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Hello, everyone. This is Matt Feret, author of Prepare for Medicare and Prepare for Social Security: Insiders Guidebooks, and online course training series. Welcome to another episode of The Matt Feret Show where I interview insiders and experts to help light a path to successful living in midlife retirement and beyond.

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(00:46):

Ana Mann is an educator, therapist, corporate trainer, speaker and relationship coach. Her husband, John Mann, is the co-author of more than 30 books, including four New York Times Bestsellers and five national bestsellers. Put the two together and you've got the makings of a wonderful take on making marriage work over the long haul. You've heard the phrase; marriage is a journey. Well, in this episode of The Matt Feret Show, John and Ana talk about how to keep a marriage flourishing, how it can break down, how to rekindle it, how relationships evolve over time and its impact on family members, and how individuals evolve within a marriage. Enjoy. Welcome to the show.

Ana Mann (01:30):

Thank you. Great to be here.

Matt Feret (01:34):

So this is a special edition of The Matt Feret Show. We don't just have one person talking, we have two people talking. We have three, three people on the podcast today. Mr. Guest number one and Ms. Guest number two, Ana, why don't you go first and explain to everybody what you do, how long you've been doing it and how you help people?

Ana Mann (02:00):

Well, I am the co-author, along with my husband, John, of The Go-Giver Marriage. I have been a therapist for a very long time, going on 35, close to 40 years, and I actually help couples navigate their relationships and decide whether they're staying together and pulling together, whether they want to take their relationship to a deeper and richer place. And I also help people decide not to stay in the relationship. And so I'm a relationship coach, and that is different than a therapist. A therapist will, in many ways, make suggestions but they will often listen and listen and listen and listen. A coach is much more directive around what is it that you really want and what's stopping you from achieving that and help you to set goals and to work toward the creation of the life that you had always wanted to lead.

Matt Feret (03:10):

Wonderful. Thank you. And Mr. Guest number two, John, I guess your wife gave it away.

John Mann (03:16):

Yeah.

John Mann (03:23):

My name is John, and I am not a therapist but I play one on TV. No, I'm a writer. I write books, is what I do, and I write everything from books like The Go-Giver Marriage, books that are, kind of, you could say how-to, or you could say books that are aimed at helping to elevate, inform, inspire, educate people to novels. I write thrillers, which are also designed to inspire, educate, and interest people.

(03:53):

The way that I help people to answer that part of your question is certainly to entertain them but hopefully as I say, inspire, inform, educate and elevate their lives. The Go-Giver Marriage is the latest, tempted to say greatest, but anyway, the latest in a series of books based on the original Go-Giver, which I co-authored with a friend of mine back in 2008, so it's been quite a few years. And all of them are aimed at different facets of our lives. There's one about leadership. There's one about different things, but they all have the same principle behind them, which is how to use the principle of generosity in relationships, of generosity in our interactions with other people, putting other people first, not in a self-sacrificing way but in a simple way of putting our emphasis on what can I do for this person? How can I make this person's life better? How can I add value to this person's life?

(04:57):

This book applies that through the lens of my wife's amazing experience to relationships, marriages but also just relationships between two lifelong committed partners. And the subtitle is The Five Secrets to Lasting Love, and that's really what we're talking about in the book, is how to help love not just survive but deepen and last in the long haul. So that's what we're all up to these days.

Matt Feret (05:25):

Thank you. So, John, I'll start with you. You've written many, many books. How is it that this is the first time you thought of writing one with your wife?

John Mann (05:37):

That's a really great question and I had better answer it very, very carefully.

Matt Feret (05:40):

You better answer it correctly.

John Mann (05:43):

Well, Matt, I've always thought about doing this. No, it's funny because it is the first book we've written together, and ironically, I've written over 30 books. I published over 30 books, and almost all of them were with a co-author. I've done a lot of partnership writing, but this is the first one with my wife. Interestingly, she thought about this book way back in 2008. Now the original Go-Giver was my first book. And before it came out, when it came rolling off my desktop printer as a draft of a manuscript unpublished, she was the first person that read it. She's the first person that reads all my books. She's my first reader, my best reader and most insightful reader. She read the manuscript and said, "This is great. This is going to be big. This would be a great book about marriage." We had the idea, she had the idea, but we shared the idea way back then, we need to write a book about marriage.

