Episodes

Four episodes back we addressed the topic of pain during sex for women and that show received a lot of downloads. Today we return to the topic but this time for men. Sexual issues like this can be difficult to figure out and often people just don’t even know who to ask, so they struggle alone. We hope this will be the start of getting help for anyone who is struggling with pain during sex so that you can return to enjoying physical intimacy with your wife. Pain During Sex for Men Often, the ca...

When your wife finds out you’ve been using porn, she isn’t overreacting and she isn’t making it up. Her nervous system is responding to a betrayal wound the same way it would respond to any other relational trauma. This article is for husbands who want to understand what their wife is actually going through, and why her healing depends on more than your apology. We work with this every week in our practice. The hurt you’re seeing in her is real, it has a name, and there is a structure to it that...

What do you do when you’re going to see family for the holidays or on a vacation and you know that not everybody is in that healthy place where they’re going to be able to show you, your spouse and kids respect and care? So many of our listeners — if they want to spend time with family — know ahead of time that it’s not likely to go well. How can we prepare and protect ourselves when this is the case? For many people, family visits are a time to look forward to where you enjoy spending time wit...

If you find yourself thinking, “my husband takes me for granted,” you are not being dramatic or ungrateful. You are naming something real. The noticing itself matters, and it is usually the first honest signal that something in the relationship needs attention. When a wife feels taken for granted, she is usually describing a slow accumulation: the effort she puts in has stopped being seen, the care she offers has become background noise, and the thank-yous have quietly disappeared. It is rarely...

If you experience pain during sex, you are certainly not alone. Pain during sex is called dyspareunia, and research shows that about 7% of women experience pain it.[1] Of those 7%, about one-quarter of them reported that the pain had been occurring frequently or every time they had intercourse over at least 6 months. Today, we’d like to look at some of the most common causes so that if you’re experiencing dyspareunia you maybe have a starting point to know how to explore and hopefully resolve th...

Back in episode 209, we did a show on the five things you need to know if you’ve been betrayed by your husband. Today we want to look at the experience of a husband who has been betrayed. Men and women both experience betrayal, but have different ways of responding to it. Betrayal trauma is the result of a shocking disclosure of a relational breach, whether that’s unfaithfulness or some other form of broken trust or loss of confidence in your marriage. These breaches can come from things like s...

Picture an ordinary Tuesday. Your wife is at the stove, and you walk past, resting your hand briefly between her shoulder blades. Three seconds. No words. That small piece of contact is doing more for your marriage than most couples realize. Physical touch is one of the first senses we develop, and it never stops being a primary channel of intimacy in adult love. It is also the channel that erodes most quickly when life gets busy, when children arrive, when stress builds, or when the relationsh...

Transitioning from full-time employment into retirement is naturally going to impact both your life and your marriage. Retirement comes with lots of changes, and there are ups and downs to the process. Whether you have parents going through this, you’re coming up to retirement, or you have recently retired, there’s lots to learn about how to handle the changes that come with moving into retirement since it’s a brand-new stage of life. Research shows that there are both positives and negatives t...

If you or your spouse is working through recovery from porn or sex addiction, you have probably noticed that the problem runs deeper than the behavior itself. There is a reason for that. Research consistently shows that attachment style plays a significant role in who develops compulsive sexual behavior and why. In a landmark 2008 study, Zapf, Greiner, and Carroll found that over 80% of men with sex addiction had insecure attachment styles. That is not a coincidence. It points to something found...

Emotional labour is a significant part of a couple’s relationship. Emotional labour was first coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her book, The Managed Heart (1983)[1]. She defined it as the work of managing your own emotions, but the term has been expanded to looking at the overall burden of managing or carrying emotions in a marriage and/or family context. You’ll probably be aware in your own marriage, one spouse often takes most of the responsibility for worrying about a particular ...

Secure attachment is foundational for strong marriages where both partners feel safe and secure. In the past three episodes, we’ve been looking at different styles of attachment that are born out of difficult childhood experiences. Today, we are considering the fourth style, secure attachment, which is really the goal that those of us with these other styles are striving for. Only about 46% of the population has secure attachment as their primary attachment style. We want to explore this one and...

If your spouse seems to want you close one moment and pushes you away the next, you are not imagining things. That confusing pattern of reaching for connection and then retreating from it is one of the clearest signs of disorganized attachment in marriage. It leaves you wondering which version of your partner is the real one, and whether you are doing something wrong. You are not. What you are seeing is the result of something that started long before you entered the picture. Disorganized attac...

