Episode #1199
Many married businessmen reach a stage in their marriage where they notice their wives changing, evolving, or pulling back emotionally. As a woman enters midlife, navigates perimenopause, or seeks greater personal fulfillment, high-performing men often react by trying to solve her problems or taking her internal shifts personally. Defaulting to fixing mode or scorekeeping creates friction, leaving wives feeling misunderstood and husbands feeling unappreciated.
In this episode, Doug Holt sits down with Dr. Amanda Hanson, a clinical psychologist, relationship expert, and founder known as the "Midlife Muse," to explore how men can genuinely support their wives' individual growth while deepening relationship connection. Dr. Hanson brings extensive credentials to the conversation: she holds a Master's degree in Psychology and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, bringing decades of clinical experience in human behavior, women's developmental midlife transitions, and relationship dynamics. As a prominent thought leader and speaker, Dr. Hanson guides women and couples through midlife transformations, emotional health, and reigniting intimacy.
The conversation explores how husbands can move away from fixing and step into grounded, curious presence:
Holding Space Over Problem-Solving: Learning to ask whether your spouse needs active feedback or simply requires a grounded, safe container to be heard.
Understanding the Perimenopause Rewire: Recognizing how dropping estrogen levels alter a woman's natural caretaking drive, shifting her focus toward personal growth and new creative endeavors.
Eliminating Scorekeeping and Tit-for-Tat Dynamics: Replacing judgment and victim narratives with mutual appreciation, honest vulnerability, and shared ownership.
Reigniting Playfulness and Curiosity: Bringing curiosity, humor, and fresh communication back into daily marriage routines.
Supporting a partner's growth requires continuous curiosity and emotional presence rather than rigid assumptions. By applying foundational frameworks like holding space for the woman in your life and discovering how to proactively meet your wife's needs, men can cultivate an environment of safety, mutual respect, and lasting intimacy.
To learn more about Dr. Amanda Hanson's work, explore her official resources and social channels below:
Website: Dr. Amanda Hanson Official Website
Instagram: @midlife.muse
YouTube: @midlifemuse
TikTok: @midlifemuse
Facebook: Midlife Muse
00:00 - Introduction: Connecting Men's and Women's Growth Journeys
01:27 - How Can a Husband Support His Wife's Growth?
03:00 - The Power of Curious Presence vs. Fixing Her Problems
05:40 - Understanding Perimenopause and the Biological Energy Shift
08:43 - Stop Taking Her Internal Rewiring Personally
11:48 - Reclaiming Playfulness and the Chief Fun Officer Role
15:33 - Overcoming Resentment and Co-Creating Marriage 2.0
20:00 - Vulnerability, Shared Grieving, and Honest Communication
24:15 - "We're on the Same Team": Navigating Triggers Together
26:11 - Acknowledging the Unsung Roles Both Partners Play
33:06 - How Couples Teach and Heal Each Other Through Marriage
41:22 - Replacing Gratitude Traps with Authentic Desire
44:22 - Understanding Female Sexual Fantasy and Exploration
51:07 - Connecting Husbands and Wives to Growth Programs
53:31 - Where to Find Dr. Amanda Hanson and Closing Remarks
How can I support my wife's personal growth without trying to fix her problems?
Start by asking her directly what kind of support she needs in that moment. Ask whether she wants active feedback and solutions or if she simply needs you to hold space, listen curiously, and validate her feelings without judging or fixing.
What happens to a woman emotionally and physically during perimenopause?
During perimenopause, shifting hormone levels, specifically dropping estrogen, alter a woman's natural impulse to prioritize everyone else's needs above her own. This biological transition often prompts her to seek personal growth, launch new projects, or establish new boundaries, which should be met with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
How can husbands and wives stop scorekeeping in marriage?
Couples can break tit-for-tat cycles by adopting the shared mindset that they are on the same team. Expressing honest vulnerability, acknowledging each other's hidden contributions, and replacing unspoken expectations with clear communication restores mutual trust.
Why is curiosity important for maintaining intimacy in long-term marriage?
Assuming you already know everything about your spouse creates flat, predictable routines. Staying curious about her evolving thoughts, desires, and dreams keeps communication fresh, making both partners feel genuinely seen, heard, and desired.
How can I support my wife's personal growth without trying to fix her problems?
Start by asking her directly what kind of support she needs in that moment. Ask whether she wants active feedback and solutions or if she simply needs you to hold space, listen curiously, and validate her feelings without judging or fixing.
What happens to a woman emotionally and physically during perimenopause?
During perimenopause, shifting hormone levels, specifically dropping estrogen, alter a woman's natural impulse to prioritize everyone else's needs above her own. This biological transition often prompts her to seek personal growth, launch new projects, or establish new boundaries, which should be met with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
How can husbands and wives stop scorekeeping in marriage?
Couples can break tit-for-tat cycles by adopting the shared mindset that they are on the same team. Expressing honest vulnerability, acknowledging each other's hidden contributions, and replacing unspoken expectations with clear communication restores mutual trust.
Why is curiosity important for maintaining intimacy in long-term marriage?
Assuming you already know everything about your spouse creates flat, predictable routines. Staying curious about her evolving thoughts, desires, and dreams keeps communication fresh, making both partners feel genuinely seen, heard, and desired.
If your marriage is struggling with communication breakdowns, distance, or a loss of trust, claim your copy of Doug Holt's book, A Man's Guide on How to Save Your Marriage Without Talking About It, to start taking massive action today. You can also discover how to assess your relationship dynamics and learn our step-by-step methodology by watching the free video training at The Powerful Man Scales.
Also listen on:
Dr. Amanda Hanson 00:00
What do you wish women understood about men?
Doug Holt 00:02
How can I support my wife with her growth?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 00:05
There's also been a culture of a lot of shame around it.
Doug Holt 00:08
Well, my pain isn't as bad, or your pain isn't as bad as mine.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 00:13
I think one of the biggest traps is when men take things personally.
Doug Holt 00:17
They do the tit for tat, and they walk away more angry than when they started, more hurt and more resentful.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 00:23
We got here because of what the other person helped to foster in the other.
