Episode #954
Why is it so hard for men to express their emotions in relationships?
In this episode, I sit down with Chris to tackle the challenge of male vulnerability and emotional connection. We dive into real questions from men struggling to open up, rebuild trust, and navigate past mistakes without losing their sense of masculinity.
We explore why society conditions men to suppress their emotions and how to break free from that pattern. You’ll hear about a powerful way to reconnect with your emotions that doesn’t make you feel weak. We also get into what it really takes to rebuild trust after hurting your partner, and how leading emotionally can actually make you more attractive in your marriage.
If you’ve ever felt stuck when it comes to emotional connection, this episode is for you.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
I was talking to one woman. She’s like, “Look, Doug, since I was 13, men have been trying to sleep with me,” right? Which sounds grotesque. At the same time, that’s a reality for a woman. So let’s say it’s not 13—say it’s 15. Is your wife 15? Is she 40? You know? Like, that’s a big delta. That’s years of her conditionally just expecting men to chase her, right? Men to want to sleep with her. When you pull back a little bit, show that you have desire but not need—that makes you extremely attractive and very rare in the marketplace.
Welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show. Once again, gentlemen, I am graced to have Chris here with us, one of our advisors with TPM. Now, what’s an advisor? An advisor is somebody that, if you’re interested in the program, if you apply and you’re qualified, we put you through to an advisor who’s going to talk to you about your specific situation to make sure the program is a good fit.
We have a 90-plus percent success rate with our programs over the past eight years, and the reason we do that is, one, they work. Two, we make sure it’s going to be a good fit for you. If you’re going to invest your time, your money, your resources, we want to make sure it’s a good fit. And therefore, Chris or one of the other advisors is somebody that gets on the phone with you.
So today, we’re going to be fielding more of your questions. I talked Chris into staying. If you’ve listened to the previous episode, those questions are sent in either to VIP@thepowerfulman.com. So if you have questions you want answered on this show, make sure you email those in. We also have a free Facebook group where we’re putting those in as well. You can find The Powerful Man Facebook group over on—well, guess what?—Facebook.
And we’ve launched our own app, which we are going to be opening up to certain people. There are already several hundred of our members in there right now, but when we open that app up, there’ll be another avenue to get your questions answered directly by myself or one of our other expert coaches.
Chris, thanks for being here again, man.
Chris 2:08
Happy to be here. Jump right in. Let’s do it. Okay, this is a question that came out of the Facebook group from Gary: How can a man who has had a hard time identifying and expressing his emotions make those emotions accessible in a romantic relationship?
Go to an Alpha Reset? Hey, I mean, that might be the answer, and I’m curious about this as well. This is something that I have struggled with in my own life—just being closed off. Yeah. And even when I want to express those emotions, sometimes I don’t really know how to step into that space.
Doug Holt 2:46
Yeah, I think almost all guys are like that. I say almost—there are some guys that can actually do it very, very well and are more in tune with it. I think it’s just that society has beaten it out of us, right? You know, “Boys don’t cry,” “Oh, you’re hurt? Put some dirt on it,” “Get back in there,” “Don’t be a wimp.” All kinds of things come out.
Also, I think, as men—especially as young men—when we’ve shown emotion, other kids have picked on us, or we’ve been made to feel weaker. Yeah. Now, I do believe wholeheartedly the answer is the Alpha Reset. That’s by far the best program I’ve ever seen to help men get in tune with their own selves and feel that groundedness. We have a guy in our group—his nickname is “The Tin Man” because he found his heart. And there are so many guys I’ve talked to—I can think of “The Sovereign,” one of a number of other men—who would tell you their entire lives, and both those men are in their 50s, they’ve never been able to touch their heart and touch emotion. And all of a sudden, they do, and they would tell you that their lives have greatly expanded.
