Let's Talk About Love, Sex & Infidelity

You quit drinking, and suddenly you can’t stop eating. You put the phone down, and the anxiety becomes unbearable. Maybe it’s the wine after a fight with your partner. Maybe it’s the fridge when loneliness hits, or two hours of scrolling the minute you get home from work, right when it’s time to slow down and be together. It looks like a food problem, a drinking problem or a phone problem, and you...

Why does porn addiction keep coming back, even after a sincere promise to stop? Most people who struggle with porn try to quit through willpower. They white-knuckle it. They install blockers. They promise themselves, and sometimes their partner, that this time will be different. Then a bad day hits, or a fight, or a wave of loneliness, and the part of them that reaches for porn fires faster than t...

You built a career on being strong, steady and composed. So why does your partner keep saying they feel alone? A lot of men tell me some version of the same story. They work hard. They think of the family first. They wish they got a little more appreciation for everything they carry. And at home, their partner describes a relationship that feels lonely. Both of them are telling the truth, and neit...

Nothing is physically wrong, yet the moment sex starts to matter, your body stops cooperating. Why? In this solo episode, Todd Creager, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and relationship coach with more than 30 years in practice, opens a series on men's issues with one of the most common calls he gets: sexual performance anxiety. Men who reach out are stressed, frustrated and often carry...

You can name the wound. You can trace it back to where it started. So why does the same nerve still get hit, and why do you still react the same way? In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager talks about a pattern he sees often in his practice: people who have spent years in therapy, who understand their childhood and their patterns, and who still get flooded when t...

What if the reaction you have with your partner isn't really you — it's a part of you doing a job it took on when you were five years old? In his yearly anniversary episode, Todd Creager marks 42 years of marriage by turning the lens on himself. Using the internal family systems model, he walks through the difference between our protective parts, our wounded parts, and the Self — the par...

Your partner hasn't finished the sentence yet, and your stomach has already dropped. Your jaw is clenched. There's a tightness across your chest that wasn't there ten seconds ago. That isn't stress. That's a part of you speaking through your body before your thinking mind gets involved. In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager explains why...

Your partner reaches for you, and something inside pulls back. Not all of you. A part of you. In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager talks about the young part that decided long ago that if anyone got close enough to really see you, they wouldn't like what they found. He calls that part an exile — a child who absorbed a message like "I'm not worth...

What happens when trauma therapy stalls, even when you're doing everything right? In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager pulls back the curtain on how he works with clients, and why pairing two respected approaches, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and IFS (Internal Family Systems), helps people heal faster than either one alone. Todd sta...

Why does your child's meltdown sometimes bring out a version of you that sounds exactly like your own parent? Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager breaks down self-led parenting, a concept rooted in Internal Family Systems, and why so many parents end up reacting instead of responding when a child pushes their buttons. Todd separates the wounded, protective parts of us — the manager, wh...

Why does a small comment from your spouse sometimes set off a reaction that feels way bigger than the moment calls for? Todd Creager, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 30 years of experience, breaks down what's actually happening when your partner triggers you. In this solo episode, Todd explains that the size of your reaction is the clue. When your heart races, your jaw tigh...

When your partner shuts down in the middle of a hard conversation, it's easy to read it as punishment — as coldness, stubbornness, or not caring. What if that's almost never what's actually happening? In this episode, Todd Creager — Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 35 years of experience — takes a closer look at stonewalling, one of the patterns John and Julie Gottman ide...

What if the fight you keep having with your spouse isn't really about dishes, money, or who said what last Tuesday? What if the two of you aren't even fighting each other at all? In this solo episode, Todd Creager — licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and relationship coach with over 30 years of experience working with couples — walks you through a framework he uses with couples every...

What if the thing you've been doing to fix your relationship is actually what's keeping it stuck? Most couples hit a wall. You've read the books, planned the date nights, promised to listen better — and somehow you're still in the same spot. More exhausted, more frustrated, and further apart than before. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. In this solo episode, To...

What if the thing getting in the way of your sex life isn't a physical problem — it's a protective one? In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager takes a candid, grounded look at what happens when your inner critic shows up in the bedroom. Whether it sounds like Am I good enough? Is my partner enjoying this? or it shows up as numbness, avoidance, or a tota...

Is jealousy making you feel out of control — or controlling? Before you try to talk yourself out of it, it's worth understanding what it's actually doing for you. In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager takes an honest, compassionate look at jealousy — not as a character flaw or a red flag, but as a protective response rooted in older, unhealed pain. If...

Do you go blank, get quiet, or feel like you've completely left your body the moment conflict shows up in your relationship? There's a reason that happens — and it has nothing to do with not caring. In this solo episode, Todd digs into one of the most misunderstood patterns in long-term relationships: shutting down during conflict. Whether you go still and silent or reach for your phone,...

What does cheating actually do to the person doing it? Most conversations about infidelity focus on the betrayed partner — and for good reason. But in this episode, Todd Creager turns the lens inward, looking at what happens inside the body and mind of the person having the affair. It's part of his ongoing series on how cheating cheats the cheater, and this episode zeroes in on something rare...

Have you ever wondered why someone who's having an affair can still feel profoundly alone? In this episode, Todd Creager continues his series on how cheating cheats the cheater — and this time he looks at one of the deepest costs of infidelity: the loss of authentic intimacy. Using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework, Todd explains why keeping a secret doesn't just strain a relat...

What if the person most harmed by an affair isn't the one who was betrayed — but the one who did the betraying? In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager returns to one of his most talked-about topics: the psychological cost of infidelity to the person who cheats. Drawing on over 30 years of working with couples, and through the lens of Internal Family Systems...

What happens between you and your partner in bed may have less to do with technique and more to do with how you're wired for connection. In this solo episode, Todd Creager — licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 30 years of experience working with couples — breaks down the four attachment styles and what they look like during sex and physical intimacy. Most people have heard of the...

What if the part of you that shuts down sexually — or the part that keeps reaching for porn — isn't a character flaw? What if it's trying to protect you? In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager explains why forcing your way through sexual performance anxiety — or trying to stop compulsive sexual behavior through sheer willpower — almost always backfires....

If you've discovered a partner's affair and wondered why the pain feels like it might actually kill you, you're not overreacting. In this episode, Todd explains exactly why betrayal trauma hits so deep — and what healing actually looks like. When an affair comes to light, the shock is real and the cause is clear. But what makes it feel so all-consuming is that it often wakes up some...

Do you and your partner keep circling the same argument, no matter how many times you've tried to resolve it? The problem might not be what either of you is saying — it might be who is actually doing the talking. In this solo episode, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Todd Creager introduces a concept from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy that helps explain why so many couples get s...

After discovering a partner's affair, many people ask the same question: Am I going crazy?   You love this person deeply — and part of you wants to walk out the door. That contradiction isn't a sign something is wrong with you. It's what happens when betrayal creates an internal war between competing parts of who you are. In this solo episode, Todd Creager breaks down what he calls...