Episodes

Did you know that some of the very things you do to try to save your distressed marriage are in actual fact destroying it? Seriously. What is even more shocking is that they exist in every marriage. One of those things that we see everyday is called the pursue-withdraw cycle. Very simply, you have: A pursuer: I am going to keep coming at you because I am afraid of losing you. Negative emotional connection feels better than no connection. And a distancer: I am overwhelmed, I can’t fix this. M...

So, you want less sex than your spouse does. Is that a problem? Well, it turns out that’s a question for your spouse. But if it is a problem, today we’re going to help you navigate your way through this delicate issue. Maybe you haven’t heard the terminology ‘low desire versus high desire’. Many marriages will have sexual desire discrepancies in which one spouse desires more sex than the other spouse. Often, but not always, the husband is high desire and the wife is low desire. If your marriag...

What do you do when you want to fix your marriage and your spouse doesn’t think there’s a problem? Or maybe sees the problem but refuses to work on it? This is a really tough situation to be in where you are really worried about your marriage but your spouse isn’t on board – for whatever reason – with doing anything about fixing it. This is actually not an uncommon situation. In fact, the research shows that it is a common marital situation for an unhappy spouse to be married to a spouse that ...

Nobody is exempt from hard times. Sometimes we get hit as a couple and other times it is really just our spouse that bears the brunt of the burden. How can you draw alongside and support your spouse during those hard times? There is this innate advantage to being a couple in that we have the ability to lift each other up when we fall down. The proverb in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall,...

We had a couple of people reach out and mention how they got into emotional affairs on Facebook – and almost into physical affairs. They really freaked themselves out and it’s thrown a real wrench into their marriage but they’re working on things now. While we’re not anti-social media, it’s time to realize the huge impact it has on marriage. Social media is quite a new thing. Given that we don’t have our parents to warn us about the dangers, we have to prepare ourselves for it and also figure o...

The difference between negativity and positivity in marriage is the difference between a marriage filled with nagging, complaining, and criticism versus a marriage that is filled with affirmation, gratitude, and positive emotions. Let’s look at how negativity can be damaging to our marriages and then look at some specific strategies for bringing positivity into play. Negativity Impacts Mood and Marital Satisfaction We may not even realize how the negativity we are expressing in our marriages ...

This is Part 2 of the series on Body Image and Sexual Functioning. If you have not read the first part, do so here. In the first half of this topic, we talked about the impact of social media, culture, and pornography on self-image and sexual self-consciousness. Today we talk about how you can help yourself and your spouse overcome issues with body image and thereby improve your sexual satisfaction. Improving Body Image and Sexual Satisfaction First, recognize the buffering effect of marriage....

Body image is a very sensitive subject. So we’re going to be really gentle, but we’re going be challenging you to do some serious thinking about your self-image and the expectations you’re bringing to your sexual intimacy. After all, how you think about your body is having a huge impact on your intimacy and sexual confidence.

So, we all know the old saying, “You can’t change your spouse, you can only change yourself”. Well, apparently that saying isn’t 100% true. You can actually leverage your self-care to feel better about yourself and consequently, improve the well being of your marriage. Self-care is integral to the health of our marriages. There are not a lot of studies to 100% prove the link between self-care and marriage where, for example, they study exercise and measure marital outcomes, but we want to look ...

Respect. We all want it, and we don’t want any exceptions – but we all know how easy we can turn it off and get our ugly on when things aren’t going our way! Respect is on the decline, generally, in our culture, but one of the most important places we can show respect is in our marriages – both as husbands and wives. It’s not something that is talked about very often; so today we will look at the specific dangers of contempt (lack of respect) and how you can move your marriage towards greater r...

It’s easy to feel entitled to certain rights and benefits from our marriages. That entitlement always seems to be there but is never helpful in creating a great marriage. Take hope though, there is a better way – it’s called sacrifice. Gary Thomas’ book “Sacred Marriage” speaks to this when he asks the question, ‘What if marriage was more about making you holy than making you happy’? He confronts the idea that we think marriage should make us all goo-goo ga-ga happy but instead we run smack int...

This is a big question. Are you lonely in your marriage? That is not a fun place to be, but there is good news – growing your intimacy can expel loneliness from your marriage and stop it from creeping back in. There is a bit of a chain reaction when it comes to loneliness in marriage. It’s clear from the research that we’ll look at in a bit that loneliness can arise from a lack of intimacy. Loneliness and intimacy are affected in turn by the quality of communication and emotion skills in the ...

