If you’re reading this page, there’s a good chance you got here after hearing your husband, boyfriend, or fiancé mention my name. Or, perhaps you discovered my name on a credit card bill or email.
Regardless of how you got here, I’m delighted you did!
I’m pretty happy for you to know who I am, what I do, and why your partner is building a relationship with me.
I love the work I do, the men I do it for, and its’ positive impact on their person, relationships, and family.
It’s extremely gratifying and rewarding most of the time, and I take great satisfaction in knowing I’m among a tiny minority of men helping men the unique way I do.

I’ve made this page with one thing in mind – you.

I’ve written the words here with the same delicate care, compassion, and love I have for your partner when I speak with him. Though he’s my client (or considering being so), it’s not lost on me that what happens with him doesn’t happen in a vacuum but impacts you and the rest of your family too.

As a husband to the same woman for 27 years and father of six children, I try to imagine what my wife would be feeling in your shoes. What she’d be curious about. What fears and anxieties she’d have. What would keep her up at night?

I don’t have to work that hard to imagine it because it wasn’t that many years ago that I had hired a relationship coach, and my wife, Zelda, wondered what impact that would have on her, us, and our family.

 So, allow me to imagine the questions, curiosities, anxieties, fears, and concerns you might have and address them here.

“Why is my partner talking to you?”

Your partner is talking with me because he’s frustrated, unhappy, and discontent. You probably already know that, though, don’t you?

Like you probably did too, he entered adulthood and a long-term relationship with a story in his mind about how his life would go, what the people in his life would be like, where it would lead, and how it would feel.

The problem is, life hasn’t gone the way that he imagined or worked out how he’d hoped.

In his search for answering the question, “why is life not going the way I wanted?” he found his way to me and felt a connection in my relating my own similar experience through those same questions and challenges in my life.

Most likely, he’s also chosen to speak with me because I’m among the very rare few who promote finding answers to those questions within ourselves instead of blaming unhappiness on people and circumstances outside of us.

Men like your partner often find this intriguing and hopeful.

I hope you will, too, because the natural outcome of a search within himself results in answers also within himself. Solutions that I’ll encourage him to stop trying to make others responsible for – like you.

“How did he find you?”

Most men find me by referrals. Somehow or another, usually by a google search, they end up in an online community or Facebook group where other men I’ve worked with sometimes also spend time in, mainly directing men to help they’ve found with me.

At some point, he worked up the courage to reach out to me for a call where we got to know each other.

“What does he talk about with you?”

The first thing we talk about is how they came to be sitting in front of me. He tells me his story and how he thought life would go and how it’s not going the way they wanted.

I spend most of my time asking him hard questions.

Questions like “if it’s your wife’s role to make you happy, how and where do you suppose she’s supposed to go to find her happiness?” and “do you think that might be a bit unfair to make her responsible for making you feel full all the time?”.

He talks to me about the stories he’s learned to understand life and which of those stories hasn’t really been very reliable to practice.

Quite honestly, he tells me the many ways he feels victimized and powerless in his life and where he’s fearful, anxious, insecure, and ashamed.

We then talk about why those are there and how they can stop undermining him in life and robbing him of the life that he wants.

 We spend most of our time talking about him because I’m a men’s mentor, not a marriage counselor.

I care more about him than the relationships he has. I also care about relationships deeply because my work is based on love and a desire to see men experience wholeness and families experience fullness.

 When a man feels whole, his relationships dramatically improve and become the best path to fullness in his relationships.

That’s another reason he might be talking to me because most men who work with me don’t see their relationships destroyed but flourish.

“Does he talk about me to you?”

Yes, he does – a little bit. But not in the ways you’re likely worried he does.

I am clear with him that he’s hired me for me to help him address issues in his life, not yours.

I have zero tolerance or support for a man leveling any form of accusation against a partner who I’ve never met and is not present in our meeting. I consider speaking about the shortcomings of absent third parties unethical and woefully unprofessional.

Though I will always empathize with how he has experienced his life and what he thinks is going on, my persistent focus is always on owning his own experience, thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

I never allow him to remain in a mindset of blaming those on you or anyone else and work to being a man’s focus back to self.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, I probably deserve it sometimes”?

I don’t know and frankly don’t ultimately care because whether you are an utterly horrible person or a saint, he still must choose to be his best.

I teach men to end the gridlock of determining how and when they’ll experience their greatness based on others people’s actions and behaviors.

I believe there is no path forward for him if he does not take responsibility for himself.

“Does he tell you things about me that portray me in a poor light?”

Let me be blunt…

 If your man is focused on how you need to change, he’s not a man that will likely feel eager or welcome to continue being my client.

He’ll rapidly realize that my mentoring is focused on his personal responsibility, agency, and need to be his very best self.

When I first meet a man, many are convinced that they have a partner problem. Those men begin pouring out complaints.

With these kinds of men, from the first call forward, I deliberately and persistently challenge them to stop blaming you or others.

If they can’t, they’re not invited to continue forward with me.

Why?

Because I don’t believe you’re likely “the problem”. In fact, experience with hundreds of men tells me you’re not.

 Any talk about you in a poor light results in my challenge to him how he must own how he experiences you and choose how he wishes to be in the world and stop focusing on you.

I hope this gives your heart and mind relief.

