Can you feel hurt without actually being harmed? And is there a difference between hurt and harm? This is a conversation that we’ve been having in our Patreon facebook group (exclusive for our Patreon supporters; you can join for as little as $5 a month!), and I...
What do you practically do about entitlement in marriage? We’re at the end of our entitlement series, and all month we’ve been looking at how entitlement can impact a marriage. We’ve looked at the difference between realistic expectations and entitlement. We’ve looked...
What if a lot of entitlement comes from a desire to not have to grow up? It’s Rebecca on the blog today, and I’m expanding on what I sent in a newsletter back last week. But I want to start with a story of a time when I was refusing to be a grown up, and it caused me...
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...
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...
What do you do if you disagree about whether or not the wife should work? We talk a lot about the "mommy wars" between stay at home moms and working moms. But I've had a number of women in a different predicament: They really want to stay at home with their kids, but...
How does mental load affect stress? This week we've been talking on the blog about mental load and emotional labor, in three posts: What is emotional labor and mental load? The Fair Play solution Our podcast on mental load A bunch of you have sent me emails, and there...
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 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 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...
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...
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...
What do you do if you've tried confronting your spouse on bad habits that they have, but nothing is changing, and it's damaging the marriage? Let's look today at how to draw boundaries and actually see progress in messy areas of marriage. We're in the middle of our...
How do you know in marriage when you should bring up an issue, or when you should let it go? Should you sweat the small stuff? We've been talking this month about how iron sharpens iron, and how marriage should make us better people. This week, the third in our...
Something's wrong in your marriage. So what do you do about it? This month I'm running my iron sharpens iron series, about how marriage is supposed to make you better people. But it can't do that if we don't speak up when things are wrong! So today on the podcast I'm...