Every year, one or two wives of the men I work with decide I'm a quack. A scammer. A grifter running a side hustle out of his home office.

(It has never happened with a woman who has actually met or spoken with me.)

They generally suspect I'm fooling their naive husbands into spending ungodly sums on idiotic gimmicks that promise a rose-colored life of endless marital bliss, and they often attribute every disappointment from their husband to me somehow, as if I'm pulling invisible puppet strings.

The internet is filled with people promising that sort of outcome and who have commoditized their alpha bro-hype into a sales funnel, so I understand the bracing. And I've almost learned to look forward to that one or two a year, but sometimes it's downright discouraging to offer someone something good when they think you're the devil.

Nevertheless, I get why some feel this way, and I have a lot of compassion for them.

Here's how things often appear to be unfolding for her at first:

Her husband starts reading my stuff or joins my group and comes home with new eyes. He is not immediately focused on the relationship, her hurts, or repairing harm. Instead, he starts seeing how much he genuinely tried over the years — the giving things up, the quiet accommodations, the effort nobody clapped for. He gets more honest about all of it.

And from across the kitchen, it can look like he's found some guy who helped him build a case that he's an upstanding man and husband, encouraged him toward selfish pursuits that foster abandonment and disregard for her, and convinced him his wife is the problem.
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I don't think this is an unreasonable fear or worry, because that is how some popular men's coaching programs out there work.

And, if that's what I was doing, she'd be spot on to hate me. I would not be able to live with myself if I did that.

And I don't. Quite the contrary.

So I wrote out a common dynamic in these scenarios — both sides of it — in one article. In it, I explore why a man can spend years trying and the woman in his life can still experience him as never having tried at all, and how both of them can be telling the truth.

Read (or listen to) it here: https://svenmasterson.com/articles/my-wife-is-never-happy/​

And a word to the women on this list: if any of that landed close to home, I made two things specifically for you.

What He's Actually Doing — a totally free course on what's really going on inside a coaching relationship, and what your husband is learning and why: https://www.svenmasterson.com/course-detail/?key=what-hes-actually-doing​

She's Not Crazy & He's Not Distant — the totally free course Zelda and I made about emotional safety and the misreadings couples make of each other: https://www.svenmasterson.com/course-detail/?key=misunderstandings​
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And fella, if this one sounds like your marriage, slow down before you hit the forward button and send it to your wife or partner. Go and learn to live it in your day-to-day life and relationships first, before you try to convince her that you're changing. Actions speak louder than words.
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Warmly,
– Sven