If you find yourself checking your phone constantly when your spouse is out, replaying conversations for signs of emotional distance, or feeling a wave of anxiety the moment they seem even slightly withdrawn, you are not being “too much.” You may be experiencing anxious attachment in marriage, and it is one of the most common patterns we see in our practice. Anxious attachment in marriage is a relational pattern rooted in early life experiences where closeness feels essential but never quite se...

Often, people see tension between spirituality and the field of psychology. Academics seem to look down on matters of belief as unintellectual, and the faithful sometimes think that scientists are secular opponents to all religion. However, research is continuing to indicate that expressions of faith have tangible, measurable benefits. This holds particularly true about prayer. Marriage Affects Cardiovascular Health Marital strain and conflict can have a direct effect on your heart. In fact, ...

How Common Is Clergy Sexual Misconduct? When people search for ‘pastor adultery,’ they are usually looking for one of two things: evidence that the problem is real, or help understanding why it happens. What the research reveals is that this kind of behavior is both more common and more clinically complex than most people expect — and that calling it ‘adultery’ often misses something important. Research on clergy sexual misconduct in the church paints a troubling picture. In an anonymous surve...

The road to discovering your spouse’s sexual addiction takes many forms. Sometimes, compulsive sexual behavior can be completely hidden for years before it is found out. It may happen as a single, devastating revelation or as a series of smaller discoveries. Perhaps you already knew about their sexual compulsivity but hoped that marriage would somehow temper this behavior. But each promise that your spouse makes to change becomes yet another broken commitment. Sexual addiction can have devasta...

Everyone knows the “fairy-tale ending.” The prince and the princess get married, and they live happily ever after. While you will be able to find happiness in marriage, it’s common to experience hardships that fairy tales never address. Sometimes, you will experience rocky times for a few days, months, or even years. The reality of two very different people living as a single unit is very challenging. But at the end of the day, it’s worth the effort. Studies show that married people are, on ave...

Shame is such a powerful emotion. The problem is, it can lead to seemingly contradictory behavior, particularly in the context of addiction. Shame’s close relationship with pornography consumption can cause porn addicts to fall into cycles of shame over their addiction, followed by giving into their addiction, followed by more shame. As with most addictions, porn addiction typically has roots in other deficits. Because you are hurt, lack something, or desire something, you might turn to porn as...

Most people have heard of boundaries and understand that it’s good to have healthy boundaries in marriage. But as with any psychological concept that enters the public sphere, its application can be quite twisted from its intended form. Sometimes people will cut off members of their family, labeling that action as “setting a boundary”. Or others will use boundaries as a way to manipulate friends into doing what they want. By applying the term “boundaries” to these actions, people often are just...

In the Book of Revelation, the Bible talks about Four Horsemen that will herald the apocalypse. Symbolizing pestilence, war, famine, and death, these Horsemen are meant to be the signs that indicate that the end of the world is imminent. Borrowing from this Biblical illustration, Dr. John Gottman identified the four most critical indicators of marital separation: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Based on his study of over 2,000 couples for more than twenty years, he was abl...

You know something is wrong. Your chest feels tight, your jaw is clenched, and the conversation with your spouse that ended twenty minutes ago is still looping in your head. But if someone asked you right now what you actually feel, you might say “fine” or “frustrated” or just shrug. This is where most people live. And if you have ever wondered how to identify your emotions past the surface level, you are not alone. The short answer: to identify your emotions, pause long enough to notice what ...

Marriages can be strange. You slog through the daily grind, but at least you’ve got your partner. You think that everything’s fine, but then one day you wake up and realize that you don’t feel close to your spouse anymore. This is a common event in any marriage. Sometimes it’s because of normal life transitions. Sometimes it’s something drastic, like the death of a parent, or a traumatic accident. Or maybe the excitement you once felt has just gradually disappeared until you’re just… bored. Is...

It might seem strange to be focusing on the betraying spouse. After all, they weren’t the ones who were victimized. However, if the betraying spouse does not grow as a result of the wrong they did, that leaves their betrayed spouse vulnerable. So yes, it is vital for you, the betraying spouse, to help your partner cope with the fallout of your betrayal. But in the aftermath, you too must focus on your own healing process as well. In this way, you take tangible steps to safeguard your spouse fro...