Talk to me

Alright guys, it’s about time for my annual sex post on this blog. I’m a marriage blogger. It happens. Here’s the thing this time though, ever since I posted about how I went from never caring about or really wanting sex, to loving sex last year, I’ve been getting A LOT of questions about sex. Via my blog email yes, but also in my personal life. Sometimes from close friends. Sometimes from people I hardly know. Just this month I had two different women from my church congregation come talk to me about sex who I’ve never before had conversations… Read More

Episode 10: Problems with In-Laws (“Rude”)

problems with in laws podcast

Do you have an over-bearing mother-in-law? A demanding father-in-law? What do you do? Grin and bear it? Confront them? Make your spouse confront them? Nothing, just complain to anyone and everyone not in your family about your in-laws? Thankfully, I do not, but this is a problem many, many couples face. In fact, problems with in-laws is cited in the top five most common thing couples fight about! (along with money, sex, work and kids) Top five! In today’s episode, we are using some helpful tips from Dr. John Gottman (and our readers!) to talk about how to gracefully deal… Read More

Embracing Negative Emotion 101: How to Feel All the Feelings

Embracing Negative Emotion 101: How to feel all your feelings instead of numbing them. Click through to read 4 ways of confronting hard feelings.

I had this thought for most of my life. A thought that seemed innocuous, but really kept me from connecting with myself and others. The thought was that I should ignore my negative emotions. I can remember so many times being bothered by something Rich said or did and consciously telling myself, “Just ignore it. Let it go. Don’t think about it. Nothing’s wrong. La la la la la.” Now, when I’m bothered by Rich it is more a reflection of what is going on with me and my head than whatever it was he did or said, so it… Read More

Episode 9: The Happiness Trap (“If It Makes You Happy”) Featuring Amanda Louder Show Notes

The Happiness Trap podcast

“If it makes you happy, is it really that bad?” So sings Sheryl Crow in her hit song, “If It Makes You Happy.” Many people think if it makes you happy, then do it, no questions asked. But often the things that make us happy are the things that are bad for us (I’m looking at you Oreos). It all depends on how we define happiness, what our expectations for happiness are and maintaining the ability to be unhappy sometimes. These are a few of the topics we cover in today’s episode, The Happiness Trap. We are thrilled to have life… Read More

Why “Being Happy” is a Pretty Costly Life Goal (and three better alternatives)

What percentage of the time are you happy? 30%? 80%? Now, what percentage of the time do you think you SHOULD be happy? via GIPHY Up until fairly recently, I thought the happy to unhappy ratio in my life should be about 90/10. I thought I should be happy about 90% of the time. (I never actually quantified this, but unconsciously I assumed I should be happy the vast majority of the time). But recently I read something that sounds maybe obvious but sort of blew my mind. It said that we can expect to experience positive emotion about 50% of… Read More