Normalize therapy.

Today we are going to unpack the virtue of admiration. By the way, did you know that admiration has a dark side?  I had no idea until we tackled this subject too, but it does make a lot of sense!

If you’ve ever read the Song of Solomon in the Bible I think you have a pretty clear example there of how admiration is so helpful for fostering love and affection between lovers.

What is Admiration?

I imagine everyone knows what admiration is, generally. But actually describing it might be a little harder. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate admiration from other similar positive emotions in marriage. Here’s a helpful quote from a study we reviewed: “Admiration is a feeling of delighted approval of the accomplishment or character of another person[i]”

A lot of the time admiration comes from pleasant surprises: when someone does something or shows characteristics that prompt feelings of fondness, awe, approval and respect[ii]. I think that we can also benefit from being intentional about admiration though, and seek to notice and focus on those attributes in others and in our spouse in particular.

But there are other emotions linked to admiration. These include[iii]:

Gratitude: thankfulness for someone's actions and who they are. Strongly linked to feelings of admiration and often naturally follows on from it. Both have positive effects for relationships

Elevation: researchers describe this as a specific form of admiration felt in response to "witnessing an act of virtue or moral beauty". It’s like when you see your spouse do something especially incredible you “elevate” them in your mind.

Envy: now this is the dark side of admiration, where instead of approving of the qualities of others, you feel bad about your lack of these qualities. Or you desire to take those qualities for yourself. Envy is desiring the good others have rather than just admiring them. You see, admiration is wholly focused on the other person, while envy is more introspective

Joy: feelings of admiration are physically and psychologically similar to feeling joy. We often experience these together.

Admiration Impacts Marriage

Stability and Satisfaction

Here’s a neat, long-term study. Shapiro et al[iv] interviewed 43 newlywed couples and then observed them for 6 years of their marriage. They found that the key qualities which predicted a stable, happy marriage were:

Fondness and admiration expressed. Expressed is the keyword there: not just felt.

Awareness of your spouse's needs and their world

Amount of unity expressed through use of phrases including "we" and "us" rather than "I"

These factors were strongly linked to both marital satisfaction for husbands and wives, and marital stability. Using these factors they were able to predict stability/divorce 6 years later with 94% accuracy.

How fascinating is that? From one conversation the researchers could predict the trajectory of a marriage with almost total success. By the way — we worked really hard in designing our content for our marriage retreat to build these three items up in the couples who attended.

Buffering

Fondness and admiration were also seen as a buffer which protected couples from the stress of major life events such as the birth of the first child.

This was especially true for husbands expressing admiration for their wives: "The fondness and admiration system in a couple's relationship can be thought of as the glue that holds the relationship together... The more fondness for his wife the husband expresses, or the more glue he puts into the relationship, the more satisfied the wife is with the marriage.[v]" (Shapiro et al, 2000)

Inspiration

Admiration for someone can inspire you to want to be a better person yourself. This kind of inspiration “involves the transcendence of the ordinary preoccupations or limitations of human agency[vi]”, meaning that admiring and being inspired by someone motivates you to push yourself beyond what you would normally think yourself capable of.

Feelings of elevation (admiration for moral excellence) motivates you to be more like your spouse, increases your desire to help those around you, and increases our appreciation for the good things you have in life[vii].

I thought this was a brilliant piece of learning from the research, too. You would think admiring others only builds them up but it has this reflective impact that inspires you to become more and to push yourself towards better things, too.

Finally, researchers have also found that inspiration creates a sense of connectedness between admirer and admired, and can increase openness levels between them and even increase the energy and enthusiasm you feel when together[viii]. All good mojo for marriage, right?

How To Create More Admiration in Your Marriage

So we’ve seen some of the benefits of making admiration a key part of your marriage. So how do you turn this into a reality?

Build Your Admiration System

You might think this stuff maybe sounds too lofty and out of reach. Let me give you a very concrete example of how you can start to make this work today, and of course, if you want to go deeper — get the exercise that we have created to go with this episode.

Remember: admiration is part of a cycle that brings couples together and helps them resolve problems[ix]. So, here’s a simple process to illustrate how you can develop a positive cycle of admiration. Notice how achievable this is:

One spouse is experiencing difficulty or some of their needs aren't being met

The other spouse notices this

The other spouse attempts to meet the needs

The first spouse notices this attempt to help them

The first spouse expresses this admiration for their husband/wife's ability to meet their needs

This forms a cycle where the expression of admiration motivates the admired spouse to continue finding ways to meet the admiring spouse's needs, leading to further admiration. Boom. Easy, right?

There’s a couple things more that we want to note, just to give you a leg up on this.

Awareness of Needs

Work on becoming more aware of your spouse’s needs. This is not hard to do.

Expression of admiration and awareness of your spouse's needs work together to strengthen a marriage. Remember: these are two of the predictors of stability in a marriage. You can work on them simultaneously to make all this easier.

Awareness of your spouse's needs means you notice when they are stressed or upset, and you express more admiration and affection to help them cope. "If the husband is aware of the stress the wife is going through, for example, he may respond by putting more glue into the relationship or expressing more fondness or admiration toward his wife.[x]". The wife then notices that her husband is making a particular effort to help her, which strengthens the marriage and helps reduce the stress she is under.

So, to express admiration effectively just slow down and observe your spouse more closely so that you can become aware of your spouse's needs and how s/he is coping with the stresses of life[xi] (Shapiro et al, 2000).

Meeting Needs

Now that you have got the awareness thing going, the next step is to start thinking about how to better meet those needs. This requires an awareness of your spouse's inner world.

You see, in order to receive admiration from your spouse you have to be able to meet his or her needs[xii] (Harley, 2011).

If you feel for yourself that you are not being admired enough, it could be because you are not meeting your spouse's needs properly. This is counterintuitive. But it is really empowering too, because it gives you something to do to change this problem that you are facing.

To be admired you have to do things which are worthy of admiration.

Start by becoming aware of what your spouse’s needs are. Next, determine if those needs are being met. If not, seek to meet those needs. The normal consequence of this kind of interest and effort in your spouse is admiration from your spouse.

Expressing Admiration

There’s a sense in which I want to say, do not make this into too large a project. Like an event. Instead, admiration and respect should be expressed often and simply in small, everyday moments. Don’t go for epic moments…just nurture this in the everyday life of your marriage.

This helps build the fondness and admiration cycle, strengthening the marriage[xiii]. Part of this is learning to form a "habit" of admiration where spouses are constantly "scanning" the environment to notice things to admire about each other.

And don’t think this is just for happy marriages. The mental habit of looking for the good things to admire can help distressed couples too, who may be more prone to only noticing the bad things their spouses do.

So whatever the situation is in your marriage: admiration can help. Give it a shot. Let us know how it goes!

References

[i] Niels van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters, ‘Why Envy Outperforms Admiration’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37.6 (2011), 784–95 .

[ii] Sara B. Algoe and Jonathan Haidt, ‘Witnessing Excellence in Action: The “Other-Praising” Emotions of Elevation, Gratitude, and Admiration’, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4.2 (2009), 105–27 .

[iii] Algoe and Haidt.

[iv] Alyson Fearnley Shapiro, John M. Gottman, and Sybil Carrere, ‘The Baby and the Marriage: Identifying Factors That Buffer against Decline in Marital Satisfaction after the First Baby Arrives’, Journal of Family Psychology, 14.1 (2000), 59–70.

[v] Shapiro, Gottman, and Carrere.

[vi] Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters.

[vii] Algoe and Haidt.

[viii] Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters.

[ix] JOHN MORDECHAI Gottman, ‘Gottman Method Couple Therapy’, Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, 4.8 (2008), 138–64.

[x] Shapiro,...

Can you remember what it was like to flirt with your spouse before you were together? The fun and excitement of figuring out you were into each other… don’t you wish you could bring that spice into your relationship now that you’ve been together for years? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to look at today!

What is Flirting?

Here’s a simple definition: flirting is any behavior with has the potential to be seen as sexual[i]. Actually I think that’s just a sexualized definition of flirting. I think flirting can be suggestive of romance without needing to lead to sex. I say that for the benefit of Christian singles and married folk alike.

Flirting is often more nonverbal than verbal: smiles, touch, eye contact and so on. It is often playful and ambiguous: you may not be quite sure if you’re being flirted with or not and that’s all part of the fun.

And let me just say, that while I don’t want to take flirting away from singles who are looking for a marriage partner, in this episode we are talking about a couple who are flirting between themselves.

Now it’s hard to imagine that researchers could investigate something like flirting without sucking all the fun out of it but one researcher noted that flirting is often used to achieve one of six main goals[ii]:

Sex motivation: flirting to initiate sex

Relational motivation: flirting to increase intimacy in an existing relationship

Exploring motivation: testing a potential marriage partner’s interest in a relationship (this one is definitely for the singles rather than the married couples!)

Fun motivation: flirting simply to have fun

Esteem motivation: flirting to increase your own self esteem

Instrumental motivation: flirting to gain some form of reward from the other person.

Other than the exploring option, I think we can look at all of the others and say that flirtation in marriage can and should be a normal part of our interactions. It may look different than the flirting that happens outside of marriage, but between a husband and wife it can really just be a normal part of marital interaction and can really be used to reinforce the sense of togetherness in the marriage[iii].

