Creating a partnership in our marriages was the goal when we got married, and yet many of us over the years, end up retreating into a paper marriage, a place where we live in the same space, but we do so as roommates, people who aren't connected. The goal of marriage isn't just to share a house and a washing machine, it's to connect emotionally, to…

When Christ informed his disciples that one of them would betray them, their response was, 'Is it I, Lord?' When I'm confronted with something that I did wrong or an accusation, most often my immediate response is, 'What are you talking about? I didn't mess that up! How could you accuse me of such a thing?!?' Hmmm. Very telling. I'm obviously not d…

In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and I explored the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, particularly focusing on how societal and religious expectations impact LDS women's understanding and expression of sexuality. Jennifer teaches us about three stages of spiritual and sexual development, including how individuals progress from…

All of us are familiar with the feeling a resentment, the angst that comes from feeling anger, frustration, or envy about how someone else is showing up and we think we're being taken advantage of or that things are unfair or that we don't deserve that treatment. And yet, remembering that resentment is not caused by someone else's behavior, but rat…

Sometimes, forgiving ourselves can be really hard. And not only the process, but also the long-lasting repercussions of not being able to accept our human flaws and move forward, to let go of a painful past and move forward with more hope and light. In this episode we are talking about how to forgive ourselves and what to do when the other person d…

Learning to live in relationship is a skill, and one that many of us have not learned, let alone even considered. But to have the intimate, connected relationships we innately crave, it is imperative we learn to move into 'we' thinking, considering our spouse and our relationship just as much as we consider ourselves. When we can deeply desire our …

In the last episode we talked about a huge list of mental and emotional behaviors. In this podcast, we're going to talk about the antidote for these behaviors, which is charity. This amazing piece of Christ-like love will rid us of those dysfunctional relationship disconnectors and instead deepen and strengthen and connect our relationships. Charit…

Who knew that there were so many ways we could engage in mental and emotional abusive behaviors. Because so much of what we do has been modeled after behavior we experienced growing up, we often don't see the hurt and dysfunction in those behaviors. Educating ourselves on healthier behaviors is vital for our growth and progress. Because when we kno…

Psychological boundaries are internal boundaries that we set with ourselves, inside of our own heads. They allow us to decide what ideas, thoughts, or beliefs we want to accept and which ones we don't. We will receive a lot of messaging about who we are and how we are and we get to decide which of those messages is okay and which are not okay. Havi…

Setting boundaries in our most cherished relationships can be hard not just because we're often doing something that may be new and requires courage, but because many of us feel so much guilt when our boundary is not received with glowing accolades but rather with pushback and frustration and even anger. And that guilt comes from two places – ourse…

When Lisa first found my podcast over three years ago, she was in a tough place: struggling with divorce, her relationships with her adult children and their spouses, and feelings of her own worth. Once she started listening consistently and figuring out how to start applying the concepts, she was hooked. She began taking classes and even worked on…

Who knew that a lack of boundaries could cause so many emotional and mental struggles in our lives? Today I'm sharing with you an article adaptation from Dr. Henry Cloud's book Becoming an Adult: Advice on Taking Control & Living a Happy, Meaningful Life. Dr. Cloud is one of the co-authors of the Boundaries books, and he shared 22 symptoms that we …

Learning to live our lives with intention is a powerful way to begin to create the lives we truly want. And it is going to push the boundaries of your comfort zone when you step into intentionality. But only when we decide what we really want in life and choose to intentionally move toward it will we find the fulfillment and contentment that is ava…

Many of us have parts of our lives where we want to grow and progress, things we want to do that we haven't done before, and yet, we hesitate and don't move forward because it can be so uncomfortable to do something new, to step into change. I call this the certainty of misery. We're not happy with where we are, but at least it's comfortable, we're…

Having a strong sense of self is the key fundamental tool to creating strong relationships. Only when we have a sense of belonging to ourselves, a sense of our worth and value, of our inherent goodness even amidst our flaws and weaknesses, can we show up in the relationship circle as an equal partner. The stronger our sense of self, the greater our…

When we feel safe in our relationships, we feel we can show up with more vulnerability. When we show up with more vulnerability, we create more emotional and physical intimacy. But oftentimes, the behaviors we are engaging in in our relationships put the other person into protective mode rather than feeling safe, and so we struggle to create the co…