Doug Holt 00:28
Start collecting the evidence so that your wife's a great person.
Doug Holt 00:43
Hey guys, welcome back to the TPM Show. Today we are joined by a very special guest, someone that many of you listeners probably already know because a lot of the men that go through our program, their wives actually work with Dr. Amanda Hanson.
I got to tell you, her book is absolutely fantastic. We had a kind of laughing conversation earlier where she said, "Doug, you know my book is written for women, not for men." And I said, "Don't worry, because my book was written for men, not for women."
So, with that being said, we had an amazing conversation. Amanda, thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 01:17
Thank you, Doug, for having me. I think that we have so many places where our work emerges and, I think, can really benefit the entire couple. So I'm excited to have this conversation.
Doug Holt 01:27
I am too. One of the things that the men ask me so often—we have these men that are coming in, they're high achievers, they're doing the work, and kind of that stereotype of guys don't ask for directions, so they're a little shy about letting people know.
One of the things they're often asking for is, "How can I support my wife with her growth?"
What comes up for you? What would you say to a man who's listening in, knowing that you've helped thousands of women in their journey? How can a man support his lover, his wife, the person he wants to be on this journey with? How can he support her with her individual growth?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 02:09
First of all, I love that there are men who are asking that and curious about that, and it's not a one-size-fits-all.
What I always recommend is lean into that particular relationship and that person because what one person requires is going to be very different than what somebody else needs.
Somebody else might really say, "Hey, I want you to help me vision this out, and I want to work on this together, the idea that I want to implement." Another woman might say, "I just want you to listen and support me emotionally, and I don't need you to fix any of the issues that I have going on, whether it's in business or personal."
So I think first and foremost is opening up and understanding what she desires.
My husband and I have these conversations all the time, and he will literally say, "I just want to check in. Do you want me to give any feedback, or is this just a moment you just need me to hear?"
I had one of these moments the other night after a really intense day, and I said, "I just need you to hold the space for me. I don't need a single solution or answer. I just need to know that someone can witness it."
So I think asking the woman—and the biggest thing, if guys are like, "Okay, well, what exactly does that mean?"—be curious. Lean in and say, "Babe, I'm so excited for you. What do you need from me? How can I best support this for you?"
Then they can give options, like, "Do you just want me to listen? Do you want me to give any suggestions?"
There have even been times, Doug, where I think I want a suggestion, and in the middle of it I'm like, "You know what? Actually, no. I just need you to hear me."
So being open and flexible to asking, "What do you need from me?"
I think that's what women love the most. They just want to know that the person that's sitting in the room with them, that they're sharing their life with, is curious and willing.
I think one of the biggest turn-ons ever for me and most of my clients is, I just want to be connected to someone emotionally and energetically who's curious about my mind and my thoughts and my heart.
My husband texted me one morning, and we were not together, and he said, "I'm just wondering, what is in that beautiful brain when you wake up in the morning? Your first thoughts."
He's intrigued by me and he's curious. So I think creating that kind of energy is what women—we want to feel desired. We don't want to feel fixed or saved as much as we want to feel desired and supported in whatever it is that we want to build, do in our lives.
Doug Holt 04:29
I love that. I mean, this is exactly what we teach the men when they go through our program.
We'll often say a baseline, there has to be emotional security. Then after that, you must have your wife feel seen, heard, and desired, to have all those three things to make her feel alive.
What a lot of the guys say—I'm not trying to put you in a position where you're representing all women across the world, but you have a lot of experience with a variety of women—and what a lot of the guys mean, first of all, guys actually want to fix things. That's their instant go-to: "Let me solve her problems," rather than listening from a place of curiosity and sharing.
The men that we're working with now seem to be really butting up against this idea that their wife is going through perimenopause, menopause, and is on that journey, and therefore she goes off on her own into her own cave, if you will.
Can you talk a little bit to—we have a lot of female listeners, but also to the male listeners who are going, "I just don't know what's going on. One day she's this way, the next day she's a different way. What's happening?"
Dr. Amanda Hanson 05:40
Yes, it's a great question, and I have so much to say. So let me try to think about the best way to keep this as helpful as possible.
First and foremost, I think it would be really helpful to understand, similar to when a woman's body goes through puberty and she begins getting a period and all of those changes and the roller coaster of it all. For anyone who's ever raised a girl, they know exactly what I'm talking about.
Well, fast-forward a few decades later, and that's what's happening again to a woman.
There's also been a culture of a lot of shame around it. "Oh gosh, she's going through the change," or, "Oh, you know."
The reality is, she is. And the change she's going through is a lot of the things that she was available to before. She is coming into the fullest truth of who she is. It's almost a return back to who she was at six, seven, eight years old, before she was conditioned by things she was supposed to do or want.
The estrogen is dropping because that's Mother Nature's way of saying, if you've been the main caretaker for the family, this is now your opportunity. As your estrogen drops, you lose the desire to caretake on the level you had before, and it's not out of malice. It's just so real. It's almost indescribable.
I've already been through the other side of it, and I'm done with all of that. But even my clients are like, "I don't know what happened. I was the glue in the whole family, and all of a sudden, that's the role they knew me as. And now I want to do my own thing, and I'm not as interested in the things I was before in terms of taking care of everyone all the time."
Now, some women will over-identify with that role if they haven't built anything else for themselves, and they will then be quietly resentful because their estrogen's dropped. They don't really want to be doing it, so now they're super bitchy about it, and everybody's like, "Oh my gosh, what's happening?"
Because she's built that level of resentment, and she feels stuck and trapped. She feels like she's expected to stay in that really tight bud, and her body wants to blossom.
I think the reason we go through this as well is we are meant now, as the matriarchs, we are meant to birth something bigger for either our community, our family, the world. And that can't happen if you're still so busy taking care of everyone else.
So I just see it as a passing of the energy. My husband is in complete understanding that this is the time of my life where something way bigger and beyond our family is being birthed. I'm birthing something for the world.
Being able to understand that and not take it personally—I think one of the biggest traps is when men take things personally, and I see this a lot with white men. I think because white men have always been at the, for lack of a better description, top of the pecking order in the world, and they haven't had a lot of the things that people of color or disabled people or women have had to deal with every day, just waking up in a female body or a Black body or a disabled body.