One researcher actually noted that long-term marriages use a particular style of flirting called authentic flirting. It has one of those holographic stickers on the side. No, just kidding. No, this study in 2017[iv] suggests that authentic flirting is not aimed at having fun or experimenting or trying to get something from your spouse: it is simply an expression of love.

Here’s a quote: "Authentic flirting is defined as an affectionate, creative, or playful action for connecting emotionally and sexually with another person. The motive is to see and be seen lovingly by a partner through expressing spontaneously a combination of curiosity, play, humor, or flirting gestures for increased emotional intimacy.”

So let me just say on that point: just because your wife flirted with you doesn’t mean you need to expect anything in bed. If flirting in your books only exists as a signal that you are going to have sex tonight, you are actually missing out on a lot of other fun flirting. It is truly a very diverse and flavorful way of expressing love. Don’t make your wife afraid to flirt.

Flirting and Marriage

On that note, sometimes there are barriers to flirting in marriage.

Barriers to Flirting in Marriage

One of those barriers could be just what we mentioned: your spouse may want some flirting just to be for the joy of it. But you sexualize it every time. Leave some room for your spouse to be utterly exhausted and still feeling like throwing some flirt your way without creating expectations that he or she is going to be too tired to meet.

Another challenge that can come up is if the passionate love in our marriage declines over time. It is normal to experience a more stable, companionate love after the first 18 months of marriage but this doesn’t mean you have to lose the fire. We looked at this in an episode on how to date your spouse again.

And then the other barrier is the simple fact that life happens: children, increased work pressures and so on. That can make it hard to have energy for flirting or to feel unburdened enough to do so.

Marital Benefits of Flirting

While some of these things can get in the way, I want to encourage you today to think about the upside.

A study in 2007[v] found that flirting in married couples could serve as a helpful relationship maintenance strategy. You can use flirting to:

Reaffirm your love and attraction to your spouse

Increase intimacy between the two of you

Just have fun together

Show positivity

Manage and reduce conflict

Flirting in married couples also serves a purpose not seen in flirting outside of marriage: the desire to create a "private world" between you and your spouse. This is done by using words or actions which you would only use with your spouse. So it can take on this really neat exclusive aspect: like an inside joke.

Flirting was therefore linked to higher marital satisfaction, for both men and women[vi]. However, the outcomes of flirting do vary depending on the motivation behind it, and we’ll get to that below.

Ways of Flirting When Married

Ok, so how does flirting look when you’ve been married ten years and you’ve barely got time to speak to each other, let alone get your flirt on?

As mentioned above, flirting in married couples is often aimed at creating a joint private world. Flirting using language or actions you only use with each other, or flirting in a way that draws on your shared history together can achieve this, leading to a stronger bond and better marital satisfaction[vii]. So just be thinking about how you can develop those areas in your marriage.

Flirting in marriage should also try to be a natural part of the daily routines of the family, and integrated with the rest of your daily interactions[viii]. So instead of setting aside specific times for flirting and romance it should be a natural part of your interactions together, and fit around other responsibilities.

This is especially true if there are lots of demands on your time, due to kids, work etc. It really probably will do better as something spontaneous — that surprise element is always fun. Send a text message if you think of it at work. Whatever it takes.

Similarly, a study in 2017[ix] writes that marital flirting doesn't have to be planned out or carefully planned, and should instead be "spontaneous and playful", taking advantage of any time you have together. Flirting in this sense can become automatic, like a habit, and therefore doesn't require any extra time or effort- it just happens.

Remember that flirting in married couples looks different and has different outcomes depending on the motivation behind it. It’s not going to look the same as when you guys were dating.

For example, research in 2012[x] found that flirting driven by esteem motivation (flirting to increase your own self esteem) is negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction. Flirting as a way to manage conflict was also negatively correlated with marital quality, so trying to flirt your way out of arguments can be a fail.

I would qualify that by saying that there are times that you can effectively defuse conflict through the use of humor — as long as you’re only defusing and not constantly deflecting. You still need to solve the issue — but humor along the way can make it easier.

One of the studies we looked at thought that two good ways of flirting as married couples were display flirting and attentive flirting. Who knew, these are on top of the six kinds we mentioned earlier!

Display Flirting

This means overt displays of affection or sexual interest, such as:

Direct sexual comments and compliments

Boasting/showing off

Acting, dressing or talking in a seductive or romantic way

Big romantic gestures to impress and seduce

Display flirting is often based on sex motivation, or the desire to have fun and create a shared world. This kind of flirting creates greater feelings of romantic love. It also (hopefully) increases sexual satisfaction, leading to higher marital satisfaction.

Attentive Flirting

This is flirting which is focused on the spouse, rather than yourself. Such as:

Gifts

Compliments

Romantic touch

Acts of service/gestures of "chivalry" or attentiveness to spouse's needs

This style of flirting is driven by motivation for intimacy, fun and desire to strengthen the relationship, but could also be driven by instrumental motivation: desire for the spouse to do you favors in return. If done with a good motivation to reaffirm your love/attraction for your spouse this style of flirting increases marital satisfaction and also strengthens commitment.

Researchers also noted that women are much more likely to use this attentive style of flirting than men. They also note that women and men often have similar standards in what they want from marriage, but men more often report having hose needs met than women do.

So husbands should aim to get better at this to help meet their wives emotional needs. Guys: you probably have the display flirting down pat…work on the attentive flirting.

References

[i] Brandi N. Frisby and Melanie Booth-Butterfield, ‘The “How” and “Why” of Flirtatious Communication Between Marital Partners’, Communication Quarterly, 60.4 (2012), 465–80 .

[ii] David Dryden Henningsen, ‘Flirting with Meaning: An Examination of Miscommunication in Flirting Interactions’, Sex Roles, 50.7–8 (2004), 481–89 .

[iii] Frisby and Booth-Butterfield.

[iv] Tarin Olson, ‘An Exploration of Authentic Flirting Within Romantic Marriage - ProQuest’

You came home tired. Your spouse forgot the thing you asked them to do. You smiled and said, "Oh, perfect." Two words. Light tone. Funny, almost. And the look that crossed their face for half a second told you exactly how those two words landed.

Sarcasm in marriage is one of those habits that sounds harmless when it leaves your mouth and lands like contempt in your partner's nervous system. The research points in a sobering direction. Sarcasm aimed at a spouse often functions as contempt, and contempt is one of the strongest signs that a marriage is in trouble, not because of any single comment, but because of what sarcasm actually is underneath the joke.

Here is what we want you to see in this article. Most of the time, when sarcasm shows up in marriage, it is contempt with a smile attached. It is one of the four communication patterns that John Gottman's research links to divorce. It hurts the person on the receiving end more than the person delivering it imagines. And the path out is not better delivery, sharper timing, or learning to raise your eyebrows in the right way. The path out is learning to say what you actually mean.

Why We Use Sarcasm (Underneath the Joke)

If sarcasm is so damaging, why do any of us use it? There are reasons, and they are worth pausing on, because the function of sarcasm is what makes it so easy to keep doing.

Sometimes we use sarcasm to deliver a criticism while looking like we are not really being critical. We tuck the criticism inside humor because we believe it will land softer, or because we think it makes us look less rude when we say it[i]. The agenda is the same as a direct complaint, but the wrapping makes us feel better about delivering it.

Other times sarcasm is the response to a criticism. It lets us dismiss what our spouse just said while still looking calm, even amused. The eye roll says: I am too far above this to engage with it.

Sometimes it is a way to express annoyance in a more socially acceptable form than losing our temper. When you make a cutting remark, your peers may laugh and find you funny rather than recoil when you raise your voice. The aggression is the same. The cost to the relationship is what shifts.

Occasionally sarcasm is used to defuse conflict. The intent is genuinely to lighten things. But because it carries an edge, this almost never lands the way the speaker intends.

Underneath all these different uses, one theme remains constant. Sarcasm is often a way to express negative emotion while not having to be vulnerable about it. It is more polite because it is more indirect, with the actual meaning left for the listener to interpret. And it creates a small layer of relational distance between us and the person we are speaking to, which is part of why it feels safer for the speaker.

If you have ever told yourself your sarcastic comments are just supposed to be funny, the honest question is whether they might also be doing something else. Of course you would reach for a tool that makes hard things feel safer to say. That is a normal human move. It is also the move that, in marriage, tends to do exactly what we did not intend.

What Sarcasm Looks Like in Marriage

Sarcasm is often easy to miss and easy to misinterpret. So before we go further, here are the common signs researchers have noticed[ii]:

Exaggerated tone of voice, or a deliberately flat, monotone delivery

Blank expression

Raised eyebrows

Eye rolling

Exaggerated fake smile or smirk

False sympathy ("wow, that must have been so hard for you")

Expressing the opposite emotion of what your words are saying ("I'm so glad you did that")

These are the surface signals. But what is happening underneath those signals matters more.

Sarcasm Is Contempt, and Contempt Predicts Divorce

John Gottman's research identified four communication patterns that, when chronic, predict divorce with unusually high accuracy. He called them the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Of those four, contempt is the most corrosive. And in marriage, sarcasm aimed at a spouse is one of the most common everyday forms of contempt[iii].

Contempt is what shows up when you stop treating your partner as a peer and start looking down your nose at them. It often has a cool, slightly amused quality. It distances you from the other person while the words sound almost light. Other researchers describe sarcasm as a form of rejection or dismissal, because it undermines what your spouse just said rather than engaging with it[iv]. Either frame names the same thing. Sarcasm is the move that quietly tells your partner: I am above this, and I am above you.

