Episodes

Because of how sexuality is portrayed in media and how we are socialized to perceive it in our culture, I think there’s this perception that arousal is just something you flip the switch on to get things warmed up for sex. In reality though, what happens in the marriage bed starts much earlier, and much differently! This week, we really want to challenge you to push the idea of intimacy out past the bedroom and to think about it as part of the fabric of your daily lives. We have this simplisti...

What if you could focus on just five things to make sure that your marriage is a success? Relationships can sometimes seem pretty complicated. For this reason, we took a step back to ask the question, “What are the core things that we MUST focus on to make sure we’re on the right track towards marital bliss?” We found (through the research of the National Marriage Project and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values) that the top five things to bring happiness ...

As I sit here, gazing at a picture of my handsome husband, I am asking myself the question, “Should I talk to him about it? It has been bugging me for a few days… Oh, I know! I’ll just shoot him a text message and hint at it – that’ll work out well!” NOT! I think the age-old question of “Should I bring it up with my spouse or just let it go?” needs some good wisdom thrown at it. To start with, I want to quote Caleb who says, “Marriage is a crucible for character formation – but only if we’re ...

It’s Valentines Day this weekend! Happy Valentine’s Day! We specialize in marriage and love so we’re supposed to be all enthused about Valentine’s, right!? So, why do we have mixed feelings about it all? First, some history… There is no firm historical record of how Valentine’s Day came to be, but there are a couple of commonly held possibilities. Apparently, there was an ancient Fertility festival called Lupercalia which occurred on February 15th. This lovers’ holiday traces its roots to ra...

In 2015, couples are saying that communication is their biggest struggle. Why, when we’ve never had so many ways to communicate and keep in touch as we do now, are people still struggling with this? The research is somewhat ironic. Well, not the research itself, but the fact that the topic of marriage communication was studied, documented, tallied, hashed out, etc. back in the 1980s and ’90s. However, in 2015: couples still say this is their #1 area for improvement. Why is that? Let’s look to...

What does faithfulness, or fidelity, mean in your marriage? What does it look like? Are your boundaries strong enough to protect your marriage from an affair? What got us started down this road of thinking is the observation that you can be in a committed marriage and never have sex outside that marriage for forty years, but still be giving members of the opposite sex a lust filled looking over. This begs the question about what loyalty and fidelity mean in a marriage. If you proudly say “I am...

Ahhh…the science of love. It’s pretty cool that something as amorphous as love can be studied. And even cooler when you find research that identifies the daily habits that catalyze the deepening of love. Withdrawer or Pursuer? Some of the most helpful research on love falls under what is known as Attachment Theory. It’s a superb framework for understanding the emotional bond of family and marriage relationships. In the context of marriage, the theory provides for the idea that a spouse will ...

One of the things we want to get you thinking about at the very start of this year is what you are going to do, with deliberate purpose, to enrich your marriage this year. Marriage is an easy thing to take for granted. Think for a moment about the things you value most. What do you do with those things? You get insurance for them! There is every kind of insurance out there which most of us have on our valuable possessions, like life insurance, medical insurance, disability insurance, house insu...

Here’s a fresh thought for fixing or just strengthening your marriage this year: try improving your sleep quality. Really? Yes, really. In this episode of our marriage podcast, we interview Shawn Stevens. He is a best-selling author and the creator of the Model Health Show, currently the #1 Nutrition and Fitness podcast in the world on iTunes. [youtube id=”zAM6iPk53m8″] Watch the video for the full interview. I invited Shawn for an interview because I wanted him to help us understand how we can...

Sometimes after a long day, you just want to climb in bed and go to sleep… but your spouse has other ideas! Differences in sexual desire are very normal. Usually, there is one high desire and one low desire spouse in a marriage – sometimes desires are equal, but not very often. Normally, the husband is a high desire and the wife low desire, but there is nothing wrong if it’s the other way around! We want you to be aware of how these differences in desire can affect your marriage. On a side no...

Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and cheer with everybody bubbling over with joy. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it just plain hurts. It’s the time of year when there is so much stress and tension. Maybe you’re alone this year, and there is a lot of grief and pain involved. No matter what we’re going through, God has a story of redemption for our lives. Let’s start with the Christmas Story from Matthew 1:18-25 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary ...

After a fight, you basically have four options: you can exit the relationship, you can be patient and loyal by waiting for your spouse to change, you can neglect your spouse, or you can repair. (Branau-Browna & Ragsdale, 2008) We’ve discussed fighting in the last few topics: why fighting for your marriage is good, different fighting styles couples use, and basic ground rules for use in a fight. This last topic in our series, about how to repair after a fight, is definitely the most important of...