So it’s easy for me to say, “Go to an Alpha Reset.” I realize that if I didn’t know the process or didn’t know me, I might think, “Well, this guy’s just trying to sell me something.” And I’m not. My life doesn’t change if someone goes to The Alpha Reset or not—but their life will. And you, by the time this is recorded, are going to be coming out of your Alpha Reset, which I’m excited about. Yeah, by the time this is released—not recorded—which will be super exciting. I’d love to get your take on that on the flip side—do another podcast on the backside of it. So short of that, right? I know some people just can’t afford it, can’t get here—whatever it is. At TPM, we have, as you know, Chris, a 106-acre ranch that we run our events on. Like, we’re dedicated. This is not a fly-by-night thing that we’re doing. We are dedicated to helping men, and so we’ve invested everything into creating a facility where we can launch this.
Now, let’s say you can’t make it there for whatever reason. You’re on house arrest—what have you. How do you get in touch with those emotions? This is a really tough one. This is a journey I was on—I want to say five years ago or so. And I kept on hearing from people—my wife, but also girlfriends over time—”You have such a big heart, I’d love to see it more.” Heard that all the time. I thought, “What the hell are they talking about?” You know? So I tried to figure out where that was. And what it comes down to is—this is going to sound weird and cliché, and I say that wondering if the old Doug would have received this—is getting in touch with loving yourself in such a way that if you show your emotions, you’re not worried about getting attacked, right?
We have men that come through this program who have been Special Forces operators their entire lives. We have men that come through this program who are manly, manly guys but are scared to show their emotions. Right? And I think the preconceived notion is, “Well, if I show my emotions, I’m weak.” And the truth is, showing your emotions is a sign of strength because you’re leaving yourself vulnerable for attack, yet you’re still doing it. So for Gary, my guess is he’s just like, “Hey, man, I just don’t know how to tap into my emotions. It’s not even the fear of it—I just haven’t felt it in a long time.” And that comes with experience, quite honestly. You have to have those experiential reps, and that’s why I said the Alpha Reset. The Alpha Reset creates a safe environment for men to be able to get in touch with their emotions, with other strong men, in a non-intimidating environment.
Chris 6:32
I have a group of men, not in TPM and outside of TPM, that I’m close with, and what I can say is that there is an aspect of it that it’s a different level when it comes to connecting with a female. Yeah. So there’s a different type of relationship. There’s a different type of trust between men and women, right? And yeah, men may have been picked on by other boys at a young age. They also may have been, you know, had their heart torn out by a woman.
Doug Holt 7:06
So when, as a man, you feel so grounded in who you are, like rooted in that kind of groundedness, you can stand the storm of sharing with a woman, sharing with another man. And that’s not to say that a man that can’t do that is weak. That’s not what I’m saying at all. You just haven’t had the reps to get to that point yet where you can actually, hey, say something where, no matter what somebody else says, you know yourself to the core so much that it’s like Teflon, right? It just bounces off you. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you, but it doesn’t affect you in that deep way that it may have used to. I can tell you, it’s also shocking to a lot of women, especially when a guy is open and vulnerable. They love it, but also they’re like, “Whoa, I’m not used to this,” in a good way.
In fact, I was having a conversation earlier with Colton about this. Colton is in such a great place that he had somebody share with him like, “Wow, I’ve never been around such a grounded, masculine man. It’s refreshing.” Kind of, I’m paraphrasing here. And then for me in Breckenridge, which we just were at for The Brotherhood and then The Inner Circle event, we were going around the table. One of the participants asked, and so The Inner Circle is our highest-level mastermind group, and I think we had 12 of us around this table at this time, including the coaches.
We started to the right of me, going around the table, like, “Where were you a year ago, and where are you now?” And phenomenal results. The guys were like, “Holy cow, I didn’t even realize how much I’ve grown until I reflect.” And there were some tears, right? The guys were like, “Oh my gosh, this was so tough at the beginning of the year when I joined The Inner Circle, and now look where I am.” Tears of joy, tears of sadness for the past. And it got to me, and I got really emotional because this last year was really tough for me—just overwork, just trying to build the movement. And what happened was I looked around the table, and a lot of guys had tears in their eyes, and one guy looked at me and said, “I’ve known you for four years. This is the most connected I’ve ever felt to you. I’ve had a hard time connecting with you.”