(06:43):

So the idea was there through all the other books. It just took this long to get around to it. And honestly, Matt, what happened was we had the other Go-Giver books come out, which are business related, leadership related, that kind of thing, and then COVID came along, and we were alone at home like a lot of people, which we love. It's the way we prefer to live, not a lot of traveling, but we saw around us a world in which people who had said "until death do us part" were saying "but we never meant that to be 24 hours a day." A lot of people were suddenly spending a whole lot of time cooped up together and a lot of marriages were suddenly in trouble. We had friends who said, in New York City, you can't get an appointment with a psychiatrist. There's a two and a half year waiting list because suddenly, people were having mental health crises, relationship crises, and we turned to each other and said, "If we're ever going to write this book, now is the time." So we did.

Matt Feret (07:47):

That makes a lot of sense. And you're right, that is, you see it if you're looking for it, you'll see it trickle past your inbox in newsletters or you'll see it somewhere online about the relationship. I remember during COVID, it was, oh, we're going to have a COVID baby boom, and that turned into a not COVID baby boom, it went the other direction.

Ana Mann (08:11):

Divorce boom.

Matt Feret (08:12):

Yeah, yeah, it was a divorce boom. So really timely to write about this. So, let's talk about that. Not necessarily COVID specific, but I've got ... By the way, thank you for sending the book. I'm going to hold it up for anybody who's watching. There it is, very pretty teal, by the way.

(08:28):

So let's talk a little bit about The Go-Giver Marriage and the story about the five secrets to lasting love, and let's just go, I think, probably later age, middle age or later age. What's this perspective either one of you could give around the state of marriage today? Again, fine, post COVID and during COVID, but I hear a lot about gray divorce. And I think loosely defined, gray divorce is somewhere in the post kids, post mid-40s, post 50s. We're seeing 20, 30-year marriages stop.

Ana Mann (09:10):

Stop, yes.

Matt Feret (09:11):

What are you seeing and hearing? Is that true? Is that not true? And just go from there, I guess.

Ana Mann (09:18):

It's completely true, and in fact, it's the fastest growing demographic of divorce in the country. And the reason is that people wake up, it's been 25 years, they don't know the person that they're sleeping next to really and/or something about the relationship has really dried up or died and they don't know how to rekindle it. And so the kids are old enough that they think they'll survive it and/or they're out of the house and so they just decide to hang it up. They're facing the decision of do I stay in this marriage until I die or do I want to start a new life right now and have a different last 20 years or last 25 years?

Matt Feret (10:09):

By the way, that's a very ... That question, it's a very deep and impactful question at that age and stage.

Ana Mann (10:22):

It is.

Matt Feret (10:23):

This isn't probably true, but for some reason if you get married three years in, it's not working out, you normally don't have much to divide anyway or much shared history. But after 20 years, 25 years or even 30 years in a life together, that is a very, very, I would imagine hard thing to deal with and tackle.

Ana Mann (10:45):

It is.

John Mann (10:46):

Not only the household and the money and the kids, but also your identity is wrapped up in this relationship. Yeah.

Ana Mann (10:52):

Yeah. And when you divide a house at that point, when your children do have grandchildren, you've now divided the grandchildren in terms of you might end up with a new partner and your ex might end up with a new partner, so now there's two sets of grandparents that want to see the children on Christmas. It really changes the dynamic and also, it's hard on adult children in similar ways that it's hard on younger children. Everybody thinks, oh, my son is 23, he'll be fine. He needs you to pull through. He needs you to be the model that love can be real, that love can be deep, that love can have meaning. And when he sees it dissolve, he thinks ... It's very challenging for kids, especially I would say kids in their 20s because they're in those college years, there's more late blooming children than ever before in the sense that ... And I know I was a late bloomer and John in terms of a career was a late bloomer.

(12:00):

So everyone has to grow up at the developmental rate that they are moving at. Depending on whether your child has special needs or anything going on, their developmental rate is going to be different. But a lot of kids in college, in the undergraduate years, they're getting experience but we're not certain what experience in the sense of they grow up, but I really think the majority of growing happens after the brain hardens, if you will, at 25. You see a different level of maturity take place in your child.

(12:35):

So when you look at that 18 to 25 range, they're out there going after the world in a way but they don't make the same mature decisions or approach the world the same way until they are 25 and beyond. And that's when they really start planting the seeds of who am I? What do I want to be? So when parents break up at that point, they may seem ambivalent and nonchalant about it, but in kids that I work with or young adults that I work with, I find that they have deep, deep feelings about it.

(13:10):

And this is not to guilt trip your listeners because the other thing that happens, the fifth secret among the five secrets is grow. And one of the things that happens in marriages is people will do things like a mom might devote herself to the children and have nothing else going on, except maybe she goes to their soccer games or she carpools them and other kids, she arranges the play dates, she does the birthday parties. She's totally devoted to that channel but she doesn't develop herself. She doesn't have anything else that she's really doing that makes her a renaissance woman, if you will, that makes her somebody who's got all these creative outlets and a large span of friends and she's really interested in an avocation, something that she's doing that's just very fun. So there's that constancy. When you're growing, you always have something new to bring back to the relationship.

