Welcome to Season 2 of Marriage Theraoke! For this episode, we wanted to take you through some of our favorite episodes and moments from Season 1 (including interviews, songs and advice), making this episode a great introduction to first time listeners and fun walk down memory line for long-time listeners!

"Take me as I am, baby, or leave me." Can you change your partner? Can you even ask your partner to change? Marriage Theraoke goes Broadway with a song from Rent, "Take Me or Leave Me," discussing why Maureen and Joanne, the couple in the song are not modeling good self-confrontation, good listening to concerns, or good ways to have hard conversations. And who better to discuss a musical with a legitimate musical theater performer? Janessa Zech joins us to talk about changing your partner and does us one better by performing this week's song rewrite!

We may think that fear lies at the heart of many relationship problems, but Brene Brown teaches that all successful relationships have fear. What destroys relationships isn't fear, but the ARMOR we put on to try to protect ourselves from the fear. In today's episode we interview life coach Jaime Wilkins who talks about two common forms of armor: perfectionism and numbing our emotions. The song "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner talks all about numbing, so we give it some therapy. Rich makes it much better.

Class is in session again. It's Theory Class 102, where Celeste builds off of Theory Class 101 (Episode 24) in describing foundational aspects of solid relationships. Today it's managing (and often letting go of) your expectations. Rich is taking notes and, live during the episode, writes lyrics to an original love song with a country twang, ('Grow Together'). Enjoy!

Two firsts in Marriage Theraoke history today: 1. We tackling children (the topic, not actual children) and 2. We are tackling country music! First up, children. Ideally, there would never be any conflict between our children and our marriage and everyone would get along in blissful harmony. In reality, our children CAN and often do put a wedge in our marriages. Either by prioritizing them above our marriage, disagreeing about parenting or just plain busyness and exhaustion. Today we are talking about all those things with our guest Becky Squire! And you better believe Rich harnesses his inner cowboy for the karaoke remake of this one! 

Someone once asked renowned marriage expert Dr. John Gottman what was one thing they could do RIGHT NOW that would have the biggest impact on their marriage. His answer? Honor your partner's dreams. First we have to know what those are, then honor them. Today we are thrilled to talk with marriage therapist and Gottman expert Laura Heck, who walks us through the good, better, best of honoring our partner's dreams. And Rich's re-make of The Greatest Showman's A Million Dreams legitimately made Celeste cry.

Switching things up on the podcast this week. Welcome to Theory Class 101, where Celeste explains her theory on five aspects of the very FOUNDATION of any solid relationship. Rich, then, taking copious notes writes an original improvised love song during the course of the podcast and performs it at the end with his ukelele. Talent and good times abound. 

Isn't it a good thing to think highly of your partner? To praise and cherish them? Yes of course it is. Unless by putting them up on a pedestal, you are putting yourself down in comparison. We discuss the dangers of hierarchy and pedestal placement as we offer some therapy to the song "She's So High" by Tal Bachman today. And you know that Rich's high falsetto is coming out full force in his karaoke re-make, which is lovely.

Last week we talked about confronting our own weaknesses and imperfections. But what about those weaknesses and imperfections that we don't even know exist? Our own blind spots? How do we confront those? Enter shadow work. Jana Spangler is going to expertly walk us through some clues we have into the parts of ourselves we're not always aware of that are holding us and our marriages back. We're giving some therapy to the song "Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears as a jumping off point for our conversation. And guaranteed Rich's acapella remake will both impress you and delight you. It did for me.

What is the most important quality in a spouse? What were some of the qualities you were looking for in a partner when you were dating? Most of us were looking for someone who was attractive, smart, kind, funny. These are great qualities, but what is the MOST important? We are making the argument that the most important quality in a spouse is the ability to self-confront. Why? What does that look like? We are going to talk about that as we give some therapy to the song "Hold the Line" by Toto. Rich is going to make an important addition to Toto's classic list of what love is. Enjoy!