So when anything is not going exactly in their favor, it can be like, "Oh my gosh, this must be about me. I'm doing something wrong. I messed up."
It's like, no, she's having a full experience that actually has nothing to do with you.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 08:43
So when you can understand that and you can take it away from making it so personal and be, again, curious and willing to listen about, "What's going on, babe?" And not like, "What's going on? You totally changed."
It's a lean-in, like, "Babe, tell me. That must be a lot that your body is experiencing. What does it feel like?"
Maybe read some books. There's so much available. Read some books and understand what's happening inside of her brain. It is literally rewiring, and so what she was available to before, after the rewire, she's often not available for it any longer.
Doug Holt 09:17
That makes so much sense. And your husband sounds like an amazing guy, by the way.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 09:22
The most phenomenal. He should be leading. I keep telling him, "When you retire, babe, this is your forte."
He's just such a divine masculine man, and he just gets it. It's in his blood. He watched his father do it. He's just extraordinary and very natural at it.
He sees it as his role to stay curious about me and learn and grow from what I bring, as much as I learn and grow from what he brings.
Doug Holt 09:49
And why wouldn't you be, right?
Something I'll talk to the guys about is they believe their wife is still the woman they married 10, 20, 30 years ago.
The first question I'll ask them is, "Have you changed since you got married?"
"Well, yeah, of course, Doug, I've changed."
"What makes you think your wife hasn't? What books is she reading currently? Who are her best friends? What's she talking about? What are her fears, hopes, and desires?"
It really amazes me, Amanda, that very few guys have any clue to any of those answers. They might know logistics, what she does, but they don't know what her deep desires are.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 10:25
And how are we actually building that? That, to me, is like parallel lives and less of a relationship, to be a little bit more leaned in and actively engaged in what she's doing.
Even if she's reading something, aren't you curious? Don't you want to know, even if it's just a paragraph or what the philosophy of the book is? Aren't you curious? The woman that you love, what's going on inside of her?
So I just think there's an opportunity to build a really beautiful bridge to something different.
What we don't need to do is pathologize the change and make it mean that it's the end of the relationship. It might be the end of the version of the way you were doing the relationship, but here's the great thing: now you get to build something so brand new together.
To me, even saying it, I can feel the effervescence in my body. That is so exciting.
Our kids are all out of the house now, and we've literally talked about, "What do we want it to look like now?" This is unbelievable that we are here on the precipice of a whole new era of our life.
I think it's also crucial to keep dreaming forward together. Not every element needs to be together, but have support for each other dreaming forward and something together that you're dreaming and building forward.
I just think it gets to be a whole new relationship with all this history that you have traversed together.
Doug Holt 11:48
Oh, I absolutely love it.
It's so funny, and I did this too, so I'm guilty of it. Most of our men are business leaders, and so when we tell them to go, "Hey, set a vision together, dream together," they show up like it's a boardroom meeting. There's no passion. There's no fun involved.
Once the guys are able to—we call it the CFO, the Chief Fun Officer—once they put on that hat and that role, and they start dreaming with their partner, everything seems to blossom. It becomes lighter.
There's no heaviness to it, and there's nothing permanent. Your dreams, your goals, your desires can change in an instant, or a week, or a year, and that's okay too.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 12:28
And you said something really key that just made me really perk up, is fun.
I think that we lose the fun. I think we lose the playfulness. I've been guilty of it as well, and having to bring some of that magic and the silliness and the playfulness.
Yes, this life is serious, and we all have people to take care of and bills that need to be paid and businesses that need to be run, 100%. And wouldn't it be a little bit more extraordinary if we infused it with some playfulness and pleasure and silliness?
Sometimes I'm even passing my husband in the hall or on the stairs, if we're at the same home together, and I will just do something so out of the box and goofy and silly, and we both just start cracking up.
Then I might not see him for four more hours, but we just have this really silly inside moment that nobody else would understand. It's what makes us feel more levity around it all.
Doug Holt 13:21
Yeah, and that's part of intimacy, right? You're being intimate together. You're doing something you probably wouldn't do if you and I walked down the hallway together.
We might tell a joke, but you can be goofy and playful, and that allows you to feel like you're part of his life and he's part of yours, and you're doing this together.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 13:41
That's right.
Doug Holt 13:42
It seems like over time, having talked to thousands of men and a lot of their wives, you have the man who starts to build a resentment, and you nailed it. He thinks it's all about him. "I did something wrong. Let me double down on being a good husband, and I'll clean the dishes more. I'll do more things," do more of the doing.
Then it seems to be, especially when there's a change in the household, kids go off to school, the wife's story becomes, "Well, I've abandoned my identity to raise the family. I've abandoned who I am."
So you have one person, the man, who feels, "I'm just a paycheck." It's a story I hear all the time. "I'm just a paycheck." And sadly, with suicide being the number two cause of death for men, a lot of guys just go, "I might as well not be here."
On the other hand, you have this other hurt soul, the wife in here, who feels like she has sacrificed everything for his goals, for the family's goals, and you have these two people that are butting against midlife crisis.
I know you're known as the Midlife Muse, coming through. You almost have two hurt kids that are just begging for love and to be seen and to be understood, and there's not a bridge to connect them. There's very few bridges to connect them, I should say.
When you see that in your practice for the women—and I'm hoping the guys can get this because they hear it from me, and it's just like raising kids, no offense, guys, that sometimes they need to hear it from somebody else to actually get it and let it sink in—what's happening in that relationship?
Or maybe better said, what can bring those two people together when he's looking across and thinking, "Wow, I hope this gets better," and puts his head in the sand, while she's realizing, "I've abandoned everything"?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 15:33
I think, again, it's about really hearing each other.
I remember being at that point where my career seemed to always be the back seat. So if a kid got sick, it was almost not up for debate that I was going to be the one who took the day off. I was going to be the one who took them to the doctors because his career was bigger, or he was traveling the world and he was the main breadwinner.
For a long time, I allowed myself—and this is the other big part, Doug—I co-created that with him. I signed up for that. I said yes for all those years.
