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JONATHAN VAN VIEGEN

Month: September 2026

You’re asking the wrong question. Stop asking for less of what hurts.

Posted on by Meredith

Another couple came to me last week struggling with intimacy issues. I’m talking about the kind where there’s barely been any physical intimacy for months.

“I just can’t desire someone who’s undesirable,” the wife said.

There’s a good reason for that, I thought.

It’s because you’ve built a wall between the two of you.

While she was stacking her wall higher with bricks of resentment, he was helping her with his bricks of rejection.

What they didn’t understand was that the wall was manmade.

They built it. And since they built it together, they needed to understand that the only way they could tear it down is together.

But they won’t do that if they’re asking the wrong questions.

“Why doesn’t she try anymore?”

“Why should I desire someone when I don’t feel connected to them?”

These aren’t unreasonable questions. And in fact, they’re probably the exact questions most of us ask when we’re hurting.

But they’re the kind of questions that don’t give you a North Star and they definitely don’t tell you where to go next.

I told this couple that another therapist would probably spend the next four weeks asking them to tell us more about the resentment, blame, and rejection. And I’m not saying that’s a bad approach.

I just don’t know that it gets them where they want to go as quickly as they’d like to get there.

So I told them they had to do something different. Something that sounds completely unrelated to the question at hand.

For five minutes, I wanted them to imagine writing the words resentment, blame, pain, and disconnection on a piece of paper and putting it on the coffee table.

I wasn’t asking them to throw those feelings away. Or pretend they don’t exist. And I promised them, if they really wanted to, they could pick them right back up five minutes later.

But for those five minutes, I wanted them to stop asking how to get rid of what they didn’t want and ask:

“How can we cultivate more of what we do want?”

“How could we create more connection… physical and non-physical?”

You see, it’s a very different conversation when you trade: “I don’t want to resent you anymore” with “I want to feel close to you again.”

That second statement gives you somewhere to point your nose.

I have to add, I didn’t tell them to answer those questions. I didn’t even want them to ask them of each other.

I wanted them to just let the questions cook in their minds. Percolate long enough that they could be adopted as a mindset.

In the very same way I asked myself, “How do I build a business of teaching couples how to have a Chosen & Cherished Marriage?”

I didn’t have the answer to that question 12 years ago when I started my journey of becoming a couples therapist.

I adopted that as a mindset that resulted in me looking for the breadcrumbs that would lead me to where I am today.

That’s step one: adopt connection as a mindset.

Then I asked them an entirely different question:

“What did you guys do when you first fell in love?”

They thought about it.

They used to take walks on the beach. They went out for sushi. They bonded over musicals.

And I remember laughing and saying:

“So basically, you needed sand, raw fish, and trips to NYC.”

In the span of about a minute, we’d double-clicked on three things they could do to start getting more of what they want.

I asked them:

“When was the last time you went to the beach?”

“When was the last time you went out for sushi?”

“When was the last time you put Hamilton on while you were cooking dinner?”

Silence. Just as I’d suspected.

Now, don’t confuse what I’m doing here by simplifying my approach into telling you to do more.

That’s not what I’m attempting to do.

I’m trying to illustrate that couples know how to fall in love with each other.

They’d done it before.

They’d simply stopped doing many of the things that created closeness in the first place.

This is what so many people stop doing years into marriage. After things become “familiar.”

Then, when pain and conflict arrive on the scene, we become so focused on eliminating what hurts that we stop thinking about cultivating what we want.

We want less fighting. Less resentment. Less rejection. Less distance.

Okay.

But what do you want more of?

And what are you doing together to create more of what you want?

Do you want more affection? More sex? More laughing? More dates? More flirting?

Yes? Then you have to make the effort to create more of it.

This brings me to one of the reasons Meredith and I have instituted what I call the Intimacy Dashboard in our marriage.

It’s incredibly unsophisticated.

We want hugs every day. At least two – one in the morning and one before bed.

We want two kisses, too. One in the morning and one before bed.

Then, it’s date nights. At least once a month.

And finally sex. We follow the 72-hour rule, never going more than three days without it – unless the world is melting down because someone in our family is sick or something else throws our routine for a loop.

That’s it.

I’m not suggesting those numbers have to be your numbers.

The point is that we don’t leave intimacy in our marriage to chance. We prioritize it.

