Posts Tagged :

marriage podcast

Coping as a Couple Caught in COVID Quarantine
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

Are you stuck together in self-isolation or quarantine?  Marriage in crisis?  This can be a shift for your marriage.  Learn how.Are you suddenly finding yourself and your spouse stuck together, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic?  Is it suddenly very close quarters?

If your marriage wasn’t struggling before, this may be the stressor that pushes your relationship into crisis.

Or it might just be the turning point to a thriving marriage.

What can you do during this time, for yourself and your marriage?  On this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, I explore 3 areas on which you can focus.  And in each area, I give 2 suggestions for what you can do to survive the crisis, weather the storm, and help both your marriage and yourself.

Listen to the episode below.

RELATED RESOURCES
Conflict in Marriage
Space in Marriage
3 Layers to Connection
Save The Marriage System

 

Marriage Wrecker: Conflict
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

Conflict can wreck your marriage.  Don’t let it!  Learn how conflict can help you improve your marriage, not destroy it.Over the last couple of episodes, I have been looking at what wrecks marriage.  First, I discussed Expectations.  Then, I discussed Disconnection.

In this episode, we look at another “Marriage Wrecker”:  Conflict.

Yes, I know, plenty of people will tell you that conflict is inevitable in marriage.  And it is certainly true that every marriage… any relationship that is as intimate as marriage… is going to include disagreements and differences-of-opinions.

That is not the question.  The question is, how do you deal with the disagreements?  How do you do conflict?  If you aren’t careful, conflict can wreck your marriage.

Why?  Because it often becomes adversarial — going for the win, not for the relationship.

In this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, we look at how conflict can wreck your marriage… or how you can keep it from happening.

Listen below.

RELATED RESOURCES
Marriage Wrecker:  Expectations
Marriage Wrecker:  Disconnection
The Role of Conflict
Fighting FOR Your Marriage
Conflict To Intimacy
Save The Marriage System

Marriage Wrecker: Disconnection
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

A marriage wrecker is disconnection.  Disconnection can eat away at the foundations of your marriage, creating a vicious cycle, leading to relational collapse.Your marriage is hurting.  Why?  What happened?  What wrecked your marriage?

In the last podcast episode, I discussed how expectations can wreck a marriage.

But unfortunately, there are some other issues and concerns that can wreck your marriage.  This week’s Marriage Wrecker is right at the top of the list.

In fact, it is a recurring theme in my work with couples.  After discussing it in several coaching sessions in the last few days, I thought it was a good topic for an episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.

What is connection?  What is DISconnection… and why does it happen?  We start there.  We discuss how connection is the life-blood of your relationship… and what happens when it gets squeezed off… often for what seem like good reasons!

The result, though, is the same, even when disconnection is unintentional. (And it almost always is.)

I also cover what to do when you realize the cycle and are ready to break it (what to know and how to approach it, so you don’t get thrown off).

Listen to this important episode below.

RELATED RESOURCES
Danger of Expectations
Connection and Disconnection Resources
Pause Button Marriage
Book:  How To Save Your Marriage In 3 Simple Steps
System:  Save The Marriage

Is Your Marriage in the Safe Zone?
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

What is a safe marriage for emotional sharing and connecting? What does “feel safe” mean when there has never been violence or threats? How can you help a spouse feel safe enough to share and connect?She started the conversation by telling how she was confused… her spouse had confused her.  He said he didn’t feel safe enough to share his emotions, didn’t feel safe enough to move back into their bedroom, didn’t feel safe enough to talk through their issues.  She told me, “I have never hurt him or threatened to hurt him.  How can he feel unsafe?”

Safety (and feeling safe) is an interesting thing.  There doesn’t actually have to be a real threat in order to feel unsafe.  Our brains are always looking for a sense of threat — and it takes very little to trigger the feeling of threat.  A look, a tone… a small hint can be perceived as a real threat.

We don’t risk connecting when we feel threatened.  Connecting requires vulnerability.  And vulnerability requires a sense of safety.

Again, that is not necessarily tied to reality of threat.  So, do you (and your spouse) create spaces of safety?  Do you internally communicate safety in your relationship?

Learn why this is so important and how to do it in the Save The Marriage Podcast below.

RELATED RESOURCES
Connection in Marriage
Connection and Disconnection Resources
Connection or Protection
Save The Marriage System

“Are We Too Opposite?”
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

What does it mean when a spouse declares, “We are opposites. Our marriage can’t survive.” Are you “opposites”? Does being different doom your marriage? We discuss it in this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.Too many times — in my office, by email, on phone calls — I hear a spouse rationalizing their decision that the marriage cannot possibly succeed because, “We’re just opposites, too different to make it.”

But is it true?  Are you “opposites”?  (How are humans ever actually “opposite”?)  And for the sake of argument, does that doom your relationship?