So I think sometimes I also help women look at, yes, you might feel resentful. You might be upset, but I think a lot of that is you're upset at yourself that you stayed silent for so long. So you have to look at your part in this. This is a co-created experience.
What I was able to do then was come to my husband and say, "I don't want to be on the back burner anymore. And I'm not even asking your permission. I'm just telling you, we're going to have to figure out as a family how to not put me on the back burner because you and the kids have always been the front and center of everything, and it only seems fair and logical at this point that I too get to take a main character role."
Through that understanding, it's like, "Yes, how can we? What can we do to support that?"
For us, what that meant is he wasn't going to be able to stop traveling. It meant bringing in outside help to support us in the home with a lot of the household tasks and changing some of the financial decisions that we were making at the time because it was that important to me, because he could see how much I was longing for that part of me to be alive again.
Now, all these years later, obviously I'm so front and center, and he sees so much of my work. He's like, "Amanda, I cannot believe that all of that was aching inside of you for so long. I get it now. Oh my gosh, I get it. I can't even imagine."
And I'm like, "Right. It would be like me asking you to tame your ambition."
I had that, and I was trying to make the best of what we had. But I reached a point. It was my responsibility to say, "We've got to figure something different out," and him be willing to lean in and say, "Okay, what do we need to do to change this?"
So I think that's a really, really important piece.
I also think that being able to own—my husband and I have shed so many tears. We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, and we do this love-letter writing for all the family members' birthdays to one another, and he and I, for our anniversary every year and our birthdays, we read these profoundly beautiful, soulful letters.
I mean, we're sobbing, and then we always have a massive reflection after that.
We sat there for a couple hours, still crying, and he's like, "Amanda, I missed so much on the road all those years."
I mean, it makes me want to—I could cry right now.
He's like, "I missed a lot. We gained a lot, and we are in an amazing position, and we help so many people in our family now, and we have this huge philanthropic foundation. But we sacrificed a lot to get here."
We just named it. It wasn't about blaming or what we would do different.
Then I'm bawling, and I start crying, and I'm talking about the things that I feel like I missed.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 18:47
I missed as a woman, as a mother, as his wife, and we just had that really honest moment of, we are so grateful for where we are now, and we're celebrating it, and we're grieving some things that we can never go back to those years again.
So I think it's the balance and being able to have the emotional bandwidth and maturity to hold the duality of both.
You can look at what you wish could have been different without saying that what you have now is wrong. It's just the capacity to hold all of it.
I think being witnessed in that way and witnessing him in that way was a really breakthrough moment for us of understanding.
He shared, "I was really lonely on the road a lot." It's emotional. When we can hold that space for each other, I have so much respect for what he did.
He's like, "You know how many nights I would go where there was no one to hug me after a long day? You were with the kids."
It wasn't tit for tat. I was like, "I understand."
And the amount of days that I just wanted someone to not touch me. I just wanted an evening where I could crawl in bed and just read for hours, and nobody wake me up in the middle of the night.
So we got to share and just hear that for each other. It was really healing.
Doug Holt 20:00
I can relate to that so much because my wife approached me last year with tears in her eyes, saying, "I can't do this anymore."
Because I was traveling all over the world, hosting events for men and doing retreats, which fills my cup. At the same time, I was going back to a hotel room by myself, wasn't going out partying or doing—you know, it seems extravagant, the lifestyle, but—
Dr. Amanda Hanson 20:22
But it's hard on the road.
Doug Holt 20:24
It's hard. It's hard for both.
For the man, as me—and I'm not saying this was your husband—I would look back and go, "Wow, they went to the park, or they went for a hike, and they did this cool thing, and I missed the art exhibit at the school."
What I love that you did, and that my wife did, and you and your husband, there was no judgment. There was no, "You did this." You just simply shared from your heart, "Here's what's occurring for me," and he did the same.
He received it first without—because sometimes people try to compare, right? "Well, I have to do this. You get to be with the kids."
Instead, he listened, received you, shared his truth to you, and you received that. Together, you co-created something new, and you realized it was going to have a runway to it. It wasn't going to happen like this, and you were able to do that.
I think a lot of couples miss that because there's this series of one-upmanship. "Well, my pain isn't as bad, or your pain isn't as bad as mine."
It's because they're not feeling heard in the relationship. It doesn't get resolved, and instead of coming together like you and your husband did—which, again, I want everybody to go back and listen to that because that was such a beautiful narration of how it should be done—they do the tit for tat, and they walk away more angry than when they started, more hurt and more resentful.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 21:46
And completely unheard, right?
Remember, I think you and I, when we first spoke, we were talking about that—and I'm going to forget the name of it again—but that beautiful sculpture where it is two adults, a man and a woman, and they're sitting. The sculpture, you can see through it, and they're sitting back to back with their arms crossed.
Inside are their two little six- or seven-year-olds, and they're both trying to—they're touching through the crevices of the sculpture, trying to find their way to each other.
But the adults, we let that ego get in the way, and we're like, "They didn't hear me. I'm not budging. I'm staying right here until they come to me."
The other person's saying the same thing, and we're wasting time and energy.
Don't get me wrong. In our early years of marriage, there were moments like that where I was like, "Well, I'm not budging. He doesn't understand."
And he thought, "Well, forget it. Then I'm not going upstairs to try to talk to her again."
Then somebody finally does. But all that wasted time and energy, where if we just can remember—and one of our big phrases the last several years, probably at least 15 years, has been when either of us are feeling triggered or activated, we take a breath, and our phrase internally is, "We're on the same team."
Doug Holt 22:54
That's exactly what my wife and I say.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 22:56
On the same team. Oh, I love that.
Doug Holt 22:59
That's hilarious. It's exactly the conversation we have. We call this Marriage 2.0.
I believe wholeheartedly that we needed to go through the dark phases to get our own healing done, to go do the work on ourselves, so then we could come together and do this journey together and raise our children the way we want to.
It's not perfect. I never want anybody to think that we have everything figured out. But I'm gonna guess you're gonna agree, it's so much more joyous on this side of things, and richer. Intimacy is richer. Conversations.
I was just up with my wife right before we hit record, and you and I were talking, and she was just sharing her day. We're talking about what we want this weekend to be.
