One of the concerns that often comes up in premarital counselling is from a couple where there are different amounts of sexual experience. Even apart from the moral concerns this may prompt are the fears, uncertainties, and doubts of what sexual intimacy may look like when you get married.

For those of you that are new to this podcast, Verlynda and I are born-again believers but I’d say we are the non-judging variety, and we come to marriage with the belief that it comes as a gift from God, but we also believe that marriage is for all people, not just for Christians. As such, our podcasts are not preachy and they are usually not even very pastoral. We take an integrated approach between our Christian worldview and current research to bring you the best truth and wisdom for your marriage.

But most of our readers are followers of Jesus Christ, and one of the Biblical values that we adhere to is that sex is reserved for marriage. The reason for that is not because God is prudish and likes to take pleasure away from people, but for a few reasons.

First, we believe that God gets to set the rules.

Second, we believe that the best sex happens in the marriage bed. Or should…that may not be your experience, but the research has shown that happily married couples are indeed having the best sex: moreso than singles or cohabiting couples.

Finally, while sex in any context may bring pleasure, we are going to see again today that the only place where loving, consensual sex is most likely to be free of complications is inside marriage.

So that’s just a little primer on where we are coming from on this episode. Let’s point out that if you’re virgins and not married, this is another reason why we recommend waiting for marriage. But if you’re coming to marriage and you’re not a virgin, we’re not here to shame you. There are likely to be some consequences but God is a God of redemption and grace. So we’re not here to shame or judge you, just to help you create a thriving passionate marriage. After all, none of us comes to marriage perfect. We all have brokenness.

Let’s begin by acknowledging some of the struggles that may come in a situation like this.

How Premarital Sex Can Impact Marriage

A quick touch of background theory: in social psychology exchange theory is a commonly used way of understanding how people act. And exchange theory views relationships in terms of give and take. The basic premise is that people are happiest when the reward they get from a relationship is higher than what they have to put into it (the cost).

When it comes to marriages, sexual satisfaction is determined by four factors:

Reward (pleasure, intimacy)

Cost (having to do things you don't want, differences in sexual desire or preference)

Comparison of rewards (how the rewards of the current relationship compare to past relationships- is sex with your spouse more or less satisfying?)

Comparison of costs (how the costs of the marriage compare to past relationships)

Now, this is going to look a bit different depending on your past sexual experience, if any. For the virgin spouse there is no comparison to previous partners, so 3 and 4 don't apply: sexual satisfaction is totally determined by the current relationship. Anxiety about lack of sexual experience or about being compared to previous partners may contribute to the "costs" of the relationship for the virgin spouse and make sex less enjoyable initially.

For a non-virgin spouse, satisfaction will be partly determined by how the current sex compares to previous partners. This can go either way: if sex was high in reward with previous partners then current sexual satisfaction may suffer, but if prior sex was higher in cost than the current sex (e.g., past partners wanted to have sex in ways you didn't enjoy, or weren't good at responding to your needs) then sexual satisfaction in the marriage may be higher.

Infertility is the inability to conceive a child after at least 1 year of trying. Turns out about 10% of US couples experience infertility, and of those, about half will eventually conceive while the other half remain permanently infertile[i]. That’s actually a pretty high number: 1 in 10 couples struggle with this issue, 1 in 20 permanently face it.

Challenges of Infertility

As anyone who is going through this themselves will know, infertility can be a hard thing to live with. I want to begin by normalizing some of the strain that infertility puts on marriages[ii]:

Meaning. Many couples see having children as a natural part of marriage, and being unexpectedly unable to do so affects their sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Expectations. Similarly, much of society sees having children as the norm, so being unable may lead to disapproval from family and friends, and high levels of pressure to conceive. 83% of couples feel some form of pressure to conceive, most commonly from their spouse or parents, or from friends and other family members.

Blame and guilt. The spouse who is experiencing the infertility problems may feel high levels of guilt and shame at the distress they are causing to their spouse

Physical. Taking treatment for infertility can be physically demanding and can also lead to sexual performance problems.

Financial. Seeking help from doctors can take up a lot of time and also cost a lot.

These are real issues. But as far as your marriage goes, it is how you deal with these challenges that determines whether or not infertility will affect your marriage, and the quality of your life overall.

