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.

Let’s say you’re doing something completely ordinary. Making a coffee, perhaps. And suddenly it hits you just how quiet the house is. Only this time, the quiet feels different. It isn't just that everyone's out. It has a permanence to it.

Upstairs, the bedroom your son or daughter used to occupy is still there. The door is closed. And for how long... You don't really know.

This episode is about that quiet. About the so-called empty nest. And about what happens when the busyness of parenting gives way to silence—and everything that silence can bring.

You're in your 40s or 50s or older. You've just become a father, or you're well on your way to it.

You're doing all this at an age when most of your colleagues are becoming grandparents. Is this a big mistake?

Actually, no. There are clear advantages to becoming an older father, but only if you know how to embrace them.

In this episode, I'm talking about sex and intimacy in long-term relationships. My approach will be the same as I try to approach everything on this podcast, which is, honestly, without false reassurance, and without the alarming tone that some accounts of this subject seem to feel is appropriate.

Today’s topic is death. Not in a gloomy or morbid sense—if that distinction makes any sense—but because there’s something genuinely fascinating about it. In my experience, the men who have seriously confronted the reality of their own mortality, who have sat with that question and examined it honestly, tend to live differently from those who haven’t. More often than not, that difference is for the better. And that’s what I’d like to explore today.