(14:10):

And the other type of growing in a relationship, and it can be for men or women, is what if you do have a childhood wound? Do you want to grow beyond it or do you want that wound to get expressed in your marriage? And if it's getting expressed in your marriage, what kind of pain is that bringing to the table? So if couples take the time, even if they think they will have one foot out the door, to really express and learn about the five secrets, they can come to some recognition that there are things missing in their relationship that they'd like to have. And the truth is it's not about whether your partner is going to bring it. It's about whether you're going to bring it to your partner because the minute you do, the entire tone of the marriage changes.

John Mann (15:01):

There's a line, Matt, in the book that says, "When you go to work in a marriage, you don't go to work in the marriage. You go to work on yourself." Because that really is how you work on a relationship, is you start to look at your own behavior, look at your own patterns, look at your own role, what you bring to the relationship and how you co-create it.

(15:25):

The things she said about women taking care of kids and really not having a whole lot else going on that's growing them, blossoming them as a person, the same thing happens to men in a job or men or women, anybody in a job. They might do a job or have a career, and these days, a career often means three, four, five jobs in succession. The one job career is more of an exception than the rule these days, but still, you might have a job or a career or work for a company and that's who you are for 20 years, for 30 years, which is great. But like raising kids, which is great unto itself, it may come to define you in a way that is over time narrowing because you don't develop other sides of yourself.

(16:13):

So whether you're a homemaker, you're a career person, you're juggling both, whatever, male, female, whoever you are, whatever your situation, we often tend to fall into the route of being who we are without growing that. The way we were growing when we were teenagers in those volatile 20s, they say you'll get married three times in your life even if you never split up. You get married when you get married, and then after you have kids, now it's a whole different relationship. You get married again to the same person. And then when the kids leave, now you get married again because it's a whole new relationship because they're a whole different person. It's a whole different situation.

(16:57):

And so I think the thing with not only gray divorce technically in the sense the marriage is splitting, but also we don't have a name for this, but gray atrophy, the marriages that stay together but that have lost their bloom, lost their excitement, lost their passion. I don't know which of those is more damaging, honestly.

(17:19):

I think one of the things that those 18 to 25-year-old kids are really looking to you for is an example of how to be a developing human being in the world. So if you are settling into a pattern, which is really not very exciting, yeah, you stay married, but is that a great example? And maybe you don't stay married but you're both flourishing in your lives.

(17:47):

What I'm trying to say is it's not like divorce, bad, stay together, good. It's a more varied picture than that. It's like are we giving our kids the examples of an ongoing flourishing life where the 60s and 70s aren't just an appendix to a live well lived, but they're an extension of a life. They're more of a life further lived. And that's really what we mean by when you go to work in a marriage, you go to work on yourself, as Ana said of the five secrets, that fifth one. The first four are all about giving to your spouse, ways of being generous with your spouse, ways of being accommodating and being loving with your spouse.

(18:31):

The fifth is about yourself. It's about becoming the person you've always wanted to be, and maybe you didn't even know it. Maybe it's discovering new dimensions to the person you wanted to be. I never planned to be a novelist. In fact, I thought that was a flat-out impossibility. I remember Ana used to say, "You'd be a great novelist," and I used to say, "Thank you for the vote of confidence." And what that meant was, yeah, BS, like you wish. I didn't believe it, and I didn't write my first novel until I was in my mid-60s, and it was nominated for a national award. Who knew? That only happened because of Ana.

Ana Mann (19:16):

It did. I knew.

Matt Feret (19:17):

You're taking all the credit, Ana. You should.

Ana Mann (19:22):

No, I'm doing the joke of our relationship, which I'm right, I'm right, I'm always right and/or I'm right and it drives my wife crazy or I'm right and it drives my husband crazy, which is a famous line from my father. He always used to say, "I'm always right. It drives my wife crazy." And we would just all twaddle and laugh because it did in fact drive my mother crazy. But he also had such a tremendous sense of humor that they were married for 60 years. So, you do see that there's a growing involved.

(19:59):

And I think it's fair to say, based on everything John just said, which was so rich, that one of the things about the five secrets is they're based on developmental theory. And that is that what you needed when you were an infant and a young toddler and a young child and then an adolescent extends to being a young 20 a late 20, a 30, 40, 50, 60. It's a lifelong developmental need, and that is the need to be seen, heard, understood, listened to in a deep and meaningful way as in being heard, but also just being appreciated, having people that see you, get you and like you. And when you have that in a marriage-

Matt Feret (20:52):

And tell you and tell you.

