Episodes

Back to school means a change in routine for many families. Summer holidays are over (or, will be shortly) and once September arrives we’re into a new rhythm. Verlynda and I thought that this adjustment was the perfect opportunity to make sure you prioritize your marriage as you adjust to the new routine. Back To School: Back To Normal This is the last of our shorter episodes this summer, so we’re getting back into our own routines as well! What we want you to think about is putting some pr...

Another quick summer episode here as we take a break from our usual programming. And, contrary to what you might assume from the title, we’re not going to ask you to do anything illegal! A Graffiti Tag for Your Marriage Our graffiti tag is simple. It just looks like C+V. But we have fun putting it in different places. We finger-paint it onto dirty windows, in frosty windows, even under our first Ikea kitchen table. Hey, I even emblazoned it on our lawn with herbicide! We don’t spray it on ...

Marriage can seem pretty complicated. There are scores of websites, hundreds of books and thousands of research articles. And yet folks — perhaps even yourselves – are still struggling. Sticky Notes Are Simple Sometimes it’s nice just to back off from all that complexity. Think simple thoughts. Do simple things that make a difference. In this week’s shorter summer episode (still on holidays – yay!) we take a break from our usual research-based programming to remind you that simple still wor...

I think that one of the lamest things to do is to break up a relationship by text message. Lame, lame, lame. But you’re married now and looking for a way to keep the flame alive, right? So, today as part of our mini-series of short summer episodes we’re looking at a redemptive use of text messages: romancing your spouse! Romantic Texts Help You Keep Connected Text messaging works great for this because it is so quick and easy. Not to make it sound cheap. Quite the opposite, actually. Marria...

Most wedding speeches are lame. There, I said it. Somebody needed to. We have a lot of listeners tuning into our podcast because they’re getting ready for marriage. If that is you, and if you are the groom, in particular, I would like you to heed the advice herein. Epic Wedding Speech-making Your wedding speech is an opportunity to be legendary. The competition is nearly non-existent (think, “…and I’d like to thank Betsy for ALL the work she did on the centerpieces…yawn). Most wedding spee...

Have you ever been in that place? You know, you come home from work… the house is a mess… you don’t want to be there… you’re yelling at the kids… you’re yelling at your spouse because your environment is a mess but it’s like your inside is a mess and your emotions are a mess too. Nobody likes to live like that. Not only that – it’s not good for you either. That’s why we interviewed Marla Cilley, a housekeeping guru commonly known as FlyLady, for some tips on how to get out of this chaos. You’l...

Even if it feels impossible at this moment, I want you to know that it is possible to rebuilt trust, to create safety and to restore intimacy to your marriage. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or simple. I can’t even promise that your trust will never be broken again. But I am saying that it is possible. In every human relationship, probably without exception, there are moments of betrayal. This has been happening for millennia: think even of the words of King David in Psalm 41:9, “Even my ...

So, what if your parents didn’t have a great marriage? Or, maybe other folks who served as role models in your life haven’t modeled a healthy, thriving marriage? Are you hooped, or is there hope? Let’s figure out if there’s any hope. If you are in this situation of having poor role models, you are not alone. This is such a common, shared experience. We all try to do our best as a couple, but even then, I’m sure our kids can see things that they like and will adopt from our relationship, but als...

Because debt reduction is fundamentally a mental issue, not a financial one, this may be a different take on debt reduction that what you might be used to hearing. We’ll give some practical strategies and tactics, but first let’s figure out HOW we think about debt. Finances are a major stressor for most marriages, so here is a checkpoint for you personally. You might already know this, but if you’re not 100% sure, sit down with your spouse and ask them what meanings they assign to debt. Ask the...

Ever get nailed by a surprise bill? Yeah, you knew insurance was due for the year but you thought it wasn’t till next month? This episode is about pain relief! More specifically, relief from the impact of those bigger, occasional, or annual bills. Not only do we need to keep track of our everyday expenses and budget for them, we also need to set up the part of our budget that deals with mid and long term planning. Emergencies also arise, so being prepared for those is very important too. We of...

Today we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of HOW to create a family budget. We’ve done budgets and had to revisit them. We haven’t always been consistent with keeping a budget with moves and job transitions. But when we are budgeting, the stress in our marriage is much lower! First, let’s clarify what we know from what we don’t know. We know: That there are many sound, recommended financial practices That these practices come from reliable sources That following these financial practices a...

Negotiating a family budget can be a real fire-starter for some couples. We may know we need a budget and want to live within our means, but the fights that the discussions cause can be so painful, that it’s easier to avoid them. We want to change that today. For Caleb and I, a lot of our own frustration about money in the past has been because we never got ourselves on the same page. He would get a raise and think he had more spending power – I thought we’d have more to save. Then we’d both be...