We do this thing called intentions. "What's your intention for the day?" or, "What's your intention for the weekend?" We do it with our kids, and we drive our kids to school, so we're trying to teach them at a younger age.
Doug Holt 23:55
But then I get to understand what her intention is, and like, "Oh, that's interesting. She just wants her intention to be fun."
That also gives me a hint of, "Hey, maybe it's been stressful. Maybe something's been going on," and I can ask questions.
And hey, I like to have fun, so this is perfect. It's getting to your point. It's getting inside each other's worlds.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 24:15
That's right.
I think that there's so much less to fear. I think we've absorbed from the generation before us just this fear of our feelings and the vulnerability of it, and somehow appearing weak or wrong.
It's interesting. I'm between New York City and South Florida, and I do this series where I walk the streets and I approach total strangers unprompted. They have no idea that I'm going to go up to them, and I would say 90% of them are so open and warm and welcoming about it.
I just did a series—it hasn't aired yet, but I recorded a series on Tuesday—and I was going up to people that, without too much, I made a little bit of an assumption, but I made sure there was enough evidence that they were a couple, and then I asked if they were in fact a couple.
Then I asked them a question. I said to men, "What do you wish women understood about men?"
Then I turned and I said to the partner—
Doug Holt 25:09
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 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 not 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"?
I don't know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I'm her man, 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.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 26:11
"What do you wish men understood about women?"
It was almost every single woman said the exact same thing, of all the women I polled, and men had a variety of things.
One of them really struck me. It was a bit of an older couple who'd raised children, and maybe the children had, I had the sense of, if I'm guessing, probably just launched and moved out of the house.
Her approach was, "I only have so many hours a day. I can't accomplish everything for everyone all of the time."
He almost turned and kind of said it in a whisper, but he said that husbands and fathers play way bigger roles than anybody ever really gives them credit for.
It just, I really felt it in my heart. I was like, "Ooh, yeah, I feel that."
I think sometimes my husband has been like the unsung hero at times in our marriage. Because I was forward-facing, so it was like at the schools, at the events, in the community, it was like, "Amanda, Amanda, Amanda."
And I felt like, "Yeah, but he also created the structure so that I could be as present as I was in the years that I was."
I think that sometimes men don't get that—I don't know if acknowledgment is even the word—but from their partner, not society necessarily, but from their partner.
Like, "Wow, I see how much pressure this is."
I think about those years when I wasn't working, the early years. I took a couple years off from work, and I said to my husband, "I'm not sure how you were sleeping at night."
He's like, "What do you mean?"
I'm like, "That's a lot of pressure to carry, to take care of all of us. The food, the house, the private schools, and the cars, the insurance. That's a lot for one human to carry."
He's like, "Thank you for acknowledging that."
Doug Holt 28:03
I would tell you there are a lot of guys listening to this right now crying because we have tens of thousands of men that come through our community and our programs.
One of the things we teach them right away is your wife needs to—first, we talk about foundational safety because most men don't. I didn't understand what emotional safety meant.
I thought provide, protect meant I protect. I never pushed my wife, was never violent. I thought I had safety checked off, and my wife let me know, "No, that's not it."
But we also teach the men, as I said earlier, your wife wants to be seen, heard, and desired.
As the men go through our program, I go, "Look, you also want to be seen, heard, and desired. Somebody has to step up and do so."
Men have, I believe, this preconceived notion that we're supposed to be so strong and have all the answers that a lot of men in business do, "I'll just outwork everybody."
They hit their 40s, their 50s, and the outworking everybody is not as fun. They try to think, "Okay, I'll just take a back seat."
So, for the women listening, I will tell you right now, I can guarantee you, hands down, that your man would do anything to hear what you just shared, just a little bit of a sense of acknowledgment.
I also want the men to know that this goes both ways. The women also deserve the acknowledgment because being—I mean, if you've ever, as a dad—we're lucky enough, my wife coaches women, but she does it when she wants to. We're lucky to have that lifestyle that we've chosen.
She takes care of the children primarily. Having said that, she's going away for a girls' retreat here in a little bit, and I'm going to be solo parenting. It's not easy.
Doug Holt 29:55
No, no. My son came in last night scared, so I had to get up in the middle of the night, take care of him.
I think what we're both saying here is, what if, instead of looking at what's going on with us and being so concerned with where we've been wronged or where we're doing extra things, what if we looked across the street, metaphorically, at our partner and see all the things that they're doing right?
You don't see the dishes that get put away. We don't see the kids' clothes that get put out, as men often, the drive to school, the arguments. There's so much that the women are holding.
When we talk about diffused awareness, a woman walks into the room—my understanding, of course, not being a woman—she notices everything.
Dr. Amanda Hanson
Everything. It's exhausting sometimes.
Doug Holt
Yeah, it would be. It sounds horrible, to be honest. And what a superpower.
As men, we get to honor that. When I come home, my house looks good, smells good. If I was a bachelor, I don't know if it would.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 31:04
It's so true.
My husband and I talk about this a lot when we go for long walks in the evening, and we talk about everything.
One of the things that we have talked about over and over, and circled back on the last several years, is we find each other to be like each other's counsel, if you will.
Because he's like, "Amanda, I love your perspective and what you bring."
If he's sharing something at work, or he's blocked around something, or he just wants to get an outside perspective that's not in the middle of the situation or the decision that needs to be made, he's like, "I just love hearing your perspective and the clarity you bring."
Or if I'm trying to make a decision in business about two different things, getting his perspective.
One of the things that we talk about is being each other's counsel in so many ways, and really honoring that.
He said in the letter he wrote for our 30th wedding anniversary that, "I have you to thank for the man and the father I am in the world today because you taught me so much around what it means to be that kind of a man."
Interestingly, in my letter, having no idea what he wrote, I said that, "You've given me such a safety net and such a soft place to always land, no matter what, so that I could go out and really build my big dreams. No matter how hard it was, no matter what it took away from our time together, you were always there. Every time I turned around, you were cheering for me, with no judgment in any way, shape, or form."
I guess we both just realized that we provided so much of where each of us, as individuals, we got here because of what the other person helped to foster in the other.