We monitor that dashboard like a hawk because we know that it gives us an exact snapshot of where our connection is just like a balance sheet will tell you how solvent a company is.

One thing I can say though: if the hugs, kisses, and sex start lacking, we don’t wait six months to find out why.

We course-correct.

We go back to doing the exact things that made us fall in love with each other in the first place.

In solutions and strength,

P.S. If you want my help putting this into practice, I’d love to have you join me for the 6-week live Chosen & Cherished Marriage Intensive, beginning November 4th — the day after Choosing Us comes out.
And I want to give you your spot for free.
When you preorder Choosing Us, I’ll send you an invitation to join us. Over six weeks, I’ll help you reignite your connection, rebuild trust, and learn how to communicate without spending all your time rehashing every painful event in your marriage.
This isn’t just theory. It’s the framework I use with my private clients and in my own marriage.
We get started in four weeks.
Preorder Choosing Us + Join the Intensive

When your spouse stops fighting with you… Don’t mistake silence for peace.

Posted on by Meredith

I want to tell you about something that scares me more than infidelity.

Indifference.

I know that sounds strange coming from a couples therapist.

Infidelity can blow a marriage apart overnight.

But indifference typically doesn’t make a marriage crumble that quickly.

It happens slowly.

And then yes, suddenly.

What I’d be looking out for is when your spouse stops taking an interest in you and your life.

And this is where you want to get good at reading the room.

Do they smile when you walk through the front door?

Are you guys still watching shows together on the couch?

Is intimacy as passionate as it used to be?

Me? I’m looking at conflict with my wife as a good sign.

Because even if neither of us cheated or threatened to pack a suitcase, the fact that we’re still fighting tells me Meredith still cares enough to want to get her point across.

But if yelling was replaced with eye rolls or silence?

Then I’d seriously be wondering if my marriage was at DEFCON 1.

DEFCON 2 at least.

I’ve sat across from dozens of couples who tell me:

“We don’t really have any big problems.”

And they’re right.

They don’t.

And that right there is the problem.

It’s a problem because somewhere along the way, they’ve stopped investing enough in the relationship to even create one.

I spend a lot of time thinking about all the big things that could destroy a marriage.

Affairs. Lying. Wandering eyes. Emotional connections with someone other than your spouse.

But I think we should be paying more attention to what’s happening on a random Tuesday night.

Because if Meredith isn’t laughing when I tell her something funny happened…

Or she’s not as excited about my latest big idea as I am…

Then I’m going to know something’s off.

And if I detect any lack of curiosity on her part, you better believe I’m taking action.

Here’s how:

1. Read the room.

Don’t mistake silence for peace.

We spend more mental energy thinking about the dumb shit our boss says to us than what our spouse doesn’t say.

Pay attention.

2. If I pick up on any waning interest in my life, I’m going to overcompensate with interest in hers.

Enter questions…

3. Start with any question you don’t already know the answer to.

Not: “How was your day?”

You already know they’re probably going to say: “Fine.”

Try something more like:

“What’s been on your mind lately?”

“What do you have that you’re looking forward to right now?”

“Is there anything you wish we did more of together?”

4. Don’t expect your interest in them to fix their indifference overnight.

If your spouse has been checking out for a while, what they probably need from you is a pattern interrupt that continues over time.

Not one good conversation.

Not three great questions.

Consistency.

5. Don’t panic if what comes out isn’t what you wanted to hear.

Definitely don’t turn their answer into a conversation about you.

And don’t even think about defending yourself if what they say hurts.

There may be pain in there.

Let it come out.

Think of it like a pressure-release valve.

At first, there’s lots that needs to escape.

But eventually the outflow slows to a trickle, and now there’s room for something else to come back in.

Curiosity.

Connection.

And Interest.

Positive body language, eye contact, and a smile will lubricate the system even more.

But whatever you do, don’t become okay with the indifference.

I know you may be hurting too.

And you’re probably wondering why I’m asking you to go first.

The thing is, they’ll be going first with curiosity, too.

Just at a different time than you.

So for now…

Just be interested.

After 18 years with Meredith, I’m increasingly convinced that one of the greatest gifts I can give her is the belief that there is still so much more of her I want to know.

And, in my opinion, that’s one of the secrets to staying chosen and cherished:

Never becoming finished with each other.

