The Save The Marriage Podcast

My car is in for service. It’s just regular maintenance today (fingers crossed).  But there were other cars there for repairs. Which had me thinking…. What does service mean for a relationship?  How about repair for a marriage? The more I thought about it, the more the metaphor fit.  If I do regular maintenance on my car, it by no means guarantees that it won’t break down.  But it does increase the chances of avoiding a roadside breakdown. Let’s be fair:  even the best-maintained vehicles can still break down, still need a repair.  But let’s also be clear that if...

Is your marriage infected by the "zombie virus?"  Do you find your relationship to be the "walking dead?"  Are emotions lost and connections missing?  Do you and your spouse respond to each other with "zombie grunts?" The infection can be stopped.  You can fight the infection and heal the relationship. Don't allow the big 4 symptoms of a zombie infection to overtake your relationship's immune system.  Fight back and restore your relationship to the living and the healthy. Okay, to be fair, this is a “tip o’ the hat” to Halloween… but still an important subject! Listen below. RELATED RESOURCES: Pause Button Marria...

There are some questions that can help a marriage.  There are many thoughts that can improve your relationship. But there is one question that will suck the life right out of a marriage.  And it is a question you don't even need to ask another person, in order to do the damage. In fact, another person won't make a difference for this question.  It is a question lurking within you. Oh, and did I mention that another question, similar to this question -- but very different in direction -- can help restore a relationship? Change the question, change the frame.  Get...

Do you find yourself and/or your spouse anchored to a problem by anxiety or anger?  Guess what? Anger and Anxiety -- they come from the same space!  One is the inner, the other is the outer expression of fear/hurt/threat. And wow, can it ever anchor both of you to the problems -- keeping you from moving to solution. Why does the Anxiety-Anger become an anchor? How do you cut the line and get back on-track to healing your marriage? Listen to today's podcast to learn more on releasing the Anxiety-Anger Anchor. RELATED RESOURCE: Anger and Resentment Why Yo...

Sometimes, people tell me that as they are trying to save their marriage, they actually feel like they are trying to earn back the love of a spouse.  They want to know if that is what it really is -- earning back the love (and even trust). The short answer is NO, that is not the goal. A slightly longer answer is that if you are working to earn back love, you are also working on building a unsustainable and not-very-healthy relationship. That is my topic for this week's Save The Marriage Podcast:  why you are NOT trying to earn ba...

It may be an odd preoccupation, but I pour over the scuba accident reports.  I like to see how the accidents happened, what led to the accident, and how it might have been prevented. The same approach is taken to studying scuba accidents as is applied to airline accident and medical accidents.  And it should be applied to marriage crises. There's a theory of accidents in systems that is called the "Swiss Cheese Theory of Accidents."  Another description would be "multiple causations in spite of prevention systems."  Imagine a bunch of slices of swiss cheese.  Usually, a slice with holes in it...

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, about everything you are doing (it is easy to slip into self-blame and self-doubt). Negativity comes from several sources:  fear, protectiveness, anger, resentment, lack of understanding, and lack of clarity. Regardless of the source, you may find yourself reacting poorly -- negatively impacting your capacity to save and improve your marriage. Is there another alternative? You bet there is! I would suggest four ways to re...

I get asked this on a regular basis, both from people who are in the middle of wanting to save their marriage, and those who are wanting to leave.  This is what I get asked:  "What does it matter if we save it or not?" In this episode, I cover some of the negative impacts that come with ending a marriage. Not to scare, but to clarify. Why clarify? Because when we are in pain, we tend to look for a way away from the pain. We tend to not think about those longer term effects. And then, we find ou...

Slowly, slowly... you are making progress!  You keep working on turning your marriage around... and it is working! Maybe you think it isn't moving fast enough.  Or maybe you have just been holding all of those emotions, fears, and hurts, in... and they start to grow.  You can feel it! But you try hard not to let it out.  To keep on moving forward.  To keep on making connections. Until... Maybe it was something small... Maybe it was yet one more little thing (or even a medium thing... maybe even a big thing!)... And BOOM!  You blow up! You use a tone...

You may just be on a fishing expedition, and not even realize it! If you are trying to get your spouse to respond, trying to get some feedback from your spouse, you are on a fishing expedition! You probably won't attract what you want.  And you may scare away what you most want to attract. Do you think you might be on a "fishing expedition"?  Listen in to this week's podcast and see if you are fishing. . . and what to do if you ARE! RELATED RESOURCE: Gary Chapman Interview Save The Marriage System

Today, I tackle a pretty sensitive subject:  the difference between "Doing The Right Thing" and "Doing It Right." Let me be very clear:  I believe that working to save your marriage is heroic work.  It is pretty counter-cultural in our world of "throw away."  We do it with stuff and relationships.   I also believe that working on saving a marriage is courageous.  It's pretty scary to be in the middle of a crisis, and to CHOOSE to work on the relationship.  That is the definition of courage -- feeling fear, and choosing to act, anyway. Sometimes, I watch people who want to...

It is such a common demand from a spouse during a marital crisis:  “I need space!  You just need to give me space!” Yet here I am, telling you to connect with your spouse, to rebuild the broken connection that led to the crisis. Are they opposites? One listener to the Save The Marriage Podcast was wondering.  Which means that others might be wondering the same thing. Here is the problem:  When your marriage is in crisis and a spouse asks for space, if you can’t give it, your spouse will demand MORE space.  And if that is not given, your...