At first, I was shocked, like, “What do you mean you can’t connect with me?” But it was that vulnerability of sharing, and sharing because I’m in a position of authority at that table, so sharing my non-perfections. You know, not that it’s shocking that I’m not perfect, but you have to have vulnerability to go out there and go, “Okay, I’m not gonna lie. I’m gonna be in integrity and authenticity. If I’m asking these men to do this, I need to be able to take that step as well.” And what I found on the other side of this, and I’m hoping Gary gets this too, is that’s where connection lies. And so in his relationship, he first has to get in tune with his emotions. If he can’t do that, then I would suggest some experiential work. If it’s not with TPM, then go somewhere else and do it. Have some experiential work. Sometimes psychedelic journeys can help men. Experiential things like The Alpha Reset are great for that.
If he is in touch with his feelings and it’s more fear of how she’s going to react, then that has more to do with getting rooted and grounded in himself. Got another one in there from the Facebook group?
Chris 10:29
I do. I have one from Tony. Little bit of this is a bit of a long one. Some of us have created real hurt within our partners, so much that they have felt deep trauma. Maybe we were arguing unfairly, being controlling, manipulative, making them feel guilty, this kind of stuff. I’m not finding the polarity/masculinity type of stuff very helpful.
Doug Holt 10:58
Hey guys, I wanted to interrupt this episode because it’s dawned on me that many of you aren’t aware that we actually have a book on How to Save Your Marriage Without Talking About It. Now, thousands of men have read it. They’ve reviewed it, and I want to give you the opportunity to do the same. If you’re interested in grabbing it, it’s a short read, but it’s helped a lot of men just like you.
And maybe you’re not interested in The Activation Method yet, but this is a small entry point that can really turn things around for you. Go over to Amazon. We have it priced as cheap as Amazon will let us, and that way, you have a resource you can use right now to start getting some results in your marriage. Now, let’s get back to the episode.
Chris 11:34
If she is, let’s say, seeing her own counselor and trying to work through whether she can even see herself with you again, what advice do you give us when she says, “I can see you’re showing up in a different way, but I’m so exhausted and have been hurt by you for so many years. I don’t know whether it’s ever going to come back.” Is it time for marriage counseling, maybe not just TPM, when you as a couple might have to reconcile such a troubled past?
Doug Holt 12:07
First of all, I totally get that, Tony. I’m going to try to offer you a translation. So what’s happened in this type of situation, which happens a lot, is the woman’s been hurt for so long, and the man hasn’t shown up as the man that she knows he can be. And see, guys, what you don’t know is your wife actually knows the man you could be, and when you don’t show up as that man, that’s the most hurtful thing for them, right? Because they’re like, “Why isn’t he showing up at this potential?” She married or invested in your potential—not the person she said “I do” to, but the person she sees you becoming. When you don’t show up, that’s just disappointing.
Quite honestly, we all have friends that we know, like, “Oh, Frank is such a smart guy. He could achieve anything,” and then Frank takes a very low-level job that doesn’t do anything and just whines and bitches, and he’s the victim, right? And you’re like, “Frank, you’ve got so much potential, man,” and eventually, you just don’t want to hang out with Frank—not because you don’t care about him, but because it’s tough to see him wasting away. And Frank’s going to end up, in this analogy, just playing the victim card.
Well, for Tony, he’s hurt his wife. He’s not showing up. And so how is she going to survive? By closing her heart, right? So, Tony, your partner has closed her heart to you in order to prevent being hurt more. Then Tony is now showing up, and she’s like, “Whoa, now he’s showing up as the man I want him to be, or at least on the right track.” And so what happens is the initial knee-jerk reaction a woman has is excitement, and excitement turns immediately into fear. Because what she’s saying, consciously or subconsciously, to herself is, “Okay, here he is showing up the way I want,” and then, “Pump the brakes, girlfriend, hold on, because we don’t want to get hurt again.”