Research shows that infertility can negatively impact marriage, but can also bring unexpected positives. 25% of women and 21% of men reported that their marriage had become stronger and they had been drawn closer together as a result of the infertility, and over half of couples can identify at least some benefits to their marriage as a result[iii].

This is the kind of thing that really gets me excited about marriage because here’s pretty much a major life blow and yet it’s in the context of a loving marriage that it can be reframed into some positives.

We are going to talk about how to be sure that it turns out to be a positive in your marriage, despite the grief and loss associated with it. However, let’s talk about a couple of the negative consequences first just so we’re aware of some potential pitfalls.

Possible Negative Consequences of Infertility

Primarily we need to pay attention to the impact on marital and/or sexual satisfaction.

Marital Satisfaction and Infertility

Infertility sometimes has a negative impact on marital quality. This effect is strongest for women but can also impact men[iv]. Stress caused by infertility can increase marital conflict, reduce self-esteem, and reduce overall happiness and quality of life.

Why is this negative effect stronger for women? A study in 1992[v] looked into this and found that for men, the stress of infertility was no different to other forms of marital stress and conflict. But for women, infertility created a different kind of stress that was more rooted in the woman's sense of identity and self-efficacy. Often women have a stronger desire to have children than their husbands, and hold motherhood as a strong part of their identity. So for men, infertility can be a stress that creates conflict and other burdens, but it often impacts women on a deeper level.

Researchers also note that stress and marital discord become more likely the longer the infertility problems go on[vi], which is understandable.

Infertility Can Also Impact Your Sex Life

Research is very mixed on whether infertility impacts sex and sexual satisfaction in married couples. Different studies find that it has negative effects, no effect or even positive effects[vii].

Depending on the cause of infertility, some men can experience reduced sex drive,

Are you working from home, or thinking about working from home? In today’s episode, we want to show you how working from home could be a real positive for your marriage — but there are a few potential downsides that you need to be aware of too.

I’ve been working from home for a few years now, and Verlynda has been for much longer than I so we found this research pretty informative.

So does being in the home more help your marriage, or make things harder? Basically, the research suggests that the effect of working from home on marriage/family life is very subjective, depending on the type of work, the circumstances at home, and the personality and actions of the individual[i]. There are both potential upsides and downsides, and it's mainly up to the individual couple to make it work.

Work vs. Marriage

We did a full episode on work-family conflict but just to recap that quickly, when you are working from home it can be difficult to have distinct boundaries between work and family. You have the ability to deal with some family and marriage responsibilities and privileges during your workday and you also may choose to address some work matters during family time. Sometimes you may even find yourself functioning in both roles simultaneously[ii].

Further, it is easy for stress to spill over from one domain to the other. This carries a potentially negative impact and you can find yourself in a situation where work and marriage are competing for a limited amount of emotional and practical resources[iii].

Downsides of Working From Home (& What To Do About It)

The Isolation is Real

If you work from home and your spouse does not, it can become very lonely and isolating since you rarely see anyone else during the day. WFH can also result in a smaller social network and less perceived social support since there are less natural opportunities to interact with others. This can potentially lead to over-reliance on your spouse to meet all your social needs.

Individuals interviewed during a study in 2004[iv] compensated for this by being more intentional about developing social networks: for example by joining professional support networks of people in similar positions or being more intentional about connecting with friends and family.

Certain personality traits, such as introversion, autonomy, and high levels of self-motivation are also helpful (but not essential) in dealing with the isolated nature of working from home[v]. There are definitely certain people for whom working on your own comes more naturally, but most people can still make it work.

Where Do You Vent Your Stress?

When working from home it is much easier for work-related stress to impact marital and family relationships, since both roles are happening in the same place, possibly at the same time. It is therefore very important that home workers learn to manage stress and learn the skills needed to handle their work responsibilities effectively. A study in this in 2000[vi] identified self-discipline as being the most important trait for successful home working so that you are pointing your stress in the right direction and adhering to healthy coping and stress-reduction strategies.

The relationship could also go the other way: stress from the marriage (eg due to conflict) will have much more of an impact on work. Creating a stable, healthy marriage therefore also needs to be a priority for home workers.

