm curious. I want to get your perspective. I talk to a lot of guys, and this isn't just through TPM, but in life, who have a lot of time and a lot of energy that they put into their business, and they claim to not have time or energy to put into making their relationship better. So, I just wanted to bring that topic up and get your thoughts.
Doug Holt 1:46
Yeah, I hear this a lot, too, and I actually use this as a coaching technique for the guys. So the scenario is essentially... because at TPM, for the last decade, we've worked mostly with business owners and high-level, high executives C-suite executives at a high level and oftentimes they'll be like, "Well, I don't have time."
And so our introductory... we have two introductory courses if you're coming into TPM, into our world. One we call The Activation Method, which is an eight-week course that teaches you how to save your marriage without talking about it. Then we also have something called the Ascension Blueprint, which helps you get unstuck and clear on life. We've been running those programs for a very long time, and they work tremendously well.
And sometimes guys will go... they'll talk to one of our advisors and go, "Yeah, well, I just don't have the time right now. It's just not the good time." But they have the time to focus 40, 60, 80 hours a week on their business, and that's always an interesting paradigm. And even guys in the program will come up and we'll talk about something for them to work on you know, something that their coach is working on, one thing and they'll talk about, "Ah, I don't have time. I'm going to this conference in Houston. I'm doing this. I'm just onboarded a new CFO." There's always a reason.
And the reason is, as men, we often crave significance, and when men aren't getting that significance in their home, they turn to the one place where they can. And what they forget a lot of times is the men we work with are the business owners, so, people are laughing at your jokes at work. People think you're smart at work. But you're also paying them! So so you got to remember that in the back of your head.
And also, are you hiding out in your business? Is what most men do. And the reason they're not investing the time into their relationship is because that's dangerous. They're scared of the rejection that they could face if it doesn't work out. In business, "I can take the risk, right?" Because it's the economy. There's always excuses that people use with business. There's something going wrong here, something going wrong there. And I I do a lot of business coaching, so very easy to answer those questions, too.
However, when the relationship isn't working, what does that say about me, the man? What does that say about me as a husband, as a father? That's an identity issue, right? And in our society, if my business fails and I start another business, I'm looked at as smart, courageous, an entrepreneur. If my marriage fails and I get into another marriage one, two, three people start to look down upon people societally. I don't, but that's just the reality of our society. And that... because it becomes an identity play, people sort of say, "Well, what's wrong with Bob, right? You know Bob, his business is good, but his marriage isn't. He's on his second, third marriage."
Yeah, and what Bob doesn't realize is the trend in his second and third marriage is Bob. Because what you bring... you know, in one relationship, you're going to bring to your next one and your next one, so those problems are going to proliferate, and it's not necessarily your wife. So guys are basically just scared.
Christopher Hansen 5:09
Yeah, scared. I'm... well, it's fear of the unknown, and and not knowing the path, right? I mean, I was never taught how to be married.
Doug Holt 5:21
No, man. It's gonna work out, right? Right. It's got to be easy.
Christopher Hansen 5:25
"I love this person. It'll be fine." I didn't even know it was work to be married, really, when I got married.
Doug Holt 5:32
Yeah. So when I got engaged to Erin, people gave us books and things, and it's like, "Yeah, you know, you know 50% of marriages end in divorce." It's just a stat. You never think you're going to be one of the 50, though. We at least I thought, "Well, those people just don't get it. I married a little later. We're in love. They weren't circumstantial." And then you realize, oh crap, this isn't as easy as it looks.
I I literally thought, "I do." We say, "I do." I put my head down. I build the empire so we can have the picket fence, the house, the kids, the cars. That's my job. So I'll go do that, provide, and I'll protect. Meanwhile, that wasn't the case. Erin's like, "Hey, where are you going?" I'm like, "No, I'm off to work," you know?
And what happens is you start to... when that distance starts to spread between you and your partner, you start to go into nice guy mode, and then you start to fear rejection. What if she rejects me? If I work on myself, what what is she going to say about me? She's going to make fun of me. She's going to put me down. It's not going to work. It's her, not me. That's what I thought. I thought for sure, "Man, what... my wife... if she just does the work, realizes how amazing I am... everybody else seems to think so... then everything will be great."
