What if too much marriage advice puts the cart before the horse, demanding reconciliation before trust has been rebuilt? We've been looking this month at how so often evangelical marriage advice puts the emphasis in the wrong place, and thus misdiagnoses the problem...
All the Latest from "Resolving Conflict"
Older posts from "Resolving Conflict"
Handling Anger in Marriage: Understanding the Iceberg
Many marriages are plagued by anger, and yelling matches or big angry outbursts. People will often say, "I have a temper problem" or "he has an anger problem." As we finish up our series on emotional maturity, I promised to spend a little bit of time on anger because...
EMOTIONAL MATURITY SERIES: What To Do When Your Spouse is Stonewalling
Have you ever experienced stonewalling in your marriage? If you've ever said something like, "He refuses to talk about it," "every time I bring it up he shuts me down," "She walks out of the room if I mention it." "He tells me he won't change and the topic is closed,"...
Is Having the Husband Make the Final Decision a Harmful Shortcut in Your Marriage?
When we give husbands veto power, do we end up damaging intimacy? Often the best conversations on this blog don’t happen in the posts themselves, but in the comments. And today I wanted to share a comment that came in on one of Keith’s earlier “men’s corner” posts...
My Husband Doesn’t Want to Use Birth Control
What do you do when you don’t want to get pregnant, but your husband doesn’t want birth control? We've been tackling difficult sex questions all month, and here's one I tackled a while ago, but I still get asked quite a bit. I thought it was worth re-running. A woman...
EMOTIONAL LABOR SERIES: Why We All Need Downtime
You can't be emotionally healthy if you don't have downtime--time when you can relax, pursue passions, or care for yourself. We're finally here--at the conclusion of our mental load/emotional labor series for the month of June! We've talked about the problem of mental...
PODCAST EXTRAS: Is It Man-Bashing to Assume Men Can Take on Emotional Labor?
If we say that it's okay to expect that men will want to be engaged at home, and will want to share the mental load, are we man-bashing? We've been talking all month about emotional labor and mental load--or just how overburdened many women feel when they are...
THE EMOTIONAL LABOR SERIES: How to Eliminate Nagging for Good
What if the reason that many women "nag", or at least men feel "nagged", is that women are carrying too much of the mental load? If only women know what tasks need to be done, then it's almost inevitable that they will have to issue constant instructions. And because...
EMOTIONAL LABOR: How the Fair Play System Helps Share Mental Load
How does the Fair Play system help you divide up mental load in marriage? We're just launching our June series about mental load, where we look at how to balance the mental work that goes into keeping the family together. Yesterday we looked at what mental load is,...
Are Men from Mars and Women from Venus?
Are we overblowing gender differences? Are men from Mars and women from Venus? It's Keith on the blog today for our men's corner! It seems you can’t go to a marriage conference, or read a book on marriage or even have a conversation about relationships without at some...
What to Do When You’re Attracted to Someone Other Than Your Spouse
What if you dream about someone other than your spouse? On Fridays I like to highlight some comments that came in over the week and carry on the discussion, because what I've found over the last little while is that sometimes the best material ends up in the comments...
How We Had to Fight to Overcome Personality Differences
We're all different. But do we understand the emotional toll of not dealing with personality differences in marriage? Adrienne Koziol, from The Zoo I Call Home, a wife, a writer, and a homeschool mom to 9 kids sent me this article, which I thought was great, and which...
Can We Talk about Mutual Respect?
If you're reading this as it's being published, Keith and I are getting on a cruise ship in Buenos Aires to head to Antarctica! But a lot of interesting things happened this week, and I wanted to chime in while I still have good wifi. The theme of all of this, I...