Tag Archives: communication

SWM 131 – Tips to fight more effectively

Last week, I shared a list of ideas our Couple’s Night group had that helped build a resilient marriage. At the end of the call, we still had some time and started discussing fighting more effectively. Again, the group came up with some excellent ideas I want to share today.

Because fights will happen, I might even say they should happen.  When I come across a couple that doesn’t fight in any way – that’s a red flag.  It means one or both don’t feel safe in the marriage.  They aren’t able to express their views and opinions. 

Because if you put two people together for long enough, they will eventually find something to disagree about.

Ideally, a fight won’t involve yelling, screaming, hitting, throwing, or anything else like that, but it’s okay to quarrel.

So, today, we will discuss how to fight more effectively in your marriage so that your arguments can be a source of growth instead of damage.

SWM 128 – Relationships require recalibration

There’s an old quip about how men get married expecting their wives to stay the same, and women get married expecting to be able to change their men, and neither gets what they want. It’s funny because often, there’s an element of truth to this, which frustrates both spouses.

Of course, it doesn’t apply to every marriage, and sometimes the dynamic is reversed, but what is expected of every marriage is that something in the marriage will change.  It may be the wife, it may be the husband, it’s likely going to be both in some ways, and it’s also going to be your surroundings and context.  You’ll get pets, you’ll have kids, you’ll move, you’ll change jobs, change churches, experience illness or injury, suffer losses or experience big wins – whatever it is, things will change.

Those changes require a recalibration of the marriage, communication, and a discussion about what it means, what needs to change, and what should stay the same.  

So, today, we’re going to talk about how to deal with the inevitable changes that come and how and when to talk about them so that you can keep your marriage calibrated rather than running on old habits and patterns that no longer suit your life.

SWM 125 – Rethinking “Duty Sex”

I’ve had a lot of conversations with couples as well as husbands and wives individually lately about what often gets called “duty sex” or “pity sex.” For those who don’t know, duty/pity sex is when one spouse gives in to sex, not because they desire it themselves, but because their spouse does. They might have sex for many reasons, including feeling obligated, pressured, guilty, to keep the peace or to “get them off their back.”

The problem is that these negative reasons are often the only ones considered, and so any situation in which one spouse wants sex and the other agrees to it without having an internal desire of their own is seen as unfavourable.

But there are some excellent reasons to have what’s commonly considered “duty sex” or “pity sex,” and often, the conflicts I see in marriages are not that it’s because of those reasons I mentioned above but instead about something positive and loving.

So, in this podcast episode, we’re going to talk about reframing duty sex in those situations.

SWM 096 – Why men being submissive is problematic

A post in response to this question:

Hi. I wanted to know if there is any reason that the man can’t be the submissive part sometimes during sex. Because I feel like I want to be submissive from time to time, but I don’t want to ask my wife because it’s an awkward topic.