Category: Commitment & Teamwork

I want to invite you to start the week thinking about the two vows I believe are missing from most wedding ceremonies.

And let me tell you, when Meredith and I got married, we certainly didn’t make them.

We promised to love each other.

To be faithful.

To stay committed through sickness and health.

All important.

But after 18 years together and thousands of hours sitting across from couples, there are two more promises I think we need to add to that list:

I hold your emotional well-being ahead of my own.

And:

I promise to show up better in our marriage today than I did yesterday.

A lot of folks won’t believe me, but I believe those two simple shifts have the power to solve innumerable problems in your relationship.

And before you think I’m full of BS, let me explain why this works in the simplest way possible:

Most couples overcomplicate relationships.

They make it all about feelings, and processing, and safe spaces.

That’s what’s complicated.

What isn’t complicated is understanding that what you put into your marriage is what you take out.

Translation:

Effort makes excellence.

I’m saying you don’t need to connect over love languages, attachment styles, or energy work.

None of those things will compensate for a lack of effort.

I’m about 4,000 clients into my career and 17 years into my own marriage, and I can tell you this:

Effort is what makes marriage work.

So, how do you harness the momentum of effort?

Simple.

Start by reframing your mental state so that you’re open-minded and curious.

As in, you give a damn about who you’re married to.

Then, once you’re really interested in who your partner is and what they mean to you, say these two vows to them, lovingly and casually:

“Your emotional well-being matters to me – and I put it ahead of my own.”

“I promise to do better every day in our marriage.”

I’m not asking you to make grand gestures or sweeping sacrifices because I like hearing myself speak.

I’m saying that when you make a daily commitment to prioritize your partner’s feelings and continuously improve how you show up, you get handed the keys to the kingdom.

Because think about what happens when two people actually live this way.

Instead of asking, “What am I getting out of this marriage?” – you’re paying attention to what your spouse is getting from it too.

Instead of waiting for them to change, you’re asking yourself how you can show up better.

And if both people wake up every morning doing that?

That’s a Chosen & Cherished marriage.

Not because you suddenly stop having problems.

But because you’ve got two people committed to solving them.

And maybe that’s what marriage vows were supposed to be all along.

Not promises you make once, standing in front of everyone you love.

Promises you make again tomorrow morning when nobody’s watching.

In solutions and strength,

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”

THE “KEEP” MANIFESTO

Alright everyone, let’s get real.

If you’re here, it’s because you’re feeling the weight of a partner leaning out of your relationship. 

If that’s happening, and you’re not ready to give up…

This is going to be worth the 5 minutes it’s going to take you to read.

I was watching HopeScope the other day with my two daughters. (She’s a funny YouTuber who buys mystery boxes from TikTok and films her reactions as she opens them.)

My favorite part is that she has no idea what’s inside until she opens the box.

It got me thinking that the future of your marriage is exactly the same.

And that’s especially true for couples in a really rough place…

… where one partner is leaning into their marriage and the other is leaning out.

The biggest mistake anyone can make is deciding their marriage is over before they’ve actually explored every possibility for it.

I’d argue that if they’re willing to open their mind, then this may just help you pull them back into your relationship.

When someone is leaning out, they’re struggling with commitment ambivalence. 

And if that’s the case, you (as the leaning-in spouse) need the kind of language that’ll help you really understand what’s going on, and more importantly, how to approach them as the leaning-out spouse.

So let’s get into it.

The first thing you need to do when you see the train leaving the station is slow it down.

You do that with language.

I obviously don’t know your situation. And every marriage is different. 

But I do know this: the biggest decisions of your life shouldn’t be made from the narrowest emotional perspective.

And that’s why the first question isn’t “Why are they leaving?”

The first question is, “What problem are they trying to solve?”

The language you use at this moment matters more than you probably realize.

