The Save The Marriage Podcast

You are working on your marriage.  You reach out toward your spouse. . . only to feel rejected. After that stops you in your tracks.  You start doubting yourself, your efforts, your plan. . . . STOP. What if your spouse was not really intending to reject you? What if something else was going on? What if I told you that almost always (I would say "always," but then someone would work hard to prove...

“Should I even keep fighting for my marriage?”, asks “G.” Oof, that word… “fighting.”  I hear it often.  But so many times, when someone says they are “fighting for” their marriage, they end up “fighting against” their spouse.  The spouse who doesn’t see how to move forward. Which is rarely helpful for the process.  But I watch person after person “suit up” to do battle, not even sure on what they...

First, let me be clear:  if you are actively saving your marriage, working toward a better relationship... stop reading and go do something else!  This won't apply to you! But if you want to save your marriage... but for some reason, you just can't get moving... hang with me!  YOU are the one that will benefit from this episode.  That "some reason" is what I want to take a look at. In this episode...

In my Save The Marriage System Quick-Start Guide, I show the 8 distinct stages of a marriage crisis. But those are the stages of the crisis.  There are also stages to your awareness of the crisis. This is the point where you are aware of the crisis, the level of the crisis, and the potential threat of the crisis.  And just to let you know:  you are NOT at stage 1.  That would be Asleep.  This is t...

You've heard the story about the frog and the kettle. It's the slowly heating water that sneaks up on the frog before it can react. Turns out, frogs are smarter than that. They jump when things get dangerous. But the metaphor survives because it describes something we do in marriage. Except our kettle doesn't heat up. It cools down. Most couples hit a pause button at some point — kids, career, a s...

Most people wait for hope to show up. They treat it like weather — something that either arrives or doesn't, something outside their control. And when it doesn't show up, they take that as a sign. Maybe it's over. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Maybe there's just nothing left to work with. But what if hope isn't something you wait for? What if it's something you build? Waiting for hope is passive. B...

She did everything right. When her marriage hit a crisis, she and her husband went to therapy. They showed up every week. They stayed with it for months. They did what you're supposed to do. And then the therapist told them she didn't think she could help them. Nothing was working. She didn't see a path forward. They walked out feeling like failures. Like they had somehow flunked marriage therapy....

If your spouse has said the word divorce — or you're afraid they're about to — the next 72 hours matter more than you might think. Not because you can fix everything that quickly. But because what you do in this window will either create a path forward or make recovery significantly harder. In this episode I talk about what's actually happening in this moment — in your brain, in your body, and in...

People ask me this all the time. And given that my website is called Save The Marriage, most assume they already know my answer. They're wrong. No. Not every marriage can (or should) be saved. I want to be straight about that. There are situations where saving the marriage is not the goal, and pursuing it would be a mistake. If that's where you are, this episode will tell you clearly. But here's w...

Most people who contact me have already decided. They've looked at where things stand — the distance, the silence, the failed attempts — and they've reached a conclusion: it's too late. The damage is too deep. Nothing is going to work. Here's the problem with that conclusion. It's almost certainly wrong. Not because things aren't serious. They may be very serious. But because there's a critical di...

No, this isn't some electrical engineering idea. Instead, it has more to do with human nature. We often want to find the switch, the on/off switch for some situation. Turn off stress by doing this, turn on fitness by doing this. On or off. With a switch. This causes us to be looking for some super-easy, simple solution... often to complex issues. Particularly when it is a marriage crisis. A marria...

You weren't trying to blow it up. You weren't trying to say the thing that sent everything sideways. And yet — there you were, reactive and regretful, wondering how you got there so fast. That's dysregulation. And it is not a character flaw. It's not weakness. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was wired to do — except it can't tell the difference between a threat in the wild and a loo...

Are you and your spouse addicted to blame?  Do you find yourself pointing your finger toward your spouse, sure that it is really your spouse's fault (and is your spouse doing the same thing?)? Or maybe you are just blaming yourself.  You see this whole mess as YOUR fault. Blame has one single outcome -- STUCK.  It robs you of power (and steals away responsibility). Blame is highly corrosive to con...