Caring For Young Children

How do children affect this dynamic? Research in 2008[vii] found that for many mothers with young children, working from home could increase their stress levels. The demands of caring for young children significantly interfered with their ability to work and meant that they had no respite from either role since both were based on the home.

Family structure could alleviate some of this stress in some circumstances. For example, if both spouse work from home then sharing the childcare could become easier. Likewise,

Competing with your spouse: is it good, is it bad? Or like us — if you’re playing mini-golf — it’s just plain ugly! At least, as ugly as Caleb’s putting skills…

Oh…snap!

For some couples, competitiveness is just a bit of fun: even though it may feel like life or death when you’re at the final hole of the mini-golf course, it doesn’t really have much impact on your marriage. But for others, competitiveness is more of a lifestyle thing: you’re trying to compete with each other in all areas of life. Can competitiveness in any form be good for marriage?

Two Kinds of Competitiveness

There are two different forms of competitiveness as a personality trait.[i] The difference is to do with what motivates you to want to do well.

Competing to win: that is about being highly competitive because you enjoy winning and beating other people. At extreme levels, competing to win is called hyper-competitiveness: “an indiscriminate need to compete and succeed at any cost[ii]”.

Competing to excel: this is about being highly competitive in order to surpass your personal goals and grow as a person. In effect, competing with yourself. This also gets called personal development competitiveness.

Obviously, these are two different kinds of competitiveness that have different causes and will impact marriages differently.

While neither style of competitiveness is directly linked to marital satisfaction, each one creates behaviours and attitudes that do have a very real impact on marriage and on other relationships as well. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Competing to Excel (Personal Development Competitiveness)

Whereas competing to win normally involves being motivated to beat somebody else, competing to excel is simply about individual accomplishment and doing the best you can, irrespective of how you compare to others.

Since this form of competitiveness is not dependent on other people losing in order for you to win, it does not lead to negative forms of competition and is positively linked to collaboration and communal connectedness[iii]. Wanting to be your best doesn’t stop other people from being their best too: in fact, it often helps them.

Within marriage, this makes couples more likely to adopt a joint perspective and to resolve conflict in ways that benefit both spouses. Competing to excel is also linked to positive personality traits and behaviors which are good for marriage, such as[iv]:

High self-esteem

Lower rates of depression

Higher positivity

Higher resilience to adversity and the ability to cope with bad circumstances

Higher desire to learn new skills and improve as a person

Higher internal motivation, leading to better performance in areas such as work

So that kind of competitiveness in marriage is not really something that will typically come between the spouses. It is healthy. And not all couples or even spouses within a couple will have the same level of competitiveness and that’s OK.

Competing to Win

Competing to win is a little more nuanced. There are still positives here but some potential issues.

A desire to win and succeed is a basic human motivation. Some level of desire to win and do well is required to function in most areas of life as it provides motivation[v]. I mean, if you weren’t motivated to do well, you’d struggle to really get anywhere in life, right?

Now think about this in a marriage context. Healthy levels of competing to win within a marriage are probably harmless. Likely fun, as well. Possibly even good for marital satisfaction especially if both spouses share it equally.

To look at this in a bit more detail, a study in 2015[vi] examined couples who participated in competitive sports as a shared leisure activity. He found that couples who were evenly matched in skill level had high satisfaction with their leisure time, leading to high marital satisfaction. He concluded that these couples would enjoy the challenge of playing ...

Is it better to put more energy into your marriage, or should raising your kids properly be your first concern? If you think pouring your everything into your little munchkins is the best way to do things, then this episode may be a bit of an eye-opener for you. We’re going to unpack the relationship between happy marriages and happy parenting and happy kids. And it may not be what you expect to hear.

Think of Your Family as a System

Let me start with a little bit of psychobabble here but I’ll keep it simple. I want you to think of your little family unit as a system. In other words, it is made up of some moving parts and some groups of parts. The whole family, dad, mom, and children, are one system. But there are subsystems within it. And these subsystems interact and influence one another and the family as a whole. For example, your marriage is a subsystem of your family system. The mother-son relationship is a subsystem.

The reason why we need to talk about systems is because it helps us understand that one system can affect another, as well as the family as a whole. For example, the marital relationship can affect parenting relationships, and vice versa[i].