In solutions and strength,

aka “Mr. Chosen & Cherished”

P.S. Men: Meredith and I have heard you. I’ve launched a new Men’s Circle. It’s free. It’s going to be monthly. And tomorrow is our inaugural meet up. I’d love to have you join us at 8pm EST Tuesday night.
If you want in, Join our Skool community and you’ll find the invite in the calendar.
P.P.S. If you missed Repairing Us, I’ve put the entire conflict course inside the Choosing Us Pre-Order Experience, along with an invitation to our live six-week Chosen & Cherished Marriage Intensive.
Preorder Choosing Us and get access to the course today.

The couples I worry about don’t fight. I’m worried when you stop.

Posted on by Meredith

Ever have one of those days when everything that can go wrong does, but you say to yourself:

“Not today. I’m not letting anything bring me down.”

That was my yesterday.

But then I woke up today with the realization that I have to re-record an entire hour of video for the new Repairing Us course that was supposed to launch today.

It’s moments like this when you tell yourself:

“You have to redo all your work because the second version is going to be better!”

I feel like I’ve told myself that many times.

Especially back in the 90s and 2000s, before the cloud came along and we could type our essays into Google Docs.

Apparently DSLR cameras don‘t automatically record to the cloud.

Well, maybe they do. I just wouldn’t know because this 50-year-old isn’t quite savvy enough with tech to figure it out.

But there’s a point to me telling you this.

Because it relates to the course itself.

And more importantly, to you, your spouse, and the conflict that lives between you.

You see, fighting with your spouse is a good thing.

Yep. I said it.

Fighting is good because it means there’s still investment in your relationship.

It means getting what you want from your marriage still matters to you.

A lot.

Couples often think the cork in the bottle blocking a deeply loving and connected relationship is not knowing how to communicate better. Fight better. Or repair better.

But the “how” isn’t the cork.

The cork is no longer wanting to build a better relationship in the first place.

The cork is indifference.

Disinterest in your spouse concerns me far more than not knowing how to fight well.

Because if you’re fighting, you’re still showing up.

You’re still saying:

“This matters to me.”

“You matter to me.”

“What we have matters enough that I’m still trying to get something from it.”

If there’s genuine disinterest in your relationship, all is still not lost.

But I’ll be honest: my work as a couples therapist becomes infinitely harder when my job is helping someone find a reason to re-engage in their marriage.

So yes…

Fighting, in my book, is a good thing.

It tells me two people still care.

They simply have hopes, wants, and desires that need better understanding, better communication, and better actualizing.

And that we can work with.

Enter Repairing Us.

Meredith and I have worked hard to give you the tools and strategies we use to turn conflict from chaos into connection.

Because yes, we still fight.

And yes, we still know how to have a long, dragged-out one.

But the difference today is that even our bad fights rarely last longer than 45 minutes.

We’ve learned how to find our way back to each other.

And now, I’m going to show you how, with my new course.

Repairing Us will walk you through the exact sequence for moving through conflict, reconnecting, and repairing without losing each other in the process.

It was supposed to be in your hands today.

Instead, I’m going to go re-record an hour of video.

But I want you to remember this:

The fact that you fight isn’t necessarily evidence that your marriage is broken.

Sometimes it’s evidence that you both still give a damn.

You just need to learn what to do with it.

That’s what Meredith and I built Repairing Us to teach you.

In solutions and strength,

 

 

aka “Mr. Chosen & Cherished”

The Forgiven Spouse Manifesto: Part 3

Posted on by Meredith

The Forgiven Spouse Manifesto: Part 3

This final part of the Forgiven Spouse Manifesto is about moving through conflict without losing each other in the process.

And I want to start with something I know will be controversial:

If you find yourself losing respect or admiration for your spouse mid-conflict,

Or if you find yourself not really liking your partner as a person anymore,

That’s more of a red flag about you than it is about them.

Allow me to elaborate.

When I hear that someone no longer respects, admires, or even likes their spouse, it tells me something:

You may have developed a pain-saturated view of your relationship.

You’re no longer just seeing what your spouse did.

You’re seeing them through what they did.

And those are two very different things.

One of the most important things we can learn in marriage is how to separate what someone has done from who they are.

That gets infinitely harder when we lose our likability for them.

Which is why, when a relationship becomes overwhelmed by pain, one of the first places I want to go is back to likability. 