A strong, healthy relationship is one in which we create a very safe place for each person to be 100% themselves. So many of us did not learn growing up what it means to be in a relationship this way. If you're like me, you thought that growing up and getting married would mean that you would have someone to love you, to shore up your insecurities,…

Being able to validate your relationship is an important tool in creating a healthier space for the two of you to live and love. Validation is something that we often seek from others to shore up our sense of self. And this never really works, because SELF-worth is something that can only be created within ourselves. Validation in our marriages and…

The Relationship Circle is a concept that I keep coming back to again and again with my clients. Understanding the relationship circle helps us stay in our own lanes and resist the temptation to try and take control of things that aren't ours to control. When we more clearly understand how to allow the other person the space to work through their o…

Conflict is a word that makes many of us squirm – it's just so darn uncomfortable! And yet, conflict doesn't always need to lead to contention. What if you had the skills to turn a conflict into deeper connection and intimacy instead? Thanks for listening! Want to learn more about this concept? Check out these podcasts: #3 Resolving Conflict #110 T…

When humans act like humans, it can sure make our lives difficult. Of course it would be easier if they all just did what we wanted and behaved in ways we thought were appropriate, but that's just not going to happen. Challenges and difficulties in our relationships are inevitable and a normal part of all relationships. Learning to allow and even e…

It can be easy, and even feel intuitive, to get in the middle of other people's business. And it's even easier when they invite us in, asking for verification that what they are thinking is true and what they are feeling is valid. When we feel we're being pulled into someone else's relationship, it's important that we learn to stay out and let the …

So many of us feel blindsided when it comes to the relationships with our adult children. We heard a lot about the struggles of being a parent to babies, toddlers, tots, pre-teens, and teenagers, but not a lot about our role and relationship with adult children. The reason it can be so challenging is because so many of us struggle to let go of our …

The conflict between our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex is as old as our brain itself. Primitive brain wants to avoid pain, pursue immediate pleasure, and conserve energy, while our prefrontal cortex wants to plan for long-term goals and growth to improve the quality of our life. This conflict will often trigger internal negotiation betw…

Our brain loves a good story, and what it doesn't know in facts, it will make up with fiction. It also really like to have a villain, a hero, and a victim in its story, and it especially loves to put us in the victim mode because when there we don't have to shoulder the responsibility for solving our problems, we can just stay in a place of blame, …

It can be so easy to neglect the relationships we most value because we have this ideas that they will always be there. And then, because of the neglect, they are no longer there. We may still be married, but we are distant and disconnected, and it can seem daunting to find our way back to connection. But it is possible to change the trajectory of …

When we over-function, we are stepping into other people's lanes and taking responsibility that is not ours. When we under-function, we are stepping back and inviting people into our lane to do things that we are responsible for doing. These one-up and one-down behaviors are so detrimental to our relationships and not only stem from our own insecur…

Continuing our journey this week of discovering ways that we can ive a more luxurious life by creating energy, living in alignment with our values, and stepping into the person we have the possibility of being. Living a luxurious life requires intention and focus, it requires discipline and dedication. And it is so worth it. When we are living with…

Many of us dream of living a luxurious life, and we tend to confine that idea to materialistic luxury, houses and cars and clothing and jewelry and travel, all the things money can buy. And yet there is another type of luxury I want to talk about with you today, and it's the luxury of living in alignment with our God-given possibility, the luxury o…

Sexuality between men and women can get complicated because we experience it so differently. And until we can begin to understand and accept those differences, and then learn to work with them rather than fighting against them, we will struggle to find the connection and intimacy that a great sexual relationship has to offer us. In this podcast I a…

If we want to increase the intimacy and connection in our relationships, it is imperative that we show up as a safe person who creates a safe space. Often, the patterns we have established in our relationships are the opposite of safe, they cause our primitive brains to go into hyper protective mode and want to run away emotionally and physically. …

Difficult emotions can be, well, difficult. And because they don't feel good, we will often dismiss, ignore, or resist them, which can be unfortunate when there is so much amazing information behind the emotions we are feeling and why we are feeling them. When we can learn to be aware of the emotion and then step into curiosity to figure out what i…

Our insecurities and the protective nature of our primitive brain can make meaningful connection in our relationships difficult. These protective tendencies make it difficult for us to step into truly listening and seeking to understand the other person. When we can learn to consciously set aside these human tendencies to preserve and protect ourse…