Since the whole family is one system, emotions and actions displayed in one of its subsystems can spill over into the others. For example, a husband who is good at attending to his wife’s needs will naturally be better at looking after his kids too, since similar traits and actions are involved. Equally, a husband who dislikes spending time with his wife and is hostile towards her will tend to be more hostile to his children too since the anger and resentment spill over[ii]

For that reason, it’s impossible to think about looking after your kids without also making your marriage a priority.

Marital Satisfaction = Parenting Satisfaction

Here’s a quote from one study: "A satisfying marital relationship is the cornerstone of happy family life, leading to more positive parent-child relationships and more congenial sibling relationships.[iii]".

Another study confirmed a strong link between marital satisfaction and "sensitive, warm and responsive parenting"[iv] (Pedro et al, 2012). This link is one way: marital satisfaction causes good parenting and good parent-child relationships, not the other way around.

In other words, you cannot improve your marriage by improving your parenting. But you can improve your parenting by improving your marriage.

I really think this is countercultural to a lot of what we see today where there is so much emphasis on pouring all the effort and investment into the children. What this research is showing, and we’ll learn more about this as we proceed, is that pouring effort into the marriage results in real benefits to the children.

The reverse is also true: low marital satisfaction leads to poor parenting. Emotionally distant spouses are often less supportive of their children and display less warmth, while marriages high in conflict often lead to more anger directed at the children[v].

Where this is particularly tricky is if you kind of give up on your spouse and pour effort into your children hoping you can redeem things there. I get why folks do that but if it is at all possible, the marriage is what needs your attention.

Stepfamilies Are a Slight Exception

There is one exception here. Yes, normally good parenting flows from a well-functioning marriage. But in step-families, the relationship actually runs both ways: marital satisfaction leads to better parenting of step-children but forming a healthy relationship with the step-children also creates a healthier marriage.

This is because in stepfamilies the step-parent typically does not have a pre-existing relationship with the children. Consequently, she or he has to work at developing a workable relationship with those children in the first stages of the marriage in order to create a stable household. We did a full episode on blended families a while bac...

Ever get the feeling that your arguments as a couple are going nowhere? Or maybe you find yourself thinking, “There has to be a better way to solve conflict than this!” Well, there is: turns out there are some essential skills that work for both husbands and wives and can actually lead to deeper intimacy rather than lingering resentments.

Figuring Out Why Someone is Upset Can Be Hard

Let’s just acknowledge right off the bat that it is normal for married folk to struggle with figuring out what the argument is really about.

Turns out there are several possible reasons for this[i]:

Your spouse may not want to share all that they are actually feeling: due to fear of vulnerability.

It can be hard for you to see what emotions they are conveying in the heat of the moment. Especially if you are trying to focus on your own thoughts and opinions.

Conflict and arguments tend to move very fast, making it hard to go back and question (with curiosity) what your spouse was actually trying to say.

Deeper or core issues often show up as distress about specific issues. It is hard to see past the superficial or triggering issue and get to that deeper layer and really solve the problem.

During conflict, you may not even want to see what emotions your spouse is conveying. Both of you are so worked up that you just end up saying negative things and reacting to reactions, rather than actually trying to discern and resolve the deeper issue.

All that to say: give yourself and your spouse some compassion and try slowing things down. It is hard to figure things out and it takes patience and commitment.

Empathic Accuracy Matters

One of the keys to unlocking the mystery of what your spouse is really upset about is this thing called empathic accuracy. Don’t worry, we’ll make this concept easy to grasp: empathic accuracy is your ability to accurately discern what your spouse is feeling, and why[ii].

The reason you need to get good at empathic accuracy is that this skill is central to resolving conflict, forgiving one another, and building overall marital satisfaction[iii]. This empathic accuracy is the skill of learning to understand one another…sometimes you often hear people talk about soul-mates as if it is some magic woo-woo pixie dust that gets sprinkled on a few lucky couples by the marriage fairy.

Not so: if you learn to do this empathic accuracy thing, you’ll be well on your way towards that soul-mate experience with your spouse. It is a skill anyone can learn, and the research shows that empathic accuracy increased marital satisfaction because it prompts spouses to respond differently to one another. Instead of blundering about in emotional darkness, think what your marriage would be like if you were really attuned to your wife or to your husband. Dialed into what was going on and able to respond accurately and appropriately.