Most of us have the wrong idea about conflict in marriage. We fear the conflict could lead to the disintegration of our marriage. That’s a reasonable fear, in many ways. But we paint with too broad a brush. You see, it’s not the conflict itself that puts the marriage at risk but rather the behaviours within the conflict. If you’re just jumping into this series, this episode and show notes are the third in a series of 4 on fighting in marriage. In the first show, we talked about why fighting i...

Fighting is something I am passionate about. Probably because I was so bad at it when we first got married… I would get mad and come across as hostile, crying and flinging words that I didn’t always even mean. Caleb would try to apologize, calm me down and say whatever it took to get himself out of the situation. And what did the fighting accomplish? Nothing! The issues never got resolved. Enter Caleb’s grad school where he learned how to teach others to fight. Thankfully, he taught himself ...

Ahhhh, marital bliss! Socrates himself apparently once said, “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” We joke and we laugh about terrible wives and worse husbands. The truth of the matter is, unless we invest in our marriages, we will never have a deep, intimate, rewarding relationship with our spouse. So today’s post is nice and simple (even if it gets a little deep at times)! We give you three things you can do to m...

Ever have a conversation that goes something like this? Hubby: So are we all good then, honey? Wifey: Yup. Hubby: You’re sure. Wifey: Yes, I’m fine. Hubby: OK then. I’ll take your word for it… What Exactly Is Womanspeak? Womanspeak is saying something where the meaning is different from the intent of the words spoken. And yes, I know it’s not just a woman thing. Not all women do it, and men are just as capable of speaking this way, we just stereotypically assign this to women (hence the n...

Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you don’t REACT to everything. Maybe you should be writing this post about defensiveness… In this week’s podcast episode, Caleb talked about defensiveness and how you can disarm your own defensiveness. I especially need to learn how to disarm my defensiveness, as I seem to react every single time to the slightest provocation! Why is it that I can react so strongly to the smallest thing? I think it’s because I like to be right and I hate being wrong. That’s just...

If you woke up tomorrow and a miracle happened so that you had a thriving, passionate marriage, what would you see differently? What would be the first signs that a miracle had occurred? Today, on our podcast, Caleb introduced me to the “miracle question” above – the lynch pin question in Solution Focused Therapy. You can ask this question about anything really. For example, “If you woke up tomorrow, and a miracle happened so that you no longer easily lost your temper, what would you see diffe...

Guilt is an effective motivator. It’s also a great way to make you an unbearable spouse. If you’ve ever had someone lay the, “If you really loved me you would…” guilt trip on you then you know exactly how that makes you feel. Loathing. Disgust. Nothing like, “I love you! I’d love to do that for you!” Motivating your spouse to change by using guilt may get you the short-term gains but it is going to cause long term pain. Why Do We Use Guilt on Our Spouse? It does work as a technique to help ...

I found the topic of triangles in marriage to be fascinating. How often do I get my nose out of joint by something my husband does? And then try to get my support from someone else? THAT is creating a triangle! What Is A Triangle? Triangles are three-way relationships. Usually, this looks like mom-dad-child, or an unpopular variant: husband-wife-mistress. Sometimes the husband’s work can be his mistress… They usually consist of two close parties and one distant one. For example, Dad is angry a...

Does homeschooling actually wreck marriages? Absolutely! But no more than sending your kids to public school… No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we need to realize the impact on our marriage and compensate accordingly. The fact is homeschooling presents different challenges than public schooling or even having both parents work outside the home. Each scenario has its own challenges! So, while homeschooling is great, it’s good to be specifically aware of a few things with regards to...

I certainly hope reading this is going to make you want to find your spouse right now and give them a GREAT BIG SQUEEZE! And don’t be fooled – we’re not talking about how tightly you squeeze, we’re talking about how well you do the squeeze! The Power of the Hug The power of hugging is not to be underestimated. In fact, research supports how it can be a great way to improve your marriage. In 2003, Grewen, Anderson, Girlder and Light found that couples who enjoyed more episodes of positive close...

Ladies, isn’t it an awesome feeling when you overhear your husband talking to one of his buddies and he says something nice about you? If you have already listened to the podcast, then you know that Caleb started quoting “nice things” about me from the Songs of Solomon. Lol! Overhearing compliments such as “Guys, my wife’s belly is as a heap of wheat encircled with lilies” may not to be too exciting for us today, but Caleb’s point was to find the language that works for your wife – even now. T...

Christians have been trying to figure out for centuries: is divorce and remarriage ever the right thing to do? For some, that’s an intellectual discussion – for others, it’s a huge, unexpected reality in their lives. Back in Episode 13, we answered the question, “Is it ever OK to say, ‘If you do XYZ I’m going to divorce you’”? In response to that post, a spouse wrote us to ask, “If there are repeated acts of infidelity over several years, is it OK to say, ‘If you do this one more time, I am goi...