Author: Meredith

I should be on a plane right now.

Instead, at 6:04am this morning, Meredith came into our room and said two words that changed our holiday forever:

“She’s sick.”

She was talking about my 13-year-old.

The one who went to a friend’s house two days ago for a Christmas party.

The one whose friend was diagnosed with Influenza A yesterday.

And now my sweet daughter is lying in bed with the same fever.
The same body aches.
The same chills.

Which means no flight for us.

No holidays with family we haven’t seen in three years.
No long hugs at the airport.
No shared meals.
No memories we were already making in our minds.

Just… disappointment.

Meredith’s been crying most of the day. I can’t blame her.

She’s been the engine of our family for eight years… ever since we left Canada.

She needed a break.
She needed help putting on Christmas.
She needed a hug from her own mom.

But here’s the thing I’m taking from today:

Disappointment is not conquering our relationship.
Not today.
Not ever.

Disappointment is a sneaky devil.

And it rarely shows up alone.

It always brings friends.

Fear.
Pain.
Guilt.
And don’t forget anger.

And those four love nothing more than turning couples against each other.

Before you know it, you’re looking at your partner as if they are the source of everything that hurts.

That’s how couples end up fighting each other instead of lining up on the same side against the chaos of disappointment.

But Meredith and I made a different move.

We named it.
Out loud.

“This sucks. But it’s not our fault.”

And just like that, we stayed in the same boat.

Same direction.
Same oars.
Same rhythm.

Because here’s the truth most couples never get taught:

It’s not conflict that pulls you apart.

It’s misguided blame (with roots in disappointment) that does the real damage.

So do your relationship a favor this holiday season:

Kick disappointment out of the driver’s seat.

Take five seconds to remember that you’re on the same side.

That disappointment is the enemy… not each other.

We’re coming up on the holidays, so now’s a great time to talk about a huge killer of connection: In-laws, the lines they don’t respect, and the spouses who don’t draw them.

I get more DM’s than I can count from couples who can’t stop arguing about boundaries.

And in the early days, Meredith and I really struggled with this, too.

She had a hard time shifting her loyalties from her family of origin to the new family we were building together.

And if you’ve worked with me or been in any of my group programs, you’ll know that loyalty is my childhood wound, and the thing I need the most in a relationship.

So it was a bit of a perfect storm for us!

It took a while for us to realize that we weren’t really fighting about my in-laws, though… we were actually arguing about loyalty.

And this is the key to understanding issues with in-laws.

When it feels like your partner sides with their parents over you, even in the smallest ways, you’re left feeling like an outsider.

And you start to wonder:

Whose team are they really on?

That painful question is a tell-tale sign that someone in the relationship has lost their sense of sameness.

Not the kind of sameness as in liking the same food or music.

It’s about moving as one unit. The feeling of:

“If it affects you, it affects me.”
“If it hurts you, it hurts me.”
“If someone disrespects you, they’re disrespecting us.”

Without sameness, you’re just two people sharing an address while other people’s opinions run your home.

Listen: you can love your parents, honor them, even include them. 

But once you’re married, your primary loyalty needs to shift.

You need to build a new team…

With your spouse.

No one is telling you to betray your family of origin. But making a ‘partner-first’ shift is one you have to make.

Making your partner feel chosen, especially when it’s uncomfortable, is not a decision your family needs to understand.

But it’s absolutely one they should come to expect.

So if you’ve been feeling a tug between the family you came from and the family you’re trying to build, ask yourself this:

What would it mean to my spouse to show them we’re on the same team now, and forever?

This simple question tells your partner that you’ve got their back.

And when you ask it, the noise around you stops mattering.

The pressure from family stops dividing you.

And your marriage starts to feel safe again.

Remember, it’s not them you go home to. It’s the person sleeping next to you.

Choose your teammate. Every time.

In strength & solutions,

I’m so sick of the experts telling couples they need to do more “check-ins” to keep their relationship healthy.

You know, the score-keepers that want you to list out all your problems for twenty minutes every week.