Ana Mann (20:52):

Yeah. And tell you that. And when you have that in a marriage, it's so powerful because you feel like your best friend sees that you're vulnerable right now and that you're shaking in your boots and they're the ones saying, "Yeah, but you can still do this." And that kind of confidence coming from another person gives you confidence. So, it's the same when you're eight years old and you're going into the little league team and you're afraid you're going to be chosen last, and your dad is saying, "They'd be a fool not to grab you, snap you up right away. Don't worry." And you're like, "Yeah." We need that sense that other people believe in us. We need that sense that other people see us and understand us. They're such simple concepts but as they're applied to these five secrets ...

(21:41):

I had a client that was a woman who was in her 40s and she was whining, and I say it literally, she was whining that her husband never does anything for her. And I said, "Well, when was the last time you thanked him for something?" And she could not remember when she had thanked him last. She was like, "Well, what would I thank him for? He doesn't do anything for me." And I said, "Well, did he take out the trash this week?" "Well, yes, but that's his job." "Did you thank him for it?" "No." I said, "Find three to four times a day to thank him for something. Thank him for getting you a cup of tea. Thank him for taking the kids to the park so you could take a bath. Thank him for taking the trash out. Find ways to say I really appreciate that you did that. Thank you."

(22:38):

And so she started doing it. She begrudgingly started doing it, I might add. And I will say I'm a woman and I will say that I've met really stubborn men and I've met really stubborn women, but women win the prize sometimes for wanting to hold onto control and wanting to be right. And I do have a real motto in my practice, would you rather be right or be married? You really have to decide.

(23:04):

So she started thanking him and then I got a text from her one morning and she goes, "My husband just brought me a vanilla latte from Starbucks." And she said, "He actually went out of his way, drove to the Starbucks after he left for work and then drove it back home to me." She said-

John Mann (23:23):

What's wrong?

Ana Mann (23:23):

And then she said with a smiley face, "Do you think he's having an affair?"

John Mann (23:26):

Yeah. That must be it.

Ana Mann (23:30):

And I said, "I don't know. I think it might be the power"-

John Mann (23:33):

Yeah, with you.

Ana Mann (23:33):

"The power of thank you."

John Mann (23:35):

He's having an affair with you.

Ana Mann (23:37):

It was a great moment between us because she suddenly got it. She got it. And he was doing all kinds of things for her within weeks because he felt he was being appreciated. When he did nice things, she noticed, and so he wanted to do more nice things because he liked being told. He was doing a great job and that she appreciated it and appreciated him. So it's such a small gesture sometimes to let your partner know that you think they're terrific or let your partner know that you think they're powerful and let your partner know that you believe in them. So these are the kinds of things that the secrets cover.

Matt Feret (24:18):

And those secrets, are they secrets only when your marriage is in trouble or when your marriage is going well? And is this ... There's my question.

John Mann (24:28):

It's so easy to do, as Ana said. There are simple things. It's so easy to just find those three things to appreciate per day, but it's so easy not to do, especially as you say, when everything is going pretty well okay. It's like, why do I even think of telling my wife how much I appreciate her, because she knows that? We're happy together. She knows how much I love her, because we courted and I told her a hundred times a day how crazy I was about her, and now we're married and life is good, and we've got other challenges, as we all do.

(24:57):

And there's this quote in the book, Warren Buffett says when the tide goes out that you find out who has been swimming naked. And marriage is like that. It's when trouble happens, when someone loses a job or when someone breaks a bone or someone has an illness or when one of our parents dies or when something catastrophic or even just highly stressful happens in our life, that's when we find out how our relationship is, how strong it is.

Ana Mann (25:30):

And even something simple-

John Mann (25:31):

And when we break down ... It's when everything was great, that's when we were creating it stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger all the time.

(25:39):

To answer your question, the secrets are, it's way back in the early days or better yet, put it this way, it's always a good time. Today is always a good time to start appreciating your spouse, verbally, out loud to them and not just in your mind. I'm sorry, sweetheart. What were you going to say?

Ana Mann (26:01):

I had one thought and then I had another, which is one of the things that's been really rewarding for us is that people who love the book often buy 10 copies plus and they give them out as wedding gifts. And this spring, I've had a flurry of people show me the book that they got at a wedding and send it to me on Instagram and/or show me the book that they got at an engagement party or something like that. We have dear friends out in Wisconsin, who their oldest son just got married, and they requested a copy for him, a signed copy for him when they got engaged, and both of them read the book and loved it. And she said, "I see these people rocking in rocking chairs and being very old together. I just see them staying together because they really do practice the secrets and they're really in love."