When Stacey first met me for her free consult, she was months out from a divorce and really struggling getting her feet on the ground. She was stuck in victim mentality and it was impacting the relationships with her children, herself, and everyone else. We started coaching one-on-one, and within 1 1/2 years, Stacy was on solid ground, had cleaned …

Besides all of the life changes that occur in middle-age such as children leaving home, readjusting our marriage relationships, figuring out our next life steps, aging parents, etc., how about we add on a heaping serving of menopause where our hormones change and adjust and it affects us not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally as wel…

For many of us, fun is something that became more elusive as we got older. We were so involved in making sure our children and our spouses were doing well, that they were learning and growing and having fun, that our own fun often got put on the back burner. And yet, having fun and engaging in play is an important part of our mental and emotional h…

Many of us think that if we could just take a confidence pill that everything in our life would be different, because confidence impacts our courage to step into new and sometimes scary situations and to take risks that could make our lives better. And yet, we all have confidence. Sometimes that confidence is just in things, but what we mostly stru…

Sione and I are just hitting our third anniversary. On this podcast we share what we have learned and incorporated this last year regarding how curiosity creates a safe space. Learning to slow down, to pause before responding, to remember that this is the person we love the most and choosing to show up curious and kind and compassionate have been i…

Sometimes we go into a one-down space and spin in shame, other times we might go into a one-up space and justify our poor behavior by blaming others, both responses that harm our relationships. When we can, instead, approach our struggles from an 'all people are equal' mentality, we have the capacity to offer ourselves grace for our humanity. Under…

Divorce is one of those experiences that kicks you in the chest and knocks you on your butt, and it can be so difficult to get back up. And yet, at some point we have to get back up and step back into life. And though it's a tough road, it isn't impossible and it doesn't have to take forever. In this podcast I share some of my own insights about my…

All of us have people who don't like us, even if we are the most kind and Christlike person we know. It's just part of our human experience. When we can learn to accept other people's agency to not like us, we can let go of self-defeating behaviors like people-pleasing, perfectionist tendencies, trying to buy their love with time, money, energy, or…

Expectation is a funny word. It means that we think something should happen a certain way or that someone should behave in a certain way, two things we rarely, if ever, have control over. What I've found is that expectations I have are often a cause of shame for the other person, and also for me. And shame is never a productive emotion. And yet, it…

All relationships struggle, so all relationships need repair. Knowing how to repair is an essential skill for creating healthy and happy relationships, and that darn ego of ours can make it so difficult to show up in loving and kind ways because it wants to be right and it wants to prove to our spouse how wrong they are. But learning to show up cre…

I love Viktor Frankl's quote "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." I am reminded by this that my power, my strength, and my freedom is created in the space between the stimulus (circumstance) and my response (my actions). But sometimes th…

Just as women were raised with societal ideas and expectations around their sexuality, so were men. And so many of these ideas are actually harmful, and even destructive, to the emotional intimacy we desire in our relationships. In this podcast my husband, Sione, shares the concepts and ideas around sexuality that he learned growing up and how he l…

Learning how to be vulnerable can be a scary and tough skill to acquire. So can learning to let other people in our lives be vulnerable. Because when others show up vulnerable, it can shake our ideas about who they are, it can shift our relationships, and it can challenge our own difficult emotions. But relationships will only thrive toward greater…

Many of us grew up in homes where we didn't receive any training about vulnerability in relationships. We were fairly uneducated about emotions, and it is very detrimental in our marriage relationships. My previous 24-year marriage struggled with a severe lack of vulnerability, and today we're talking about why that was such a problem and the diffe…

If we are going to be all-in in our relationships, we have to be vulnerable, and that can feel super scary. Sometimes it's difficult because we are in a new relationship and it can be hard to be the one to make the first move. Sometimes it's difficult because our decades-long relationship is struggling and it's been a very long time since we were v…

Relationships can be hard. If we have created a pprotective pattern over the years, we may find that we are in a pattern of leaning out emotionally in our marriage and not having the intimate connection that we inwardly crave. When we choose to be all-in, we take a risk in our relationship, but it is also the only way to open a door that makes emot…

When a woman has devoted so many years to being a stay-at-home mom and then the kids grow up and leave, she will often feel as though she is floundering a bit to get her feet underneath her. What are her next steps? How does she enter the workforce with not a lot of 'working outside the home' experience in the last 30 years? Angela Ashurst-McGee is…