Christopher Hansen 6:56
Yeah. Well, and I think as men, there's some validity to the idea of that that internal feeling. Because as men, our wives are our biggest supporter. They're the thing that... like, men are pretty fragile, at the end of the day, right? We're big, strong, we protect. But you hit us sideways, especially our wives... it's like we can shatter really quickly. So we want that support, right? We want that. We want our wives to look at us like, you know, we're the the greatest guy on earth, and like we're that, and she believes that. We also have to do the work to show up that way. And again, I didn't know that going into... I was like, "I did the thing. I I did it right. I won. I won the game. I got the woman."
Doug Holt 7:44
Well, it... marriage is the destination, right? The wedding is the destination. You forget about the journey portion of it. Um, and what happens for a lot of men is they... what we do is we put our external validation of who we are as a man outside of ourselves. We put it into the feedback loop we get from our wife. Now, if our wife's not happy, the feedback is not going to be good. And if we react... DEER mode, we talk about DEER mode, which is DEER is an acronym we use for Defend, Explain, Excuse, React. I was really good at the react part. I was great at it like a professional. And coming back into that, we go into DEER mode. We react. We're validating her validation of us.
Christopher Hansen 8:30
Just feeds the cycle. It's a downward spiral.
Doug Holt 8:33
100%. And so what I did, Chris, is I kind of bit my tongue and said, "You know what? I'm just gonna be stoic, right? Stoicism's my way." And that was not the way. In fact, my wife one time, I remember we're saying... but I was like, "What are you talking about? I never hit you. I don't push you. I'm not I'm not a physically violent guy."
And she goes, "I I'd rather you hit me than close down emotionally."
Christopher Hansen 8:58
At least it's real.
Doug Holt 8:59
Yeah, I was like, "Holy cow!" And at the time, I was boxing. Like, I was I was doing boxing. I was in the ring. Like, I could hit, and she knew it. And for her to say that to me, I was kind of like, "What? What do you mean?" And that's also why I started to learn about emotional safety something I'd never been taught. Completely different.
So as men, I would rather get in the ring with a guy back in that time now it's a little different box, or I was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I'd rather roll with somebody, get in a fight. That was less scary for me than sitting down and opening up truly to my wife and telling her what I was really scared of, or my fears, or even what I really wanted in our marriage. Um. "Hey, things aren't working out for me right now, and I'm looking at possibly leaving." I couldn't say that to her, but I could go get in a ring with someone to get the crap kicked out of me, right? Because it was less scary.
Christopher Hansen 9:54
Yeah, for sure. Vulnerability. There's a fear of rejection. I know a big fear that I've held in my relationship is that if... and I think most men feel this way, is that if I show up fully as myself, she's out the door, right? She'll see me for who I am, and then she's gone.
Doug Holt 10:18
Imposter syndrome. I had a guy... two stories. I had a guy recently, locally. His wife called me and said, "Hey, Doug," you know, because she knows what I do, "I need you to get him out of the house. He's in a bad way."
So I picked him up, and we drove around for a while, and we went walking around for a while. And as men do, not much, many words shared. And he kind of went to me. Finally, he opened up vulnerably. My reaction wasn't the best, but he goes, "I have I have a condition."
I was like, "Okay, man, what's up?"
"I have a thing called imposter syndrome."
I just kind of chuckled, like, "Dude, everybody does, bro. Like, welcome to the party, sir." And but I obviously was very much more sentimental than that, but and I was just kind of making light of it so he'd realize, "Hey, bud..."
Christopher Hansen 11:04
Well, but I mean, think about how alone he feels in that, not knowing that everybody else feels that way, right?
Doug Holt 11:10
100%, 100%. Today, I was on a coaching call with a guy in the Inner Circle. Inner Circle is our highest-level mastermind group. It's men that go through our initial programs, they make great results, and they're like, "I want to dive deeper down the rabbit hole." It's a significant cost in investment in money and investment in time. So they do trips, we do all kinds of things.
But one of the things they get is a one-on-one call with me, and I'm talking to him, and he goes, "All right, here's what I want to work on. I want your perspective. I've got an older son. Why does my son trigger me?" He's like, "I was just on a huge business call where this guy was a big asshole. He was bragging about the billions of dollars he has, and he exited a company for X billion," and you know he's wealthy, successful.
He goes, and one of my business partners turns to me and says, "You know what? You're not the smartest guy in the world, the best at anything, but your your your superpower is your composure." He goes, "Doug, but how come I can't do that with my son?"