(26:56):

And the thing about love is that that blush of romance, that love that you feel at the beginning, it fades. Everybody talks about after the honeymoon, it just fades because that's the nature of romantic love. But the truth is that when people really practice seeing, believing in the other person, appreciating them, saying thank you, staying in that deeper connected way of giving to your partner, that's when you see the love really deepen and grow and it's very important.

(27:29):

And in my client practice, everybody reads the book and there's homework. It's like are you willing to say thank you to your husband or your wife? Are you willing to spend that time appreciating them every day? It's easy to forget, so we often say set timers on your phone. You can send your wife a sexy text at 10:00 in the morning. You can send her a sexy text or an I love you text at 4:00 in the afternoon. You don't have to come home and find three opportunities to try to fill in the gaps.

John Mann (28:07):

You don't have to walk in the door and say, "Let's see now. Okay, good job in the shopping, and also" ... It can almost sound like that. It can almost sound like this is a mechanical thing. And people often tell us, "I feel weird. I feel uncomfortable at first, saying honey, I have something I have to tell you. I just really want to tell you that I just really appreciate how you make dinner or whatever it is. I appreciate the way you" ... Yes, and it might feel uncomfortable and it might be awkward, and I promise you that's good. They'll appreciate it. Awkward is okay. Awkward is how it was when you were first together.

(28:42):

And I just want to say a word about this thing Ana said about how the love fades. Here's what it's like. I'm really happy to be able to say this from my experience. When you're first together and you're in that flush of romance, it's like kindling. It's like the newspaper that you use, just balled up newspaper to start a fire. All you have to do is touch a match to it and it goes whoosh. It burns really easily and it burns really quickly. It's when the hardwood logs catch, and that takes time. When you're in five years, 10 years, 20 years, either the kindling burns out and the logs are just sitting there cold, or if you took care of the fire and you tended it and you attended to it and you kept it going long enough for the hardwood logs to catch, those hardwood logs, man, they burn with a fire that's hotter than any kindling. And that's what happens at 25. That's what can happen. That's the potential of a long-lasting love.

(29:49):

It's not just that, well, we used to be passionate and now we're good buddies. We're housemates and we know each other so that's comfortable. It can be on fire, passionate, thrilling, exciting. It's just that it has the flavor of maturation. It doesn't have that flavor of crazy youth. It's a different flavor to it, but it is just so abundantly possible and available and wonderful.

Ana Mann (30:16):

And it can withstand all things.

John Mann (30:18):

Yeah.

Ana Mann (30:19):

One of the stories in the book is of a couple in their 50s and he went on blood pressure medication and suddenly had erectile dysfunction, and their sex life was by no means over, but for the moment, it felt over. And he was devastated, and so was she. But she was very wise in that moment. She really let him know that it was very much alive for her and that she was so attracted to him and that it was not a sign of his manhood to take a blue pill. She just encouraged him in a way that he went and got medication and pretty quickly, they were back in action. He felt a much deeper connection to her because he got it that she understood that this was devastating for him. He felt terrible about himself.

John Mann (31:12):

I love that story too. Ana tells the story. And what I especially love about that is that it's beyond the blood pressure med and the blue pill, there's also a larger context which had to do with the fact that he had a setback at work, a job loss. So there was a whole dimension to it of him losing confidence in himself as a performer in life at his job as a bread earner, and her willingness to be in solidarity with him and her steadfast, her belief in him, the way she expressed that, it didn't just salvage their sex life, it also salvaged their life, life. His career went on and blossomed from that point.

(31:56):

That's I think part of what we're talking about, is that it's when you approach a relationship as an "us" as opposed to a "me and you" as opposed to two people, we are two people but together, we manifest as an "us." And when you consciously build that us-ness, you get to a point where there is nothing the world can throw at us that we can't handle as long as we have each other. And that's how it really feels.

Ana Mann (32:19):

There's a television show on Netflix right now called Queen Charlotte, and some of the listeners may be aware of it. There's a fantastic moment where Queen Charlotte is telling off the royal doctor, and she says to him, "I have"-

John Mann (32:35):

Yeah, he says, "If you do this, his sanity will be threatened."

Ana Mann (32:39):

Right. And she says, "I don't care about his sanity. What I care about is his happiness and his soul." And it's like, boom. It's like, okay, because she gets her husband. She knows that ... It's hard to know when you watch the series whether he's bipolar, but he's obviously not completely mentally sound and yet, he's a lovely person, which is true of many people with a slight mental disorder, as you might term it, or a mental health issue. It doesn't mean that it isn't fixable. It doesn't mean that medication can't make it just fine. And so she was just standing in solidarity with his person, with his happiness, and she wasn't going to have it.

