Master Your Marriage

We just spent two episodes looking at contempt—the number one predictor of divorce. One of the clearest takeaways is this: empathy and contempt cannot live in the same room.

When contempt is operating, we elevate ourselves. Disgust and superiority crowd out our capacity to stay present with the person we claim to love the most. And when we lose that presence, we start wounding each other without fully seeing it.

In this episode, Sharla unpacks empathy as the skill that stands opposite to contempt. Drawing from Nonviolent Communication, she offers a clear definition, clears up common confusions about what empathy is (and isn’t), walks through the three essentials of how to actually do it, and names the three situations where empathy is hardest. The episode ends with a practical exercise you can use this week to start rebuilding the muscle.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why empathy and contempt cannot coexist
• A clean definition of empathy: giving full presence and sensing what is alive in the other person
• What empathy is not (sympathy, advice, “I understand,” correcting, and agreeing)
• The three essentials: Being Present, Focusing on the Now, and Sensing Feelings & Needs
• How to stay present with harsh words, a closed-off partner, and hearing “No”
• A simple written exercise (the Emotion Shifting Exercise) to practice shifting from judgment toward compassion

Free Resource

Download the Emotion Shifting Exercise worksheet here

This week’s challenge

Pick one recent moment where you felt judgment, superiority, or flat toward your partner. Do the Emotion Shifting Exercise with it. Notice what shifts in your body and perspective.

Empathy will not fix everything. But without it, almost nothing else we try will last. It is the soil that repair, intimacy, and lasting closeness grow in.

If this episode was useful, would you leave a five-star review and share one thing that landed for you? And if someone in your life needs this conversation, please share it with them.

For coaching or to practice these skills live with your partner, reach out at masteryourmarriage.us.

Last week we named the problem: contempt is addictive, corrosive, and the #1 predictor of divorce. This week we take up the harder question—how do we actually walk away from it?

We open with an honest look at whether it’s possible to keep a largely contempt-free marriage while still participating in a culture that runs on contempt. The short answer: not in any deep or sustainable way. Contempt is a habit of mind, and habits don’t stay neatly contained. What we practice outside the home eventually shapes the atmosphere inside it.

From there we get practical. Drawing from Arthur Brooks’ Love Your Enemies, John Gottman’s research, and real marriage experience, we walk through six concrete steps for starving the contempt habit and practicing warm-heartedness—especially at home.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why you can’t fully separate “contempt out there” from “contempt at home”
• The quiet fears that grow in a spouse when contempt is part of the atmosphere
• Treating your marriage as the laboratory for change
• The 5-to-1 rule and why it matters
• Making a personal rule that contempt is never justified
• Real moral courage: standing up for people who believe differently than you
• Staying curious instead of assuming the worst
• Reducing exposure to outrage culture
• Using moments of contempt as practice opportunities

This episode is about direction, not perfection. The goal is to begin walking away from contempt—on purpose, over time—starting with the person who knows you best.

Book mentioned:

Love Your Enemies by Arthur Brooks

Related episode:

The Addiction of Contempt

Get in Touch

Website: MasterYourMarriage.us

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage

In this episode, we unpack one of the most destructive forces in modern relationships: contempt.

Drawing from Arthur Brooks’ book Love Your Enemies, we explore why contempt is not just a communication problem—but an addictive pattern that is quietly eroding marriages, families, and our sense of belonging. We look at the difference between anger and contempt, the brain chemistry that makes contempt feel rewarding in the short term, and the research showing how costly it becomes over time.

We also examine the loneliness epidemic, particularly among younger generations, and how a culture of contempt may be one of the hidden drivers behind our growing disconnection.

This episode focuses on awareness. Next week, we’ll get practical and ask a harder question: Is it possible to build a marriage and home largely free of contempt while still living in a culture that constantly invites us into it?