The other thing the research has consistently found is that sarcasm hits harder than the speaker thinks it does. A series of studies on how sarcasm is perceived found that the person saying it tends to rate it as relatively mild, while the person hearing it rates it as more hurtful and more aggressive than a direct comment would have been[v]. The reason is straightforward. Sarcastic comments often highlight the gap between what someone did and what they should have done. "Thanks for your help with that" said to a spouse who did nothing draws attention to the failure in a way that feels more cold and calculated than a frustrated outburst would[vi]. Anger looks impulsive. Sarcasm looks deliberate. Deliberate hurts more.

The clinical version of this is simple. Anger fires the listener's threat system, and they can recover. Contempt fires the listener's attachment system, the part of the brain that tracks "am I safe with this person, am I valued by this person, do they see me as an equal." And that one is much slower to recover.

Is Sarcasm a Form of Emotional Abuse?

This is one of the most common questions people search after a hard week with a sarcastic spouse. The honest clinical answer is: it depends on what is underneath it and how chronic it is.

Occasional dry humor between two secure, connected partners is not emotional abuse. Two people who trust each other, who repair quickly when something lands wrong, who use a wry tone now and then about life in general rather than about each other, are usually fine.

Chronic sarcasm aimed at your partner's identity, capacity, or worth can move onto the abuse continuum. When the running pattern of how you address your spouse is to make them the punchline, when they cannot bring up a concern without it being turned into a mocked phrase, when their attempts to be vulnerable get met with a smirk or an eye roll, the cumulative effect is not just bad communication. It is a form of emotional contempt that erodes their sense of being safe with you over time.

The clinical marker we watch for is whether the sarcasm targets the relationship's hard moments (a missed task, a forgotten errand) or whether it targets the person (their intelligence, their body, their parenting, their job, their family). The first is a communication habit worth changing. The second is doing real damage. Pair it with chronic dismissal, and you are no longer just looking at a sarcasm problem. You are looking at a pattern of contempt that needs clinical attention.

A short note if sarcasm is paired with intimidation, threats, control of your money or your movement, or fear for your physical safety. That is a different conversation than this article is having. If that is your reality, please reach out to a domestic abuse line in your area or get in touch with us, and we will help you find the right support.

How Sarcasm Damages a Marriage Over Time

The research on what sarcasm actually does to a marriage over years, not days, is sobering.

Overall satisfaction drops. Studies on humor in marriage have found a strong link between marital dysfunction and "negative" forms of humor, which is the category sarcasm and harsh jokes at a spouse's expense both fall into[viii]. The relationship is correlational, and it appears to run both directions. Sarcasm contributes to dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction makes sarcasm easier to reach for. That creates a slow downward spiral of "less satisfying communication that ultimately results in a less satisfying relationship[ix]."

The same research found that sarcasm hits harder in already-struggling marriages. Couples who feel secure with each other may hear a sarcastic comment, register the playfulness, and not feel as threatened by the edge. Distressed couples register only the aggression. The shared history a married couple has, which would normally make humor land safely, can also make sarcasm feel more normal than it should and let it become an unseen destructive force inside the marriage[vii]. So the marriages where the partners can least afford another hit are exactly the ones where every sarcastic comment lands like a real one.

Conflict gets worse, not better. Some couples reach for sarcasm as a way to manage conflict. Research consistently shows this does not work[x]. Benign or playful humor can de-escalate a conflict when both partners feel relatively safe with each other. Sarcastic humor in the middle of a fight tends to be ignored when the relationship is in good shape and to escalate the fight when it is not.

Stability erodes. The classic 1993 work on marital interaction found that displays of contempt, sarcasm included, predicted that both spouses were seriously considering divorce or separation[xi]. That is the long arc. Most marriages do not end on the day a contemptuous comment lands. They end somewhere down the road from the thousandth contemptuous comment, when one or both partners has finally stopped expecting anything different.

One of the things we see in couples work is that the partner on the receiving end often becomes quieter, not louder, as the sarcasm pattern goes on. They stop bringing up concerns because they know how concerns get met. By the time they come into the office, they are not asking how to fight better....

Ogling or objectifying the bodies of others by staring with obvious sexual interest can be an easy habit to get into. Especially in a culture that objectifies women. It’s also something that recovering porn addicts have to work really hard at to break. But: there are plenty of non-addicts that deal with this too, so let’s break this down and figure out how to break free of this habit.

I think the first thing I want to note here is that while this activity or habit of checking people out can become almost mundane and very normal for a person, we have to realize it really is a betrayal event for our spouses. So it can be generating a lot of ongoing pain and hurt for one person while the other person is like “What? I was hardly even looking!”

Why Do Men Ogle?

Why is this such a common problem? The short answer is that our culture socializes us to look at women this way. In fact, both men and women are socialized to see women as objects to be viewed and admired[i].

Don’t believe me? Just look on Instagram…if a man or woman posts a photo of him/herself posing — it gets a ton of comments. Even though this is seen as a positive when it’s women complimenting each other…it is still objectifying. Men are taught to look at women in this way, and women are taught to think of and display themselves accordingly.

This socialization happens through advertising, films, television and all the media that almost exclusively portrays women with ideal body shapes. And they emphasize their physical appearance over their personalities and qualities as a person.

The effect of this is that men are trained to view women as sexual objects. In that context, ogling and “checking out” women becomes acceptable. We say things like “I was just looking!” to minimize and defend the behavior. And then the fact that so many people buy into this worldview is also used as a defense — as if you aren’t personally making a choice to check out other women, you’re just conforming to how everyone else acts.

But just because something is commonplace, that doesn’t in any way mean it isn’t harmful. This objectifying of women has a dehumanizing effect. A rather alarming study from 2014[ii] found that when thinking about women in terms of their physical appearance, men would use less human words to describe them, and assign fewer human traits to them than they would to men. This effect can even be seen at the neurological level: focusing on women's bodies activates the same brain areas that are activated when looking at inanimate objects[iii].

How frightening is that? Men looking at women think of them as less human. Of course, you can only imagine the moral challenges this brings because we hold a different moral standard for what we do to an object versus what we would do to a human being.

The Effect of Ogling on Women

A common defense made is that nobody is being hurt. We are “only looking”. But the research shows that objectifying gaze has tangible, negative effects on the target of the gaze. Even the perception that one might be the target of objectification can have a negative effect. These effects include[iv]:

Increased body shame and dissatisfaction with your own appearance

Increased body surveillance — monitoring and worrying about your own appearance

Internalizing the beauty standards of society and trying to live up to them

Increased belief that looks are all that matter

Reduced concentration, cognitive ability and performance (e.g., at work or in sports)

Increased “self objectification” by women: thinking of themselves in more objectifying terms and being constantly preoccupied with how others will see you

Acting less individually and more in line with expectations. For example, talking less and not standing up for yourself[v]

What is really sad is that you begin to get the picture that as you objectify people they begin to internalize that view, and begin to believe this about themselves as well. Women affected in this way actually start acting more like objects, even when the gaze is “complimentary” (making a positive impression about a woman’s appearance).

Along with this, women begin to believe that their physical attractiveness is more important than their qualities as a person. As you can imagine, this can lead to unrealistic standards of beauty which can lead to shame when they fail to live up to those unachievable standards[vi]. If beauty is all that matters, and you’ll never be as beautiful as the airbrushed models on TV and in fashion ads, what does that leave you with?

Does this happen to men? No: this was actually tested and the effects are found for women being gazed on by men, but not the other way around[vii]. This highlights our responsibility as men to break this habit and to challenge our culture about how we view and look at women. Literally.

How Ogling Affects Marriage

Of course this does have a significant impact on marriage. It really is a betrayal and this objectification can happen both through ogling or other means like porn use. Here are some documented negative effects on wives if their husbands display these objectifying attitudes[viii] :

Sadness and negative emotions

Increased body shame

Internalization of unattainable beauty standards

Reduced self esteem

Greater likelihood of having eating disorder symptoms caused by body shame

Other researchers have found the same thing. For example, a study in 2011[ix] found that highly objectifying views in the husband predicted self-objectification in the wife. Wives will see themselves how husbands look at other women. Naturally, this impacts the marriage, creating reduced sexual satisfaction for both the husband and wife and reduced relationship satisfaction.

By the way: if you are wondering how it reduces sexual satisfaction…it reduces women’s self esteem and it reduces intimacy. Self-esteem is necessary for desire…if you’re lost in your own insecurities it is going to be hard to feel a lot of desire. Also if you feel like you are actually just part of a larger harem of women but you happen to be the one your husband has physical sex with (rather than virtual) then of course there is a reduction in intimacy that’s going to happen.

It is also really important to note that reduced sexual satisfaction does not lead to husbands engaging in more ogling or objectification in this context[x]. So a husband ogling other woman is not because he is not getting enough sex. What I mean is that withholding sex does not cause ogling. That may be used by him to justify ogling but I would challenge guys to be very careful about going down that road.

At the same time, there are some spouses in a lot of pain because sex is being withheld from them: I do not want to dismiss that pain, but just to gently challenge you to think about how you may be choosing to adjust your own moral values as a result. I’d encourage you both: if you guys have a legit sex problem, go ahead and tackle that, but don’t try to justify ogling by blaming it on your spouse.

