Normalize therapy.

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...

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...

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 hav...

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 c...

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 spo...

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...

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 t...

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 h...

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 Ma...

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 satisfactio...

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...

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 a...

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...

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 . Lonel...

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 t...

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 ma...

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 c...

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 collaborati...

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 Cale...

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 m...

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 da...

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 fall...

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)...

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...