When a Man Changes,
the Relationship Changes.
Twenty years of men’s work taught me something couples therapists don’t always see. The path to a lasting relationship runs through the body — and through the man in it.
Work With Us
This Wasn’t a Pivot.
It Was a Progression.
For over two decades, I’ve worked with men — in groups, in private coaching, in leadership intensives and somatic training.
Again and again, the same thing happened. A man would show up carrying stress, disconnection, a vague sense of failure. Over months, something in him would shift. His nervous system would settle. He’d start to access parts of himself he’d walled off for years. He’d grow into someone more present, more honest, more capable of real contact.
Then his partner would call.
Not to complain — to ask what had happened to their relationship. Because when a man changes at that level, the relationship changes. Sometimes it catches up beautifully. Sometimes the couple needs help making the transition together.
What I’ve learned working with men — that lasting change lives in the body before it lives in behavior, that real connection requires real safety, that community makes transformation stick — turns out to be exactly what struggling couples need. The men’s work was always pointing here.
The Best Relationship Research, Woven Together
Most couples approaches treat the relationship as a communication problem. Fix how you talk, fix the marriage. That works — until it doesn’t. Until the couple learns the language of connection but still can’t access the state where connection is possible.
My work integrates what the research actually shows — four dimensions that belong together and rarely are.
The voices shaping this work: Esther Perel — who was the only woman ever to attend one of my men’s trainings — brings her singular lens on desire, power, and relational aliveness. Terry Real’s framework on relational life and male socialization runs through the work as well. Neither of their perspectives fits neatly into standard couples therapy. Neither does this.
Attachment Theory
The science of how we bond, why we panic when connection is threatened, what secure love actually looks and feels like. This is the map — and the foundation of EFT.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Sue Johnson’s model — the most research-validated approach to couples work that exists. EFT doesn’t work on the argument. It works on the attachment bond underneath it.
Somatics — Your Physiology
When your partner withdraws or pushes, your nervous system responds as if under threat. You don’t think your way into a fight. You get hijacked into one. Working with that biological reality is where durable change begins.
Community as a Mechanism
Change made in isolation doesn’t hold. Community isn’t an add-on — it’s a stabilizer. It’s built into how we design every workshop and retreat.
“If what Owen developed were therapy, it would be EFT.”
Said on a live call with over 1,000 therapists
Ten-Plus Years of Holding the Room
For more than a decade, I have co-led Hold Me Tight® workshops and international retreats with Dalia Anderman, LMFT. Hold Me Tight® is Sue Johnson’s couples program — Seven Conversations designed to help partners understand what’s driving the distance between them, access the emotions underneath it, and reach toward each other in new ways.
What I bring to that room is different from what a therapist brings. I bring 30 years of working with men’s emotional access. I know how a man shuts down. I know the specific way men go sideways in emotional conversations — analyzing instead of feeling, fixing instead of connecting, defending instead of being vulnerable. I can speak to that directly, in a language men hear. Couples consistently tell us that dimension alone shifts something in the room that wouldn’t shift otherwise.
We’ve co-led these workshops locally in Northern California and on international retreats, including in Costa Rica. Every workshop sells out. We keep them small intentionally.
Training Therapists in This Synergistic Model
The integration of somatic work and EFT is not only what I do with couples — it’s what I teach to therapists. Through MELD and my professional training work, I’ve trained coaches, therapists, and facilitators in this model: how to bring the body into relational work, how to work with men’s emotional physiology in couples contexts, and how to use community dynamics as a therapeutic lever.
Therapists who refer clients to our workshops consistently report that the somatic layer accelerates what they’re doing in therapy. We complement the work. We don’t compete with it.
Men’s Work Was Always About Relationship
A man who can regulate his nervous system becomes a partner who can stay present when it gets hard. A man who learns to access his emotions becomes a husband who can actually be reached. A man who experiences authentic community becomes a father who knows how to stay close.
Now the same logic has moved into organizations. Through NEUROS, the body-based approach that changes how men show up in their marriages changes how leaders show up at work. The mechanism is the same: get out of survival physiology, get into genuine contact, and watch what becomes possible.
