Episodes

Caleb answers a question from a listener about sexual addiction and its consequences in marriage.

Today we have a question from one of our audience members who is asking for help to overcome some significant mental barriers around her husband’s sexual history. Hi, I have a question. I got married just recently and much later in life…around 40 years old. I was a virgin when I got married. My husband was not. However he shared with me that he had not had any sexual partners for at least three years prior to our being married, because of his renewed commitment to Christ. I’ve been a Christian...

One of our listeners asked for help with his situation. His wife is in an ongoing affair but also wants to keep the family unit intact. As you might imagine, despite his willingness to forgive and move on, he is wondering how to handle this very difficult situation.

A listener wrote in asking how he could help his wife trust him after his infidelity in their marriage. Caleb gives him lots to think about!

This is episode #114 and we are going to be talking about whether or not it is possible to have a hectic life AND be happily married. So in this episode, you will find out if you need to change your career and lifestyle, or if you’re all good to go. No pressure.

Jealousy. This can drive some people absolutely nuts – and their spouse feels completely justified. It’s a real conundrum. And it’s particularly worse when the jealous spouse has had prior reason to become jealous — a betrayal has occurred. What does a person do? Healthy And Unhealthy Forms of Jealousy. Research shows that jealousy can have positive or negative effects on a relationship, depending on the type of jealousy that is being displayed. There are three kinds of jealousy: Reactive ...

Learn more about the problems, symptoms and deeper issues that are present in sexless marriages. If you’re in this situation, you can find hope and ideas for recovery.

We know for some of you, this episode is going to be a tough one. We’re going to speak the truth in love because we’re committed to integrity, but at the same time we want to give you hope because this IS hope, and recovery of your marriage IS possible. If you’re at the point where you think your marriage is fine, I hope you will take from this post the need to be proactive. Don’t want until you’re wondering if you can recover your marriage to take action – take action now! Personally, we don’...

A sexless marriage almost never starts in the bedroom. By the time a couple notices that sex has slowed to a stop, the disconnection that produced the gap has usually been growing for months or years in the rest of the relationship. The bedroom is the readout, not the cause. If you’ve found this page because physical intimacy in your marriage has gone quiet, or because one of you wants more and the other doesn’t and the gap keeps widening, what follows is the research on what actually drives se...

Life is super busy. We get that. Rather than focusing on the hopelessness of the ‘busy’ problem, why not take the time you do have and make the most of it? Here are 10 sure-fire ways to make time for each other in a crazy busy marriage. These are not things that will ADD to your busyness, but allow you to connect WITHIN the context you’re already in. It would be wrong for us not to challenge you at this point though, to look at your busyness objectively and ask yourself if there aren’t some ...

If you really want to build more intimacy in your marriage – and who wouldn’t??? – here are four ways to do that. Take the time to hear, and digest this. 1st Way to Build Intimacy: Intimacy is Built Through Disclosure and Responsiveness Given that intimacy itself is purely emotional, let’s put a nice, sterile definition on it… Intimacy is what happens through interactions of self-disclosure and partner responsiveness to disclosure. This process is believed to develop feelings of closeness bet...

You give and you give. You scan his mood before he walks in the door. You handle the things he forgot, smooth over the conversation his sister did not appreciate, manage the family calendar he never looks at. And somewhere along the way, you stopped knowing what you actually wanted, because the question got buried under the weight of keeping everyone else okay. If any of that lands, you might be looking at codependency in marriage. Not the meme version, the real one. Codependency in marriage i...

So, your spouse just blew it. Again! How can you move from the place of being offended – and maybe feeling like a victim – to feeling like you’ve moved the dial on your marriage in a positive direction? We’ve all been in that situation where we’ve been offended by our spouse – when what we heard hurt us. But, what is it that we hear and feel that hurts? Once you understand what’s coming at you, you can learn how to respond accurately. Some messages that we get from our spouse hurt more than ...

Talking to each other seems like a pretty obvious topic, right? But, how many times have I asked Caleb, about a couple we’re working with, “Do they not talk???” This is a really fundamental issue that we see in most marriages we help. Folks are simply not having the basic day-to-day conversations they need to, and as a result, there are misunderstandings, miscommunications, and then conflict! If we can just make sure we talk about these essential subjects, we can save ourselves a whole lot of p...