Because if she opens her heart to Tony again, and this change isn’t permanent—right? This is the “new car smell” right now—if this change isn’t permanent, he’s going to hurt her again. And she remembers how much that hurt. She was crying in the shower by herself, or whatever she was doing to cope. She doesn’t want to go through that again, so she’s going to push back even harder on Tony. Now, Tony’s job is to show up consistently. That’s the key. If you think marriage counseling might work, go for it. I’m not against marriage counseling. It didn’t work for me—tried it a couple of times. It hasn’t worked for probably 98% of the guys we talk to. We have thousands of men that come through the program. Not to say it doesn’t work for anybody—I mean, we have marriage counselors that come through this program. It’s just that marriage counseling, in my experience, is looking in the rearview mirror, right? Not moving forward.
And so, when she knows that Tony’s awakening—if you will, excuse me—him becoming activated, as we call it, when she knows that Tony’s truly activated, and Tony is doing it for Tony, not for her, not to prove something to keep her around, then she’ll start to open her heart more. Now, it may be too late when that happens. That certainly does happen, and that sucks, and I don’t want to see that. But the best-case scenario is Tony stays the course, and his wife recognizes it’s going to be permanent, and they ride off into the sunset. Worst-case scenario, Tony stays the course, and his wife—it’s just been too late. But Tony becomes a better man out of it. And, well, you can’t see this right now, Tony, but you’ll attract a higher-level woman at the next step, right? Of the game.
But you need to do this for yourself first and foremost. Women can smell it a mile away when you’re doing it just for them because that’s transactional, right? So if I do something to impress you, Chris, so therefore you’ll like me, I’m only doing that as long as you’ll like me, right? That version of me that shows up. But if I am authentically myself, and you choose to like me, you’re always going to like this. You’re always going to like Doug because that’s just who I am. And so, that’s the difference. In our society, we have so many transactional relationships, and a lot of the men are like, “Oh shit, she’s leaving. She’s gonna leave.” And they try to put on this whole facade of who they’re gonna be to impress her.
Well, the woman can see right through that. And the men I work with—when it actually clicks for them that, “Hey, I’m doing this change for me. If she’s here or not, I’m still doing this”—well, then all of a sudden, as soon as that man makes that transition, their wife starts to go, “Hey, what are you doing over there?” You know, she starts to notice. And quite honestly, a lot of times, what happens is the woman starts to become scared that another woman is going to step into her place because she sees the stock of her man rising and realizes how rare it is for a man to be grounded and masculine in a very loving way.
Chris 17:12
Yeah, what a wonderful place to be, honestly, because she gets to then meet you right there, and you guys get to grow together.
Doug Holt 17:18
And that’s the ideal, right? But sometimes, when a woman is in fear, she’s—so what’s going to happen for Tony is his wife is going to safety test him. We call it a safety test because that’s truly what it is. “Am I safe?” Right? So she’s going to push every button she can, and she deserves to because Tony hurt her, and so she wants to make sure, Am I safe in this relationship? So she might accuse Tony of stuff. She might throw tantrums. She’s going to find a way to get Tony to react, and what she’s trying to do is get Tony to go back to the old Tony—the one who was the jerk or whatever he was doing, Tony. And if you resist that, and you’re actually the grounded, masculine man—the activated man, as we talk about—then if she does that, she knows she’s safe, and she can surrender into you.
My daughter’s five, right? And so my wife was out of town at a retreat for the last five days, and she will push every boundary—as she should. She’s a five-year-old. She’s testing her boundaries. But when I hold a firm line with her, and I’m solid where I am, regardless of what she does, she just melts in my arms like butter, right? That’s what feminine energy does when it’s met with masculine energy. It’s not that I’m being dumb. It’s not like I’m—I’m not being a dictator or anything like that. In my house, with a five-year-old, you have to kind of tell them what to do. But feminine energy responds so well to a masculine, grounded presence. And, at least for me, I wasn’t taught that, Chris, so that’s something I had to discover on my journey of figuring that out.