Back to being able to say, even mid-fight:

“I really don’t like what you did to me right now. But I still like you.”

Or even:

“I don’t like what you did. But I still choose to like you.”

Pain is inevitable in marriage. But marriage requires us to learn how to move through it.

I want you to imagine yourself as a rock in a river. The water hits you…

But instead of violently splashing off you, you allow it to flow around you.

Too many of us do the opposite in marriage.

We experience every disappointment, insensitive comment, or forgotten promise like it’s soaking us from head to toe.

Until eventually we become so full of pain that there’s nothing about us that pain doesn’t touch.

I want to help you stay dry. I want you to learn to recruit your spouse into a get-rid-of-pain campaign.

That starts with telling them:

“I’m upset.”

“I’m unhappy with what happened.”

“I’m hurting.”

But instead of immediately making them the target of your pain, ask them to help you eliminate it.

Let them help you to not get soaking wet with it.

A marriage can be good and still have problems

Everything I’m saying assumes something important.

There are certain covenants that have to exist inside a marriage:

Loyalty. Honesty. Fidelity. Transparency. Commitment.

When those things are actively being violated, or when there is ongoing deception, infidelity, or dishonesty, we have something different to repair.

But I meet so many couples who tell me:

“Our marriage is terrible.”

And then I look closer and discover….

Nobody is lying or cheating. They’re loyal and committed. They’re transparent and have built a life together.

They just fight.

And when I discover they don’t like each other very much right now, or intimacy has disappeared, I find myself wanting to say:

“Zoom out.”

You may not have a bad marriage. You actually have a beautiful marriage… just with problems.

There’s a difference.

The pain-saturated couple sees the problems and concludes the marriage is bad.

The joy-saturated couple can see the problems and everything else that’s beautiful.

Every marriage has its soft spot.

The question is whether we allow that vulnerability to exist without protecting it.

Let me ask you: 

When did we give up the job of protecting each other? 

When did the person who was supposed to defend us become the threat inside our home?

The faster we can cultivate joy, admiration, respect, and likability again, the easier it becomes to let pain move through us rather than accumulate inside us.

Betrayal creates two journeys

When there has been a gross breach of the covenant of marriage, something unexpected happens.

Both spouses are suddenly thrust onto a journey. 

But they’re not on the same one.

The person who broke the trust has to go on a journey of maturity. They have to wake up to the reality:

“I hurt someone I love through my actions.”

And then they have to decide what kind of person they’re going to become.

It’s not enough to say:

“I won’t do it again.”

You have to go deeper:

“I don’t want to be someone who hurts my spouse like this anymore.”

I absolutely believe people can change.

I believe someone can lose their moral compass, do something devastating, wake up to what they’ve done, mature, and spend the rest of their life being loyal and devoted to the person they once hurt.

But the betrayed spouse wakes up on a different journey. And they didn’t choose it.

Last night, they went to bed thinking they knew their spouse, and their marriage.

Today they discovered their spouse betrayed them.

Now they’re on a journey of forgiveness.

And in many ways, I think that’s the harder journey. One person chose the actions that put them there. The other person had the journey thrust upon them.

But both journeys require maturity. And the thread that connects those journeys is forgiveness.

I don’t believe you can have a truly Chosen & Cherished marriage while permanently withholding forgiveness from your spouse.

Relationships thrive on oxygen and forgiveness is what delivers it.

Stop turning behavior into identity

This matters even in ordinary conflict.

When people swear, call names, or say deliberately hurtful things during fights, they’re often trying to soothe pain with more pain.

They’re looking for what might feel good for five seconds.

But now there’s another wound… and another.

Maybe you have two wonderful weeks and then one terrible fight. You can tell yourself:

“We’re a couple that has terrible fights every two weeks.”

Or:

“We’re a couple that has amazing weeks that occasionally get interrupted by a fight.”

Those aren’t the same identity. And I think identity matters.

I struggle with anger, so I can acknowledge:

“I struggle to keep my anger from hurting my wife when we’re fighting. That’s my cross to bear.”

Because I bring that struggle into the light, now I can work on it. 

Anger doesn’t have to own me. Indeed, I can struggle with something without turning it into who I am.

We need to extend that same grace to our spouse.

Because one of the most important things you can do during conflict is keep the conflict about behavior instead of identity.

“I’m angry about what you said.”

“I’m hurt by what you did.”