Ogling is a Betrayal of Commitment

Don’t forget that in all of this I’ve been calling ogling out as a betrayal event.

Marital commitment is made up of three components:

satisfaction with the relationship

exclusivity vs. attention to alternatives

investment in the current relationship

You can see how increased attention to other women really erodes commitment. It is a betrayal.

A few episodes ago when we looked at the dark realities of the porn industry we created a bonus guide that helps men deal with this objectification and ogling issue. So for this episode we’re coming at it from the other side.

This week our bonus guide is for wives who find themselves influenced by popular thought and although it is painful to admit — you’ve really objectified yourself as well. Not necessarily in an immoral way, but you’re noticing you spend a lot of time on body image and concerns there rather than thinking of yourself as a whole person and focusing on personal growth.

What To Do About Ogling

Understand the Damage It Causes

Despite the damage ogling and objectification do to women (both the target and the wives of ogling husbands), many people are resistant to the idea that it needs to stop. Men see it as "normal" or "harmless" and in some cases even women are taught that being the object of male attention is desirable[xi].

I think this needs to be a conversation in your marriage if it is a problem. For wives, make your husbands aware of the personal impact of their ogling behavior on you. For some, that may provide motivation to change.

And I want to challenge men out there too — I am challenged by lust as much as the next guy. Character is what you are when nobody is watching — when you can ogle someone do you? I have to stay on top of this…it is an easy habit to get into and in the summer time or in a mall or going past some billboards it takes a concerted effort to bounce your eyes.

And yet, if all of us were intentional about this I believe it would actually begin to change our culture and make it a safer place for women and also safer for our marriages too.

Change How You See Women

Ogling and being drawn to look at attractive women's bodies may be an automatic or nearly unconscious process, and so can be hard for men to stop. However, we can choose to focus instead on other aspects of women: seeing them as equal human beings rather than objects to be viewed. This is really about how you think about women now.

Over time this will make you less likely to think of women as objects and you will be able to "catch" yourself when you are drawn to start ogling. To demonstrate this effect, a study in 2014[xii] found that focusing on women's physical appearance caused men to see them as being less competent, less warm and less capable of making moral decisions.

Seeing women as objects and seeing them as having

Balancing work and family can be a tricky task for any marriage. In fact, sometimes it can seem like it’s impossible to really satisfy either area: either work is going to be unhappy if you put too much emphasis on family, or family is going to be unhappy if there’s too much emphasis on work.

Or: both will be unhappy! This is really hard to figure out!

Work-Family Conflict

Work and family are probably the two biggest demands on your time and energy. When both your career and your family responsibilities are competing for the same hours in the day it can easily lead to conflict in one area or the other.

Work life and home life run into issues usually in one of two ways:

When the demands of work interfere with your ability to manage family life, or

When the demands of marriage and family life interfere with the ability to manage work

This can go two ways and consequently there are different causes, different consequences and ways of coping[i]. If you pay attention, what you will usually notice is that stress is caused in one area and then most prominently felt in the opposite area: for example, stress caused at work is felt most strongly in the marriage, and vice versa[ii].

This can be hard for your marriage because you have something outside the marriage that’s bringing stress in. Also, just to be clear, this can happen in dual-income families or it can happen in single-income families: all you need is a demanding or successful job, some long hours or a lot of travel.

Competing Roles

It is good to be compassionate with ourselves here because having a career and being a spouse/parent are two very different roles to hold simultaneously. On top of that, these two roles can compete for the same time and emotional energy[iii].

When that happens there are two processes that can cause conflict between these roles:

Spillover: where stress and difficulties in one role spill over into the other (e.g., stress at work leading to conflict at home)

Congruence: where there is a separate factor affecting both home and work equally (e.g., poor conflict resolution skills)

Basically you can either bring stress from one role into the other, or you can bring some other factor with you that’s causing stress in both roles. A tight deadline at work creates stress at home, but a bad attitude creates stress everywhere you go.

Not Enough Resources

What happens is we all have a limited amount of resources such as energy, time, money, knowledge, emotional effort etc. When you do not have enough resources to take care of all the roles this creates tension. Or maybe you have to use an excessive amount of resources trying to balance the roles[iv]. Think about it: is this happening to you? Are you stretching yourself too thin?

Further, work-family conflict can also occur when behavior resources are carried over from one role to another inappropriately. For example: someone who is stressed at work may try to use the same authoritarian management style at home. That’s never going to go well. Then you get conflict in the home[v].

These are all dynamics that we need to be aware of in order to solve work-family conflict.

So is Work the Problem? Or Family?

High demands at home naturally pull your resources away from work, and conflict at home reduces your capacity to handle conflict at work[vi].

Here is a helpful way of figuring out where the stress is and what the impact is:

Factors

Consequences

Work Interfering with Family

Stressful or high pressure working conditions

Conflict with colleagues at work

Long hours and physically/emotionally tiring work

Inflexible working hours

Having to do work you don't find meaningful or engaging

Dissatisfaction with family life

Marital tension, leading to conflict

Higher overall life stress

Symptoms of depression and anxiety

Reduced physical health- such as high blood pressure, sleep disturbances and increased susceptibility to illness

Higher likelihood of turning to destructive behaviors such as smoking, poor eating and substance abuse

Family Interfering with Work

Marital conflict

Number of hours spent on household labor

Childcare, especially having multiple young children

Financial instability

Caring for elderly parents as well as children

Major events which could drain your resources, such as sickness, injury, financial

Poorer performance at work

More days off work due to sickness and stress

Higher rates of burnout

Increased likelihood of leaving the job and high turnover rate between jobs

Ways to Reduce Work-Family Conflict

Research on reducing work-family conflict has focused on ways employers can reduce the conflict for their employees, and on issues you as individuals can work on to reduce the conflict as well. Let’s take a quick look at both.

Things Your Employer Can Do

Many employers offer services to address work-life balancing issues. These include:

Flexible work hours

Options to work from home

Ability to work part time

Extended maternity/paternity leave

Paid family leave

On-site childcare

Assistance finding childcare and other support

Which of these are actually helpful? In 2008[vii] some researchers conducted a meta-review of studies examining which of these services actually help reduce WFC.

Results were very mixed: some studies show that flexible work arrangements like working from home and on-site childcare can improve work-life balance and reduce conflict, while others show little effect. Some studies even show that these arrangements can increase WFC. For some people working from home meant taking the stress of work home with you rather than reducing the stress.

The research does show that these services work for some people, so whether they are useful or not is probably a matter of personal preference and individual circumstances. So if your employer offers these kinds of services, try taking advantage of them and see what works. Remember that employers have a responsibility to minimize the stress your job causes, so if these services aren’t offered, could you ask for them to be set up?

Things You Can Do

Now let’s look at what you can do to redress this balance. This is the most important part, really, because you can’t control what your employer and your job demands are like, but you can always take steps to learn new skills and look at news ways to manage.

Managing Resources

Like we saw above, conflict between work and marriage is due to a strain on your emotional and practical resources. This means you can reduce the conflict by learning to manage your various resources more effectively. We really dive into this in the bonus content, so give that a really good look if you want to figure out how you can pull all your different strengths and resources together to make things easier.

Time Management Skills

Having good time management skills reduces both work and home stress, and prevents stress from one area spilling over into the other[viii].

This is a great option, by the way, because these are simple skills that anyone can learn. And they’ll help in pretty much every area of life.

Self Esteem

Self esteem has an interesting relationship to work-family conflict. According to a study in 1999[ix], self esteem is not correlated to work-family conflict and does not help prevent it. However, high levels of self esteem are negatively correlated with all the bad outcomes work-family conflict normally produces, such as stress, marital conflict, poor physical health, poor performance at work etc.

So working on building your self esteem doesn't stop work-family conflict from happening, but it does stop it from having any negative effects on your marriage or work life. Self esteem isn’t the easiest thing to work on but it’s about learning to be comfortable with who you are, and developing the skills and knowledge to act with confidence at work and at home.

Settling Boundaries

How are you at setting boundaries? A study 2009[x] identified some simple strategies people used to create boundaries between work and home, which reduced work-family conflict:

Enlisting Help: using other people to help protect your home times from work demands, such as having work colleagues screen calls while you are away, asking colleagues to help with work to reduce stress, or asking your spouse to act as a "buffer" to control which aspects of work are allowed to come home with you.

Prioritizing: only allowing the really essential work demands to interfere with home life and leaving the non-urgent stuff until you are back at work.

Controlling work time: setting clear time boundaries as to when you are at work, and when you have to leave.

Holidays: taking regular time off to recover from work stress.

Sometimes creating healthy work-life boundaries is about standing up for yourself and choosing to make your marriage and family a priority over work. Which leads us on to the final point.

Priorities

This is one to think about carefully.

According to Role theory[xi] individuals with multiple competing roles will naturally lean towards one, developing a primary role and seeing the other role as secondary.

People then come to "specialize" in their primary role by getting better at it and investing more time and effort in it. This often negatively impacts the secondary role(s). This is reflected in the fact that people who choose to spend more hours in work and engage more in their work life experienced reduced quality of marital life, and vice versa[xii].

In this sense, individuals with competing roles may simply need to choose which one is their priority: their job or their marriage. If they choose to prioritize the marriage they may need to accept that there will be some detrimental effects to the job, or vice versa,...