What went wrong…

Which needs weren’t met…

What circular argument happened again…

We stopped that cycle in our marriage with one simple rule:

“For every issue we discuss, we have to say 2 good things FIRST.”

When I first introduced this years ago, Meredith literally froze.

“Wait… what?”

“One problem equals two wins. Start with the wins.”

She stared at me.

Tried to open her mouth… closed it…

Then she laughed: “I… I don’t know how to do that.”

It broke her brain because she wasn’t used to it.

Talking about the good, that is.

But I held firm: “Try.”

She struggled at first: “Well… I guess… you did make my tea yesterday?”

“And?”

“And… you asked about my day.”

And that’s when her whole body shifted. Shoulders dropped. Face softened.

By the time she got to the “issue,” it felt tiny.

Because we’d just spent 5 minutes remembering we actually like each other.

Here’s what I learned:

We’re all experts at cataloging what’s broken.

But most of us can’t name two good things without our brains short-circuiting.

That’s not normal.

That’s trained pessimism.

Now every check-in starts with the 2-for-1 rule.

She literally said yesterday: “I have too many good things to pick from.”

Same marriage. Different lens.

Instead of dissecting what went wrong, start talking about what went right.

When was the last time you spent 30 minutes with your partner just talking about what worked?

About the things you both deserve to take credit for?

See where I’m going with this?

If you skip that moment to pat each other on the back, don’t be surprised when your motivation to do more of what works starts to fade.

You need to document the narrative you want for your relationship – the one that says, we work in so many ways we sometimes forget to notice.

If you had a great week together, talk about that.

If you got the results you were hoping for, store it in your core memory bank.

Try it tonight:

Before anyone mentions a problem, they say two wins first.

Watch them malfunction trying to find the good.

Then watch them remember why they chose you.

In strength and solutions,

I just finished working with a couple who’d been in therapy for over a year before they came to see me.

Why did they call me after 12 long months of working with their therapist?

Because they made very little progress.

But I didn’t need them to tell me that.

I knew why in the first 5 minutes of working with them.

They were the kind of couple that could list their differences like a grocery receipt:

• She’d say she was spontaneous, he liked structure
• She wanted depth, he wanted peace
• She felt everything, he analyzed everything

“Great. You know how you’re different,” I thought.

Good job that their last therapist helped them understand each other’s differences, if you like being in therapy for months on end…

They were taught to respect their differences. To accept them. And work around them.

And so they did.

They analyzed. They labeled. They tried to “honor” each other’s wiring.

But every session made them feel more like roommates than partners in love.

Because the more they focused on their differences, the further apart they grew.

That’s when I told them something they’d never heard before:

“Therapy that focuses on differences keeps couples divided.”

You see, when you spend all your energy analyzing what doesn’t work, you lose touch with what does.

You start treating your partner like a problem to be solved instead of a person to be loved.

Here’s what I tell my couples, over and over again:

It’s your similarities, not your differences, that keep you connected.

You already come from wildly different backgrounds.

You are guaranteed to have beliefs that don’t align.

And don’t get me started on what differing political views can do to a relationship.

Focusing on your differences will wreak havoc on your relationship.

The antidote?

Turn your attention to the overlap.

Start asking what your values, desires, and dreams are.

Remember those early days when you fell in love?

I do.

I can remember hanging off Meredith’s every word.

Talking. Asking her questions. Looking for ways in which we were alike. Ways in which we were compatible. Ways in which we were the SAME!

Reconnecting to your partner happens when you focus on sameness.

Concentrating on how you are the same creates safety.

And more importantly, it attaches a parachute to vulnerability.

And it’s vulnerability that’ll keep your relationship alive.

So instead of asking, “Why are we so different?”

Start asking, “How are we still the same?”

Your marriage won’t get better itemizing your differences.

It’ll grow when you feed and water your similarities.

So here’s your homework for the week:

Give yourselves a week to fill just one sheet of paper with all the ways in which you and your partner are the same.

Ask yourselves:

“When do we see eye to eye?”

“What do we have in common?”

“What are the things in life that are important to both of us?”

Spend this week looking for similarities, and you’ll be shocked at how quickly your walls start to crumble.

In strength & solutions,