Sounds so philosophical, doesn't it?  Your "created past."  What is that? We all do it.  We remember things based on our emotional state, not on what happened. When someone hurts us, we think back on the other times they hurt us.  When someone is kind and loving, we think back on the other loving times. When a couple is connected, they remember connection.  When they are disconnected, they remembe...

You know something is wrong. You might even know, in some general sense, what needs to change. But you're still stuck. Maybe you've tried things. Maybe you've researched, listened, read. Maybe you've had the conversations, made the gestures, given it time. And yet... here you are. There's a reason for that. And it's not what most people assume. Most people in a marriage crisis think they're stuck...

Most people assume a marriage falls apart because something went wrong. A betrayal. A blow-up. A moment where everything changed. But that's rarely how it actually happens. What I've watched — in couple after couple over 25 years — is something much quieter. Much slower. And in a lot of ways, much harder to reverse, because it's almost impossible to see while it's happening. There's a path. A prog...

My high school science teacher almost helped me make TNT in the chemistry lab! That's how this episode starts. But it's not really about chemistry. It's about physics. Specifically, it's about momentum... and why the same force that keeps a relationship strong is also the force that quietly destroys it without anyone noticing until it's almost too late. Here's the thing most couples never consider...

It almost seems redundant, doesn't it? If you have limited beliefs, they could limit something -- say, for example, your marriage. I say IF you have limited beliefs. Full disclosure: We ALL have limited beliefs that are limiting us. We ALL have blind spots, assumptions, even untrue beliefs. We just don't notice them. And we pay a price for that. Especially since we usually fail to notice or addres...

Probably more than you want to admit. I've been playing pickleball for about four years. Started when my wife and I moved to a new community — we were looking for something to do and a way to meet people. Neither of us expected it to become a weekly ritual. But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something I couldn't shake. The patterns showing up on that court? I'd seen every single one o...

Einstein said we can't solve our problems with the same thinking that created them. And if you've been working on your marriage—trying hard, putting in effort, doing everything you can think of—but nothing's actually changing? You might be spinning the wheel. Pursuing harder. Forcing conversations. Making grand gestures. Reading every article, watching every video, trying every technique the algor...

I hear it a lot. Sometimes from someone in the middle of a marriage crisis, trying to make sense of the pain. Sometimes from someone who hasn't hit crisis yet, but carries the belief quietly in the background — like a safety net they don't know they're depending on. "If it's meant to be, it will work out." It sounds like wisdom. It sounds like acceptance. If you've thought it yourself, I understan...

"I'm just Type A—that's why we clash." "I'm an Alpha male. This is just who I am." "I'm anxiously attached. I can't help how I react." I hear these statements constantly in my coaching work. And every time, I watch the same thing happen: growth stops. The label becomes a shield. The framework becomes a prison. And the marriage stays stuck. In this episode, I'm examining three of the most popular p...

In this episode of the podcast, I explore why marriages feel empty even when couples are still together. The answer isn't about compatibility or whether you "married the right person." It's about three essential elements that every strong marriage needs, and what happens when they disappear. I'm bringing together insights from Brené Brown, Tony Robbins, and Jennifer Wallace's new book Mattering to...

You've decided to save your marriage. You start the process, maybe even make some progress. Then, BAM!  You hit a wall. A wall of fear.  Fears that sabotage your efforts, pull you back from your plan, get you to give up. But those fears do not have to be the end of your efforts.  In fact, those fears need not do anything to your efforts.  Fears and actions are not the same.  Fears are fears.  When...

When successful men feel powerful at work but powerless at home, something fundamental is missing. In this episode, Mitchell Osmond, leadership consultant and host of the Dad Nation podcast, shares his journey from rock bottom — facing divorce, depression, and 60 pounds overweight — to creating a framework that helps couples move beyond being "roommates sharing rings." Mitchell introduces the RISE...