Well, I hope I’ve sold you on empathic accuracy. Now: how to learn this skill?

How To Develop Empathic Accuracy

Emotional Validation

The first technique you need to learn is emotional validation. This is simply expressing the empathy toward your spouse when they are upset or when you are in conflict.

Follow me closely here: conflict is often triggered by incidental events or actions, but at a deeper level it is often driven or intensified by an underlying feeling of not being heard.

For example, if a wife is upset by something her husband did or said, and he does not acknowledge this properly then she will become more upset. How do we fail to respond properly? We get defensive, we blame the other person, we dismiss or minimize their concerns, or we just don’t know what to do so we stonewall them. When that happens then your spouse will become more upset.

At that point, the conflict is no longer about the inciting incident but about your spouse’s need to feel validated[iv].

This is such a key point because you can break out of this by learning validate your spo...

This has to be one of the most common questions I get emailed about. Turns out, if you can take a little time to understand why men or women react differently to the idea of counseling, then you can dial in your approach to help you and your spouse get the help you need!

Researchers estimate that at any point in time, in America, around 20% of marriages will be experiencing significant distress[i]. That’s a lot! It speaks to how much of our struggle is hidden from sight and from family, In fact, 28% of divorcing couples do not confide in family members about their marital problems prior to divorcing. And 63% of divorcees do not attend any kind of relationship counseling prior to divorce. Further, couples who do seek help wait an average of six years before doing so[ii].

That needs to change: there’s help available. Unfortunately, popular media has made divorce appear cheap and easy and they fail to disclose the real emotional, relational, spiritual and financial costs of divorce.

So today we’re going to be talking about how to get your spouse into marriage counseling. This isn’t just an ad for our own virtual counseling agency but a research-based discussion about how to overcome this challenge effectively without being manipulative or sneaky.

Why Do Couples NOT Seek Help?

First, there are practical concerns: things like feeling there is a lack of time and money. Sometimes it is just a lack of awareness that good help can be had. And, in some cases, if you’re in a rural area there may seem to be a lack of available services. Although the increasing number of virtual agencies such as hours has done a lot to fill that need.

Second, there’s often a stigma around seeking help for your marriage. Especially for men. Men tend to act more self-reliant and more in control and so we’re less inclined to seek help regarding emotional issues. Researchers note that typical masculine beliefs such as self-reliance and emotional suppression are negatively correlated to a willingness to get help. So the stronger those things are in a guy’s character, the less willing he will be to get help. Typically.

One study even found that most men would only consider marital counseling appropriate in situations relating to divorce or abuse[iii]. Obviously, we think there’s a lot of other reasons you’d want to consider counseling: hopefully before you get to a place where divorce is on the table.

Of course, women are not immune to stigma either. Seeking marriage counseling can be seen as an admission that your marriage is failing. That’s a difficult admission. That requires you to recognize the seriousness of your problems and open yourself up to scrutiny. Some even fear that getting counseling may be dangerous to the relationship: by admitting how serious the problems are, you may feel that you are signaling the end of the relationship[iv]. So taking that step towards counseling is certainly courageous.

There are other variables too. Women are much more likely to want to seek help than men. Interestingly, older couples are generally more willing to seek external help. That fits what I see in my practice: I think the statistic is that half of divorces (not marriages) occur in the first 7 years of marriage. I rarely see couples in counseling in the single digits of their marriage. And yet, that’s a great time to do counseling: taking the step of spotting your challenges early and getting help before they become massive issues can save you a lot of trouble later on down the line.

There are also socioeconomic factors: couples who are more well off, and couples who are more highly educated are more likely to seek marriage counseling, presumably due to being more aware of the benefits it can offer, and having the financial resources to utilize it. Of course, money doesn’t have to be a limitation: learning to budget and making this a priority in your spending can help you overcome any financial barriers.

It seems like with chronic illness in marriage you either hear the extremes of horror stories or, on the other end of the spectrum, some very beautiful stories. I’ve heard of a wife getting a bad form of cancer, the husband deciding he just didn’t want to deal with that and bailing out on her. And then there’s a much-loved couple in our own church and she developed Alzheimer’s fairly young and his response has been to double down on his faithfulness and care for her, saying, “I guess it’s my turn to pull the wagon now”.