And luckily, I was able to save my marriage. My wife surrenders into that now because I can show up that way. She knows she’s going to get consistency. She knows, regardless of what she does, I’m on this path, and so no matter what, I’m there for her, which gives her safety and a container in which she can live her life.
Chris 19:12
Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Great question. Yeah. So this is from Samuel. My relationship with my wife is going great since I’ve taken the steps to work on myself, but if there’s still deep-rooted trauma from an affair she had, how do you dig that root out so you can move forward with learning to fully trust her again? In my head, I keep making up stories about her that I know are not true, which causes me to not allow myself to fully trust her.
Doug Holt 19:44
Yeah, Samuel, first of all, man, I’m sorry that happened to you. I feel you. So this one’s a tough one in the sense that Samuel needs to come to the realization that he can affect her, and she may cheat again. That’s a tough pill to swallow. So what a lot of guys do—guys do one of two things, usually. One is they become overly needy and overbearing, meaning they want to know their wife’s location. They want to ping her. They want to check her phone. They’re checking for signs of affairs and cheating to get their own reassurance, right?
The second thing guys do is they’ll start really accusing their wife all the time and beating her up. They want to make sure she hurts as much as they did. In both of those scenarios, you lose, right? Your wife is going to leave, or you’re going to—it’s just not going to end well. Eventually, I remember in a relationship that I had, I was constantly being accused of cheating, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t cheating at all. Finally, I looked at the woman and said, “Look, if you’re going to keep accusing me and treating me like I’m cheating, I’m going to go do it because I’m getting the same punishment either way.” And I remember the look on her face—stunned. But I was dead serious. “I have not cheated on you once. These are your own insecurities, but you’re punishing me as if I have. So I might as well do the action if I’m already getting the punishment.”
For him, really, the essence of this is he has to get to a place where he’s so secure in himself that, if she cheats, he understands his own self-worth enough to say, “That’s her loss.” And when he figures that out and truly embodies it—like, he is the gift. We say the prize—a guy named Andrew changed that with a beautiful poem that he wrote at one of our events. But when he lives like he is the prize or the gift, then, hey, if she cheats, she just lost the prize of her life.
But you can’t control her.
So I’ll use my wife as an example. You know, I travel. My wife just went on a five-day retreat, right? Where was she? Who was she with? I could easily get caught in my head. She stayed an extra—she stayed an extra night. Why’d she stay an extra night? Did she stay an extra night to meet a man? What was going on? And if I do that, it’s all-consuming. I’m texting her, I’m following her, I’m tracking her location. My wife and I share locations for safety reasons, right? But if I were to track all those things—”Why were you here and not there? Why didn’t you text me? You texted me at 10 o’clock at night. Why were you up so late? We go to bed early”—but you get the idea. Or I can just realize, “Look, my wife could be cheating. She could be doing all of these things. I hope she’s not, but if she is, she’s going to lose what I think is the best thing that ever happened to her. That’s unfortunate, but I’ll move on.”
When I get to that place where I realize my own personal value—not only in the “sexual marketplace,” as they call it, in the dating marketplace, but my own value as a human—then, when my wife says, “Hey, is it cool if I take an extra day?” I’m like, “Yeah, enjoy yourself. Have a good time. I got the kids.”
I also become sexier to my wife, right? I’m not needy. I’m being reassured. I’m giving her space. And it’s kind of like a cat, right? And I’m not saying this in a degrading way, but if you ever chase a cat around—I think you have a cat, don’t you? Yeah. So if I come to your house and your cat’s there, and I start running after your cat to catch it, what’s it going to do? It’s going to run. It’s going to run away, right? It’s going to hide under the bed or something. And I’m like, “Get here, kitty, kitty. Come back.” And the cat’s like, “Get this guy away from me.”
