Given that Ash Wednesday was yesterday, this post may seem a bit late. But, it occurred to me this morning that however much we acknowledge the power of Lent to transform our relationship with God, we don’t think enough about this season’s ability to do the same in our marriage.

Which seems like a great loss, since one of Jesus’ two greatest commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself:

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:36-39)

And who could we consider a closer neighbor to us than our spouse, our other half, the only human person with whom we share a covenantal relationship?

I think we’re often tempted to think of our neighbors as those outside of our home, those we interact with here and there. In many ways, it’s easier to love those further away than it is to love those closest to us. Our family knows what buttons to push to drive us crazy. Their moods and habits affect us directly every day. And they’re more demanding of our time and energy than anyone else.

So, while it’s wonderful to start volunteering, give more money away, or pray more for those outside of our homes this Lent, our vocation - as wives and mothers - is how God calls us to love him most, by loving our husbands and children even (or especially) when it’s hard.

Make it a Lent of Love

So, how can we make this Lent one of love for Got and our spouses? Start by asking yourself this question: If I were to love my spouse the way I want to love Jesus, what would that look like? What would I need to do differently?

This may sound idolatrous, but bear with me. Jesus tells us that what we do to others, we do to him:

“for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. […] Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)

Mother Teresa used to say that she saw the face of Jesus in every person she served. That was how she mustered a seemingly limitless capacity to love others. What if you saw Jesus’ face in your husband every time he was tired, sad, frustrated, sick, or hurting? How differently would you respond?

Once you’ve made a list of the things you’d do differently, the next part is simple: Surrender something, take up something else. Pick one thing you do or a habit you have that is preventing you from loving your spouse as well as you could, and surrender it. Give up this habit entirely for Lent.

Maybe it’s how much time you spend on your phone. Maybe it’s your defensiveness or short fuse or complaining. For me, it’s my self-centeredness. This Lent, my goal is to make a habit of considering what’s best for my husband before my own preferences, every time I can. This is a painful one, a significant “dying to self”. It’s already requiring greater flexibility in how I approach the day, humility about what I “deserve”, and patience with things beyond my control.

Then, pick a habit or activity you could start that would be great for your marriage. Take up this new habit for Lent. Maybe it’s showing more gratitude for your spouse’s efforts, planning a weekly date night for the two of you, or being more physically affectionate. Bonus points if you pick something your spouse would really appreciate.

God bless you and yours this Lenten season.

~ Cameron

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“In this life no one can fulfill his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man’s desire. Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God.” - St. Thomas Aquinas

You wake up tired every morning, with an aching head and sore eyes, not matter how much you sleep. Everything seems a lot harder than it used to be. You can’t focus, and your husband’s little quirks, usually endearing, are starting to irritate you. “I’m just stressed and overworked”, you tell yourself. But the things that used to help you relax - going on walks, reading, kickboxing, baking, seeing friends - just feel like another chore now. Maybe, in a desperate attempt to unwind, you’ve found yourself bingeing sweet or salty treats at night, zoning out with social media or trashy reality shows, or spending too much time on Temu. And, just maybe, you identify a little too closely with this hippo:

Pop culture psychology will likely try to diagnose you with depression. However, it might be something else: burnout.

Burnout is a state of complete mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion caused by chronic stress.

Here are some of the most common symptoms:

• You’re tired all the time, no matter how much you sleep

• Every task feels like a chore, even things you used to love

• You’re irritable, moody, or emotionally dysregulated

• You’re having frequent physical pains like headaches, stomach or digestive pain, or muscle tension

• You’ve come to resent your responsibilities, particularly taking care of your family, when you used to be thankful to have people to care for

At this point you may be saying, “Yeah… this sounds like me. So, what do I do about it?”

The advice you’ll get from the internet (and most therapists)

Take stuff off your plate. Stick to the bare minimum essentials. What do you need to do every day to meet everyone’s basic physical, emotional and spiritual needs? Then, remove literally everything else. That might sound extreme, especially if you’re someone who’s always run a tight ship (i.e., a clean house, home cooked meals, preplanned family outings, etc.). But, keep in mind, these changes are only for a season, a season of actual rest and recovery for you. After all, what you’ve tried so far hasn’t fixed the burnout, so it’s time for more drastic measures!

Recruit help. Whether it’s your family, in-laws, neighbors, friends, or that one lady at church who seems to adore your children, now is the time to ask for help. If you’re like me and asking for help triggers a guilt spiral, tell that guilty part of yourself this: by asking for help you’re allowing the other person to love you. Jesus calls us to love one another. So, by leaning on others, you’re helping the people around you honor the Lord. In other words, you’re helping get them that much closer to heaven! What could be better than that?