Any kind of long-term illness can be extremely tough for married couples as one spouse struggles to cope with the symptoms and effects of illness and the other takes on a carer role, trying their best to look after their ailing spouse. It looks very different for each spouse, but for both it can be hard to know how to cope.

Instead of focusing on individual things each spouse can do, it is helpful to think in terms of joint coping: both spouses taking responsibility for coping with the illness and sharing stressors and resources[i].

Joint Coping with Health Problems

What you need to know is the way you interact and respond to each other's coping strategies is just as important as the strategies themselves. For example, the non-ill spouse needs to be able to see what kind of support the ill spouse (called the "patient spouse" in the research) is in need of at any given time: do they need practical support, problem-solving, or emotional reassurance?

Coping as a couple is affected by two main factors: the patient and spouse's "appraisal" or understanding of the illness, and the coping strategies they use to deal with it.

Appraisal of Illness

How the patient and their spouse each view the illness will affect how well they support each other through it. There are three specific issues that we want to draw your attention to[ii]:

Understanding of the Illness

Do both spouses fully understand the nature, possible duration, and consequences of the illness? If an understanding of the illness differs between spouses this will naturally lead to different expectations of how much support is needed (e.g., if the spouse thinks the illness is not a very big deal then they will naturally put less effort into helping the patient spouse cope). So we want to be sure that both parties understand the scope and prognosis of the illness.

Ownership of Illness

Is the illness viewed as a joint problem, or as the patent spouse's problem which the other spouse may or may not be required to help with? Mismatches on this will again naturally lead to ineffective coping. This also raises the issue of togetherness: is the illness your problem or is it our problem?

Broader Context

How much support do you expect from your spouse, based on culture, family of origin etc? Were you raised to share all burdens between you, or to respect their independence and dignity by being more hands off? Again, different expectations here could lead to poor coping.

Different appraisals or expectations in these areas can lead to poor coping with the illness, so couples should try to make sure they are on the same page regarding the nature of the illness and how much support is required/desired.

Dealing with Chronic Illness in Marriage

When you look at all the ways a spouse can support their patient spouse, they fall into two main categories[iii]:

Problem-focused: providing practical support such as helping provide or facilitate treatment, assisting with practical needs or taking care of needs and responsibilities while the patient spouse is unable to

Emotion-focused: providing emotional support to help the patient cope with the stress of the illness

Problem-Focused

Each of these styles of coping can be either helpful or unhelpful, depending on what you do.

Helpful problem-focused coping is often referred to as "active engagement": both spouses taking an active role in discussions with doctors,

Life gets really busy and difficult to manage sometimes, and as we encounter some challenges we can lose sight of the forest for the trees. Maybe we have some unexplained health problems or even problems at work and we wonder what is going on? Obviously, there are many potential reasons, but have you considered that your unhappy marriage could be an underlying issue?

Today’s topic looks at problems caused by marriage problems. Obviously, the goal here is not to make you want to give up on your marriage, but rather, instead of thinking about solving your other problems so that your marriage will be better…what if you START with your marriage? Get into some good books or some marriage counselling with your spouse and get that sorted, and then see the cascading benefits of a happy marriage spill over into other areas.

So hear us out as we go through various facets of life and see what resonates. This is meant to be an eye opener, so just be curious and consider how helping your marriage could be a huge benefit to other areas in your life.

The first hidden cost of marriage problems for us to discuss is the area of mental health.

Mental Health Is Impacted by Marital Woes

Not surprisingly, research shows a strong link between marital problems and poor mental health.

For example, a major study in 2007[i] examined over 2000 married individuals and found that marital distress was a predictor of high levels of anxiety, mood disruption, and substance abuse. It was also linked to specific mental health conditions including bipolar disorder, alcohol abuse disorder, depression and general anxiety disorder. For depression, it was found that the longer the marital problems go on, the higher the risk becomes.

Again, we want to assert that the solution is not to get un-married! But rather to pursue the healing of your marriage!

How do marital woes potentially contribute to mental health problems? Another study in 2005[ii] examined how marital distress can create mental health problems and found several mediating factors:

Attribution style (see below — basically, you’re more likely to pay attention to negative things)

Conflict style: especially demand-withdraw cycles and avoidance of conflict. These are normal patterns for distressed marriages.