“Why is marriage so hard?” That is a question I often hear from struggling couples. What happened?  All of that love, all the connection, seems to disappear, to be replaced with struggle and strife. At the start, it seemed so easy.  You wanted to be together, to spend your life together.  Then… something shifted.  Things got tough. Does that mean that the marriage was wrong, that you married the wrong person? Or is there something else going on? There are several challenges that arise in any marriage.  They are challenges, not insurmountable obstacles.  They prove that “being in love” is not enough to ge...

You have already journeyed to here.  Maybe your relationship is hurting and in pain.  Maybe your connection has gone cold.  But however you got here, whatever the path, you want to get somewhere different. Somewhere better. It may seem cliche, but it is a journey.  And this last part of the journey, it has some stops along the way. Many times, people think (and want) it to be a linear path, stopping along the way, but arriving at the end, reconciled and in love. Those four big stops? Apology Forgiving Trusting Reconciling Many assume that one follows the other, just poin...

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 me wrong), it is not really an attempt to reject. It is really an attempt to protect. Not "protect you."  But "protect themselves." What?  You say, "They don't need to prot...

“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 are fighting. So, let me clarify that with the question from “E.”  She asked why I always talk about connection… not romance, playing “hard to get,” doing “No Contact,” or reverse psychology. Those two f...

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 of the Save The Marriage Podcast, I discuss the 4 "F" words that are keeping you from taking action... keeping you from saving your marriage. I discuss 4 reas...

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 the point when you are not even aware that things are in trouble.  You are blissfully unaware of — or choosing to not notice — the looming marriage c...

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 season of life that demands everything. The intention is good: we've got this, we'll get back to us later. The problem is, there's no suspended animation in a relationship. Wh...

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. Building hope is a choice. In this episode, I go back to work from researcher Charles Snyder, who mapped out what hope actually is — not as a feeling, but...

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. Like the problem was them. Here's what I want you to know: she was wrong about that. And if you've sat in that same chair (or if you've tried the...

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 the dynamic between you and your spouse — and why the response that feels most necessary right now is probably the one most likely to backfire. After more than three decades helping...

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 what I also believe: far more marriages could be saved than actually are. And the gap between those two things — what's possible and what actually happens — usually come...

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 difference between a marriage that is truly bankrupt and one that is simply overdrawn — and from the inside, those two things feel exactly the same. I've been using a metaphor lately when talking about marriage and connec...

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 marriage -- much less a marriage crisis -- is not an on/off situation, and no simple switch will turn it around. Yet that is what many people want...

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 look from your spouse across the kitchen. On this episode of the Save the Marriage Podcast, I sat down with EJ and Tara Kerwin, founders of Relationship Renovation, hosts of t...

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 connection.  And it freezes up the process of change.  It freezes out any chance for change. And it is unnecessary.  (Oh, and don't fall into the trap of just changing who ge...

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 remember disconnection. We rewrite the past, based on the present situation.  Usually, we just think about how the past led to the present. But where we are forms what we think about where...

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 because of one thing: they either don't have the right information, or they can't seem to act on what they know. Pick one. Figure out which one is your problem. Fix it. Except...

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 progression. A series of stages that couples move through — not because they want to, not because they're bad people, but because disconnection follows a predictable direction once it gets started. And here's what makes it especi...

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: love isn't what holds a marriage together over time. It's what starts the process. What actually carries a relationship forward — or pulls it apart — is momentum And momentum follows rules. When couples come to me in c...

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 address these limiting beliefs. Do you think your limiting beliefs MIGHT be limiting your life and your marriage? I'm betting that is the case, since it is true for all of us. ...

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 of them in struggling marriages. Not as a loose metaphor. As an almost exact parallel. The partner who can't stop criticizing every shot — and wonders why the othe...

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 algorithm throws at you. That's effort. Real effort. But it's pointed in the wrong direction. In the last episode, I talked about why "if it's meant to be" is dangerous thinking. This episode is about what you do instead. Not just...

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 understand why. It offers something we all want in a painful moment — a clean explanation that doesn't require anything else from you. But I want to make the case that...

"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 psychological frameworks people use to explain their behavior—and what the research actually says about them. Spoiler: the science doesn't support what most people think it does. What We C...

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 show you a different way of understanding what's really going wrong. These aren't just abstract concepts. They are deeply wired human needs that your marriage either fulfills or frustrates. Here's what makes this episode different: I'm not just d...

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.  Whenever we base our actions on fears, we give them too much power. When you are working on saving a marriage, there are 4 fears that strike...

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 Conversation Ladder, a practical tool for moving from surface-level logistics to genuine emotional intimacy. The four levels—Routine, Information, Story, and Essence—provide a roadmap for the deeper connection your marriage is craving. You'll discover: Why men often struggle with "normative male alexithy...

Resetting in 2026 New year. Same marriage problems? Here's the thing: most people approach a new year with good intentions but no actual reset. They keep doing the same things, waiting for different results. And when it comes to saving your marriage, that's a recipe for staying stuck. In this week's podcast, I walk you through five critical resets you need to make in 2026. Not resolutions. Resets. There's a difference. If you play pickleball, you know what a reset is. When what you're doing isn't working, you reset the ball. You slow it down. You step back and start fresh. That's...