My values are to believe the best, and your man, if he’s working with me, will hear me encourage him the same.

Though I don’t know you, I choose to believe the best about you as I do all humans.

I believe you’re doing the best you can, and my help to your partner will be centered on that belief.

“How does he describe me to you?”

Most women would be absolutely shocked with how their partners describe them to me.

Pleasantly shocked!

Men come to me during the most challenging stages of their relationship. Stages where there has been a lot of anger, hostility, resentment, and contempt building.

I work with high-character, virtuous men who endeavor to live epic and remarkable lives. I don’t work with the “Al Bundy” and “Homer Simpson” men of the world.

Despite the challenging emotions they’re experiencing, these high-character men I work with tend to speak very highly of their partners.

It’s astonishing, actually, given their emotional state. It’s warmed my heart over the years to see many virtuous men hang on to a high view of their partners in such difficult times.

If he’s working with me, know that he really does think highly of you and speaks as such.

He’s doing his best to live in a way that reflects a view of you that, quite honestly, may even be even higher than you think of yourself.

“Is the picture he is painting of me unfair?”

When he first speaks to me, often, it is indeed unfair!

And I let him know that!

Then we start immediately start working on getting a more mature and empowering story to live in where you’re not the villain, and he’s not the Victim.

Hopefully, you’ll notice this before long.

You should behold his being less defensive, less irritable, less pouty, and less need to be right.

You will likely see him be more mature, calmer, open, and warm.

If you’re not, tell him he needs to double down on his work with me 🙂

“Is he considering leaving me?”

This might sound scary…

When he first gets in touch with me, he might be entertaining such a thought.

99% of the men I work with would only be fantasizing about it because, deep down, they know they don’t really want that. They want their relationship to not just work but flourish. They’re just exasperated and running out of hope.

When I start working with such a man, I encourage him to set those ideas aside for a while.

I encourage them to learn to be a good captain before concluding he’s got a lousy boat.

I show him how to sail with confidence, competence, and delight before making any hasty assumptions about his boat (relationship).

As most men do this, they realize they never had a boat problem; they just didn’t know how to sail.

“Are you going to encourage or support him in leaving, separating, or divorcing me?”

99% of the time, No.

I’m not focused on your partners’ marital status. I’m focused on his sense of wellbeing.

I encourage the men I work with not to ever end a relationship from any place other than a deep love for self and his partner.

Ending a relationship without a solid sense of wellbeing, which many do, accomplishes nothing. It’s built on the belief that the other person is the problem, and I generally don’t support that view.

Until a man no longer feels victimized by the woman in his life, I don’t believe making such a consequential decision is advisable.

Despite this, some men still make this decision. I don’t encourage them to do so.

Suppose a client is being assaulted by his partner. In that case, I should note that I will advise him to do what is necessary to remove himself and seek safety and seek the appropriate professional and legal counsel required to navigate that scenario.

Women assaulting their male partners are not typically looking at this kind of web page.

“Do you tell him that he’s better off with someone else?”

Nope… Never!

I don’t believe a man that can’t be the source of his own happiness and wellbeing receives any benefit by changing partners.

All relationships experience stages of conflict. My experience is that these can bring tremendous growth to a man and his relationships and that to seek to avoid them is to seek to avoid maturity and growth.

Take heart… men looking for the easy and comfortable path generally don’t have any interest in working with me

“Will you end up turning him into something awful, paternalistic, or misogynistic?”

No.

I realize that some partners may confuse my quoting from ancient cultures and sources like the Torah and New Testament as being wholesale adoption of the worldview of those ancient cultures.

Others could confuse my promotion of male leadership in a relationship with paternalism.

When I speak to your partner about leadership and leading the relationship, I’m not at all suggesting he is “in charge” or makes the decisions.

I’m clear with him that leadership in the relationship means taking ownership and responsibility with setting the temperature and that if he wants warmth, to be warm. If he desires connection, to be connecting. It means to stop waiting for you to be and do what he imagines you should be and do and for him to be and do what he wants in life!

Is there mutual contempt? Leadership means going first to let go of his contempt whether you do or not.

Is there mutual resentment? Leadership means going first to let go of resentment.

Have you asked for space? Leadership means doing what is within his power to make that space.

Leadership in a relationship is about going first in the hard things and taking responsibility for the hard stuff that he’d much rather continue waiting for and looking for you to do.

My experience with men and women is that most women generally find that very agreeable and desirable, even if it challenges their political ideology.

My experience also tells me that if you have to go first in all these ways, you’ll generally end up irritated or resentful that he didn’t, conclude you married a petulant child, and want more for yourself.

I hold men and women in equal esteem, value, and worth. I don’t believe one is superior to the other.

“What if I’m having an affair?”

If you’re having an affair, I’m sorry that your relationship has produced a context where having an affair felt like the best option for experiencing the life you’ve wanted for yourself.

I don’t judge you but have empathy for you.

I know the pain and emptiness and longing that leads to affairs.

I also encourage you to end it and come clean with your partner. It will suck for a bit, but you’ll also be giving your relationship and partner a great gift.

There’s a good chance he already knows – albeit he’s probably really struggling because of not having proof. That’s a miserable way to live for a man, and knowing the truth would bring some relief.

“Can I privately contact/talk/get in touch with you?”

Yes, you may. Just use the contact page to get in touch with me and let me know what you need.