I go, "Because you've put your validation into what you mean as a father, into your son's reaction to you." So I say that another way because I can see a guy's getting tripped up on that. This gentleman amazing man, by the way he made the meaning of who he is as a father into how his son reacted to him, and that created the same cycle it does for most marriages. Now, in his marriage, he was out of that cycle, so he didn't see it that way. Once I started showing the light onto him, he was like, "Oh my gosh!" He had put a lot more externally who he is as a man, or in this case, a father, as a reflection on how his kids reacted to him.
Most men do this with their wives. Who I am as a man is what Erin thinks of me. And you know the cool thing, man? Right now, my marriage is awesome one of the best I know of. And I don't say that to be braggadocious. I say that to say when home base is good... because it's been bad. When home base is good, I can go out and do anything. I can conquer the world. I got energy. I can take risks that I wouldn't normally take. When home base is bad, that's on my mind all the time. Right when I'm in the business deal, when I'm doing a negotiation, whatever I'm doing, I'm also in the back of my head thinking about: what's my wife doing, what's going on? Do I really want to go home tonight? Man, can we make this negotiation go longer?
Christopher Hansen 13:42
Think about as a business owner, if we look at mental capacity and just physiologically, just the the what's being processed through your brain on a day-to-day basis. If you have all of that running in the background...
Doug Holt 14:00
Hey guys, I just want to share something with you. I'm sure we can both agree that in order to fix something, you need to know what's broken, and and not only need to know what's broken, but a step-by-step methodology on how you can fix it. That's the easiest way to do it, right? Otherwise, you're going to be toiling with things.
That's why I created a free training a training that only shows you how you got to where you are, where your relationship is missing that love, respect, admiration, and even intimacy that it used to have, to how you get it back. How do you retain that where your wife's looking at you the same way she used to look at you when she said, "I do." You know, I don't know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I'm her man, that I feel like I can conquer the world, and I want that for you.
Simply go over to thepowerfulman.com/scales. That's thepowerfulman.com/scales, and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if this resonates for you. Now back to the podcast.
Christopher Hansen 15:02
How inefficient are you actually operating within your business? The the things that you say are important to you are being completely compromised.
Doug Holt 15:11
100%, man. One of the fact is, I got yelled not yelled at, but there's a guy I've been working with one-on-one for years, so I know him really well. So we talk trash to each other. If you you know me, man, I'm making fun of people. I was making fun of you earlier. If I like people, I make fun of them. It's a weird thing. That's how I grew up as a guy. If I was telling Colton, who produces this, when we first hired him, I go, "If I stop making fun of you, you know it's a problem. We we got an issue."
And so he was talking to me, and shoot, where was I going with that? Forgot.
Christopher Hansen 15:45
You were talking to...
Doug Holt 15:47
I know exactly who I'm talking about. Can't remember the conversation.
Christopher Hansen 15:50
We were talking about mental brain power energy.
Doug Holt 15:53
Yeah, yes. Thank you. Speaking of which, been sick lately. It's it's not good working for me. But one of the things he said is like, "Why in your marketing don't you guys talk about how much more money business owners make after the program?" He's like, "I am making more money than I ever have." This guy makes a lot of money, by the way he enough to do one-on-one coaching with me, which is 250,000 a year. So he's been with me for for a couple years now.
So he's like, "I'm making more money I ever have, and the reason is, is my psychological capacity is so much greater. We've removed so many barriers that I didn't even know I had." And I hear that from guys all the time. "I went through this eight-week program to save my marriage. I didn't realize I saved myself. I saved my business. I'm closer with my kids. Then all within eight weeks." It's like a super short time.
And the reason is... and I when I used to do business coaching before TPM, and I've done it since. My I always see the leader, whether it be the CEO, whoever's the president, whoever's in charge of the company... the company only grows or has a capacity to grow as high as the psychology of that top individual. So that person either needs to, A, exit and hire someone else to take their spot, or, B, grow themselves so the company and business can grow.
And so when these men stop thinking about, stressing about, worrying about their marriage arguably the most, or at least close to the most important relationship of their lives they have that capacity to go deeper. And when that relationship starts to get better... thing you hear this all the time: "My marriage is better than I ever thought possible." Like, now they have this springboard and this foundation with which to thrive.