Doug Holt 32:48
I love that.
I had a question just pop up for me when you were talking. Do you believe that people are attracted ultimately—obviously, there's physical attraction, there's enjoyment—but that partners come together in order to teach and heal each other based on the lessons they need to learn?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 33:06
I really think so.
I think that my husband was born with a natural capacity for something really, really big beyond.
So let me say this contextually. He is the CEO of a Fortune 300 company, and he makes, obviously, really large decisions inside of that corporation and leads in ways that are fairly unique for traditional corporate America.
They win some of the most prestigious awards every year. Not the kind of awards you're probably thinking, right? The kind of awards that have to do with humanity.
He shares with me messages, emails. There's over 30,000 people in this company, but he shares things that come through to him from down the pipeline. We sit and read some of these messages and voice notes that get left, and we just cry together.
He's like, "Amanda, none of this—I would not be this kind of leader if you hadn't taught me to see differently."
That famous quote by Pablo Picasso, it's like, "We only see things one way until somebody shows us a different way of seeing it."
He's like, "You've done that for me. You've opened my eyes and my heart to more of humanity that, if I stayed in my typical patriarchal way of living, I would have missed a lot of the magic."
I think this also relates—we've adopted two children from different countries, and so that was all driven by me.
He's like, "You've just created a perspective inside of me that I would have not had otherwise."
Yes, he is this really celebrated leader, and he's just phenomenal. He always says on the largest stages around the world, "I would not be this leader without my wife."
It's not because of what she does in the background, but he talks about because of what she helped foster inside of me and how she made me see the world differently.
So I think that's really, really beautiful.
I came in—we met when I was 21—and there was a lot of wounding from my childhood. My father left when I was 10.
Isn't it ironic? I marry a man who travels the world, leaves every Monday, comes home every Friday, that I would have to continue to reopen that wound until I could finally fall to this place of a true healing.
I will say, Doug, this is so fascinating. We've been married 30 years, and I think the final piece, the final, final piece of that healing only just happened about two and a half, three years ago.
There was a remnant of it left. That's how long it took because that was coded inside of me in such a fundamental time of my life, that ultimately men leave. You can't really let your guard down because ultimately they will choose something else.
There was something that had happened two and a half years ago that I laid it all—I was so vulnerable. I was so vulnerable, and it was so powerful. Something shifted that day forever.
But if I'd been like, "Oh, I'm not going to let him know that that thing really hurt me, and I'm going to be angry about it," instead, I was really tender and open and vulnerable and a little embarrassed. But I just went for it.
He was like, "Amanda, I'm so grateful that you were able to do that," because it's like everything just opened for him. He was able to see me through a completely different lens.
Doug Holt 36:27
I love that so much, Amanda.
I mean, the journey is the destination, right? There's no endpoint, per se. You just kept doing the work, kept chipping away, as everybody does.
The fact that your husband, being rock solid for you, willing to learn from you, and you doing the same, you guys are able to heal each other and come out the other side.
Within TPM, I do mostly one-on-one coaching for our guys. The guys that do one-on-one, which is pretty rare, it's a substantial commitment in time and resources to do so.
You know how it is. You become really good friends with people because I'm in their lives very intimately. I can tell you what they're doing today, which is such an honor for me. I really love that.
They always give me a hard time for not marketing as a business success tool because, like your husband, once home base is taken care of—and their wives usually have all the insights for their business anyway. They don't marry dumb women. They marry very powerful, strong, smart, intelligent women.
But then when they start opening up together, they start collaborating. They become that true power couple.
The guys are like, "My business has grown exponentially. I'm not worried about home base. I come home, I'm looking forward to it. I'm listening to my wife. She's listening to me. We're sharing on a level that we just never imagined possible."
It's just so amazing to hear the story of you and your husband doing the same and coming out the other side.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 37:59
It takes that maturity. I think there's just some good old-fashioned maturity that has to happen too.
At least my experience is such that I'm watching my mom and her husband—he's in his 80s now, she's in her late 70s—and my husband's parents are in their late 80s.
When you watch it all—and this is not a pass for any bad behavior, please hear me clearly—but when I watch it all, somehow, I'm 53 right now, my husband's turning 60 this year, we're at this place of some of the things that the 30- and early-40-year-old version of us might have stood our ground for, and that would have been our battleground and unmovable, now it's like, "Oh, that's so silly. What is actually even the point?"
When I see the long haul of it, I realize I don't want to prove that I'm right. I don't care to prove that I'm right. I don't need to prove that I'm right.
I can also have a different opinion than him, and that gets to be beautiful too.
Doug Holt 39:00
One hundred percent.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 39:01
Doesn't mean he's against me. He just has a different lived experience.
Doug Holt 39:04
Well, yeah, different lens to look at the world through.
I remember in my 20s reading a book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and It's All Small Stuff. That book hit me.
Now, I didn't apply it all at the time, but I remember reading it and kind of getting that knowledge. Wow, all the things I'm worried about, I'm stressed about, they're not going to matter a week from now, maybe not a year from now.
Going through that in relationship, I see the guys—I'll ask them when they're complaining about their wives, "You have a big teenager inside you, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Look down. This is your teenager acting up, being rebellious because you're scared. You're scared of being hurt. You're scared of being left. This is fear coming in."
When you can see that, start collecting the evidence that your wife's a great person, the good things that she does, rather than looking for the things that she's not doing.
As business people, part of our job is to find the things that aren't working and fix them. When you apply that to a relationship, that is not a good recipe at all.
A quick aside: I'll share a story with you because I think this will help the listeners.
One thing that I'll have men do when they're complaining about their wives, "My wife nags. My wife does this," 30-day gratitude journal.
Don't tell her. Just every day for 30 days, you got to write down at least one. Now, it should be three or more, but at least one thing.
It could be easy. If you guys are fighting right now and things are going on, are you worried about your children being safe when they're with her? The answer is no. Then be grateful that you don't have to worry about the safety of your children.
Make it easy. Some people try to go over the top and look for these grandiose gestures, and you don't have to. Make it easy.