Betrayal is such a ground-shaking event. Probably because it so deeply challenges your beliefs about someone incredibly significant in your life, and that, in turn, challenges your beliefs about yourself. So: what does the road forward, after betrayal, look like? Unfortunately, betrayal is a journey that every couple goes through at one time or another. It is sometimes something as severe as an affair but other times, it can just be that we’ve let our spouse down in the every-day-living of life...

Conflict can be such a painful, frustrating experience. Is it really possible to turn conflict into an opportunity to grow closer rather than it being a catalyst to push you further apart? Both Caleb and the research think it’s possible! This topic was spawned by the question, “How can we do conflict as if we’re passionate about solving the same problem instead of having it something that’s against each other?” So, today we give you a new perspective on conflict – a perspective that is concre...

The definition of mixed feelings: watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your brand new car. The joke lands because almost everyone has felt some version of it. The strain, the awkward visits, the loyalty conflict you cannot quite name. Knowing how to deal with in-laws is not a personality trait you either have or you don’t. It is a structure you build with your spouse, and there are three principles that hold it up. This is what we work on with couples in our practice. The arguments...

On the Marriage Podcast for Smart People we don’t often talk about parenting. But when it’s impacting your marriage, then it’s our business! Fighting over kids, or parenting issues is a very common source of marital conflict. It’s common, but it’s also really frustrating and it can be a tough rut to get out of. A further negative of this fighting situation though, is that disagreements on childrearing can actually have negative effects on your children’s wellbeing. It’s not just a source of co...

Episode #100! Wahoo!!! Normally we focus on real-world, research-based strategies to help your marriage. Today, we’re mostly just going to stop and reflect on our podcast and www.onlyyouforever.com and talk a little about our future plans. But, this being the marriage podcast for smart people, hosted by a research-guru…we couldn’t have no research! So here’s the research, and if you want all our nitty-gritty details, you’ll have to listen to the audio. What Caleb and I do is called copreneuri...

Why does it seem to be so difficult to create time to spend together? We all want to spend more time with our spouse and do more together, but so often it doesn’t fit into the schedule and we don’t quite get around to doing it. Sometimes the truth hurts. Today we’re going to give you two key strategies for creating more time with your spouse – what you can actually do to create the time together that you want to have. The first one is really helpful. The second one is also very helpful, but it ...

My cousins boss and the boss’ wife went fishing one day. It was the first time in a long time they were doing something together rather than him working and being on the phone ALL day. Apparently, his phone rang so he answered it (which fellows, was the wrong thing to do!), so his wife grabbed the phone and pitched it as far into the ocean as she could throw. Is the cell phone becoming a problem in your marriage? We certainly struggle with this! Thankfully it hasn’t quite got to the point of th...

Sometimes we ask more philosophical questions about the future of our marriages. One of those is that age-old question, do opposites attract? It turns out they do – and they don’t… How confusing is that! The research actually seems very contradictory over the whole opposites/similarities thing until you start to pull it apart carefully. Which is what Caleb loves to do… 🙂 This topic actually came from a concern from one of our listeners, and we’ve heard it echoed elsewhere – that uncertainty of...

Not every Christian couple feels guilty about sex, but a surprising number do. In fact, we’ve even been asked the question, “I’m married now, but I really, really look forward to and enjoy sex with my husband. Is that OK or is there something wrong with that?” To give you some context here, our moral convictions are that sex is intended for married couples only but inside of that marriage bond, it is intended to be enjoyed and explored in a way that grows and deepens and becomes a richer and ri...

You and your spouse are arguing about something small. Whose family to visit at Christmas. Whether the kids do music or sports this year. How to spend the unexpected tax refund. The fight ends with one of you saying, “Fine, do it your way,” and walking off. The decision is made. Nothing is actually settled. That is a power struggle. And in Christian marriages, power struggles often have an extra layer underneath the surface fight: an unresolved question about what kind of marriage you are suppo...