(33:30):

So when you can be there for somebody in that kind of way, you're a partner who's so rich and so strong. Everybody wants that. That's having the parent that says, "My child is great."

Matt Feret (33:50):

So it's important, the lifelong journey here and the five secrets to lasting love, as Ana, you said that's a great, hey, you're married, congratulations, do this book ... or a big one. But, John, you mentioned earlier, life happens and trauma occurs all the way through and so you may be looking, whatever, 10, 15, 20, 30, however many years and it can grind at you. So I guess, I don't know if this is a tough question or not or even a fair question, but what if it's already off the rails? Does one person follow it? Do they introduce it to their spouse? What's the approach when someone, or if it's not both in the equation, one of the folks in the relationship goes, "Okay, I want to get to where that hardwood isn't running out. I want to throw another log on the fire and light it before the other ones burn." How do you do that?

(34:58):

I suppose there isn't a too late time, unless the papers are signed, but maybe when do you do that? Do you get out in front of it? Do you wait until someone brings it up? Do you do your reading on your own, introduce it to your spouse? Again, a very long-winded question, but I think you know where I'm going.

John Mann (35:16):

No, no, actually, it's a beautifully articulated question. Only to me, I'm actually hearing three questions. I kind of want to go boom, boom, boom.

Matt Feret (35:22):

Yeah, sorry, I do that. I just did it to you. I'm sorry.

John Mann (35:26):

It's okay. I like that. I like the way you think. And I want to hit a few points before I turn it over to the person whom I call my higher power.

(35:36):

The first thing I want to say is that you make a really good point, which the trauma has happened, the stress has happened. Typically, when you're courting, when you're young, when you first fall in love, you're pretty much at your best, and that's conscious. That's intentional. That's no accident. You show up as your best. What happens with long-term marriage is often we're not at our best. In fact, most of the time, we're not at our best. We just can't be, and it's because life happens. These things happen. So we're not operating at a hundred. We're not at peak. And so that's just reality.

(36:12):

So, part of the accommodation, the generosity, if you will, of marriage is giving allowance to the other person, is giving them the benefit of the doubt, is understanding that she, he might be cranky at me, crabbing at me, bitching at me, and might just be having a really hard time. Assume that they mean their best. Assume the best for the person. There's a lot of that giving them the benefit of the doubt. That has to happen. It is not as much as it's a give and take as much as it's a give and allow. As long as there's a sense underneath that that we're on the same team, that's so critical. There's got to be that sense that we're in the same team, and that's so important to build. As long as we're in the same team, then we have permission to not be operating at our best.

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But then to your question about is it just one or both or what, and I'm going to turn that over to Ana, I want to speak to the last question, which is, is it ever too late? And I think in one sense, it's never too late, but there has to be a willingness. There has to be an intention. It's a question about intention. Do you have the intention for this relationship to get richer, to get stronger? Because some people have just decided it ain't. They're out of here. And you can't make up somebody else's mind. All you can do is make up your own mind. You have to decide for yourself, where are you at?

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But in terms of one person read the book, do both read the book? I want to give that to Ana because she's had all this beautiful experience with that. Sweetheart.

Ana Mann (37:54):

It's lovely when both people read the book, but my experience is that to change your marriage is to change yourself and to change your behavior. And when you change your behavior and you're consistently changing your behavior without keeping a scorecard, and by that, I mean just because you've been really good to your partner for two weeks now and they still have their hands on their hips with you, you can't just say, "Yeah, well, I'm doing everything I can and look what you're doing." Because it can take months. When there's deeply ingrained patterns, you have to show up in a different way, and I'm not talking about being codependent here. I'm not talking about just kissing their ring for the sake of happiness in the moment. I'm talking about a genuine different way of operating with them where you're giving and where there's an intimacy to that giving.

(38:48):

John puts a cup of tea on my bedside table every morning when I wake up, and he doesn't have to, and he's busy. He gets up at 5:00 in the morning and writes so he doesn't have to run to the kitchen and get me tea, but he always does.

John Mann (39:02):

I do charge her for it. I'm just kidding.

Ana Mann (39:05):

But it's such a sweet thing and I appreciate it so much. And it's like when you ask people, do you wait on your partner at all? As in, do you really give to them? Do you attend to them in ways that are just the same way that you would make your child's favorite cupcakes or things like that? It's like, do you spoil them? I make amazing food for John sometimes just because I want to spoil the heck out of him. And it's like, yeah, and he'll be like, "Oh," and he's so happy though. You know the things that are important and special for your partner. Maybe your partner really, according to the five love languages, maybe they love gifts. A little simple bouquet or a Starbucks vanilla latte, that made her go, "Whoa." It's things like that that really matter.