In this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, I answer a listener question that you may have, too.  This listener’s spouse has declared, “We are opposites,” and has given up on even trying to save their marriage.  This listener is wondering, “Is that true?  Are we opposites? Does that doom our marriage?”

Since this question comes up so often, I wanted to discuss the reality of this.  I cover my issues with “opposites,” discuss my theory of “Complimentarity,” and trample all over the belief in “compatibility,” an idea that has been espoused by dating sites and apps — and yet has failed in creating strong relationships.

Listen below for my response to “We’re Just Opposites.”

RELATED RESOURCES
What Happy Couples Know
Ways We Connect
Love Languages
System To Save Your Marriage

Why It All Came Tumbling Down
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

When a marriage comes crashing down, what happened to create the marriage crisis?  Probably more than you think… and longer than you think.“It suddenly fell apart,” Jenny told me.  As far as she could tell, everything had been great until… one day… her husband said, “our marriage is over.”  Before that, Jenny said, there had been no trouble.

Why did it all come tumbling down?

Rob told me that, sure, there had been some issues along the way.  But he didn’t know his wife was ready to leave… until “out of the blue, she moved out and said we were done!”

Why did it all come tumbling down?

George told me, “I just want us to get back to where we were… before the crisis.”

My response to George was, “Where you were got you to where you are.  You can’t just go back to there.  You need to build a new relationship!”

I told both Jenny and Rob that I very seriously doubted that the crisis was quite so “out of the blue.”  They just didn’t see it coming.

But brick by brick, piece by piece, their relationship was being pulled apart long before it all came tumbling down.  And it is very likely that both they and their spouses bore responsibility.

In this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, we explore the roots of trouble, so you can begin to consider why your marriage didn’t just start to crumble.

RELATED RESOURCES
Book:  Marriage Failpoint
Save The Marriage System
Connection and Marriage
Healing Disconnection
Change Yourself

“Why Can’t I Get Started?”
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

When you need to save your marriage, but you can’t get yourself started… what do you do?  Why are you stuck??Audrey wrote me to ask, “I just can’t get started on my marriage.  What’s wrong with me?”

She wrote in as a listener of my podcast.  (And if you have a question for the podcast, send it to me here:  [email protected])

IF she WANTS to save her marriage, then WHY CAN’T SHE GET STARTED?

There are some reasons why people get stuck and can’t get started.  And there are some issues beneath these reasons that must be addressed, one way or the other.

I cover the problems and issues in this week’s Save The Marriage Podcast.

RELATED RESOURCES
“Can I Even Save My Marriage?”
“What If I Can’t Save It?”
Why Does It Matter?
Working on It Alone
Healing Your Anger
Save The Marriage System

Special Holiday Edition: Ghosts of Relationship Past
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

Do you settle down with a good book you have read over and over this time of year?  I read my kids the exact same Christmas book every single year.  And many years, I re-read a classic for myself… like A Christmas Carol.  This year, I want to offer a redux of a prior podcast episode… about the Ghosts of Your Relationship Past.  Yep.  Christmas, with new opportunities.  Here it is:


The Ghosts of Relationship Past.Christmas Eve.  Chris and Holly have settled into bed.  Neither can sleep.  It is not, however, sugarplums dancing in their heads.

Both are replaying the arguments and hurts of the past.  Neither feels connected, although both are desperate for that warm embrace each used to treasure.

What happened?  Where did their relationship fall into trouble?

Can they find their way back?

First, they will have to make it through a night of haunts, as the Ghosts of Relationship Past visit them this night.

Are they the same ghosts that haunt your relationship?  Is there a path through the pain?

Listen in as Chris and Holly face the hauntings of their relationship.

All The Wrong Reasons: Should You Stay Together?
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

Are you staying together for the wrong reasons?We continue with listeners’ questions on the Save The Marriage Podcast.  And in this episode, I pull together a central question about “Should we stay together because of this Insert Bad Reason Here?”

Several people told me they were still married, just for the sake of the kids.  Several told me that their spouse was still there because they could not afford to separate, much less to divorce.  And some told me they stayed married just to avoid having to hit the dating scene.  And then, there is that anxiety of “what will people think?”  So, they stay together.

But is that enough, they ask?  Should they only stay together for these “wrong reasons?”

You can make a perspective shift and use those “wrong reasons” to get you to the right place in your relationship.

I cover 4 ways to get there in this episode of the podcast.

RELATED RESOURCES
Connecting
Changing
Conflict
Convincing – don’t!
Save The Marriage System

 

Fighting for… Connection
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

What are you fighting for? Fighting for your marriage and connecting with your spouse.“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 fit together… the “fighting” part and the “connecting” part.  You are fighting for connection!  For some very specific (and deeply rooted) reasons.

I discuss both in this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.

RELATED RESOURCES:
Connection and Marriage
Why are We Fighting
No Contact is Crap
No Manipulation
Save The Marriage System