One hundred percent of the time, a guy will come back after 30 days, if he does it, and goes, "Doug, my wife changed."
Like, "No, she didn't. The way you're looking at her changed."
Now she may, because you're behaving different, she may be bouncing off you differently. But when we change the lens at which we look at each other from, and come at it with gratitude rather than resentment, that alone can change a relationship and have it do a 180 pretty quickly.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 41:22
That is so beautiful. Thank you for doing that.
It's interesting. I have a chapter in my book called "The Gratitude Trap" because I think the gratitude journals were really pushed and marketed primarily to women.
In my world, when I've asked women—I do this exercise—"I want you to make a list of everything you're grateful for," I mean, they can't even fill the page up. They're just grateful for everything, right?
Because we've been so raised and trained on, "Just be grateful that he's not a drinker. Be grateful he's not a gambler. Be grateful..." It's like bare minimum.
Then you ask her, "And what do you desire, in the relationship or for yourself? What do you desire?" And they're paralyzed.
I have women start crying. They're like, "No one's ever asked me what I desire. I know what he desires in sex and in food and vacation, and I know what my kids all desire: their favorite foods, their favorite toys, their favorite games, and their favorite color. But I don't know what I desire anymore."
After years of hearing that, I just started asking men, "Do you have a gratitude journal by your bed?" And they're like—
Doug Holt 42:25
Exactly.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 42:25
I started thinking, "Oh wow, this is fascinating."
We've really spoon-fed, "Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful," and not even spaciousness for, "And if you desire..."
I remember when we were having a struggle in our marriage, and I was sharing it with a friend, and she's like, "What are you talking about? You've got everything," as if desiring more emotional intimacy was too much to ask.
So I just appreciate you sharing about this gratitude journal because it's such a difference from the approach that I have seen when it comes to gratitude versus desire for women. It's like a barren field when it's desire.
Doug Holt 43:02
That's eye-opening to me. I wasn't aware of that. That's sad, quite honestly.
My wife and I do a regular yes, no, maybe sheet with each other around intimacy that we'll fill out and exchange.
I recently redid it, using artificial intelligence now that we have access to those kinds of tools, and made it, I think it was a nine-page document, front and back.
But I was really curious. Everything from holding hands to erotic things in the bedroom, you name it, from all the extremes in there.
There were not many surprises, but a few, because she's evolved. We've done this regularly, coming through, and it was a really fun way for me to see what my wife's desires are.
We talked about this earlier, but I also look at the books she's reading. I don't read them, but I'm curious what the subjects are. Her girlfriends, the books I've read, got summaries of some of the books that they're doing for the ladies' book club, and a lot of them are basically erotica-disguised stories.
But the men will come back to me, Amanda—and this is not going to surprise you, but it's going to surprise the guys—the men will say, "Well, my wife's not interested in sex."
I'm like, "No, unfortunately, she's just not interested in sex with you right now."
Dr. Amanda Hanson 44:22
She's not interested in the same.
Here's how I explain it, and I say to women, "This is how you can explain it to your partner in a way that feels really loving."
Ask them, "What is one of your favorite restaurants?"
They say, "Oh, this Italian restaurant."
"What if I told you for the rest of your life, you get to go to that same exact Italian restaurant, and you have to sit in the same seat every single time with the same view? You can't look at the menu. They're going to bring you what they're going to bring you. You're going to have a glass of water with it, and you're going to see other things on the menu and people eating things at other tables. And there's a room in the back with jazz, but you got to sit there. Then you might see out the window that there's an Asian restaurant and a Greek restaurant, but you can't go to any of those either. You're only going to eat there for the rest of your life. Would you do that?"
And you're like, "Oh my God, are you kidding me?"
I'm like, "Okay, so that is kind of similar as to sometimes what—and I'm part of this as well, and so I'm bringing this—it's kind of what our sex feels like."
Dr. Amanda Hanson 45:18
Our sex is so predictable. I know what seat I'm gonna sit in. I know how the waiter is gonna serve it to me. I know how many things of Parmesan they're gonna put on it.
That doesn't get our desire going. We want some mystery and some intrigue.
So I think you're exactly right. We can't assume that just because she has an orgasm every time that she doesn't want something more.
It's interesting. My husband and I have opened up and explored and had a lot of conversations around that. He was floored at my level of willingness and desire around certain things versus his, and we realized it's actually him who's so much more conservative.
There's a book that was written about eight years ago by a psychologist. Her name is Wednesday Martin, and the book is called Untrue.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 46:04
I went to her opening that night, and I know her.
It's built on 20 years of social science and social research, and what she found in those 20 years. This is looking at primates like the bonobos and looking at people who are, let's say, engaged in pornography and then hooked up to electrodes to see the response versus men versus women.
What they found, and also combing the streets of New York City and talking to women for years upon years upon years anonymously—Doug, what women fantasize about would blow most men's minds.
Because you have to think about, we have a little bit more range. This is my experience in working with women.
Women are really vast and really deep. I have a lot of different kinds of friends, where my husband has a pretty typical kind of friend. I love to go to musicals and symphony and orchestra and comedy clubs. I like all of that, and my husband likes this kind of a movie on a Saturday night.
My fashion is all over the place. It's like, "What personality am I today?" And his fashion is like this.
So it's like, of course it makes sense that when it comes to sex—but we as women have been conditioned to be like, "If I tell somebody, what are they going to think of me?" So we don't, and we're embarrassed about our fantasies.
I mean, the fantasies are incredible, of what women have.
I have a whole month where we go deeply into one of the archetypes that I teach, which is the Erotic Oracle. We get in it, in it.
The women are blown away about what I'm talking and teaching and opening up to them about what they could talk to their partners about, and they're like, "I'm so scared."
Then they bring it to their partner, and their partner's usually like, "Really? I would have never thought you would be curious about even talking about it, let alone..."
And I'm like, "Listen, whether or not you follow through on any of it, even talking about it gets to be erotic."
Doug Holt 48:03
One hundred percent. Some things can just stay in the fantasy zone, right?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 48:06
And sometimes it's better that way than in reality.
Doug Holt 48:09
Certainly can be.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 48:11
But yeah, I think that we make a lot of assumptions, and again, another place where we miss each other as a couple.