Loyalty in marriage is one of the most powerful predictors of a long-lasting, stable relationship. In one study that followed 147 couples who had been happily married more than 20 years, loyalty to the spouse came in as the second strongest predictor of long-term stability. That makes loyalty one of the most important features of building a marriage that actually lasts.

But here is where it gets interesting. Most of us, when we hear the word "loyalty," default to a fairly thin definition: don't cheat. Don't betray. Stay faithful. That is not wrong. It is just the floor, not the whole house. The clinical and research literature gives us a much richer picture of loyalty in marriage, and the gap between what we settle for and what loyalty actually offers is, in our experience, one of the quietest reasons marriages plateau.

Today we are going to walk through what loyalty really means, why the research keeps finding it at the top of the predictor lists, and how to handle the three places it gets tested most often.

What Loyalty in Marriage Actually Means

The philosopher George Fletcher gave us one of the most useful frames for this. He distinguished between minimum loyalty and maximum loyalty[i].

Minimum loyalty is what we usually mean. It is the baseline: not having an affair, not lying, not betraying your spouse's trust. It is defined entirely by what you do not do. Stay inside the lines. Don't cross them.

Maximum loyalty is a different thing entirely. It is about "becoming one" with your spouse through long-term commitment, partnership, and devotion. Where minimum loyalty is about avoiding the major taboos of marriage, maximum loyalty is about investing yourself into something deeply. You can see how those are not the same. Avoiding harm and creating something are two different muscles.

Maximum loyalty, in Fawcett's research, gets built through five things[ii]:

A shared vision for life: wanting the same things from life, valuing the same qualities, agreeing on the issues that matter.

Joint life goals: parenting, community work, faith practice, business ventures, anything you are both pulling toward.

Generosity: investing in your spouse through affection, time, gifts, acts of service.

Fairness: sharing workloads and taking joint responsibility for the relationship.

Openness, vulnerability, and honesty.

This is what John Gottman calls "shared meaning" in his Sound Relationship House model. It is one of the features Gottman sees in marriages that thrive over time. And what is striking, clinically, is how rarely couples talk about it directly. They will talk about chores, about sex, about the kids. They rarely talk about whether the life they are building is one they both actually want.

There is one more layer to maximum loyalty that often gets overlooked. Loyalty also implies a commitment to your own growth inside the marriage. To bring more of yourself. To be challenged to develop as a person. Fowers writes about this as bringing a "richness and vitality that may otherwise be dormant" into the marriage[iii]. So loyalty is something developed both inside yourself and between the two of you. It is not just about how I treat my spouse. It is also about whether I am still becoming someone worth being loyal to.

Why Loyalty Predicts a Lasting Marriage

A loyal marriage tends to be a strong one. The research lines up across decades of studies. Here is what loyalty actually does.

Loyalty Is the Hidden Mediator of Marital Satisfaction

The clinical mechanism here is fascinating. Rosen-Grandon and colleagues ran a study in 2004 that looked at whether positive marital behaviors, things like affection, agreement, intimacy, and sex, actually produce satisfaction on their own[iv].

They do not.

What the study found is that all of those positive behaviors only translate into satisfaction when love and loyalty are present as mediators. In other words, you can check every good-spouse box and still feel empty if the underlying loyalty is not there.

This is the same idea the apostle Paul lands on in 1 Corinthians 13, which is the most well-known chapter on love in the Bible. You can do all the right things, and if love is missing, it amounts to nothing. The research is making the same observation about marriage specifically.

It is a useful self-check: am I checking the boxes, or are the things I am doing actually saturated with love and loyalty? The spouse on the receiving end can feel the difference.

And here is the other direction this finding points. For couples who value loyalty and see devotion as a priority, simply being happy with the loyalty their spouse already shows is enough to produce high satisfaction, independent of any other factor[v]. That is worth stopping on. If loyalty is genuinely being shown to you in small daily ways, noticing it can become part of how the system strengthens. We often see in our practice that couples will overlook real loyalty for years because they have stopped looking for it.

The #2 Predictor of a Long-Term Marriage

Fenell's 1993 study followed 147 couples who had been happily married for more than 20 years and asked what predicted that outcome[vi]. Loyalty to the spouse came in second. The number one predictor was seeing marriage as a lifelong commitment.

We point this out because it is easy to miss what the data is actually saying. Loyalty is not a nice-to-have. It is one of the major predictors of whether your marriage makes it to the long-term version of itself. And the related concepts in the top 10, things like close friendship and companionship, are all on the same spectrum. They are all describing variants of "I am for you, and I am staying."

How Loyalty Buffers Against Fear

This study is one of the most interesting things in the literature. Florian, Mikulincer, and Hirschberger asked participants to think about frightening existential issues, like death and mortality, and then measured how they reported feeling about their spouse[vii]. What they found was that thinking about death actually raised people's reported commitment and loyalty to their spouse. And those thoughts of commitment, in turn, reduced their fear of death.

The researchers concluded that a strong, loyal relationship reduces the fear of death because in a loyal relationship your sense of self has expanded to include the other person. So if you die, part of your "self" continues. Here is how they put it: "Unlike most other threats, the threat of death is inescapable, and support from close others cannot remove the threat itself. In this case, perhaps, the affirmation of one's importance in others' lives engenders feelings of meaning that render the prospect of death more tolerable"[viii].

What we read in this, clinically, is that loyalty also creates legacy. It is leaving something behind that endures past the span of your own life. People who are deeply loyal to each other become participants in something larger than themselves. That is one of the gifts of a faithful, long marriage that often does not get named.

Loyalty Makes Vulnerability Safe

Vulnerability and loyalty are deeply linked, and the link runs in both directions. When you are in a loyal relationship, one that emphasizes partnership and togetherness, you can express vulnerability and be received well. That is the part most people expect.

What may be less obvious is how loyalty changes the way couples fight. Duba and colleagues found that high underlying loyalty allows spouses to "use positive affect, positive emotions such as humor, to maintain calmness and flexibility, attack the issue and not the spouse, and notice opportunities for repair attempts rather than focusing on each other's negative traits"[ix].

This is what Sue Johnson's work on Emotionally Focused Therapy has shown about secure attachment in marriage. When the loyalty is solid underneath, conflict does not feel like a threat to the bond. It feels like something the two of you are working on together. The fight is not about whether you are still us. The fight is about figuring out the issue at hand. That is a fundamentally different experience.

When Loyalties Compete

Even when you and your spouse genuinely value loyalty, real life will put it under pressure. Three situations come up over and over in our work with couples. The first one is not common to all marriages, but the last two are essentially universal.

Loyalty Conflicts in Stepfamilies

In blended families, loyalties can pull in different directions: between your new spouse and the children or family from a previous marriage[x]. When you are trying to make this work, it can be hard to know which side to come down on. Do you support your spouse, or your kids?

The research is fairly clear on the answer, even though it lands hard. Pasley and colleagues found that creating a stable marriage and a stable home is the single best thing you can do for the children's adjustment to the new family. So when it comes to discipline, rules, and household norms, presenting a stable partnership with your spouse is often what gives children the stability they need. Building new family rituals and a new family dynamic helps too. The whole package becomes the family the kids are growing up inside.

What we see clinically is that the parents who navigate this best are the ones who refuse to treat loyalty to the spouse and loyalty to the children as competing claims. They are committed to the whole system. Of course you would feel pulled when your child is upset with your new spouse. That is the most natural response in the world. The work is treating that feeling as data about a family system that still needs integrating, not as evidence that you have to pick a side.

Work and Marriage

Loyalties also get divided between family life and a career, sometimes in ways that look like normal life but feel like betrayal underneath[xii]....

I do not think that there is a human being on the face of our planet right now who does not struggle at least a little bit with defensives. Some of us struggle a lot. And defensiveness in marriage is definitely going to make you unhappy and dissatisfied with your marriage. Turns out, it’s not an easy one to overcome either—but today we’re going to show you how.

This week we are gonna call you out and expose this gremlin running around in all our marriages called Defensiveness.

I know what you’re thinking…”I’m not defensive!!” But, that’s the problem right there.

How Defensiveness Works

The Bible says that "A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” (Proverbs 18:19 ESV) Or we could say a “Wife offended” or “Husband offended”… Once you hit that point where there’s an attack, there’s a known flaw, there’s known issues then it is really easy to become defensive.

So we have some cool stuff to start with because we are really going to break down this defensiveness thing — you have to know the enemy in order to defeat it — and the enemy is not your spouse, the enemy is the defensiveness that happens between you.

Defensiveness happens when four things line up[i]. What I really like about this is that if you take any of these out, you begin to undermine defensiveness in your own life. So the four things are:

A self-perceived flaw which you refuses to admit

Sensitivity to that flaw (e.g., you are embarrassed or even ashamed about it)

An attack by another person (doesn’t have to be a huge attack — could just be a blunt observation)

The attacker seeing the same flaw which the defender does not want to admit

Defensiveness Could Be a Personality Trait

The first two items above are more characteristic issues: they enter into that area of ways of thinking and/or personality traits. I have a flaw — I do not want to admit to it — and I am sensitive about it. That’s getting into that character realm of things.

Often we might feel quite inadequate around a flaw or at least insecure about it. We certainly do not want to admit it to others and we may not even really admit it to ourselves.

In order to become defensive, that real or perceived flaw has to relate to something that is an important part of my own sense of self or self-worth, and my identity[ii]. It’s like a closely guarded secret that you’re trying your hardest to hide from everyone— maybe even yourself— so when it’s brought to light you instantly try to shoot it down.

