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...
Who is the person who is most likely to read a marriage book and try to get help with their marriage? Someone whose marriage is a source of strain. If you're in a great marriage, you don't need to read a marriage book. You might read one if you're part of a small...
What if the reason that our evangelical marriage advice often doesn't work is because we're aiming for the wrong thing? And because we're aiming for the wrong thing--we've got the wrong solutions? Welcome to our Marriage Misdiagnosis series! This month we're going to...
What do you do if your husband wants to smoke pot? That may feel out of left field, but increasingly I'm having readers write in with that question. Marijuana is legal in many jurisdictions now--Europe; Canada; many individual states. So I thought it was time that we...
Sometimes you just have to ask your husband for what you need! I've been talking all month about how to change the dynamic in your marriage and start feeling close again. I wanted to end the month with super practical tips, and so I talked about how happy couples...
It's not big, blow out fights that wreck a marriage. It's how we treat each other day to day. And that's why happy couples sweat the small stuff! I like to run a series on the Wednesdays of each month so that we can explore one topic in more detail. And this month...
The secret to a great marriage is to fix problems before they start. It's just being intentional--and it's making those small choices that we talked about yesterday that can become turning points in our marriages. We decide to move towards each other, instead of apart...
What do you do when you have different standards for housework? It's Monday, the day that I usually try to tackle a reader question, and today I want to talk about what to do when you're a little messy and he's a neat freak. But before I get to that, I'm excited about...
Sometimes our marriages need us to speak up! Kestia Gustave is a long time reader and wonderful blogger from Pure Couples, and she shared this blog post with me recently. I thought it was great, and so I asked if I could run it today. The point? If you want real...
Are video games stealing your husband--and your marriage? One of the things I really wanted to talk about this January, as we start a new year, is how the habits we have can stop us from living a big life. I shared this picture of a poinsettia that I saw in Costa Rica...
This week we've been talking about how books like Love & Respect go so far off base. I started with showing how the view of sex in Love & Respect is very wrong. And then yesterday I showed how the concept of a wife giving a husband unconditional respect is...
Should you have unconditional respect for your husband, as Emerson Eggerichs claims in the book Love & Respect? I was overwhelmed by the response to my review of Love & Respect's sex chapter yesterday. Many of you asked for my take on the whole book, and not...
By 4 a.m. on Christmas morning, my brother-in-law's house is bustling. Wrapping paper is flying, Christmas music is playing, and laughter is bubbling. But it's not the kids who wake everyone up at 4. It's my brother-in-law. He does Christmas BIG.My house is very...
What do you do if you discover your best friend is having an affair? We're talking about boundaries this month, and how to figure out when to make something your problem, and when it just can't be your problem. A while ago I answered this question about discovering...
December means Christmas. Christmas often means family. And family often reminds us that we really need boundaries. I like to dedicate the Wednesdays in a month to a particular theme, and this month I wanted to talk about boundaries with family members--including...