If you engage with them by attempting to process emotions or understanding why your connection has decayed, you run two risks:

1. You’ll connect your spouse to the thing they don’t want: the pain of why you’re not connected
2. You’ll stay stuck talking about that pain for 52 weeks without circling back to what’s going to move the needle and repair what’s broken.

Neither of those stop the runaway train.

And that’s not what I teach.

You need language that slows the train down.

You have to understand—and this is especially true for those of you wanting a new language to communicate with your spouse—that when someone is truly contemplating leaving a relationship, the very first thing they’re trying to do is end the pain.

When they express a desire to leave, here’s what they’re thinking:

Leaving the relationship is the only solution worth attempting.

Why?

Because your spouse isn’t trying to leave you.

They’re trying to leave the pain.

And if you’ve been carrying the weight of trying to save your marriage alone, I know how lonely that feels.

In therapy, we talk about attempted solutions.

Why do people do the things they do in life? 

Because those are attempted solutions that will let them escape the pain they’re in.

Everything we do is an attempted solution to solve some problem we’re experiencing.

Let’s say I need to fix my car. 

One attempted solution is, “I don’t want to fix it. I’m going to sell it, take the money, and buy a new car.”

That’s an attempted solution. But it’s not always the best solution.

And if you’re the one who’s pulling away from your marriage, it’s really important to understand this because you don’t want to be making a life-changing decision without seeing it for what it is.

Let’s say you throw in the towel on your relationship.

I’ve seen this.

I worked with a client—someone very successful in his career—and his wife threw in the towel. She didn’t want to rekindle the relationship.

He wanted to try.

She didn’t.

Today, he’s remarried.

She’s still alone.

I often wonder if she would’ve made the same decision had she believed there were other solutions worth trying.

If you’re the one leaning out and one reading this, you’ve got to understand that your decision to lean out—or even end the relationship—is simply an attempted solution.

It’s in your best interest to ask,

“Would I be open to talking about my decision, if there were other solutions we could attempt?”

If you’re the one leaning in and reading this, understand that they’ll only answer ‘yes’ to that question if they believe that exploring other solutions could be the best thing for themselves.

Most leaning-out spouses think, “I want the pain to stop because my relationship is all bad.”

The thing is, no relationship is all bad. 

But since they’re feeling that way, they don’t see that. 

They only think, “I’m in pain and the only way to end that pain is to end the relationship.”

What they don’t understand is that there are multiple steps before you actually throw in the towel.

So, just because they’re feeling pain, what other solutions could we attempt?

How could we stem the bleeding?

How could we stop the pain long enough for them to discover whether there’s still a little bit of gas left in the tank to repair the relationship?

I want you to remind them—using these exact words—that if they throw in the towel today, they may eventually regret that decision.

Tell them, “I don’t want us to live with regrets.”

“So what do you propose instead?” they may ask.

That’s when you pitch them the idea of zooming out and taking a 30,000-foot view of your relationship.

Simply ask them, “Wouldn’t it be in both of our best interests if we could get an unemotional, unbiased view of our relationship?”

This is the whole goal of the conversation you’re going to have with them at this point: 

Take an inventory of what is good, not just what’s painful.

Because no relationship is 100% painful all the time. Even those that hurt still contain moments worth protecting.

At this point, I want you to use this analogy with them:

Imagine that our relationship is a train.

The conductor has fallen asleep.

His foot is pressing harder and harder on the accelerator.

The train is speeding up, racing toward the edge of a cliff…

“Wouldn’t it be in both of our best interests if we got an unbiased look at our marriage?” 

Then pause a moment before continuing.

“Can I ask you something? If leaving is one solution… would you be willing to spend one hour making sure it isn’t the only one?”

Your only goal is to get them to pause on making a decision about the relationship–be that to leave, to separate, or ask for space.

Your main focus when your partner first brings up the idea of separation is to stop them from acting on their attempted solution.

How?