Christopher Hansen 17:41
Yeah. Well, and all of the things that exist underneath them in the business are now they have just that much more space to expand and to grow. And...
Doug Holt 17:52
It's crazy that guys don't take that into consideration. What you're thinking about all day and stressed about all day is going to be the driving force, you know? And if you're a businessman like I am, and you are, you need that on the top. You need to be thinking about your business if you want to grow it, right, and scale it. If you don't, then don't worry about it.
Christopher Hansen 18:16
Yeah, what do you say to somebody who... guys are great at compartmentalizing. Go to work. "Hey, I can just focus on this. I don't think about anything else."
Doug Holt 18:24
100% disagree with you.
Christopher Hansen 18:26
Okay, well... what do you say to somebody that, "Okay, I'm I'm compartmentalizing this over here, so I'm blocking all of this out over here." But then, you know, when this ends say work, right? I'm focused on work the terror of having to go home creeps in, right? So it's like, I think a lot of guys... the reason I say this, I think a lot of guys think that just going and focusing on that work, it feels so good because it's in contrast to this thing over here that's so much more difficult. They think that they're really getting they're very efficient on this side because they can block that out.
Doug Holt 19:07
Yeah, so I hear this all the time from guys. "I can compartmentalize really well," and you're full of shit. I've worked with thousands of people. Like, you have one data point. I have thousands of data points. Yours is wrong because you're lying to yourself.
Yep. And I've worked with extremely autistic men who would theoretically have a better job of compartmentalizing than the average dude. They can't do it. They lie to themselves that they can do it, right? "Oh no, I'm very good at compartmentalizing. This is work." Oh, so you don't think about your marriage at work? Well, you know... you don't think about your kids? You're not the same person? Oh, so you fake it. You're this person here. You put on another persona at work and another persona... that sounds tiring.
I used to do it, Chris. I thought I was great at compartmentalizing. I used to brag that I could go into any room or any event, and I could be like a chameleon moving through that room. You know, whatever it was, and and it was a great skill that served me really well, and also wore me out. I'd be exhausted after an event because it wasn't the authentic me.
And now the best compliment I get is events when I meet the guys, or I meet somebody. So, guys, if I ever meet you... a guy stopped me in Hawaii, right? I was at the beach with my kids, and coming out of the water, a guy goes, "Doug Holt!" and yelled.
I'm like, "Uh..."
He goes, "You don't know me, but I know you. You saved my marriage. You know, I'm here with my family now." It was a really cool experience, right?
Christopher Hansen 20:37
That's amazing.
Doug Holt 20:38
And one of the things they always say if I start talking to them, I go, "Dude, you are just like the guy here on the podcast," just like the... because I am just me. This is just the way I am, good, bad, or indifferent.
And having to quote, "compartmentalize," you are really stuffing down your emotions, and bro, they're going to come up, and they never come up at the best time. They never come up at the best time. It comes up when you're yelled you're tired, you explode at your wife, you snap at your kids, and then you regret that, and then the shame-guilt loop starts.
Christopher Hansen 21:10
Yeah, well, you said it being honest with yourself, right? That that in and of itself can be a challenge. What's that even mean, right? You know, there's levels to that. But if you go down the journey of just being honest with yourself, and you choose to go down that journey... because here's the thing: when when we're on our deathbeds and this is typical for people there be there is a moment of honesty, right? People are reflecting on their lives at, you know, 85 or, you know, however old they are. At that point, like, that's pretty late to choose to to really be honest with yourself and to really take inventory. And that's where regret comes from.
Doug Holt 21:57
Sure, man. You can't go back.
Christopher Hansen 21:59
Right. When... the more that you push that off, the heavier and heavier and heavier it becomes. So just that alone, just just being honest with yourself... and go ahead.
Doug Holt 22:12
No, I didn't want to interrupt you. I've had a lot of coffee.
Christopher Hansen 22:17
Well, just... I mean, being honest with yourself. So we talk about the compartmentalization. What are you pushing away at the end of the day? If if you're going home from work consistently and you don't want to walk through your front door, that's not going to get better.
Doug Holt 22:35
No, it's going to get worse. Have you read the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying?
Christopher Hansen 22:39
No.
Doug Holt 22:40
It's worth a read. I don't remember what all five of them are, and certainly not in order, but I do know one of them is not: "I wish I would have worked more," right? And everybody knows that cognitively, yet we get stuck in it. "I wish I would have made more money" isn't one. You know, all of these things that people are striving for in their 30s, 40s, 50s none of them are on there.
