A spouse should complete you… right? Your emotional needs, companion needs, physical needs… if your spouse is meeting them, then that is the right spouse… right? And therefore, if your spouse isn’t meeting your needs… wrong person… right? Wrong.

“I give up,” he said, throwing up his arms.  He was ready to leave the session.  But before he walked out, I asked, “Can you tell me what just happened? Why are you giving up?" He told me, “Look, we have struggled during this marriage.  Not just now.

Your plan to save your marriage has hit a wall. Maybe things were moving forward, or maybe they have been stalled from the beginning.  But your plan?  It hit the wall. First, let me assure you that this is not unusual.  In fact, it is typical.

No, a toddler didn’t take to pounding on my keyboard.  And no, my new puppy didn’t paw my keyboard… well, at least on for the title. Yep, I meant it: DWYADAYGWYAG. But to back up, have you ever noticed how we get stuck in repeating patterns?

A podcast listener (accurately) noted that I don’t talk too much about love.  The listener wanted to just get back to the love they had shared at one time, and wanted to know how to fall back in love. I responded with, “What do you mean by ‘love’?

“I’ll try,” my client said in response to multiple suggestions about actions to take.  But each week, the “try” never happened.  Just a couple of days ago, I got the same response to another suggestion. Before that,

Surely you can convince your spouse to work on your marriage… right?  Yes, your marriage is in crisis.  But if you say the right thing… or say it in the right way… or convince, beg, cajole, argue, and somehow shift their thinking,

Do you ever start on some new habit you heard about, maybe about the best diet or exercise, only to find that it isn’t true later on?  And have you ever discovered it was actually even worse for you? (Just think about margarine or “low fat” diets,

“It’s your choice,” I reassured her.  It was a call I picked up between sessions.  The person told me she had been following my System, but wasn’t sure if she could keep it up.  She wasn’t sure if it mattered, so she was thinking about quitting.

Many a marriage crisis emerges when a spouse declares, “I’m not happy.”  It is really a statement about discontent with the relationship. But many respond by assuming they now know what they need to do:  make their spouse happy.