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why contempt may be one of the most addictive relational patterns in our culture
• The Vietnam War heroin study and what it reveals about our need for real connection
• The difference between anger and contempt
• John Gottman’s research on contempt as the strongest predictor of divorce
• The physical and emotional costs of living with chronic contempt
• Motive attribution asymmetry and why political division feels so personal
• Why so many of us hate the division… yet keep participating in it

Book mentioned:

Love Your Enemies by Arthur Brooks

Next episode:

We’ll explore whether it’s possible to keep contempt out of our closest relationships while still engaging with a culture that runs on it—and what that practice actually looks like.

Get in Touch

Website: MasterYourMarriage.us

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/

We’ve all heard (or said) those loaded words: “We need to talk.” For most of us, they immediately trigger defensiveness and dread. But what happens when conversations stop altogether? In this replay episode, we explore the difference between healthy silence and the damaging silent treatment, why it’s so harmful to your marriage, and practical ways to break the silence and start reconnecting.

Whether you’re currently experiencing emotional distance, stonewalling, or a full-blown demand-withdrawal pattern, this conversation offers hope and actionable steps. We discuss real client situations, common pitfalls, and how to approach hard topics without triggering another fight.

Key Topics Covered:

• The critical difference between a productive “adult time-out” and the silent treatment
• How the silent treatment functions as a form of emotional control or abuse
• Why research shows the silent treatment activates the same brain areas as physical pain
• Practical scripts and strategies to name the silence and turn toward each other again
• The power of “I” statements and acknowledging fear to rebuild connection

If silence has been growing in your relationship, this episode will help you take that first brave step back toward one another.

• Silence can be golden when it’s a mutual agreement to revisit the conversation later. The silent treatment is a refusal to engage at all.
• The silent treatment leaves the other person feeling rejected, unimportant, and unloved — and over time it erodes trust and intimacy.
• Avoiding conflict doesn’t work. Unspoken issues build until there’s no emotional energy left to fight for the marriage.
• The best way to break the silence is to name it out loud, using vulnerable “I” statements and acknowledging your fears.
• Small, consistent efforts to turn toward each other are what keep couples from drifting apart.

Resources & Further Reading

• Meta-analysis on the demand/withdraw pattern: Schrodt, P., Witt, P., & Shimkowski, J. (2014). Communication Monographs
• Additional research: NCBI article on the silent treatment and its effects

Connect With Us

• Website: MasterYourMarriage.us
• Instagram: @masteryourmarriage
• Facebook: Master Your Marriage

Looking for personalized support? Schedule a free 30-minute discovery call at masteryourmarriage.us — we work with couples ready to do the real work of repair.

Most of us get defensive without even realizing it — and it’s one of the fastest ways connection breaks down in marriage. In this episode, we explore why defensiveness is actually a self-esteem issue at its core.

We break down how defensiveness shows up differently depending on whether you’re coming from shame (one-down) or grandiosity (one-up), and why neither position allows for real repair or intimacy. Sharla shares a personal story from her own life and explains how healthy self-esteem gives us the ability to feel proportionate guilt without collapsing into shame.

You’ll also get a simple, practical intervention you can use in the moment — including a physical technique and two powerful mantras — to help you move out of defensiveness and back into “same as” with your partner.

If you’ve ever felt like you get defensive even when you don’t want to, this episode will help you understand why… and give you tools to actually change it.

In This Episode:

• Why defensiveness is a symptom of distorted self-esteem
• The difference between one-up (grandiosity) and one-down (shame) defensiveness
• How grandiosity blinds us to the impact we have on others
• What healthy self-esteem actually looks like in real moments
• A simple body-based intervention to get out of defensiveness
• Two mantras to help you return to “same as”
• Journaling prompts to help you notice and interrupt defensiveness faster

Key Tools & Practices:

• Physical Centering Technique: Pull yourself up from shame or down from grandiosity until you feel centered and “same as.”
• Mantra for Shame: “I’m enough and I matter despite…”
• Mantra for Grandiosity: “Each person has inherent worth. No one more than. No one less than.”
• This week’s journaling prompts to track your defensiveness patterns

Action Step This Week:

The next time you feel defensiveness rising, try the physical centering move with one of the mantras. Then journal:

• What triggered it?
• Was it more one-up or one-down?
• Did the intervention help?

