Normalize therapy.

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 disc...

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...

Back to school means a change in routine for many families. Summer holidays are over (or, will be shortly) and once September arrives we’re into a new rhythm. Verlynda and I thought that this adjustment was the perfect opportunity to make sure you prioritize your marriage as you adjust to the new routine. Back To School: Back To Normal This is the last of our shorter episodes this summer, so we’re...

Another quick summer episode here as we take a break from our usual programming. And, contrary to what you might assume from the title, we’re not going to ask you to do anything illegal! A Graffiti Tag for Your Marriage Our graffiti tag is simple. It just looks like C+V. But we have fun putting it in different places. We finger-paint it onto dirty windows, in frosty windows, even under our first I...

Marriage can seem pretty complicated. There are scores of websites, hundreds of books and thousands of research articles. And yet folks — perhaps even yourselves – are still struggling. Sticky Notes Are Simple Sometimes it’s nice just to back off from all that complexity. Think simple thoughts. Do simple things that make a difference. In this week’s shorter summer episode (still on holidays...

I think that one of the lamest things to do is to break up a relationship by text message. Lame, lame, lame. But you’re married now and looking for a way to keep the flame alive, right? So, today as part of our mini-series of short summer episodes we’re looking at a redemptive use of text messages: romancing your spouse! Romantic Texts Help You Keep Connected Text messaging works great...

Most wedding speeches are lame. There, I said it. Somebody needed to. We have a lot of listeners tuning into our podcast because they’re getting ready for marriage. If that is you, and if you are the groom, in particular, I would like you to heed the advice herein. Epic Wedding Speech-making Your wedding speech is an opportunity to be legendary. The competition is nearly non-existent (think,...

Have you ever been in that place? You know, you come home from work… the house is a mess… you don’t want to be there… you’re yelling at the kids… you’re yelling at your spouse because your environment is a mess but it’s like your inside is a mess and your emotions are a mess too. Nobody likes to live like that. Not only that – it’s not good for you either. That’s why we interviewed Marla Cilley ,...

Even if it feels impossible at this moment, I want you to know that it is possible to rebuilt trust, to create safety and to restore intimacy to your marriage. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or simple. I can’t even promise that your trust will never be broken again. But I am saying that it is possible. In every human relationship, probably without exception, there are moments of betrayal. Th...

So, what if your parents didn’t have a great marriage? Or, maybe other folks who served as role models in your life haven’t modeled a healthy, thriving marriage? Are you hooped, or is there hope? Let’s figure out if there’s any hope. If you are in this situation of having poor role models, you are not alone. This is such a common, shared experience. We all try to do our best as a couple, but even...

Because debt reduction is fundamentally a mental issue, not a financial one, this may be a different take on debt reduction that what you might be used to hearing. We’ll give some practical strategies and tactics, but first let’s figure out HOW we think about debt. Finances are a major stressor for most marriages, so here is a checkpoint for you personally. You might already know this, but if you’...

Ever get nailed by a surprise bill? Yeah, you knew insurance was due for the year but you thought it wasn’t till next month? This episode is about pain relief! More specifically, relief from the impact of those bigger, occasional, or annual bills. Not only do we need to keep track of our everyday expenses and budget for them, we also need to set up the part of our budget that deals with mid and lo...

Today we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of HOW to create a family budget. We’ve done budgets and had to revisit them. We haven’t always been consistent with keeping a budget with moves and job transitions. But when we are budgeting, the stress in our marriage is much lower! First, let’s clarify what we know from what we don’t know. We know: That there are many sound, recommended financial practi...

Negotiating a family budget can be a real fire-starter for some couples. We may know we need a budget and want to live within our means, but the fights that the discussions cause can be so painful, that it’s easier to avoid them. We want to change that today. For Caleb and I, a lot of our own frustration about money in the past has been because we never got ourselves on the same page. He would get...

Budgeting can feel like such a ball and chain. Why is it such a pain point for so many of us? This is the first article in a mini-series on Family Budgeting. Today we make a case for WHY you need to budget. Usually, every relationship has a spender and a saver. Caleb is our spender, and I am our saver/budgeter! It has taken us a while to negotiate that. For example, we both want a retirement fund....

Life is busy. So busy. But so often we let other people and other things run our schedules and in the process of allowing this to happen: what really matters to us gets bumped. Like time with our spouse…Date nights…Fun nights…Just time to hang out. What can we do to change that? We all hit phases in life that are busy. It is totally normal ! If this is you right now, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean y...

Why the First Orgasm Feels So Out of Reach If you are a married woman who has never had an orgasm, or who has struggled to get there consistently, you are not broken. You are not the exception. You are, clinically speaking, the norm. Research shows that most women take significantly longer than their husbands to reach orgasm, and many wives spend the first several years of marriage unsure of what...

We’ve noticed that a lot of marriages take a very traditional approach where all the work HE does is money-earning, and all the work SHE does in unpaid – and usually unacknowledged. So we ask, is this a good thing, or is it a problem? What happens for those wives who take on more and more, and might even do all the housework AND are employed full time? How does that work? If you are a wife that is...

OK. So you had ANOTHER fight – another disagreement. It’s like, man, are we ever going to stop fighting? Remember, the goal is not achieving zero disagreements, it’s learning to disagree productively! Caleb and I recently had a disagreement. Caleb told the story in our podcast episode: “So I remember a recent disagreement we had. We were actually talking about a Sunday school lesson you were...

Courting your wife means continuing the maintenance behaviors that build admiration, affection, and respect, the same behaviors that brought you together, applied every week of your marriage. It is not about expensive dates or anniversary gestures. It is about how you live with each other on a regular Tuesday afternoon. The ten ways to court your wife in this article are drawn from twenty years of...

My own daughter asked me today, “So, why do people do pre-marital counseling?” She’s 13. I’m glad she’s asking. You are likely wondering the same thing if you’re reading this and so I’d like to make a case for it. Not just for my own benefit – I do offer pre-marital counseling/coaching – but for your sake especially. You see, it does help . A lot. Is Pre-Marital Counseling Worth It? One meta...

I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would I want to support my spouse when we’re fighting? Well, because you want to stay married, that’s why. That’s the “brutally-loving” truth! But, there’s more. It makes fighting productive. Yes. That’s right. I mean it. It actually makes the conflict helpful for your marriage. Now, I could go down a rabbit trail about why fighting is good for your marria...

I read a comic strip once about pregnancy and childbirth that had the title “Help, my entertainment center is now a juice bar!” While it struck my funny bone, there is so much truth in that statement. We may think that adding our firstborn to the family will be all hunky-dory, fun and games, but the reality is it usually results in a DECREASE in marital quality. Navigating the relationship i...

Do you find yourself always taking the blame for everything? I mean, not so much in the sense that your spouse won’t accept any, but that you just find that YOU blame yourself for everything? Even your spouse thinks you take too much responsibility for things? Last week we discussed differentiation . Remember, differentiation is the process of learning to simultaneously separate from and connect w...

In marriage, we need to strike a healthy balance between independence and dependence on each other. This is where we sort out the sticky stuff like needing you as my spouse versus just being needy – being an individual without taking away from a sense of ‘us’. Differentiation is a key paradox of healthy marriage and is one of those concepts that when the skills are embodied takes a marriage...