Attachment style: ambivalent or avoidant attachment. Not pursuing healing for attachment issues can impact mental health.

The flip side of this is you can see that marriage becomes something of a crucible for personal growth. Getting these conflict, attribution and attachment issues dealt with can turn your mental health challenges around. Again, another reason to stay in your marriage and sort this stuff out. Really, if you just go for escape you’re going to carry the same issues to the next marriage.

Physical Health Costs from Marriage Problems

The impact of marriage problems extends into the physical realm as well.

Research from 1997[iii] found that high levels of conflict and marital distress lead to various physical health problems, such as higher blood pressure and a weaker immune system. This effect was stronger for women than for men. One explanation for the gender effect is that women typically feel and express more negative emotions during conflict while men withdraw emotionally (known as the demand-withdraw cycle). It is this negative emotion and stress which causes the negative health effects[iv]. Of course, emotionally withdrawing isn’t going to be good for your marriage or your mental health, so we’re not saying that’s the better strategy here!

Other research highlights other health concerns for couples with low relationship satisfaction, such as higher risk of cardiovascular disease and even the possibility of higher mortality[v]. Again this effect is stronger for women than men.

Marriage Difficulties Influence Work as Well

Conflict and distress in your marriage can spill over into other areas of your life, particularly work.

Initially, I was a little hesitant about this episode. Dealing with criticism? Sounded like it was going to be a real drain. But as we looked into the research we actually found a lot of hope, not only for you if you are on the receiving end of the criticism, but even for the critic as well.

I feel like I need to say right off the bat that we are not attempting to minimize the destructive potential of criticism in our episode today. In fact, it may even be worth checking out our mini-series on abuse as sometimes I have had women come to me just thinking their spouse is critical not realizing that there is a profound belief system in place that is fundamentally abusive.

On the flip side of that coin, there is a lot of plain misbehavior and bad attitude that gets labeled abuse that is really not abuse. And I think there is a difference between verbal abuse and emotional abuse. The first is using words to hurt someone which is something we have all done in our lives, and the second is a conscious or subconscious systematic attempt to undermine someone’s self-worth and dignity. Neither are acceptable but the latter is particularly damaging.

Today we are staying on the lighter end of the spectrum in the bad behavior category. So this is not particularly about abuse, but just about the critical rut that we or our spouse can get into and what to do about that if you’re on the receiving end.

Understanding Where the Criticism Comes From

I think the first step to creating some safe space around criticism is to actually take a step back and understand where criticism comes from. The nature of criticism is that it wants you to think there’s something wrong with you. But when you see or experience criticism I think it is worth considering where that may actually be coming from. So instead of focusing internally on yourself as the target, focus on the source.

Attribution: What is The Critic Actually Unhappy About?

Attribution is such an important piece in any marriage. The human mind naturally interprets things around it in line with its current mood and beliefs. If someone is happy, they are more likely to interpret things around them as being positive, and more likely to see positive things and ignore negative[i]. If they are unhappy, the reverse is true.

In marriage, this means that someone who is happy with their spouse and with the relationship will see lots of things to be happy about, and interpret what their spouse does in a positive way. But someone who is dissatisfied with the marriage will see more reasons to be unhappy, and interpret things in a more negative way, thus leading to negativity and criticism[ii].

The point here is to take a step back and ask yourself am I doing something upsetting or wrong or inconsiderate that I should genuinely be considering? Or are there other circumstances in our marriage or in our lives generally that are leading my spouse to be critical of me?

This is very nuanced to sort out. Let me give you a couple of examples. Your spouse may have lost his job and his dad is in the hospital with cancer and you’re receiving a lot of criticism. I’m not saying it’s OK for him to take that out on you, but you can at least make some space for your own mental well-being by acknowledging that this is about what is going on inside him emotionally and not actually about flaws in you. That’s a fairly clear example. We’ll talk about what to do in this kind of situation at the end of today’s show.

A tougher one to sort out is if the marriage is in distress. Typically both spouses have a role to play in a distressed marriage but if one spouse has poor conflict resolution skills s/he may try to correct the problem by pointing out all the perceived deficits in the other spouse. I know this may feel like a bit of a jump: but typically this is a desperate attempt to connect. The belief is that if these issues can be set aside by me pointing them out and you correcting them then we can be sa...