Find Ways to Decompress. Whether it’s a bubble bath, back rub from your hubby, walk in nature, a nap while your kids nap, doodling or painting, or something else that you love (or at least that doesn’t make you more tired), do something every day for at least 15 minutes that’s rejuvenating.

Avoid Energy Zappers. Avoid frequent bingeing on junk food, social media, TV, alcohol or gossip with friends. While these ways of coping provide a temporary escape in the moment, they actually make us more tired and restless over time by hurting not just our minds and bodies, but our souls*.

Now, while all this advice is all good, it’s also missing the central ingredient for treating burnout.

What this advice is missing

Most of the time burnout has a foundational spiritual component. When laboring for God, our work is rejuvenating and life-giving. When laboring without God or even against his will for us, we end up depleted and burnt out.

While it’s a good idea to regularly take stock of how we’re spending our time, to reflect in prayer on whether we’re using our time, talents and resources the way God wants us to, ensuring that we’re laboring for God has as much to do with how and why of our day as with the what.

I recently heard a great recommendation of how to make God a central part of your day. At the start of each new activity (e.g., waking up, making breakfast, taking a shower, nursing your baby, reading with your toddler, going to work), you follow these three steps:

1. Ask God to be with you in that moment: “Jesus, please be with me while I wash these dishes.”

2. Offer that moment to God as a sign of your love for him: “God, I will wash these dishes well and in good spirits out of love for you.”

3. Accept whatever may happen to you in that moment: “I accept whatever happens to me in this moment as if it’s coming directly from you, Lord.”

When we keep Christ in our hearts, asking for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in each moment and remembering the love our Father has for us, we allow the Lord to nourish our souls with the spiritual blessings and graces we need to weather the storm we’re in.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

In this way, burnout is like any other injury or illness: our beloved Jesus is the only one who can bring about true healing. And he does just that, once we choose to lean on him instead of ourselves.

Keep it up, mamas! You’re doing the Lord’s work.

~ Cameron

*Why do these activities harm our souls, you might ask? As you’ll read in the section, “What this advice is missing”, we find our true rest in Christ. As we were made to be in communion with God, what wears us down most is anything that pulls us away from him. That’s why numbing or distracting activities like eating a bunch of ice cream or doom scrolling, if done often, actually make things worse: the purpose they serve, to pull us out of the pain of the present moment, actually ends up separating us from God, as well. The only place we can truly commune with God is in the present, so anything that distracts us from this moment, right now, distracts us from him.

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The biggest obstacle to successful marriage therapy I’ve faced in my work with couples is an overemphasis on accountability. That is, requiring that your spouse take personal responsibility for his issues. Upon first glance, this probably doesn’t seem like a problem. So, let’s dig below the surface a bit.

More often than not, it starts off looking something like this: wife* brings her husband to couples therapy after many months or even years of suggesting they need help. Her husband, either invested or apathetic, is usually willing to admit he’s at least partly to blame for the discord.

However, as we get a few sessions under our belts, it becomes clear that those months and years of bargaining with and even begging her husband to give therapy a try, wife has lost her sense of fault. She believes he is the problem with their marriage, rather than seeing the broken dynamic between them as being the result of a deleterious two-player game.

A willingness to take personal responsibility for our own flaws is the big golden key to unlock the treasure chest of progress in couples work. However, an insistence on your spouse taking accountability for his flaws before being willing to face your own is a marriage therapy non-starter. After all, why would both spouses go to therapy if only one of them is causing all the problems? Therapy is for people who want help improving their lives, not people who want third-party validation of their own innocence.

Couples therapy differs from individual therapy in many ways, the most important being its purpose: couples work is meant to heal the relationship between two people rather than helping either individual achieve major independent self-discovery or personal growth. These things can and often do happen as side effects of healing the relationship, but they are not the primary goals.

As a result, when couples come knocking on the therapy door together, the only way to make it work is if both spouses are ready to point the finger at themselves, not just each other. Then you at least know that both spouses will cooperate with the therapeutic process, a process that allows the relationship’s problems to rise to the surface relatively unimpeded by one party’s inability to accept any blame.

If you or your spouse aren’t ready to accept your roles in the problem, you won’t have any role to play in the solution in couples work. That’s one of the often overlooked pearls of wisdom in the above passage from Matthew. Until you’ve removed the log from your own eye, you can’t even see the speck clearly in your spouse’s eye. In other words, our own issues cloud our judgment about our spouses’ issues.

