Nobody is fighting. Nobody is leaving. Dinner has become admin, and your partner has stopped asking how your day was. I work with founders on this every week, alone or with both of you on the call.
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I have been on both sides of this. Divorces, burnout, and the rebuild that followed.
The founders who come to me for this almost never say the word relationship on the first call. They say they are tired. They say they are short with people. Then, ten minutes in, they mention that their partner takes the kids to her parents most Sundays now. Without him. Said as a logistics update.
If three of those landed, you are not a bad partner. You are running a company with an operating system that works at the office and fails at the front door.
Some of my clients tried couples therapy before we met. Good therapists, real effort. The same feedback every time: the therapist did not understand what it is to carry a company, a board, sixty salaries, and a raise that keeps moving.
I do. I built six companies over fifteen years. I know the version of you that walks in the door at seven with two hundred decisions already made, no bandwidth left for one more, and a partner who has been waiting all day to be seen. I know it because I was him.
So this is not therapy, and I will not pretend it is. It is coaching for the whole human, and the relationship is one of the four systems I score in every engagement: work, body, mind, relationships. A leak in one drains the other three. In my practice, the leak is at home far more often than it is at the office, and the founder almost always walked in thinking it was a business problem.
Weekly sessions with the founder only. Your partner does not need to join, or even know it is on the agenda yet.
We start with you, because the one thing you can change is you. Sleep, phone, the hour you get home, the way you listen. Then we script the actual conversations: what to say, when, and what not to say after eight in the evening.
Most of the founders I work with on this start here. Some stay here. It is enough more often than you would think.
Each of you gets your own weekly session with me. After four to six weeks, we add a joint session, and we keep adding them.
What you tell me alone stays with me. I do not carry ammunition between rooms. In the joint sessions we take one real incident from the week, slow it down, and turn it into an agreement you can both keep.
I do not have a preferred result. I have a preferred process. Sometimes the outcome is a marriage that works again. Sometimes it is a clear, kind decision that it does not. Both count.
Not sure which door? Start with the first. If your partner wants in later, the second door is already open.
Names and details changed. The patterns are exact.
Ten minutes before guests arrived, a founder walked into the kitchen and critiqued how his wife had laid the table. To him, feedback. To her, eighteen years of "he cares more about getting it right than treating me right."
In the joint session we slowed it down. It was never about the table. They agreed on one rule: if he wants input, he gives it by Thursday noon. Not in the last ten minutes. That rule has held.
A co-founder told me the phone at night was "just habit." I told him it looked more like hiding. Ninety percent of what he did on it after dinner could wait until morning, and both of us knew it.
The agreement: he stops at six, and the devices sleep in the garden office. Not a detox. A door between the company and the couch.
A CEO sat across from his partner at dinner and heard: "What is going on in that head?" He was at work. He had been at work all through the starter.
His homework was not a date night. It was to be where his hands are. Pour the water. Chop the onion. Answer the question that was asked. It sounds small because it is small. It is also the whole thing.
A people leader told his wife about a hard week and got a list of solutions back from himself before she had finished. Classic founder reflex: default to action.
The one line that changed his home, and mine before it: "Do you need me to listen, offer advice, or do something?" Then wait for the answer. Most of the time it is the first one.
A written questionnaire that asks about home, not only work. Then a ninety-minute session where we score all four systems and find the leak.
One fixed hour a week, on video, with homework that is a change in behaviour, not a worksheet. WhatsApp between sessions when the moment is live.
If both of you are in, we add a joint session. One incident, slowed down, turned into an agreement. Then a small assignment that is meant to be fun.
We score the four systems again. The number tells us whether it moved. Most people continue on a lighter retainer. Some take the plan and run.
I am not a regular therapist. I will be in your week, on WhatsApp, reminding you what you promised on Tuesday. Some people find that a relief. Some find it annoying. Both are fine, as long as it works.
I'm Peter Sorgenfrei. I built six companies over fifteen years. In 2019 I stopped listening to my body while going through a divorce, and in February 2020 it stopped for me. Six weeks in bed. The board let me go while I was still down.
My ex-wife carried more of my absence than my son did, and I carry that. It is the reason this page exists. Since 2020 I have coached 67 founders, CEOs, and corporate leaders across 13 countries, and a large share of that work turned out to be about what was happening at home, whatever the first call was about. My book, The Whole Human Leader, is published by Wiley. The next one is about this.
I cannot change you. You cannot change me. But we can each change ourselves.
That line ended an argument in my own kitchen this year. It is the whole method, in one sentence.
Step 1. Book thirty minutes in my calendar. The form asks why we are meeting: tell me where you are, in your own words, and whether you are thinking of door one or door two. I read every one myself.
Step 2. We speak. Not a pitch, a working conversation. I will ask early whether things are good at home, because that is usually where it is. If I can help, you will have a proposal within a day. If I can't, I will tell you who can.
If you are the partner reading this, not the founder: you are welcome to book too, or write to ps@petersorgenfrei.com. It happens more often than you would think.
One fixed hour a week. Three months. Both of you, or just you.
I'd love to hear from you. Tell me where you are, or book time straight into my calendar. If we speak, it's a working session, not a pitch. You'll answer three short questions when you book, so we start from something real.
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