“If menopause is the silent passage,” says author Gail Sheehy, “Male menopause is the unspeakable passage. It is fraught with secrecy, shame, and denial. It is much more fundamental than the ending of the fertile period of a woman’s life, because it strikes at the core of what it is to be a man.” When...Continue reading
Category: Psychology
Male-Type Depression: The Second Hidden Cause of Mid-Life Marriage Meltdown
I have a particular interest in preventing mid-life marriage meltdown, a problem that is becoming I increasingly prevalent today. My first marriage came to an end when I was 33 years old. We had two children and had thought our marriage would last forever. I healed the wounds of love and loss and eventually fell...Continue reading
“Mid-life Crisis?” Nah…It’s Just the Starting Point for Your Longest Run.
My aspiration is to clearly see and courageously confront concerns appearing for me (and other 40+ guys, too) at the mid-life point and beyond. Concerns about staying physically vital. About not looking “old.” About warding off maladies that lurk in the shadows. Among all concerns, perhaps the biggest is the most subconscious and hardest to recognize: At or beyond life’s halfway marker, we’re uncertain what our life ultimately will have meant. This “Meaning of Life” concern is caricatured as the midlife crisis and the sports car in response. But in reality, it can be more of an awakening, a broadening of vision and spirit, a healthy challenge, and an opportunity. Intensifying your focus on fitness, nutrition and overall wellness — doubling down on overall body-and-soul health — helps maximize this opportunity and achieve whatever your definition of "Meaning" is.Continue reading
What Women Want Men to Know About Fear, Sex, and Love
For more than 40 years, I’ve been helping men better understand women so they can have more sex and love and fewer fights and tensions. It’s said that we teach what we want to learn and I’ll admit I’m still learning about the wonderful creatures we call women and how to have passionate, peaceful, and...Continue reading
Avoid the Holiday Blues This Season
The six weeks encompassing Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s—collectively called “the holidays”—are for most, a magically unique time of year. But for many, the holidays bring hurt. Caused by factors including the weather, separation, death, stress, unrealistic expectations, hyper-sentimentality, guilt, or overspending, holiday depression—also called the “holiday blues”—can zap the merriment out of even the...Continue reading
Postpartum Depression Affects Men, Too
Dear Mr. Dad: I’m a new dad, and a month or so after our son was born, my wife started acting strangely. Thanks to an article you wrote a while back, I recognized the signs of postpartum depression—she was sleeping more than usual, putting on weight, crying a lot, losing interest in things she loved...Continue reading
Men, Maybe Being The Breadwinner Is Not a Good Thing
Gendered expectations in marriage are not just bad for women, they are also bad for men, according to a new study by University of Connecticut (UConn) sociologists. Using data on the same nationally representative group of married men and women over 15 years, the authors examined the relationship between men’s and women’s relative income contributions...Continue reading
Detecting Early Signs of Alzheimer’s
The elusive cause of Alzheimer’s disease continues to frustrate researchers but they are getting better at discovering earlier indicators of it. A new report from researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2016 (AAIC 2016), have developed a 38-point checklist that could be beneficial to doctors in...Continue reading
Increase Your Happiness by Changing Your Environment
Feeling a little blue? If nothing negative is going on in your life, it could be because of your environmental surroundings. The good news is that with a few simple changes you should be able to cheer up quickly. Here are some factors that may be affecting your mood along with some tips on how...Continue reading
Do You Know What Mental Illness Feels Like?
We often hear the clinical terms used by doctors and other professionals to identify the symptoms of mental illnesses…but if someone hasn’t gone through it, would they know how to recognize it? So often, clinical terms don’t do justice to what life with a mental illness feels like. We know that two people with the...Continue reading