It happens.  In the middle of a marriage crisis, you can find yourself surrounded by negativity.  A spouse negative about the marriage.  Friends and family negative about your efforts to save your marriage.  You negative, well,

In last week’s podcast, I discussed healing your own resentments.  This week, we turn to dealing with your spouse’s resentments.  Let’s be clear:  really, this is about helping your spouse to heal resentments.  You can’t actually do the healing.

Resentments are the deep infections of anger.  When anger is unresolved, it becomes a systemic poison.  But do remember that anger is really a result of hurt and fear/threat.  It just comes out as anger. When the hurt goes unaddressed and the anger fes...

A while back, I was talking with someone who was struggling with his marriage.  I made a couple of suggestions.  He pushed back.  He said, “It’s not like I’m not doing anything!” “Great,” I said, “Tell me what you are doing.

We don’t mean to, but we do.  We fool ourselves.  Yep, humans can be dishonest with others, but we can also be dishonest with ourselves.  In fact, we do it every day. It’s bad enough we can be dishonest with others.  But ourselves?  Yep.

Pretty much every day, I hear from someone telling me about a controlling marriage situation.  Either they are controlling or they are being controlled.  Either way, the underlying dynamics are the same. Control is a hallmark of dysfunctional relations...

Feeling like quitting is not the same as making a decision to quit.  One is an emotional response to the struggle.  The other is a rational decision.  Unless, of course, you confuse the two. It is true in all of life.  We can feel like quitting a job,

The phone rings.  I answer.  The person on the other end blurts, “I CAN’T SAVE MY MARRIAGE!”  And as calmly as possible, I add “Yet.” Uh? “I can’t save my marriage YET.” Uh? Many times, people contact me to tell me their marriage can’t be saved.

Whenever I am alone on a long drive, I try to answer all the calls I can.  This past weekend gave me another opportunity.  I delivered my son to college and had an 8 hour drive home. I answered a call as I was leaving the mountains.

Confidence and capability.  Two big blocks holding people back from saving their marriage — unnecessarily! People call or write me and tell me they are absolutely ready to do whatever it takes to save their marriage. . .