The Quiet Midlife: a podcast for men over 40

Anger is the emotion men are most comfortable expressing and least likely to examine. This is unfortunate because, in a significant proportion of cases, anger isn't the point. It is the thing sitting on top of the point—so what's going on?

The male withdrawal is one of the most reliable and least understood phenomena in relationship psychology. The man disappears into himself, or the garage, or he has a sustained interest in looking into the middle distance. Let's explore.

At some point in the middle years, significant numbers of men achieve the things they've always wanted only to discover, with considerable inconvenience, that it doesn't feel the way they expected.

It's the series two finale in which I pull together the threads of what may have appeared to be unrelated topics, but actually weren't. It's also a sneak peek into what's coming for series three.

At some point in the middle years, most British men acquire a paunch. We call it a beer belly, even though many men don't even drink.
Men don't decide on a paunch or agree to it.  It simply arrives, gets bigger and refuses to budge.
Today I want to talk about where it comes from, what it's actually doing,  and —  without any dramatic overhaul required —  what genuinely helps.

It's one of the most common feelings - am I in the right job? So what's preventing you from making the jump? I'm looking at the pros and cons along with something we call the sunk cost fallacy.