Man ? couple ? community ? organization. The same change, moving outward.
Four Ways to Engage
Couples Coaching
Private coaching that works underneath the surface argument — on the nervous system state, the attachment patterns, and what would actually need to shift for something new to be possible. Available individually and in partnership with Dalia Anderman, LMFT.
Private Couples Intensives
Two days with Dalia and me. Not he-said-she-said — a structured deep dive into what isn’t working and why, with a clear path forward. Couples come for many reasons. All leave with new levels of honesty, connection, and compassion.
Learn more ?Hold Me Tight® Workshops
Weekend workshops using Sue Johnson’s Seven Conversations. Your work is private — you’re not required to share with the group. Intimate, structured, and consistently transformative. They sell out. We keep them small.
Learn more ?International Retreats
We’ve taken this work to Costa Rica and beyond. The extended retreat container — away from daily life, in a different landscape — allows a depth that a weekend can approximate but not fully reach.
Learn more ?In Their Words
The Google reviews below come from Dalia Anderman’s practice page, where couples who have worked with us share their experiences. Read all reviews on Google Maps ?
“My spouse and I plan to revisit and attend another retreat in a couple of years because we got so much out of it. I am confident that moving forward he and I will have an easier time communicating our needs to one another, listening to the underlying messages, and ultimately caring for and loving each other for many years to come. Thank you, Dalia and Owen, for being real, honest, and experts in the field of love and marriage. We are so thankful.”
“As a last ditch effort, I agreed to couples therapy. Our first assignment was to register for and attend Dalia’s and Owen’s Hold Me Tight workshop. I was skeptical. Without publicly airing our dirty laundry, we learned to listen to each other. Where I’d felt my emotional pain was unheard and unvalidated, I now knew it was. As Dalia and Owen encouraged him, my husband began to learn to reveal his internal feelings to me. I felt the longed-for connections begin to establish themselves.”
“Dalia and Owen are miracle workers. They know how to drop into the deepest places with us, while keeping us feeling safe and secure to do so. They helped us realize that the difficult dynamics we have is common, and that by turning into the hard stuff — shedding our fears of opening up — we can overcome any conflict through an emotional connection that supersedes the issues at hand.”
“Owen gave me my first glimpse of masculinity as I’d like to practice it, versus how I do act as a man. The two of them have given my wife and I more time to heal and improve. I will be seeking out Owen and Dalia again.”
“My husband and I grew more this weekend than we have in 20 years of marriage. It’s like couples therapy on steroids. My husband was able to learn about and experience the life-changing benefits of being vulnerable. They make it easy to find and understand our ‘raw spots’ without shame or judgment. Thank you Dalia and Owen for your labor of love and dedication to this important, life-changing work.”
“This 2-day workshop gave us more tools and connection than many months of therapy. It allowed my partner and I to open up more directly and deepen our honesty and our intimacy. We were able to witness each other in ways that we didn’t realize were needed or possible. A must for your relationship.”
“I went to this Hold Me Tight EFT workshop this past weekend with Dalia Anderman and Owen Marcus and was blown away by the experience and the results. I want to share the knowledge that something like this exists — I think every couple could benefit from it.”
A Collaborative Model,
Not a Competing One
If you’re a therapist whose male client’s relationship is suffering — or whose couples work would benefit from the somatic dimension — I welcome referrals and professional collaboration.
I work alongside Dalia Anderman, LMFT. Our collaboration is not a referral network. We share clients, co-lead workshops, and bring genuinely different lenses to the same work. Her clinical depth in EFT and my somatic, relational, and men’s work background weave together in ways neither of us can replicate alone.
Therapists whose clients have attended our workshops consistently report that the somatic layer accelerates what they’re doing in therapy. We are built to complement, not compete.
Learn more about working with us as a therapist ?Ready to Find Out If This Is the Right Fit?
Reach out and tell me where you are. I’ll get back to you.
Contact Owen