Marriage Straight Talk

When It Feels Stuck

You are not fighting all the time, you are just flat. Nothing is broken enough to name and nothing feels good either. These pages are for the stuck stretch, what is actually causing it, and the small concrete moves that get a marriage moving again.

• How to fix a struggling marriage.

  Not a grand gesture, but a small handful of daily changes made honestly and sustained past the uncomfortable part.

• Love, marriage and family problems.

  Nobody plans to grow apart. Here is how it usually happens, and what it takes to walk it back.

• 10 common problems every long marriage faces.

  Nothing on this list means something is wrong with you. What matters is what you do before they compound.

• Why So Many Good People Feel Trapped in a Marriage

  The Marriage Trap explained: why decent, committed people end up feeling stuck, and what actually moves.

• Time Management for a Marriage With Kids in It

  Why time management advice fails married couples, and the handful of decisions that actually protect a marriage from the calendar.

• Common Marriage Problems Couples Face

  Why the standard list of marriage problems never helps, how the presenting complaint translates into the real one, and the question that finds yours in 10 minutes.

• Emotional Disconnection in Marriage

  How couples drift into emotional disconnection without a single argument, what it sounds like at the kitchen table, and how the two of you get back.

• Emotional Neglect in a Relationship

  Emotional neglect is one sided, usually unintentional, and the most reliable warning sign I see. What it is, where it comes from, and what actually moves it.

• Feeling Stuck in Your Marriage

  Stuck is inertia, not a crisis. Why a marriage settles into a state neither person wants, and what actually breaks the pattern.

• Feeling Suffocated in Your Marriage

  What the suffocated feeling usually means, why asking for space backfires, and the line between a crowded marriage and a controlled one.

• Financial Stress in Marriage

  Why the money argument repeats, the four things money usually stands for, and how to stop treating your spouse's spending as evidence about their character.

• Giving and Taking in a Relationship

  Why fairness math ruins marriages, what over giving is really buying, and how to build an arrangement that survives a bad month.

• How to Deal With a Negative Spouse

  Why I refuse to coach one spouse into tactics for handling the other, what constant negativity is usually doing, and the half of it you can genuinely move.

• How to Reset Your Relationship

  What a relationship reset actually is, the order it has to happen in, and why wiping the slate clean is the wrong goal.

• Love Marriage Problems and Real Solutions

  Love got you in the door. It does not run the house. The four problems that actually show up, and what moves them.

• Multicultural Marriage Challenges

  Seven specific friction points multicultural couples in Miami actually fight about, and what each one is really doing.

• Your Husband Is Smothering You

  The script. What to say to a husband who is around too much, why the obvious sentence backfires, and how to hold the ground you get.

• When You Think Your Spouse Is a Narcissist

  Why the label is usually a dead end, what belongs with a licensed professional, and the pattern underneath that a coach can actually work on.

• Needing Space Without Loving Them Less

  The chase that produces the smothered feeling, why the person who wants room gets cast as the villain, and what each end has to do to loosen it.

• There Is No Miserable Husband Syndrome

  Why the syndrome does not exist, what withdrawal in midlife actually is, and the difference between a marriage problem and something that belongs with a doctor.

• The Codependent Label and What Is Under It

  Why the label stops the inquiry, the giving and taking loop underneath it, and the point where this stops being coaching work.

• Build a Happiness Habit: The JGAME Five

  The five practices behind a happiness habit, how little time each takes, and why the state you walk in the door in is a marriage issue.