So we get defensive in situations in which our identity is threatened.

A classic example is an addiction — even take it on the lighter end of the scale, like a phone addiction. For me to be defensive, go through the four parts:

I perceive it but do not want to admit to it

I am sensitive — I do not want it pointed out

You point it out to me with a harsh edge on your voice because it is a problem that is coming between us

You see the flaw, and I know that.

And then I am beginning to think, I am an addict. I am a bad husband. Good husbands do not have this problem. I stake a lot of my self-identity on being a good husband and father.

Now we have all the ingredients for defensiveness. So how does this get talked (or fought!) through in a marriage?

Defensive Communication in Marriage

There are two sides to defensive communication: the defensive reaction, and the action which caused it. We need to separate these. Just think carefully about how you either trigger defensiveness in your spouse, or how you respond to your spouse when you are feeling defensive[iii]. Let’s start with the first.

How to Trigger Defensiveness In Your Spouse

Here are some sure-fire ways to put your spouse into a defensive mindset:

Use words or tone of voice that evaluates or judges the listener (“I see you are on your phone…again”)

Attempt to control or coerce the listener (“If you don’t put that down I am going to freak on you.”)

Strategic or manipulative communication (targeting, needling or guilting over it)

Neutral speech that conveys a lack of concern (#hairflip you’re on your phone again)

Implications of superiority

Dogmatism or certainty in your own opinion

Any behavior that your spouse deems threatening or punishing

Loud or rapid speech

Frequent interruptions or corrections

These last 2-3 are typical of conflict scenarios: you’re shouting and demanding in every way you can think of but nothing is getting through, and the angrier you get, the more defensive your spouse gets.

What You Likely Do When You Are Feeling Defensive

And here’s how you’re likely to react when you’re in defense-mode:

Dismiss your spouse’s concerns (“what, I’m just looking for a place to eat tonight”)

Denying or minimizing your own responsibility (“People from work keep asking me for stuff”)

Shifting blame to the attacker (“If you’d be a little friendlier I wouldn’t have to use my phone for an escape”)

Making excuses (“Why? Other people use their phones way more than me!”)

Justifications of your actions (“This is how I make a living, OK!”)

How Defensiveness Impacts Marriage

This is one of those “you can win the battle but you’re going to lose the war” scenarios.

Defensive styles of communication lead to increased sensitivity and escalation of the conflict, as the attacker feels like they are not being heard and the defender keeps trying to deflect responsibility[iv].

Where this really hits a marriage in the gut is it is sending a signal to your spouse (when you are defensive) that s/he is not getting through to you. Basically it is an abandonment or rejection signal. It is saying you are alone in what you think because you cannot get through to me. Or it is saying I do not care what you think, go away.

And you thought you were just being defensive!

Researchers have noted a couple important things about why defensiveness really never has anything positive to offer your marriage:

Defensiveness in one spouse also makes the other spouse more prone to defensiveness, creating a destructive cycle that perpetuates itself[v].

Couples who frequently engage in defensive communication report fewer positive feelings for each other and experience lower marital quality and satisfaction[vi]

Ok so that’s how defensiveness works to wreck marriages. Now let’s explore how to stop it.

Reducing Defensiveness

Owning Your Flaws

The built-in objection within defensiveness is that we do not want to be flawed people. Nor do we wish to be seen by the most important people in our lives as being flawed.

If you can change your perspective of marriage to one that includes seeing your marriage as a crucible for personal growth, then you are going to be receptive to the complaints that your spouse makes.

So when she says, “You’re on your phone too much” you can respond differently. You choose to be married because you wish to grow, and your spouse just offered you some feedback that could trigger growth. So instead of becoming defensive, you are now in a position to embrace the feedback even if it hurts.

Remember, one of the core components of defensiveness is a self-perceived flaw which you refuse to admit. When you admit and own the flaw, you are no longer in the position of being defensive.

Part of this is based on the perspective that we are all broken as human beings. So when someone points out one of my flaws, they may do so in a hurtful manner, but because I know that I am already flawed my identity is not threatened.

So there’s an attack but there is no sensitivity because I’ve already embraced my brokenness. Now, I may choose to set a boundary on people who consistently point out flaws in a hurtful way because they are toxic or unhealthy — they’re corrosive — but when it is someone who cares and is normally respectful I can much more readily embrace the feedback.

Believing in Self-Determination

If you’re from a Christian background like us, you may get a little nervous around the idea of self-determination, which is the ability to make decisions without relying on others, and doing things out of your own free will rather than being coerced and manipulated.

We believe in the will of God, but we also believe that God has given to every person the ability to make their own choices. I believe in free will.

In this context, then, you can make choices based on the values that matter to you. As opposed to being forced into things by other people.

So take my phone example, and our definition of how defensiveness happens: someone points out a flaw which you are sensitive to and refuse to admit. Defensiveness says that you can choose to deny the flaw, conceal what is sensitive and try to protect yourself. Self-Determination says that you have chosen to enter marriage, you are invested in the health of that marriage and in the care of your spouse. With this mindset you see the problem as a challenge to be faced together rather than something that needs to be denied, minimized or hidden[vii].

When you see yourself as capable of addressing something rather than as a victim or someone with an unchangeable character flaw, that is a more empowered position to act from. When you see your marriage as part of this in the sense that this is where you get to be seen, warts and all, then you will be even less defensive. In that way, you’re acknowledging this is what you signed up for: refinement, growth, and challenges.

People who show this kind of self-determination generally experience better emotional wellbeing and better relationship satisfaction overall[viii]. Being confident in your ability to face challenges together helps you move past defensiveness and strengthens your marriage across the board.

References:

[i] Glen H. Stamp, Anita L. Vangelisti, and John A. Daly,...

Resentment is what happens when you are treated unfairly and you begin to feel angry and bitter. Resentment can be directed at your spouse, at God, at your life: but if it begins to play a significant role in your marriage, that’s going to make home a pretty tough place to be.

Proverbs 12:25 says that anxiety makes the heart heavy and as I thought about the subject of resentment it occurred to me that resentment can be a form of anxiety. You don’t see this in any diagnostic manual, but it has the same ruminating characteristic of repeatedly mulling over past grievances, with a lot of negativity.

We all end up with resentment at different places and times in our marriage. We don’t want to be getting after you about it, but rather we want to help you understand how it happens, why it doesn’t help and what to do differently!

Resentment often strikes us when we feel that we have been treated badly. Especially if it’s in a way we did not deserve, but it can even happen when good things happen to others which you feel they did not earn[i]. That starts to look a lot like envy.

In marriage it often occurs when you feel you have been unfairly wronged and so it might bring about a desire to get even by holding onto a grudge and remaining bitter[ii].

Major Sources of Resentment in Marriage

Unresolved Conflict

If you struggle with poor conflict resolution and a fairly frequent inability to solve disagreements this often leads to a buildup of resentment and anger[iii]. You get this buildup of annoyances and hurts which might be individually small but if left unforgiven and unaddressed can start to look pretty big. This slowly building resentment then negatively impacts marital satisfaction for both partners.

It is also helpful to note that certain styles of conflict are specifically linked to creating high levels of resentment, especially the competitive style of conflict where each spouse is trying to "win" the argument rather than reach a joint solution[iv].

Unless arguments are properly resolved and forgiven, resentment at the initial transgression which caused the argument will continue to impact the marriage. I often tell the couples I am providing counseling to that how much you argue is not nearly as important as if you resolve those arguments.

Underlying resentment about past grievances can then fuel future conflict and impede conflict resolution in the future, creating a negative spiral[v]. If you’re still angry about something from last week then this week’s annoyance is going to seem even more infuriating. And then when you’re arguing you start to throw in all the little things from the last few days that have annoyed you, and the whole thing blows up.

Don’t worry, we’re going to show you what to do about all this in just a moment!

Perceived Unfairness

Believing that your spouse is acting unfairly often leads to feelings of resentment which can create conflict and reduce marital satisfaction. This can occur over all kinds of aspects of life, such as:

Division of household labor: believing that you do more work than your spouse or that the work is split unfairly leads to resentment, especially for wives[vi].

Emotion work: similarly, feeling that you are doing all the emotional work to maintain the relationship (you’re the one doing all the maintenance behaviors like expressing love, confiding and intimacy etc) or feeling like you put more work into the emotional side of the marriage than your spouse does can also create resentment[vii].

Secrecy: feeling that information is being kept from you by your spouse can also lead to resentment[viii].

Lack of perceived support: feeling unsupported and thinking that your spouse is not helping you through difficulties also leads to hurt and resentment. For example a study in 2000[ix] examined marital satisfaction in couples where one spouse had a serious illness and found that a lack of support and concern or a refusal to help led to feelings of resentment which reduced marital satisfaction.

All these factors are also affected by attributions: whether you think you’re spouses actions are intentional, or driven by who they are as a person or just by circumstance. Believing that your spouse's unfair actions were intentional or driven by who they are as a person makes the ensuing resentment more severe[x]. We did a whole episode on how to stop when you’re misinterpreting your spouse so make sure to go back and check that one out if this sounds familiar.