Connect With Us:

• Website: MasterYourMarriage.us
• Instagram: @masteryourmarriage
• Facebook: Master Your Marriage

If this episode helped you, please leave a comment or review and share it with someone who needs it.

In this quick mid-week bonus episode, Sharla answers two listener questions from our current series on Real Self Esteem and the distortions of shame and grandiosity.

We explore:

• Why you can feel confident and know your worth, yet still hear harsh critical voices from your parents
• How to pursue excellence and high performance without falling into grandiosity or one-up-ness
• The different “parts” of us (healthy adult vs. adaptive child) and why this matters

These short bonus episodes are our new way of answering your questions in a more casual format between full episodes.

Have a question? Send it to [email protected] — we may feature it next week!

Stay tuned for next week’s full episode where we’ll go deeper into practical tools for this work.

This is part two of our shame series. Be sure to listen to last week's episode for an introduction into shame and how it relates to self-esteem.

In this episode, we go deeper into the real reason shame and grandiosity show up in our relationships. We explore how early childhood experiences shape a part of our psyche called the Adaptive Child — the part that learned to survive through fight, flight, or fix strategies.

You’ll learn why these once-brilliant survival patterns often become the very thing that keeps us stuck in shame cycles as adults. We break down the three parts of the psyche, how trauma gets stored in the Adaptive Child, and what it actually takes to re-parent that younger part of ourselves with compassion and firmness.

If you’ve ever wondered why your reactions feel so automatic and intense in relationships, or why “just loving yourself” hasn’t worked, this episode will give you the missing piece.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The three parts of the psyche and why most of us spend our adult lives in the Adaptive Child
• How fight, flight, or fix becomes your default survival strategy
• Why the Adaptive Child carries and replays shame and grandiosity
• How childhood trauma (big or small) wires these patterns into your nervous system
• The powerful truth that shame and grandiosity are actually the same emotion pointed in two different directions
• How to begin re-parenting your Adaptive Child so it no longer runs your relationships

Connect With Us:

Website: MasterYourMarriage.us

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/

Most of us are walking around with a relationship to ourselves that is pretty dysfunctional — and we don’t even realize it. We bounce back and forth between shame and grandiosity, sometimes minute by minute, and this constant internal cycle quietly damages our marriages.

In this first episode of our new series, we unpack what real self-esteem actually is, how shame and grandiosity act as two sides of the same coin, and why so much of the disconnection in our relationships actually starts with the relationship we have with ourselves. We also introduce the three types of “outside-in” (or pseudo) self-esteem that many of us unknowingly rely on.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not enough one minute and superior the next — or wondered why connection with your partner sometimes feels so hard — this episode will give you language for what’s actually happening.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why shame and grandiosity are both distortions of real self-esteem (and how they show up in marriage)
• The difference between inside-out self-esteem and the “outside-in” versions we often rely on
• The three types of outside-in (pseudo) self-esteem: performance-based, others-based, and attribute-based
• Why we bounce between shame and grandiosity — and how this “cycle” affects the safety and closeness in our relationships
• The very first step to interrupting the pattern: building awareness through a simple noticing practice

Your Practice This Week:

Keep a simple Noticing Journal for the next 1–2 weeks. Each time you notice your internal state shifting (especially around your spouse), jot down:

• What just happened? (the trigger)
• What did you notice in your body first?
• What emotion was underneath?
• What thought ran through your mind?

No fixing. No judgment. Just noticing.

Next Week:

In Episode 2, we go much deeper into the shame side of this equation — what it actually looks like in real marriage, how it shows up differently for different people, and what we can do when that one-down feeling takes over.

