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July 7 - August 29, 2025
There is likely an angry and tough part of you that blames the weaker and more helpless parts of you for the suffering you have endured.
Shame and contempt are toxic and deadly, so we must meet them with what is even more potent: the love and life of God. There is nothing he cannot defeat. Keep opening yourself to him so he can overpower them through you.
seeing my own contempt disrupts my sense of identity.
At some point along the way, someone we trusted abandoned us in a physical or emotional way, and in response to it, we formed a core belief: I don’t matter.
that we were worth being with by achieving and gaining attention and favor.
As we discussed in chapter 3, chronic loneliness often reflects unaddressed trauma, and many of us experience this.
Research reveals that loneliness increases the risk of heart disease and is associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety. Clearly we are not meant for this; we are meant to be seen, known, and connected. Loneliness is different from occasionally feeling lonely; it is feeling alone, fundamentally separate. We are hardwired for human connection—true connection. If we’re in the presence of others, but if we don’t have any sense of connection, we still can experience loneliness.
When our bodies feel a familiar old pain, our default response will be to live out the past in the present, to do what we’ve always done to self-protect. But, instead, we can learn how to consciously disrupt the pattern and create a new story in the present.
As Jake became more aware of how his wife had endured such heartache and despair from her mother’s emotional neglect, he began to respond differently to her.
Emotional presence is incredibly powerful because our desire for presence is innate. It is in our nature to long deeply for someone to see us.
The presence of another tells us that we are seen. We are not forgotten. We matter. We are chosen.
Curiosity is foundational to emotional intimacy. It says, I want to see you. I want to know you. I want to be with you. Curiosity reminds us that our partners chose us—and are still choosing us. Curiosity is an intentional engagement with our spouses. It can sound like, “I was thinking about you today during your board meeting. How did it go for you?”
That was what I needed. The complexity of repair was found in the simplicity of validation. When validation is offered, we feel soothed. We feel regulated. We feel understood.
Humans are association-making beings, tending to make pairings with events. Camille had paired anger with harm. While she “knew” Ryan wasn’t her father, her brain functions of cognition and reason were hard to access amid a threat (as we discussed in chapter 6). When fear kicks in, she just reacts. And she keeps doing it.
We experience something that triggers a felt experience of a past trauma. Then we naturally reenact behaviors that have, in the past, enabled us to survive heartache—but these are not productive in the present.
Even if the words reflect some reality, they are not spoken for the sake of the truth or for any hope of reconciliation. The person is simply exploding their frustration and contempt in desperation to find relief. I was hurt, and I will hurt you in response. I will make you pay for the harm done unto me. This is how reenactments are justified and reinforced.
Triggers themselves are not the problem. They simply expose a deeper issue: hurt-generated patterns that have long been used to escape the vulnerability of shame. We often cope with shame by flinging judgment at our partners, then use that judgment to justify our behavior.
Judgment is contempt that condemns without considering context and disguises our part in the problem. Judgment against our partners and ourselves is like a cloud preventing us from being able to see what’s happening.
Pushing others away might be easy, but receiving loving help is brave.
Awareness invites understanding, and understanding invites tenderness.
But then I paused. And I got curious. I asked myself, Okay, what’s up? What happened?
Our bodies crave reassurance in distress, and when we don’t have access to our spouses’ reassurance, we can receive a kind, tender, soothing response from ourselves.
As we remember, we also can offer words of reassurance to ourselves. Of course that was overwhelming to you. Of course that stung. Of course you have a panicked feeling. We can name these feelings and offer ourselves validation and comfort.
As you resolve to embrace these transformative mindsets, linger with these words from theologian Barbara Brown Taylor: “To become fully human . . . means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else’s hourly failures to live up to divine standards. . . . It means living so that ‘I’m only human’ does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”
Whether they are related to mistakes or individual differences, everyday disappointments are part of our lives together and can cause division.
What also is inevitable are relational ruptures—failures that cause significant wounds and emotional distance. These failures might be words that demean or threaten the other, or choices made with no consideration of what the other will suffer. They could be any betrayal of the other through a pursuit of money, power, sex, addictions, or other false gods. We are flawed humans who fail. And those failures break trust and leave a wide emotional gap we cannot easily resolve.
A question I’ve frequently asked couples is, “What is the goal of your conflict?” After giving me a confused stare, one might playfully reply, “To win!” and the other might say, “To come to a compromise,” or, “To resolve it.”
These are logical answers many of us would give. But research tells us that if our only aim is to resolve our conflict, we’ll be fighting a losing battle. Marriage expert John Gottman has found that nearly 70 percent of conflict is unresolvable.
Yes—we spend a vast amount of emotional energy attempting to solve what we cannot. While this may seem like a defeating reality, it’s actually a clarifying one: our work in marriage is not simply to resolve conflict but to integrate fruitful ways to stay connected to each other throughout it. Another piece of research supports this. Professor Ted Huston discovered through a thirteen-year study with 168 couples that failure in marriage is not the result of conflict but of a weak emotional c...