So perceived unfairness leads to resentment, and resentment leads to lower marital satisfaction. However, low marital satisfaction can also cause perceived unfairness. A study in 2001[xi] studied married couples' levels of satisfaction at 3 points over several months. They found that dissatisfaction with the marriage at time 1 predicted perceptions of unfairness in relation to issues like division of labor at time 2. This then predicted conflict, resentment and dissatisfaction at time 3.

So, if marital satisfaction is already low (for whatever reason) then spouses tend to scrutinize their marriage more harshly and perceive aspects of it as being unfair, leading to resentment and conflict.

In other words, resentment becomes the lens through which you view all of your marriage and through which you see and interpret your spouse’s actions.

Now, how do you deal with resentment?

How to Deal With Resentment Towards Your Spouse

We want to give you three things to look at here.

Moving Towards Fairness

Addressing the reason for the perceived unfairness can prevent resentment from building up. It is important to identify the unfairness and then address it if you believe it is important to you.

Working on a fairer division of labor or more emotional support or whatever the perceived injustice can also remove the underlying resentment and improve marital wellbeing. Simple enough, right? Resolve the issue, remove the resentment.

Forgiving Your Spouse

Forgiving your spouse for the thing which offended you means choosing to let go of the resentment and not let their past actions dominate your present emotions.

Forgiveness is not the same as condoning your spouse's behavior, or letting them off the hook for doing something that upset you. Rather it is choosing not to hold on to the resentment and releasing the person from being indebted to you.

Like I said, we’ve got some high quality detail on this in our bonus download for our patrons, but here is a very helpful quote from a research team:

"As the person decides to forgive and so proclaims, several important things happen. First, the forgiver has crossed an important line… He or she has moved from a position of resentment to one of not letting the resentment dominate the interaction. Although the one who forgives may still feel resentful, the person chooses not to let it be a controlling factor. Second, the decision and proclamation show that the forgiver is consciously aware of his or her new position. The forgiver, in other words, is not abandoning resentment because of taking some memory-loss pill or simply letting time run its course. Instead, the decision is a defining moment regarding who the forgiver is (“I am one who forgives”),who the forgiven is (“He/she is worthy of respect”), and what their relationship may be like as a result of this decision.[xii]"

Forgiveness has very strong links to marital wellbeing, commitment and satisfaction, and is especially linked with better ability to resolve conflict and prevent the negative cycles of resentment and conflict[xiii].

That’s why this is the focus of our bonus guide: forgiveness is a huge lever that you can pull to move you out of resentment and towards contentment.

Gratitude Helps, Too

This is really interesting: gratitude and resentfulness are often considered "mirror images" of each other[xiv].

Both arise in response to a person's actions towards you and both invoke a desire to reciprocate or get even, either in a positive way (gratitude) or a negative way (resentment). Resentment therefore forms a cycle of conflict and negativity while gratitude starts a cycle of positivity and thankfulness.

Gratitude and resentment as personality traits are negatively correlated: being high in one makes you naturally lower in the other[xv]. So working on increasing your feeling and expression of gratitude will cause your tendency towards resentment to decrease. Being a generally grateful person is also highly correlated with being easily able to forgive, which also helps remove resentment[xvi].

An attitude of gratitude always helps!

References:

[i] N. T. Feather and Rebecca Sherman, ‘Envy, Resentment, Schadenfreude, and Sympathy: Reactions to Deserved and Undeserved Achievement and Subsequent Failure’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28.7 (2002), 953–61 .

[ii] Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, The Psychology of Gratitude (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004).

[iii] Frank D. Fincham, Steven R. H. Beach, and Joanne Davila, ‘Longitudinal Relations between Forgiveness and Conflict Resolution in Marriage’, Journal of Family Psychology: JFP: Journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 21.3 (2007), 542–45 .

[iv] A. P. Greeff and T. de Bruyne, ‘Conflict Management Style and Marital Satisfaction’, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26.4 (2000), 321–34 .

[v] Fincham, Beach, and Davila.

[vi] Daphne Stevens, Gary Kiger, and Pamela J. Riley, ‘Working Hard and Hardly Working: Domestic Labor and Marital Satisfaction among Dual-Earner Couples’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 63.2 (2001), 514–26.

[vii] Stevens, Kiger, and Riley.

[viii] Catrin Finkenauer and Hana Hazam, ‘Disclosure and Secrecy in Marriage: Do Both Contribut

Today we want to lift the hood on the world of marriage counseling and look at one particular approach and how it works. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens in the counseling room or are considering counseling there’s a lot more to it than you might think!

The Mystery of Marriage Counseling

The world of counseling may seem like a mysterious or even intimidating place to those who know little about it. There’s a stigma around mental health itself, and although a distressed marriage is not a mental health problem, we rarely talk about our struggles as a couple. We like to appear like we have it all together and I think us church-going folk are even more prone to this.

But then you do hear the horror stories when things don’t go well and people open up. Some terrible advice comes from people who call themselves counselors.

So then when it comes to choosing a marriage counselor it can be pretty scary because your marriage is a big deal and you don’t want to the wrong person trying to help you with it!

Basic Marriage Counselor Criteria

Now I want to say that this article is not an extended advertisement for our services, but the things I am going to tell you are important facts you need to know, whether you decide to work with someone from my counseling practice or find a local counselor.

The first thing is that not all counseling degrees are created equal. When a person is earning their Master’s degree in order to become a therapist, their school and the degree program they choose will generally orient itself around a particular school of thought.

Of course, there are a plethora of flavors. But when it comes to marriage counseling you should know that there are a number of universities around North America that offer marriage and family therapy programs specifically. These kinds of degrees have less focus on specific mental health problems like anxiety disorders or even addictions, and they focus very much on relationships, how humans interact, how children learn to love and relate to others, on marriage dynamics and on family systems.

So when you choose a therapist the first thing you should filter on is their education: do they have a degree that specializes in marriage and family? And usually you’ll see this in the letters after their last name in that either their degree will look like MAMFT (Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy) or their certifying body will supply MFT credentials like LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist). If you’re not sure, ask about the person’s training.

The second thing you want to look for is whether the therapist has a specific approach to marriage counseling that is evidence-based. “Evidence-based” means that they are using a treatment approach which has been tested and tried through research and peer-reviewed journals.

Surprisingly, there are only a handful of marriage approaches that have been rigorously tested in this way, and so if you want to give you marriage the best chance of success you would do well to ensure you are selecting a counselor who uses an evidence based approach. Otherwise you’ll have no idea whether what you’re being told actually works or not.

Probably the two most popular evidence-based counseling approaches are Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (sometimes called EFT or EFCT) and the Gottman Method. I have taken specific training in both of these, on top of my MFT degree, as has my colleague in my practice, Jesse Schellenberg. They are quite different but very complementary.

Both of us favor EFCT as our preferred approach: about 90% of couples show significant improvements using this approach and we’ll talk more about success rates in a moment, but 90% is incredible.

How EFCT Works

Key Principles

Now, I am going to work hard to break the scientific jargon and psychobabble into English here but there are some key principles in this approach to marriage counseling that are important (Gurman et al, 2015[i])

Collaborative alliance: meaning the couple needs to be coached to become allies in working through their difficulties and working together to discover solutions. The onus is on the therapist to facilitate this. When you take this approach to marriage counseling, the relationship between the couple becomes the "client" or the target of the therapy, rather than each individual spouse. And I am very explicit with couples about this: I tell them, “I am not on your side or your side, I am on the side of your marriage."

Person centered: In its secular form, this approach views people as being essentially good, and capable of making good and healthy choices. The bond and attachment between the couple is viewed as being essentially good and healthy. In this view everyone has the capacity to have a happy, healthy marriage and the ability to break free from conflict and unhealthy patterns.

Now as Christians we own the problem of sin so I prefer to look at it in the sense of acknowledging that people are created in the image of God, which is one source of goodness, but because of sin we act in ways that are self-serving and self-preserving, rather than loving our neighbor/spouse as ourselves.

So I think about it differently but it still invokes the same interventions. Since we’re made in God’s image we all have the capacity to reflect him in our marriage. It’s just sometimes a bit of struggle getting there. A Christian approach to EFCT also argues that the marriage bond is a universally positive and valuable connection that has the capacity to heal and strengthen individuals. Both EFCT and the biblical worldview see marriage as a powerful place for individual growth[ii].

Patterns of reacting: According to EFCT thinking, problems arise when individuals get "stuck" using certain ways of responding and interacting with each other, such as anger or fear of rejection. Often couples will already be somewhat or very aware of this, saying things like, “We always get stuck on the same issues." These emotions form unhelpful patterns of acting as a couple, which need to be understood and deconstructed.

Expanding emotional responses. Emotions are the main focus of the therapy as they guide how the couple interacts. "Emotion guides and gives meaning to perception, motivates and cues attachment responses, and when expressed, communicates to others and organizes their response[iii]".

The therapists helps couples to analyze their emotional responses to conflict and find new ways to express themselves in order to help them move forward. For example if a couple often show anger to each other they can work on expressing the underlying fear or vulnerability which is causing the anger. Positive change comes from expressing new, softer emotions and expressing yourself in new ways, not necessarily from uncovering past trauma or working on old issues.

Goals of EFCT

We have three goals.

First, we want to create a safe, collaborative alliance between the spouses where they are both willing to work on their difficulties. This, by the way, is why we do not do marriage counseling when there is an abusive husband in the picture. That issue needs to be resolved first, because there is no emotional safety for the wife, so making her more vulnerable puts her at greater risk for violence or abuse. This is a very common mistake made by therapists who do marriage counseling without being specifically trained in it.