Connect With Us:

Website: MasterYourMarriage.us

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/

Many people do deep, sincere work in therapy and gain real insight into their patterns — yet they still find themselves repeating the same painful cycles in their relationships. In this episode, we explore why insight alone often fails to create lasting change and what actually helps us respond differently when we’re triggered. Drawing from the work of Terry Real and Relational Life Therapy, we unpack the three parts of ourselves that show up in moments of conflict and why building the capacity to shift between them is essential for real transformation.

• Why so many people feel like therapy “didn’t work,” even after doing significant personal work
• The gap between knowing why we react and actually responding differently in the moment
• The three parts of you: the Wise Adult, the Wounded Child, and the Adaptive Child
• Why the Adaptive Child’s survival strategies often override our best intentions
• The difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches — and why both are often needed
• A simple, practical practice you can start using today to build “second consciousness”
• A personal story that illustrates what it looks like when someone finally chooses a different response

• Insight is valuable, but it’s often not enough to interrupt deeply wired patterns when we’re activated.
• Many adults spend a large portion of their life operating from their Adaptive Child rather than their Wise Adult.
• Real change happens in the present moment — not while talking about the past.
• Recovery is active, moment-to-moment work that requires noticing when the Adaptive Child has taken over and gently inviting the Wise Adult back online.
• Both strengthening the Wise Adult and reducing the intensity of old trauma are important for lasting change.

Try this simple practice the next time you notice yourself getting reactive:

1. Take a slower, intentional breath (try the 4-7-8 breath: inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8).
2. Gently ask yourself:

• Which part of me is running right now?
• Am I in my Adaptive Child, or is my Wise Adult available?
• What would my Wise Adult want to do differently?

This week, keep a short journal and note moments when you noticed yourself in your Adaptive Child. Awareness is where choice begins.

• Work of Terry Real and Relational Life Therapy
• Viktor Frankl’s quote on the space between stimulus and response
• Thomas Hübl’s teaching: “To observe is to have choice”

Get in Touch

Website: MasterYourMarriage.us

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmarriage

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MasterYourMarriage/

What if the secret to a thriving marriage isn’t avoiding conflict… but learning to lean into it?

In this episode, Sharla and Robert explore NBA superstar Stephen Curry’s powerful marriage advice from his recent interview with Michelle Obama: “We don’t run away from the tension on the daily.” They unpack why this simple idea is backed by decades of research from John and Julie Gottman, Terry Real, and divorce lawyers — and why so many couples still resist it.

You’ll learn:

• Why 69% of relationship problems are perpetual (and why that’s actually good news)
• How the 5:1 positive-to-negative ratio works in real life — and what happens when it doesn’t over 5–10 years
• The compounding effect of small, unaddressed negatives (and how it leads to “falling out of love slowly, then all at once”)
• Practical ways to reframe tension, use soft startups, get underneath gridlocked issues, and repair quickly

Whether you’ve been married 5 years or 25, this episode will shift how you see conflict in your relationship.

Resources & Links Mentioned:

• Michelle Obama’s IMO Podcast with Stephen & Ayesha Curry (full episode)
• Medium Article: “Stephen Curry’s Best Marriage Advice Is Backed by Psychologists and Divorce Lawyers”
• John & Julie Gottman – Fight Right
• Terry Real – Relational Life Therapy
• Our Repair Mini-Series (previous episodes)

Challenge This Week:

The next time tension rises, name it gently: “I’m noticing some tension here, and I want us to lean into it together. What’s going on for you?” Stay in the conversation, listen openly, and make a repair if needed.

Research Opportunity:

We’re in the early stages of developing a new marriage program and would love your input. If you’ve ever felt successful in your career but struggled to connect at home, Sharla would love to hear your story. This is purely for research — no sales pitch. Schedule a quick interview here

Call to Action:

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts — it helps other couples find the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Until next time — choose each other, even in the tension.