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When we are in conflict, we reveal what we think and feel. Conflict is, in a sense, a form of intimacy, a word that originates from the Latin intimare, “to make something known.”3 It is a time when we give our partners access to ourselves. Conflict allows us to be seen and known (which we innately desire) and to be heard and understood (which are foundational components of emotional intimacy). What if we approached conflict in our marriages with a reimagined purpose of cultivating emotional intimacy?
Most of us have learned to avoid conflict at all costs and assume it only can go poorly. We see it as a threat, and, as we’ve said, our bodies have automatic reactions to threats.
Let’s review the four primary trauma responses we discussed in chapter 6, since our bodies often respond the same ways in conflict. We do these things to temporarily relieve the hurt, frustration, or disappointment we feel in a charged moment. Flight: We escape through withdrawal or retreat, disengaging or physically walking away. We avoid further conflict by removing ourselves from it. Fight: As our adrenaline spikes, our muscles tense up, our bodies and faces tighten, and we may shift to aggressive behavior. We believe we’ll gain control if we exert power. Freeze: Our bodies shut down and
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Remember, though, how judgment can cloud your view of reality and keep you from seeing what needs care. These responses are the body’s way of protecting itself from potential harm. The amygdala is automatically hijacking the situation, but it does not need to stay in charge. If you can honor how the past is revealed in the present and be kind to the body’s natural need to protect itself, you can begin to develop an awareness of what you both need to feel safe. We’ve discussed the importance of pausing in intense moments to create safety, gain clarity, and invite connection.
A driving force behind our flight, fight, freeze, and fawn responses to conflict is our preoccupation with being understood. When our partners overlook, minimize, or dismiss our feelings or thoughts, we tend to work hard to get them to understand us. We might become louder and more expressive, saying, “That’s not what I said.” “That’s not what I meant.” “You’re not listening to me.” Our hurt from feeling misunderstood fuels the conflict. We have distress in our bodies because we feel disconnected (and we crave connection). We may end up feeling stuck in tense misalignment. Being preoccupied
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What if our goal in conflict was to offer understanding and validation? How might that change the dynamics?
Conflict often begins when we encounter differences of opinion, need, or desire. Differences can feel threatening and cause guardedness and irritation. If you would think like me, believe like me, or feel like me, all would be well.
You didn’t partner with sameness; you partnered with difference. Your partner’s differences probably attracted you to them. It is no surprise that you don’t always think and behave the same way.
But you can view moments of conflict as an opportunity to engage difference. The key is to be free of judgment.
Sometimes I’ll snap at her, “Why do you have to read before bed?” which is essentially saying, “Why can’t you be more like me?” There is a tone of judgment, implying she is somehow fundamentally flawed. When we have this type of impulse, the courageous questions to ask are, What drives my belief that my partner should be more like me? Am I willing to let go of whatever is blocking my ability to be kind to their difference?
But we start with understanding and respecting our partners’ individuality. We sustain connection as we engage differences with kindness. We also “seek to understand” whenever we see our partners bristle.
What helped change the trajectory? The choice to say, “Hang on, can we pause here?” Pausing is a form of honor and of protection. It disrupts our automatic responses. It invites curiosity, and curiosity moves us toward connection.
how we begin these conversations dictates how they will turn out. Demands or blaming tones push the other away, and the relational experience we’re hoping for slips out of reach.
This invites our partners into our struggle and gives them the opportunity to respond to our needs. We’re giving them access, encouraging them to move toward us rather than away. We’re creating space for them to see and acknowledge—without defensiveness—the impact of their actions.
When the roles are reversed, it’s easy to hear our partners’ hurt as blame and become defensive. But, as we just said, when one of us opens up about a struggle, we’re giving the other access to our needs.
At the very least, we can validate our partners’ experience, which doesn’t require agreement. We can offer it even when we don’t have the same feeling or perspective.
Sometimes this type of twenty-second exchange saves us from having a twenty-minute debate. Validation may be all we need. Other times, validation leads us away from hostility and toward safety and support, even if we have conflicting desires. Seeking to understand and validate our spouses’ needs throughout conflict maintains our connection.
The deepest healing is possible when you have a wise and kind voice engaging with your stories and walking you through the process of restoration.
Blame, however, is a judgment built on a biased reading of reality. It fuels a self-protective defense and scapegoats the other while mostly taking ourselves off the hook. It keeps us from listening to each other and propels us into a rapid-fire tit for tat, upping the intensity of contempt.
There can be no true repair without sorrow.
Kindness, as we have said, is a fierce commitment to offer goodness to ourselves and others. It is the choice not to rush the process, but to take time to understand how the harm occurred and where we find ourselves now. Sorting through the shards bonds us together in shared grief, gives us a clearer perspective of our stories, and sets us up for restoration.