Let me give you more language to use with them…

Would you ever take your car to a mechanic and say, “Just start pulling parts out and replacing them?”

Of course not.

No mechanic starts replacing parts before running diagnostics.

The same thing is true of your relationship.

There are going to be painful parts. But there’s also going to be a lot of good.

If the two of you don’t take that 30,000-foot view—especially if one of you is leaning out hard—you run the risk of making an attempted solution based purely on emotion.

Usually, overly negative emotion.

No one should want to make major life decisions from an overly negative OR positive emotional state.

When you’re making an attempted solution, you want to confidence.

You want a clear, level head so you can decide what your relationship actually needs.

Every relationship knows hurt–mine included

But every marriage still has some good in it.

And it’s worth pointing that out.

Why?

Because, at the very least, it may have them thinking twice and hitting pause before making a life-changing decision.

And remember HopeScope?

She has no idea what’s in those boxes until she opens them.

The future of your marriage works exactly the same way.

Don’t decide what’s inside before you’ve opened it.

Your spouse may still leave.

Or they may not.

But before either of you makes the biggest decision of your life…

Make sure you’re ending the marriage because it’s truly over.

Not because you’re desperate for the pain to stop.

In solutions and strength,

aka “Mr Chosen & Cherished”

P.S. If this resonated with you, I’d love to give you the exact Marital Inventory I use to help couples see more than just the pain in their marriage. I created it to help you step back, take an honest look at what’s working, what’s hurting, and what still might be worth fighting for.

Normally it’s a $250 program.

Right now, I want to give it to you absolutely free.

My upcoming book Choosing Us is coming out November 3rd. When you preorder it, you’ll get The Marital Inventory today along with $2,250 of other bonuses. These aren’t going to last forever. So if you want them, use this link and preorder Choosing Us today.

This is how quickly it can turn your life around.

A few months ago, a man in my Chosen & Cherished Club sent me a message.

He told me he had moved out because the marriage had become toxic. There was trauma there, the resentment ran really deep, and neither of them saw a way through it.

But then he found my DIY program, he and his wife started it, and something magical happened: after a few weeks, his wife asked him to move back in.

And he sent me a message, crediting this unexpected 180 to what they’d learned in the program, and thanking me for saving his marriage.

I hesitate to take that much credit because, as any therapist will tell you, it’s the client who has to actually do the work.

But I can’t lie: it definitely brings me joy and fuels my heavy workload when I hear stories like this.

But one thing he said in particular really stood out to me, because it confirmed so perfectly the mistake I see couples – and other therapists – make, time and time again…

And that’s the impulse that they need space in order to figure things out.

But space is usually just the first slip down what becomes a very slippery slope to the end of a relationship.

As he put it, “I think the ‘moving out’ space almost destroyed our marriage and any hope…I think if we had heard of you prior to me moving out it might have not happened. I think for repair it’s important that I am home.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, hits the nail on the head.

You don’t need space in order to figure things out or make it better.

So many couples assume that some space and distance will bring them clarity.

And sure, occasionally it does.

But more often than not, it just makes things worse, and the relationship gets harder to repair.

What you actually need is a different S-word: safety.

You need to feel safe enough to tell the truth. To be vulnerable.

To set aside resentment for a few minutes, drop the defenses, and start connecting.

Only by starting with that connection can you truly work on repair.

Now, some couples are really great at self-study, and some save their relationship just from watching my reels.

But if you’re having trouble doing that on your own, then it might be time to see how I can help.

The best place to start is with a Clarity Call. I’ll take a few minutes to understand what’s going on for you, and help you identify the biggest obstacles standing between you and the marriage you want.

Then, if I believe I can help, I’ll show you what that path could look like.

These calls are best suited for couples who are serious about repair, willing to look at their own role in the problem, and ready to stop repeating the same conversations over and over again.

If that sounds like you, click here to book a Clarity Call.

I’d love to help you create a marriage where you both feel chosen and cherished.