One of the most fascinating moments for me as a couples therapist is when one spouse has this paradigm shift: once something inside of them heals or they change their perspective, something they thought was a major issue in the relationship vanishes, often without the other spouse doing anything differently.

Obviously, this doesn’t always happen. Some issues are real, concrete, and not solvable by a simple change of perspective. However, the majority of issues in marriages with spouses who love each other do seem to fall into this former category.

So, what if you or your spouse are convinced you’re blameless? Start with individual therapy or spiritual direction - for both of you but separately - so you each have a chance to discover what needs healing inside of you before revisiting the marriage therapist’s office.

Stay strong, wives and husbands! You’re doing the Lord’s work.

~ Cameron

*Wives aren’t always the accuser, and husbands aren’t always the accused. However, this happens more often than not. Women initiate couples therapy much more than men, likely because women detect potential or real interpersonal issues sooner than men do. So, for the sake of brevity and clarity, I’m using this dynamic for the example here.

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One of Jesus’ most countercultural messages for his followers is this idea of serving the “least of these”, or those most vulnerable, most in need, and most pushed to the outskirts of society. When we serve those whom others shun, we serve Christ.

For many Christians, and certainly for myself before I became a mother, I considered the least of these to be groups like the homeless, the disabled, and the isolated elderly. I never considered that children could (and should) be included as the least of these, as well. In a world where more than 70 million children are murdered every year due to the horrors of abortion, the youngest among us are the most at-risk group in existence. Not to mention the other crimes our society regularly commits against our kids, such as a tragically broken foster care system, evil modern medical practices, and a general anti-kids attitude in public life.

As much as I could say about how our kids deserve far better from us than what we’re currently giving them, I want to focus this post on a tangential lesson we get from Jesus’ emphasis on serving those who are most vulnerable:

We not only have much that we owe* to the least of these - our attention, time, resources, love - but we have much we can learn from them, as well.

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I want to share with you a story close to my heart to illustrate. Our second son was born this year. After spending my introduction to motherhood struggling through a serious bout of colic, this second newborn phase has been an absolute joy. When I was reflecting on why it’s been so wonderful - after all, there are just as many poopy diapers and nighttime feedings and aches and pains from the delivery as last time, plus a wild toddler to chase after, too - I realized it’s because our 4-month-old already embodies a certain Christian ideal I’ve wanted to cultivate in my own life for years:

“I’m just glad to be here.”

It doesn’t matter what he’s doing (maybe except tummy time). He could be laying under a mobile, sitting in someone’s arms, eating, sleeping, watching his big brother make a mess at dinner, riding in the car… He’s content just to get to experience life.

If you’ve ever met a small baby, you’ll recognize this image: he’s recently become fascinated with his hands. He brings them together, almost like he’s praying, then shoves them in his mouth. Then, he’ll lay there, happy as clam almost indefinitely.

He often giggles to himself when the little animals on his mobile spin around. He smiles at anyone who smiles at him. He wakes up happy, cooing and wriggling with excitement when I pick him up. When he’s sleepy, he yawns to let me know, then patiently waits until I have a moment free to put him down for a nap.

It’s been incredible to watch how others respond to this innate sense of joy . They adore him. Everyone wants to hold him, to kiss his fuzzy head. He’s brought healing to some of our family with heavy emotional burdens.

Life is the most precious gift we’re given, since without it we cannot experience what it means to be human, to be made exclusively for the purpose of loving and being loved. So, not only should life be protected - from conception to natural death - it should be embraced with joyful gratitude every moment between these two points.

Through no doing of my own, our little baby already has this joyful gratitude. He reminds me every day that one of the most important qualities to have as a Christian is infectious joy. And, this sort of joy comes from being grateful simply for the opportunity to experience whatever God has chosen for us in this moment. Every emotion, tear, toddler tantrum, bedtime story, sleepless night, every interaction with a stranger out in the world, every struggle, every triumph, they’re all part of the greater gift of being alive. Though God had an infinite number of other people who could’ve created, he chose to create you. He chose to love you.

And, in every moment of this life, he continues to choose you, to love you, and to give you another opportunity to experience his love through this extraordinary gift of life. Even in trials and hardship, he wants for his children to be at peace, to know joy.

He wants us to be able to say, genuinely, “I’m just glad to be here.”