“I’m disappointed by what happened.”

“I’m not going to turn those things into who I think you are.”

Name-calling does the opposite. It attacks identity.

So try this instead:

“When I saw you do that…”

“When you said that…”

“This is how that landed for me…”

Talk about how you experienced their behavior without turning their behavior into their identity.

Most of the everyday hurts we inflict on each other can probably be boiled down to three things:

We were thoughtless.

We were lazy.

Or we were insensitive.

“If I’d thought better, maybe I wouldn’t have done it.”

“If I’d put in more effort, maybe I would have done it.”

“If I’d been more sensitive, maybe I would have recognized how much I hurt you.”

To never be thoughtless, lazy, or insensitive would require something none of us can offer:

Perfection.

Your spouse is going to fail you. And you’re going to fail them. The question is what happens next.

Get out of the courtroom

When pain overwhelms likability, couples enter what I call courtroom culture.

Suddenly, we’re no longer two people trying to repair something. We become litigators. I have my evidence. You have yours.

I defend my truth and you defend yours. And both of us fight tooth and nail to win our case:

Who was right?

Who was wrong?

Who hurt whom more?

Who owes whom what?

But here’s the problem: there’s no restitution that can perfectly match emotional pain.

How exactly do you repay someone for saying something that broke their heart?

How do you compensate them for days, weeks, or months of feeling unwanted?

How do you make the scales balance?

You can’t.

Which is why I believe the off-ramp from courtroom culture is forgiveness. Without forgiveness, we keep seeking a favorable verdict that remains elusive.

And eventually we turtle. We go into our shells.

Turtling looks like a husband who emotionally shuts down. It looks like a wife who gives the silent treatment for three days.

But the deeper turtling is the kind when we start hiding our heart.

We allow scar tissue to build. And while that scar tissue is accumulates, something else slowly drains away:

Our likability for our spouse.

Repair cleanly

Which brings us to repair.

When something hurts in your marriage, don’t spend three hours arguing about who’s at fault.

Ask:

“How do we fix this together?”

“What can we do differently next time?”

“What can we learn from this?”

“How can I make it up to you?”

Those questions matter because they’re rooted in curiosity. And curiosity tells your spouse: your perspective matters to me.

If forgiveness were abundant in our marriage, how much would we actually need to dissect the pain?

If we’re determined to make our spouse understand exactly how badly we’re hurting, then we grab the only person who isn’t drowning and pull them underwater with us.

But that’s the opposite of what we need.

If you’re drowning, you don’t need your spouse to drown too.

You need them to help you back onto shore.

Reconnect before you repair

When you’re in the middle of a fight, stop. Catch your breath. Let your body come down. And then come back to each other.

We need to reconnect before we repair.

Because repair is possible when two people genuinely don’t feel safe with each other.

Sometimes reconnecting is as simple as relaxing your shoulders. Or sitting beside each other instead of across from each other.

Take their hand. Touch their elbow.

And say:

“We’re going to fix this. But can we hug first?”

Your goal is to communicate:

“You’re safe.”

“I’m not going to attack you.”

“I’m ready to repair.”

Then move toward curiosity:

“How can we fix this?”

“What could I do differently?”

“What could I say differently?”

“How can I make it up to you?”

The moment you become genuinely curious, you’ve stopped trying to win.

And that’s the point.

They need to know that even while you’re hurt, angry, disappointed, or confused, you’re still trying to find your way back to them.

Pain doesn’t have to disappear for you to choose each other. Conflict doesn’t even have to disappear.

If we can stop turning pain into identity, and dragging each other into the courtroom, we can stop trying to win.

And we can focus on repair.

Which brings me to the one sentence that matters more than anything you can ever say to your spouse:

“I’m sorry for how I hurt you—intentionally or unintentionally.”

That sentence makes room for forgiveness.

That sentence protects your spouse.

And that message communicates… 

That after everything we’ve been through… 

I still choose you.

In solutions and strength,

P.S. If this manifesto helped you see conflict and repair differently, my new book, Choosing Us, will take you even deeper.

It’s available for preorder now ahead of its November 3 release.

Preorder your copy and claim your FREE spot in my six-week Chosen & Cherished Marriage Intensive (a $1,500 value) and start building a marriage where both of you feel chosen and cherished again.

Preorder Choosing Us and claim your bonuses here.