And the question I ask almost all men when I'm helping them set their vision is: when you're sitting on your porch with a glass of lemonade or a glass of bourbon, reflecting on your life in your late 80s, what are you most proud of? Everybody talks about their kids and their family.
Christopher Hansen 23:21
Friends, family, kids, experiences, connection.
Doug Holt 23:24
Yeah, and so where are you spending the most time? Let me look at your calendar. Where where are your kids in here? Oh, they're not in there. Okay, where's your where's your partner? Your wife? Oh, she's not in there. Wow, it's a lot of work there. You know, yeah, that makes your calendar, but this stuff doesn't.
And the thing I used to do, and I still do it with my one-on-one guys, is I'll get on a call with them, and this this stuns them, is I go, "Okay, pull up your bank account."
Like, "Uh-huh."
"No, pull up your bank account. I want to see your credit card statements."
"Why?"
"I want to see where you're voting. You're telling me your family is the most important. Let me see where you're spending your money. Every dollar is a vote. Are you voting for your family? Are you voting for something else?" And every minute's a vote.
Christopher Hansen 24:09
Right.
Doug Holt 24:10
We're going to leave this podcast this this pod early because I'm going to be with my kids when they come home from camp. That's important to me. That is on my calendar, and that's why we decided to do this podcast at this particular time, so I could be with my family. Because that's my priority.
Christopher Hansen 24:25
Yeah, man, just putting family stuff on the calendar. I have date night on the calendar. Anytime I have any family things... it doesn't even necessarily influence how much family things I have, but having them on the calendar, having them scheduled, shifts the entire energy around the thing. It's it's as if just putting date night on the calendar... my wife knowing 6:00 PM on Friday, it's you and me, no kids. It's us. Regardless, we could just sit in a hammock in the backyard. Whatever it is, it's just us. Completely shifts her state, yeah. She knows that she's being prioritized at this time, right? It's the same thing for the kids.
Doug Holt 25:08
Sure.
Christopher Hansen 25:08
Like I put on the calendar last week. I told my daughter, "Hey, we're... July 18, concert in Bend at the amphitheater." It's an artist that she's wanted to see for like a year. Like, we have the tickets, we're going. She hasn't stopped talking about it, right? Like, just her entire energetic state around just like this, "I know this thing is happening. It's locked in. We're gonna go." Just having that energy in the house with the kids and with the wife...
Doug Holt 25:39
100%, man. And the thing is, you can drag and move those, right? So maybe you miss date night, something comes up. That's okay. But you want it on your calendar first as a priority, and put it in the "brush your teeth" category, not the "get a massage" category, right? Most of you don't think about brushing your teeth, you just do. Some people take showers more than others, as we were discussing offline, but but massage is like one of those things that most people do sometimes, right? "I'll do it when I get the time." At least I do. I I don't prioritize it, you know?
And so you need to put your family in the "brush your teeth" category and where you want to be. And I get that not everybody's at that stage in their business. There's there's there's seasons, but everybody can carve out an hour of connection time a couple times a week. That's it. And quality over quantity.
I used to think, "Okay, my wife likes quality time. I'll sit on the couch with her with my laptop, working with my laptop." And she goes, "You know what? I'd rather just see you once or twice a week and just have all of you, than having you just be near me." And that was a good lesson for me.
Christopher Hansen 26:48
Yeah, 100%, yeah.
Doug Holt 26:49
So I could be more productive. As always, man, I love these conversations.
Christopher Hansen 26:53
Yeah, me too. I always appreciate you being here, bud.
Doug Holt 26:55
Yeah, thanks, man.
Doug Holt 26:56
Gentlemen, as I often say, in the moment of insight, take massive action, guys. I'd love to know what you get from this show. I love to hear from you guys. Jump in the community, let me know what episodes you would like us to talk about. We'll get Chris back up here if we can, we'll get Aaron, we'll get a woman's point of view, a wife's point of view. We do these for you.
The reason we've done over 1,000 episodes of these past 10 years is we're giving everything away for free. And look, if you want a methodology, a proven process, inquire about The Activation Method. We'd love to have you on our team as well. Until then, take massive action. We'll see you next time on The TPM Show.