It’s not rocket science to know that rejecting your spouse is a really, really painful thing to do. But, think about the opposite for a moment: if I asked you to sit down and list the things you do regularly to communicate your unconditional acceptance of your spouse: how long would that list be? First though, let’s start with the opposite of acceptance-rejection. I think it is clear to everyone that it hurts to be rejected, but it is worth knowing how severe that impact is in marriage. A stud...

There are some things you can do without in marriage – and still have a pretty good marriage. Commitment is NOT one of those things. It is foundational. If you don’t have it, your marriage is toast. But, the good news is, even if you don’t have it right now, you can choose to be committed today and start building this essential piece into your marriage. There is a lot of content out there about marriage. A lot of people are talking about a diversity of things in the world of marriage. Some of i...

This is the second part of a topic that’s pretty common and can be pretty difficult for a lot of couples. It’s really just the idea that the wife is running the marriage and family and the husband is the breadwinner but not really engaged or involved as much as they would like him to be. We’re assuming you want to change that. Last week we looked at the wife’s role in this scenario. Today we are challenging the men. Before you get defensive, husband, know that we realize what a horrible place i...

Are you frustrated that your husband doesn't help with the kids? This episode explores the surprising reasons why he might be disengaged, including the common "demand-withdraw" pattern and the concept of "maternal gatekeeping," where a mother's actions may unintentionally discourage her partner's involvement. We discuss how to break this cycle by changing the conversation from blame to collaboration. Learn practical strategies for discussing the division of labor, sharing domestic demands, and w...

If you’re living with another human being in this wonderful institution called marriage, then there is a good chance that at some point in your experience as a couple, your spouse is going to experience anxiety. I’ve seen this over and over and believe me, some couples handle it much better than others. Here are some how-to’s and how-not-to’s. This topic was actually spawned by a conversation Caleb had some time ago with a frustrated husband. We’ll call him John. John’s wife was really struggli...

Perhaps you’ve never gone through an affair in your marriage. Or perhaps you have. Have you ever felt the gut wrenching kick to your heart, or spent sleepless nights wondering where he is or what he’s doing? Or maybe you’re completely numb and not feeling anything anymore… There is nothing quite like the pain of betrayal. But life doesn’t end there. Even if it feels like it should. So how do you move on? Slowly and carefully and painfully and deeply. I would really recommend that if somethi...

It is a well-researched fact that having a baby usually has a negative impact on your marital satisfaction. Let’s look at the whole early parenting thing and draw out some important lessons for married couples who are parents or about to become parents. As you transition into parenthood, you’ll want to have some pretty specific parenting and marriages strategies to make sure that mom, babe, and dad are all taken care of because babies make for busy lives! They take a lot of time. But there is ...

We had this idea that we were trying to figure out. If you get really fanatical about church and ministry, does that form a point for your marriage to rally around? Or does that investment come at the expense of your marriage? This is, in part, prompted by the observation that a lot of highly involved spiritual leaders end up with failed marriages. We don’t want to get into the whole issue of fallen pastors and spiritual leaders and the psychology behind that, although that is a very interestin...

Do you ever NOT deal with something between you and your spouse, hoping it will just blow over or that it’s a passing issue? And perhaps life does sail smoothly for a while and then later, BOOM, it comes backs to bite you!? Making it a principle in your marriage to talk about issues sooner rather than later will save you a lot of headaches. For example, it is my nature to procrastinate (or avoid) dealing with issues and just hope they’ll blow over or go away. Unfortunately, it never seems to w...

Ouch, these were painful for me, as a wife, to find out. I don’t even want to think of the times I’ve done these things… AND didn’t even know if it was painful to Caleb. You know, I went through the 3 Best Ways to Ruin Your Wife’s Day and totally understood EVERY ONE of them. I could relate, and fully understand how any one of them would ruin my day. But, when it came to the things that ruined my husband’s day I actually got defensive and figured that the things weren’t actually that bad. That...

Obviously, there will be quite a bit of satire in this post and we don’t actually want you to ruin your wife’s day, but the serious part is this: we want to highlight some key gender differences between guys and gals. Perhaps some of you are like Caleb – you came to marriage having been raised in an all-boys family, and educated in an all-boys school while going to an all-boys church… only to discover that women have certain sensitivities that aren’t even on your male radar…. Before we start, ...

I take Verlynda for granted sometimes. There’s no escaping the truth. In fact, if you pause for a moment I’m sure you’ll have to admit the same with regards to your spouse. What’s odd is that it happens so subtly. But when I finally clue in, it’s so obvious. Kind of the like the proverbial frog in the pot. So let this post serve as a self-check—possibly even a wake-up call—for taking your marriage for granted. It has been suggested that we start taking our marriages for granted around 3.5 yea...