We can have so much fun and so much playfulness around it because that too gets to be.
As our bodies change, I can only speak for women. I know men's bodies are going through certain changes as their testosterone changes, but I can speak for women and myself at least.
What I desired even three years, four years ago is different than what I desire now. It's fascinating.
So it's like, of course, we have to keep that conversation going. We can't think that what she liked when she was 30 is going to be the same thing at 50.
It's just so—it's a beautiful landscape. It's like you're going on a whole new adventure.
Doug Holt 48:52
This is why I do that yes, no, maybe sheet regularly, right? Because things can change.
I know my desires change for a lot of things—the things I want to eat, sex, things I want to read—they can change over time. I'm not watching the same movies I was when I was 20. I'm 49 years old at this point.
I'm going to share a beautiful story with you, where I think it's beautiful anyway.
We have a program called the Inner Circle. It's our top-tier mastermind group for one year, and one gentleman approached me and said, "Doug, my wife is going through menopause and/or perimenopause, and she approached me and said, 'I desire you, but I can't carry the desire right now. I need you to step forward and carry this for me and for us.'"
Wow.
I thought that was such a brave, beautiful thing for her to share so openly and raw, and to let him know, "Hey, look, it's not you. I desire you. I want you. I've just got changes going on hormonally that I don't even understand."
Dr. Amanda Hanson 49:53
That's the part that's really confusing because there is that desire, and yet it feels—there's some...
It doesn't last for long. And here's the really exciting thing, is that when you're on the other side of menopause, you feel like you're 18 years old again.
But now the great part is you got all the wisdom and you're not reckless like an 18-year-old. So that's the plus.
Doug Holt 50:13
Awesome. I love that.
Wow, I mean, we could talk for hours and hours, and I would love to do that as well, Amanda. At the same time, I want people, men, to go out there.
How can guys get this book and find out more about you?
And guys, I'll let you know. We have several men who've gone through our programs, like The Brotherhood in particular, and their wives have gone through Amanda's programs, and they are raving, reconciled.
I mean, I'm talking divorce not only on the table, but divorce filings, and gone from that to complete 180s.
It's great to meet somebody and respect them for who they are, but then also to have firsthand knowledge of the ability of the work that you do and put out there, of changing families' lives. I just think it's amazing. I'm a raving fan.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 51:07
Same too, Doug. I tell everybody. I tell all my clients when they're asking.
I have a client right now whose husband I know just recently came back from a retreat, and honestly, some of the stuff she shared about his experience is almost eerie, Doug.
It's almost as if we are living in parallel universes, that you are doing, in your beautiful program, so many of the fundamental elements I'm doing. It's insane.
They're so complementary, and they get to come back and share, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're doing that too. We did something like that."
So again, it builds this brand-new bridge and language for them, and it's very deeply complementary of the work.
So I feel the same. I'm just so grateful to have someone to refer the husbands to.
Doug Holt 51:52
Likewise, very much so.
We have a lot of wives who listen to this podcast as well and watch this on YouTube. If the women are interested, please let me know where they can go.
Then secondarily, what's a good way for a man to introduce you and your programs without making her feel like she has to fix something?
Dr. Amanda Hanson 52:16
Yes, exactly.
I think it's as simple as starting with, if they heard this podcast, listening to it together. Like, "Oh, you know how I listen to XYZ podcast? I was listening to this episode the other day. It was really interesting. They had this woman on, and there were some things I think it'd be kind of cool to listen to together, and we can even pause it along the way. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about what she's sharing. Do you agree with that? Have you ever felt that, or is that way off base?"
Bring it as something to do together.
Doug Holt 52:44
Yeah, throw it up on your smart TV, guys. YouTube. Make her dinner. Make it fun.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 52:52
Lots of candles, maybe some fresh flowers.
Doug Holt 52:54
Yeah, make it fun.
Doug Holt 52:58
And obviously, in the show notes, we'll leave links to your websites and all your social media.
I gotta check out that show you're doing. That sounds really, really cool, the live interviews of the couples.
I'm really curious as a man who—and this is a misconception that we get a lot—the men that come through our programs love women, and they want to know.
As a man, I want to learn more about women, most particularly my daughter and my wife, and other women out there that we want to love and support.
So I thank you for the work you're doing, and I can't wait to learn more.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 53:31
Thank you, Doug, so much. I really appreciate it.
I would say my website, amandahanson.com, has everything you need, and also my Instagram is midlife.muse, M-U-S-E.
You'll find all of the work. There is a lot of beautiful material to interact with for free if you're curious. You don't even have to step in and pay until a woman sees that, "Wow, I got a lot of value even after that free thing."
There's all kinds of options where she can reach out if she's interested in working with me.
Doug Holt 54:03
Yeah, and I'm just going to give you one more shout-out for your live events. I've heard they're exceptional and absolutely great.
Dr. Amanda Hanson 54:11
Well, it's in three weeks. I don't know, this is probably airing after the fact, but it's October 3rd and 4th in Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center.
Doug Holt 54:19
Awesome. Well, if this does come out—I don't know the release date—but the team will get it out there as soon as possible, and I'd highly recommend it.
I'd go if I could, but—
Dr. Amanda Hanson 54:29
Doug, let's talk about future collaboration. Maybe we do a combined—can you imagine a combined experience, a weekend experience where the husbands and wives come together?
Doug Holt 54:40
I can definitely imagine it. I do.
Dr. Amanda Hanson
I can too.
Doug Holt
We'll talk.
Well, thank you again.
Gentlemen, as I always say, in a moment of insight, take massive action. And Dr. Amanda has given you so many insights into a beautiful soul.
You married your wife. You said, "I do." You looked in her eyes. And yeah, maybe you've drifted apart, but she has given you a play-by-play of exactly what you can do to come back together.
Be curious. Make it fun, and really get into her world. And don't sweat the small stuff, guys. It's not worth it at the end of the day.
You love the woman across from you. You love who she's being. So take at least one of these insights. Don't go from one show to the other. Take one thing and put it into action immediately, and that's how we get progress.
Thank you again, guys. We'll see you next time on the TPM Show.