In episode nine, Matt and Karl return after an Easter break and continue their multi-week series on relationships, building on themes from a recent men’s gathering about self-care, boundaries, and negotiating personal time away from family.

They discuss how partners can manage encroachment on agreed “me time,” including setting expectations and using an emergency phrase for genuine escalations.

They then explore a feedback framework from Terry Real’s book "Fierce Intimacy," emphasising asking permission to give feedback, reaffirming love and commitment, separating behaviour from identity, and presenting a partner’s “core negative image” with supporting examples and emotional impact.

Matt describes doing the exercise with his wife during a car journey, including processing traits like messiness and rudeness, avoiding retaliation, and closing with a “core positive image” to restore balance, noting the need for time, safety, and sometimes professional support.

.....

The Clearing — a space for men navigating questions without easy answers.

We would love to hear from you, with your practices, and/or any questions you might have around self care.

Email us at matt@theclearing.life

Follows us here:

Instagram

Website

It's the spring equinox, and something shifts. Not just in the season — in the direction of the podcast. Karl opens with something his wife said to him that he couldn't brush past. Four words, quietly devastating, that cracked open a conversation he didn't know he needed to have. It's not a crisis story. It's a human one.

Matt and Karl use this episode to launch a 12-week season on relationships — with our partners, our families, the world, and ourselves. They start where it's most immediate and most personal: the menopause. Not as experts. Not with answers. As two midlife men trying to show up better for the women around them, and honest about how much they still don't know.

In this episode, Matt and Karl explore:

• Why the spring equinox felt like the right moment to commit to a season-long theme
• Karl's blog post about his wife Nicole — and the conversation it started
• What it means for men to "hold space" without making it about themselves
• Matt's own writing on perimenopause — and why every word felt loaded
• The history of damaging medical language around menopause, and why it still matters
• The difference between managing change and celebrating it
• What Karl learned from speaking with pelvic health experts Sandy Hilton and Hillary Lewin
• How to be present for something you can never fully understand

This is a season about relationships. It starts here — messy, real, and worth showing up for.

Click here to download our FREE Menopause PDF handout and/or the audio guide.

The Clearing — a space for men navigating questions without easy answers.

We would love to hear from you, with your practices, and/or any questions you might have around self care.

Email us at matt@theclearing.life

Follows us here:

Instagram

Website

In this honest episode, Matt returns to the mic 16 days after undergoing complex surgery — and shares what recovery has actually looked, felt and smelled like from the inside.

This isn't a polished post-op update. It's a real-time account of what happens when a capable, active man has his usual coping strategies stripped away — the running, the swimming, the sauna — and has to sit with uncertainty, discomfort, and a bathroom routine that takes an hour.

Matt and Karl explore the identity challenges of operating at 50% in a culture that demands 150%, the unexpected revelation sparked by a friend's throwaway remark about grumpiness, and the strange dopamine loops that fill the vacuum when movement disappears. They also reflect on what it means to carry pain quietly for 16 years — normalising it, masking it, adapting around it — and what it might feel like to finally put it down.

Topics covered in this episode include: post-surgical recovery and pain management, the identity toll of chronic and acute pain, coping strategies and digital dopamine loops, self-compassion and showing up at reduced capacity, workplace culture and stoicism in men, and the unexpected wisdom of a five-year-old at a skate park.

A thoughtful, funny and genuinely useful conversation — wherever you are on your own journey.

We would love to hear from you, with your practices, and/or any questions you might have around self care.

Email us at matt@theclearing.life

Follows us here:

Instagram

Website