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I often say if you are really loving the book, keep leaving it around the house and keep practicing as much as you can these different secrets so that it's clear to them, what the heck has come over my partner? They're like, "Why are you being so nice to me?" In fact, one husband actually-

Matt Feret (40:21):

Why are you being so nice to me?

Ana Mann (40:22):

Yeah. One husband actually said that to his wife, "What's going on? Why are you being so nice to me? Did you spend a bunch of money on the checkbook?" He was really curious. She started really flirting with him on texts too. So when they see that and they see the book around, then you can always point at the book and say, "I'd like to read you just a snippet of that," and then get in bed and read them little sections of it and get them through the story and talk about the different things. But when you do that, be willing to be the partner that says, "I've been with you for 17 years and I don't think I've ever spent anywhere nearly enough time appreciating you. You have pretty much raised the kids. You make all the food. You have been doing this."

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Whether it's a husband or a wife or a partner, it doesn't matter. You have a bullet list of things that they're amazing at, and you can pull that list out at any time and remind them of how much you see that they give to this relationship and give to your life. And then it's about saying, "I couldn't be where I am without you." People melt like an iceberg at that point. They just melt all over the place. It's so powerful because people don't ever get that praise. I think that when we're little kids and when your mom or your dad says, "Look at you. You read that book all by yourself." You're sitting there going, "Yeah, I'm pretty good." That same energy exists in all of us. Every one of us is a 30, 40, 50, 60, 70-year-old disguised as a 10-year-old. It's just the truth. We all want to be admired and believed in and we want people to think we're funny and cool and all those things.

(42:28):

I am married to one of the funniest people on earth, and what I want your listeners to know is we both went through a divorce in our early 40s. We are divorced people, who wrote a book about marriage in our 60s, after spending 25 years together.

John Mann (42:48):

Yes.

Ana Mann (42:48):

Now, what makes that powerful is people learn from their mistakes. Getting divorced isn't the worst thing that can happen. And so if that's what's right for you, you can be the only one who can determine. But if you're going to enter into any relationship, whether you're 30, 40, 50, 60 and start over again, definitely read this book because it's going to give you a leg up on the things that you did wrong in your last relationship, and I don't say that things that he or she did wrong, the things that you did wrong. So that you can really understand that we are all making mistakes every second of the day in our relationships and we could all do better, but we have to start at home with ourselves.

(43:36):

So if you can get your partner to read it, that's lovely. And if you tell her or him that it's like, "This is an incredible book. I am so digging it, and I want our relationship to be so powerful and so rich. I want you to love me until the day I go." If you can share that, I think you really might find that they sit down and read it and it could change everything.

Matt Feret (44:02):

Awesome. John, Ana, I could talk for hours, but what questions did I not ask about either the book or any of the other topics that are related to that book that we touched on over the last hour or so? What questions should I have asked that I didn't?

John Mann (44:23):

I don't know how you'd frame this as a question without it sounding like a setup, but maybe the question could be, so is this book really, really long and hard to read? And then the answer would be, well, I'm so glad you asked that question, Matt. Curiously enough, no.

(44:41):

I just want to say the nature of the book, for those who haven't seen the book, actually it's a fairly short book. It's very quick and easy to read. It falls in two halves, and the first half is a story. It's a modern parable, because all the Go-Giver books are modern parables. The first half tells the story of a couple, Tom and Tess, whose marriage isn't horrible. It isn't totally on the rocks, but it's not what it once was, and it's in that in-between place. The story is my contribution. That's what I do.

(45:13):

In the second half of the book, Ana basically says, okay, here's what you just read and here's what it means and here's how you can put it into operation in your life. The second half of the book is the how-to. It's what these five secrets are, how they work, how you can practically apply them with bullet lists and examples from stories of real people. So it's the how-to part, starting with the parable part, that's very entertaining and it's extremely easy to read. So yeah, I'm glad you asked that question.

Matt Feret (45:47):

I am too. The question that I didn't ask. Ana, how about you?

John Mann (45:52):

Another question I would ask is, Ana, so tell us about what you do.

Ana Mann (45:57):

I think the question you didn't ask is so tell me about those thriller novels you write, John.

John Mann (46:02):

The thrillers.

Matt Feret (46:07):

Don't worry. I will link to all of those on the show page website and, John, I see your webpage presence is huge and many years of it, so it's great. But, Ana, what about from your angle? You're a co-author here. What didn't I touch on? We can go gray divorce, but we can also just do, like you said, it doesn't matter, 20s to 70s or 80s in a marriage.