Budgeting can feel like such a ball and chain. Why is it such a pain point for so many of us? This is the first article in a mini-series on Family Budgeting. Today we make a case for WHY you need to budget. Usually, every relationship has a spender and a saver. Caleb is our spender, and I am our saver/budgeter! It has taken us a while to negotiate that. For example, we both want a retirement fund. However, Caleb wants to create that wealth by generating revenue, and I want to create that wealt...

Life is busy. So busy. But so often we let other people and other things run our schedules and in the process of allowing this to happen: what really matters to us gets bumped. Like time with our spouse…Date nights…Fun nights…Just time to hang out. What can we do to change that? We all hit phases in life that are busy. It is totally normal! If this is you right now, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean your marriage is done – you’ve done well just to recognize the stage you’re in. I like the phrase fr...

Why the First Orgasm Feels So Out of Reach If you are a married woman who has never had an orgasm, or who has struggled to get there consistently, you are not broken. You are not the exception. You are, clinically speaking, the norm. Research shows that most women take significantly longer than their husbands to reach orgasm, and many wives spend the first several years of marriage unsure of what their body needs or how to ask for it. The good news: orgasm is learnable, and the path to your fir...

We’ve noticed that a lot of marriages take a very traditional approach where all the work HE does is money-earning, and all the work SHE does in unpaid – and usually unacknowledged. So we ask, is this a good thing, or is it a problem? What happens for those wives who take on more and more, and might even do all the housework AND are employed full time? How does that work? If you are a wife that is struggling because you are overloaded with employment and housework – or a husband in the same ...

OK. So you had ANOTHER fight – another disagreement. It’s like, man, are we ever going to stop fighting? Remember, the goal is not achieving zero disagreements, it’s learning to disagree productively! Caleb and I recently had a disagreement. Caleb told the story in our podcast episode: “So I remember a recent disagreement we had. We were actually talking about a Sunday school lesson you were doing in the Old Testament. And you really wanted to emphasize the holiness of God as was expressed in ...

Courting your wife means continuing the maintenance behaviors that build admiration, affection, and respect, the same behaviors that brought you together, applied every week of your marriage. It is not about expensive dates or anniversary gestures. It is about how you live with each other on a regular Tuesday afternoon. The ten ways to court your wife in this article are drawn from twenty years of clinical practice and the published research on what actually keeps couples close. The couples we ...

I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would I want to support my spouse when we’re fighting? Well, because you want to stay married, that’s why. That’s the “brutally-loving” truth! But, there’s more. It makes fighting productive. Yes. That’s right. I mean it. It actually makes the conflict helpful for your marriage. Now, I could go down a rabbit trail about why fighting is good for your marriage but I want you to think about your beliefs about fighting and disagreeing instead. We genera...

I read a comic strip once about pregnancy and childbirth that had the title “Help, my entertainment center is now a juice bar!” While it struck my funny bone, there is so much truth in that statement. We may think that adding our firstborn to the family will be all hunky-dory, fun and games, but the reality is it usually results in a DECREASE in marital quality. Navigating the relationship issues that transpire following the birth of a child can be tough! If you’re a young parent reading this...

Do you find yourself always taking the blame for everything? I mean, not so much in the sense that your spouse won’t accept any, but that you just find that YOU blame yourself for everything? Even your spouse thinks you take too much responsibility for things? Last week we discussed differentiation. Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect with a loved one. If you find yourself always taking the blame and never taking the risk of putting ...

In marriage, we need to strike a healthy balance between independence and dependence on each other. This is where we sort out the sticky stuff like needing you as my spouse versus just being needy – being an individual without taking away from a sense of ‘us’. Differentiation is a key paradox of healthy marriage and is one of those concepts that when the skills are embodied takes a marriage from ordinary to extraordinary. It pushes the constant growth of the relationship and the individuals wit...

We live in a quick-fix society. Everything is easy, cheap and disposable. Somehow we’re trained to think about what we get OUT of things, rather than what we can build into them to make them better. Sometimes marriage can seem complicated. Daily rituals are the little things that can combat the rough areas and make a difference in the day-to-day-living of a couple. They are easy and are sure to really boost your marital happiness. We’re not talking about one-off try-this-when-you-get-home-toda...

There is a lot of discussions nowadays in the business world about work-life balance. Today I want to challenge and inspire you to think seriously about your work-marriage balance! Materialism is the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods. Think about the choices and values you place on material things (things you can buy) and how that affects your satisfaction with your marriage. Not that wealth is bad, nor is it wrong to prosper. Owning and enjoying material things is not bad...