My experience, though, when I go to someone’s house—and I had a cat growing up, my dad’s got cats—but my experience is, if I ignore that cat, and I sit on your couch, and you and I are just talking, there’s a good chance that cat’s going to get curious and come over, test the waters, purr a little bit, rub against me, and eventually, if I keep ignoring it, it’s going to end up on my lap or darn close to it, right? It’s the same thing with your partner.
When you are not needy, you become attractive to a woman, right? Women are so used to men chasing them. So used to it. I was talking to one woman—she’s like, “Look, Doug, since I was 13, men have been trying to sleep with me,” right? Which sounds grotesque. At the same time, that’s a reality for a woman. So let’s say it’s not 13—say it’s 15. Is your wife 15? Is she 40? You know? That’s a big delta. That’s years of her, conditionally, just expecting men to chase her, right? Men to want to sleep with her. When you pull back a little bit, show that you have desire but not need, that makes you extremely attractive and very rare in the marketplace.
Chris 24:46
Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Yeah. And just getting good with the idea of her cheating because there are emotions around that. There’s a lot of feelings, a lot of pain that comes up with that. I’ve been through that. Yeah, I’ve experienced it. And, yeah, you really have to just—I would always lean into it. Like, if I felt like that was happening, I’d be like, “All right, I’m gonna feel all these feelings that come up around this happening. I’m not gonna react to them, not gonna live from that place, yeah, but I am gonna accept and acknowledge that these feelings are here.” And it just creates so much space to actually navigate for myself and not feel like I’m being driven by those feelings.
Doug Holt 25:26
So my guess is, based on having this conversation hundreds of times at this point, the feeling is, “What’s wrong with me?” Right? So it’s a lack of self-worth. Like, “What am I doing wrong? Why is my partner cheating on me or having an emotional affair? Am I not good enough?”
That “I’m not good enough” is usually the core thought process that men go through—and women, right? “What are my faults?” The key here is, I need to feel good enough myself that I don’t question my self-worth. So now, if my wife, Erin, cheats, I’m like, “You’re just stupid. That was just a dumb thing to do,” right? Because I know—I’m not thinking, “Oh my gosh, is the guy that she slept with or talked to or did whatever with better than me?” No. Was it an opportunity? Was there something maybe? You know, I can’t provide everything for her. That’s not my job, right? That’s just not who I am.
And, hey, if I faltered and she went off and did something, she made a choice, and that choice is going to have consequences. I’ve communicated those consequences to her, and she has to me, right? So if I do the same thing, I gotta expect to pay those consequences. And it’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna suck. It’s not something I want to have happen, Chris, right? But at the same time, I know my value. And because of that, when I’ve let her go, so to speak—my attachment to her—I’m no longer controlling, and she’s able to freely flow into her femininity. You know, if you’re controlling, then you’re making your wife masculine, and that’s not sexy. Now your wife is masculine, you have to be masculine, or you have to slip into your feminine. And now you’ve lost polarization—the way it should be.
Yep, sure. Love the question, man. Thanks for bringing these to the table. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Gentlemen, as we always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action. I hope you’ve liked these questions. I find them fun. We don’t do any prep for them, but they are really interesting, and they’re the questions that you guys have. So if you have questions, first of all, if you’re in the new TPM app, which you can find in the App Store—unfortunately, if you’re not in it, you can’t actually get access to it—we’re going to open up access to a select few of you, the listeners, coming up shortly. We’re working on the technological ways to do that. But for those men that are in it, go ahead and post your questions there. We’ll prioritize those questions. And for the rest of you, you can email VIP@thepowerfulman.com or post in our free Facebook group.
So the advisors and the coaches that are in there culminate those questions. Chris gets those, and we’ll do our best to do more of these for you if you guys like them. And let me know if you like them. Otherwise, it’s just Chris and I rapping here, having a good time, and having conversations. I’d love to hear from you guys and let us know what it is you’d like to hear on The TPM Show.
Gentlemen, in the moment of insight, take massive action. Remember, I’m always in your corner, and we’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