Second, we want to expand the range of emotions which guide the couple’s interactions. Often they are not aware of all that is going on in their hearts, leading people to act in ways that aren’t helpful just because they can’t get at the root of the problem. EFCT does an incredible job of building emotional intelligence.

Thirdly, we work to restructure the couples’ interactions in a more positive and responsive direction. Meaning, they respond to each other positively and with care and sensitivity. We end up creating a positive interaction cycle.

The Marriage Counseling Process

How do we reach those goals? In EFCT there are nine main steps[iv] and we’ll go through them pretty quickly:

Identifying the conflict issues within the marriage. “What brings you to counseling?"

Identifying the negative interaction cycle: figuring out how and why the couple are getting stuck. This requires a very skilled therapist so that you can see exactly what is happening.

Uncovering the unacknowledged emotion relating to the couple's attachment bond which is underpinning the cycle of interaction for each partner. So, finding out what’s really driving the problem: fear, lack of trust, rejection and so on.

Re-framing the initial problem in terms of the cycle of interaction and the underlying needs. Couples need to see that this cycle has been unknowingly created and that both spouses have fallen "victim" to it in the marriage. This is where you reframe the cycle as the enemy, instead of your spouse being the enemy.

Helping individuals to connect with the attachment needs of parts of themselves they have been ignoring. For example the need for reassurance or comfort, or a sense of shame or unworthiness.

Encouraging each partner to accept the other's experience and perspective.

Helping each spouse express their needs in relation to the original conflict, in order to restructure the cycle of interaction based on new perspectives and emotions.

With these new perspectives, discovering new solutions to old problems.

Developing new, better cycles and patterns of behavior.

So that’s a very brief rundown of the aims, principles and basic steps involved in EFCT. Let’s talk about the effectiveness of EFCT — how well does this approach work, and what are the specific things that make it work well?

Effectiveness of EFCT Marriage Counseling

EFCT has been shown to be highly effective in alleviating marital distress in couples[v]. You see different results in different places but on the

I am excited about this episode today. We all dread mental health issues but today you’ll find out that there is a lot of hope for marriages where one spouse has significant mental health problems.

Mental health is a huge problem that affects millions of people around the world. Disorders including depression, anxiety, bipolar and others impact many more people than you may think and can cause real pain and distress.

Living with a long term mental illness is hard, and so is being married to someone with such a disorder. So today we want to look at the reality of how mental health impacts marriages, and what you can do to support your spouse if you are in this situation.

How Mental Illness Impacts Marriage

We need to be realistic about the impact of mental illness on marriage. Mental illness in one spouse often has a negative impact on wellbeing and marital satisfaction for both the mentally ill spouse and the other[i]. This is normally stronger for the mentally ill spouse but both spouses to feel the effects.

What we’d like to share with you is that for both the ill spouse and the healthy spouse, there are specific mediating factors which can account for much of the marital distress, and therefore be used to help keep marital satisfaction high even when dealing with severe mental issues like mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders.

Attributions

Mental health disorders (especially mood disorders like depression or bipolar) affect how you interpret your spouse's actions and what you attribute them to[ii]. This attribution effect is important to be aware of.

Mental health disorders cause people to attribute their spouse's actions more negatively. They can also cause people to attribute negative behaviors to being stable parts of their spouse's personality rather than being isolated one-off incidents. This tendency to attribute things negatively leads to lower marital satisfaction over time. Levels of depression themselves do not lead to lower marital satisfaction: all the changes are due to this attribution issue[iii].

Remember our recent episode on attribution and misinterpretations in marriage? We talked about how the way you interpret your spouse’s actions can either set you on an upward or a downward spiral. Mental illness can, if you aren’t careful, make you more likely to see everything as negative, which then alters the way you act and feel. So we really have to watch the attribution piece and thoughtfully counteract that.

Negative Thoughts and Views

People with mental illness will hold more negative views about themselves, and about their marriage. Mental illness can affect perception so that the mentally ill spouse pays more attention to negative events and disregards the good things that happen. Mental illness can also cause people to have more negative expectations about the future[iv]. All these negative beliefs and expectations can influence the way people act and cause them to withdraw and hide away.

Interpersonal Difficulties

Anxiety, depression and personality disorders can all lead to impaired social skills,[v] such as expressing more negative views, difficulty expressing emotion, reduced problem-solving ability, a high need for reassurance and difficulty accepting and believing the reassurances offered.

The cycle of repeatedly asking for reassurance or seeking comfort and the refusal or inability to accept comfort can eventually lead to rejection.

These issues can create interpersonal problems within marriage over time as the non-ill spouse has to constantly reassure and comfort their mentally ill partner without getting as much support in return. Also without getting appreciation for the effort required to support the ill spouse.

To help with this, training in communication and social skills can lead to improvements in symptoms of mental illness, and improve marital functioning at the same time[vi]. Once again the point here is that it isn’t the mental illness itself that’s causing the marital problems, it’s a specific issue that’s caused by the illness but has a very practical solution. So there’s hope there.

Dealing with a Mentally Ill Spouse

So how can you support your spouse through mental illness? If your spouse has some kind of long term mental illness you may feel powerless to help them, but it turns out that you as the spouse are perfectly positioned to help them through it. Here are a few ideas.

Positive behaviors. A study in 1998[vii] identified five key positive behaviors which can be used to support a mentally ill spouse:

Enjoyable time spent together

Positive listening

Tangible/practical assistance

Self esteem support

Intimacy and confiding

These behaviors help the mentally ill spouse feel supported and can reduce symptoms over time. So these simple things which should be a part of any healthy marriage can actually reduce the burden of mental illness. We go into more detail on each of those five in our bonus guide so definitely check that out.

Accept the issue. While there are definitely things you can do to help your spouse, expecting the mental health issue to just vanish is going to make things much worse. Expecting or putting pressure on your mentally ill spouse to change creates a higher risk of marital distress[viii]. It can be difficult to understand what your spouse is going through since there are no outward signs of illness, but it’s important to understand that mental health issues are just as real and serious as physical ones.

Change is possible but it has to be a very gradual process and challenges and setbacks are likely, so expecting or needing your spouse to recover is likely to turn mental illness into a bigger marital problem.

Conflict and problem solving. A study in 2002[ix] surveyed 22 couples where the wife suffered from an anxiety disorder such as agoraphobia. They found that husbands in these marriages were often more critical of their wives and less likely to use positive problem solving skills. These couples also showed higher rates of negative nonverbal behavior and longer "negative exchanges" (arguments). This then led to higher marital discord. So working on good conflict resolution and communication skills can certainly make the mental illness less of an issue.

Similarly, a study by Coyne et al[x] found that arguments with your spouse are a risk factor for the onset of depressive disorder, and having a spouse you don't feel you can turn to or confide in also leaves people vulnerable to depression.

So you want to work hard at maintaining a posture of approachability and helpfulness.

Compassion and reassurance. As we saw above, mentally ill people often need regular reassurance that they are still valued and cared for, but struggle to accept reassurance and comfort when it is offered.

This is because people with anxiety or depression suffer from both negative emotions (sadness, worry, hopelessness) and negative thoughts and beliefs about themselves (thinking they are worthless or that other people don't like them). So they need reassurance to comfort the emotional side of the illness, but the thoughts and beliefs they hold make it hard for them to believe that they are really loved and supported[xi].

Spouses should therefore continue to offer reassurance and comfort whenever needed and try not to get frustrated when the person continually asks for support. Continually affirming that your ill spouse is loved and valued can slowly change their perception of themselves and help change their negative beliefs over time.

However, spouses need to be careful to show support and validation to their spouse, but not to their ill spouse's negative views and beliefs about themselves. Normally showing that you understand and agree with your spouse’s views and perceptions is a good thing, but when your spouse holds very negative views of themselves due to mental illness, showing agreement with these views can reinforce them and end up being harmful[xii]. You want to try and lift your spouse out of their negative thoughts and beliefs, not wallow in them alongside them.

Supporting Yourself While Your Spouse is Mentally Ill

The other side to this is making sure that you are ok while your spouse is mentally ill. A happy spouse will go a long way to reducing the impact of mental illness, and just because you are the “healthy” one that doesn’t mean you don’t have needs that should be met.

So let’s look at some issues that you need to think about.

Attributions. Mental illness can cause people to say or do things they would never do otherwise. For example, illness may make people more easily angered, more prone to self destructive behavior or less willing to engage with their spouse.

Spouses should attribute these things to the illness, not to their spouse. Thinking that negative behaviors are deliberately performed by your mentally ill spouse and intended to cause harm creates higher distress within the marriage[xiii]. So learning to separate your spouse from the things the illness causes them to do or say can protect you from distress. A simple question you can ask yourself is, “Is this the illness speaking or my spouse speaking?"

Stigma. Mental health is often poorly understood or stigmatized by society, which can lead to the other spouse feeling isolated or unable to share about the difficulty of supporting their mentally ill spouse[xiv]. Friends and family may, for example, be unable to understand and accept mental illness and instead refer to it in other terms such as thinking the mentally ill spouse is just stressed, or that they just have a weak or anxious character.

The non-ill spouse may also come across the attitude that they are in some way responsible for their spouse's condition. Being aware of these issues and choosing to selectively confide in a few trusted friends can help you get the support you need without feeling isolated or s