Ana Mann (46:34):

Well, I think gray divorce is an awesome topic, and I actually love that that was your headliner for the show because I think it's real. It is a huge growing demographic. And when they say gray divorce, they mean people that have been married 20 years or longer. They aren't necessarily gray. As two people who got divorced in our 40s, we had both married very young. We had married people that I think if we had the wisdom of being slightly more mature, we probably would not have chosen to get married. And I think that that would be set on both sides of both of our marriages, previous marriages. I think that my ex would clearly say if I had spent three or four years with her, I would have known that it was not right for us to get married. I think there's just wisdom in that.

(47:29):

And I think that when you can have an amiable separation where it isn't about screwing the other person or dividing the toys in some aggressive way or isolating the kids or badmouthing your mom or the dad to your children, I think if you can do a clean divorce, that's a great divorce. It's okay. Start over. Give yourself the opportunity for a new start.

(47:59):

I'm not just trying to give permission because I do believe that a lot of people at that stage of development, if they would do a little bit of couples therapy and a little bit of work on the marriage, that they would find that there's a lot of men that are walking around with what we call a covert depression. They're very, very good at their work. They're slaying it in their professional life, but they've had a closet depression that has kept them from feeling good about themselves and good about life for 20-plus years. And yet, because depression is such a topic of no, no man wants to admit that they're depressed and no man wants to go to their doctor and say, "I think I need medication." But I think that men's groups where men ...

(48:51):

And I actually have colleagues that run, two men, that run amazing men's groups for men, and those men get down about who do they want to be in life? What's missing? What's wrong? How can they take better care of their bride? I think these men come out of their depression because they have collaboration with other men that admit that they are under siege, that they're tired, that they're getting terrible, terrible things are happening to them at work. I was about to say something obscene. That they're being abused at work by their boss or whatever. You know what I mean?

Matt Feret (49:30):

Yeah.

Ana Mann (49:30):

And so when they get together, they finally have an outlet. Women do that very naturally with each other. Men will play basketball, but they won't get together and talk about those deep, dark things that really bother them. And so when they have that, I think that marriages can start to blossom again because there's more communication.

(49:51):

And for women looking at a gray divorce, let go of control. Stop trying to control the universe and give everybody a break because I think that during pre-menopause and menopause, a lot of women really hit the wall of like, "I've been dealing with this for so many years. I'm not dealing with it anymore." And it's an irrational, sometimes very crabby time in your life where you also feel very insecure. Get with a good therapist. Get with people who can help. Get in a group, but do something for yourself that gives you an outlet to talk because it isn't about going to your women friends and bitching about your husband. It's about going to someone who's a professional, who can help you to reframe what's going on in your life and to make steps toward shifting and changing, and all of that can enrich a marriage dramatically.

(50:49):

So it isn't a yes or no that you get divorced or don't get divorced. There's not a right or a wrong. It has to be the right, but if you're going to get divorced, do it right by your children.

Matt Feret (51:05):

Well said. And thank you both very much for all of your time today. Thanks for writing this book. Thanks for sending me this book. Like I said earlier, all of which will be up on the website when this episode is released, and you can click around. Any other topics you want to cover, John? I'll put your website up there. Ana, I didn't check if you had a website, but I can certainly do that as well. Any other ways to find you on the interwebs or otherwise contact you or find out more about what you do and what you offer?

Ana Mann (51:37):

It's gogivermarriage.com, and we're putting up a new page that gets a little more in depth to my practice and what's up with me. But I do see clients privately, and the sky is the limit in terms of groups and other things that I do.

John Mann (51:53):

For all the Go-Giver Marriage work and for Ana and everything that she's doing, and she travels the world teaching groups in other countries as well. That's the site, The Go-Giver Marriage. That's Ana's locus. That's the place to find her. And if you write to us there, we're the ones who see that. Our assistants are us.

(52:14):

I have my website, as you said, johndavidmann.com, but I also have a site specifically for thrillers, I'll say that since Ana prompted me, which is webbandmann, WEBB and Mann. Webb is my writing partner for the thrillers. It's a blast. It's a series of three thrillers. The third is just about to come out, and people are loving them, and it is my testament to what you can do to reinvent yourself in your 60s. It's a brand-new career. People who enjoy thrillers or mysteries or crime novels or novels of any sort, that's the page. That's the page over there.

Matt Feret (52:56):

John, Ana, thank you so much. This has been awesome.

Ana Mann (53:00):

Thank you. We've really enjoyed being here.

John Mann (53:01):

Thank you.

Matt Feret (53:04):

John and Ana, thank you. If you liked this episode, please follow, like, subscribe and rate the show. Make sure to hit The Matt Feret Show website for links and show notes, Until next time, to your wealth, wisdom and wellness, I'm Matt Feret, and thanks for tuning in.

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