~ Cameron

*For a great example of this radical Christian view, here’s a quote from St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and Church Father who lived in the 300s: “When giving to the poor, you are not giving him what is yours; rather, you are paying him back what is his. Indeed, what is common to all, and has been given to all to make use of, you have usurped for yourself alone. The earth belongs to all, and not only to the rich . . . You are paying him back, therefore, your debt; you are not giving gratuitously what you do not owe.” (emphasis added)

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Decades have gone by since the conversation surrounding the gender pay gap crept into common vernacular. And, while it’s shrunk over the last two decades - in 2024, the average woman earns 83 cents for every dollar the average man makes - a significant difference still persists.

Thus, the real question here is not whether the pay gap exists, or even whether it should exist. The real question is should we care that it exists?

American culture has become atomized to the point that we view the individual as the fundamental unit of society, an attitude that even shapes how we view social justice issues. The pay gap is the perfect example: when we discuss this issue, we justify or bemoan its existence by arguing from the perspective of the individual. Should the average woman (individual) earn the same as the average man (another individual) for the same type of work?

Yet, herein lies the real problem with this debate. Society isn’t a collection of individuals. The fundamental building block of any culture can’t be the individual person because individuals do not create new human life. Individuals don’t reproduce. Families do that.

Interestingly, the pay gap reflects this fact with crystal clarity.

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The gender pay gap does not exist for single, childless adults. In fact, as of 2022, unmarried childless women earn slightly more than unmarried childless men: $87,200 versus $82,100 annually.

So, what populations are skewing the data so much to cause that 83 cents statistic we see touted as proof that women are still being unfairly compensated in the workplace? The skew is from families.

Married women with children earn 35% less on average than married men with children. Yet, unmarried women have it the hardest financially, making an average of $11,000 a year.

Some may dig their heels in, claiming that whether kids are in the picture or not, women should still be fairly compensated for their work. Of course, no one is advocating for sex discrimination in the workplace - at least, no one I’ve ever met or heard speak on this issue. Yet, if you talk to families headed by married parents, the story shifts significantly away from “fair compensation” to “what’s best for the family”.

Women, for primarily biological and psychological reasons, are more likely to have the temperament, skillset, and desire to stay home with their small children. To argue that this reality is completely or even mostly socially constructed is to ignore every sign that nature gives us about the importance of having mom actively involved as the primary caretaker of her babies. The vast majority of mammalian species follows this arrangement. For example, for our closest ancestors, chimpanzees, it’s customary to see the mama chimp play the role of active, hands-on primary caretaker for her young for at least 10 years.

The hormonal evidence for this sex difference when children come into the picture is also overwhelming. Through pregnancy and breastfeeding, it’s not just a woman’s body that changes to accommodate this new life she’s bringing into the world. Her hormones change the makeup and size of her brain, as well, to better suit the needs of her infant. And, while men’s hormones also change to make them better caretakers, their hormones encourage a shift into the role of caring more for the family as a unit rather than the baby as an individual. For example, a drop in testosterone helps men focus more on providing for and protecting their wives and children rather than on risk-taking behaviors better suited for the single man’s lifestyle.

I’ll never forget the day my husband experienced this change firsthand when I gave birth to our first child. About our investment strategies, he said, “I’ve always been risk averse. But, now I am the most risk averse.” It made me smile knowing that we were both changing in exactly the ways we were supposed to so that we could be good parents.

So, what does all of this mean for the pay gap? It means that women with children work less because they want to (and should) spend more time with their kids, particularly for the first three to five years of life. Men, on the other hand, choose to work more once they have kids in order to allow their wives to work less and care for their children. Thus, even full-time working mothers see significantly less pay than full-time working fathers because mothers choose more flexible work options in lower stress industries, work fewer hours overall, and take more time off than men do. The consequence of these choices is lower pay, a consequence I would argue is well worth it when you consider the tremendous benefits to everyone in the family (including moms!) when men and women are encouraged to embrace the natural changes in their desires and roles that they experience when they become parents.

In other words, the real pay gap is a mother gap. What’s wrong with this arrangement? Nothing, if you view society as a collection of families and care primarily about promoting social practices and economic policies that are best for the family. A problem only arises when we (wrongly) view society as a bunch of individuals who should all be behaving similarly and, thus, achieving similar outcomes. Yet, this never has and never will be the case. By design, families function significantly differently from individuals. And, since the family is the necessary ingredient for any society to thrive, it’s also the unit that should be protected at all costs.

Stay strong, mamas and papas. You’re doing the Lord’s work!

~ Cameron

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I was raised to value mental toughness. The recipe for success, as handed down to me in my childhood, was to develop a steely resolve that could overcome obstacles with little to no emotion reaction. Did I live up to that standard? Definitely not. Did that add another thick layer of suffering to what I was already dealing with? Absolutely.

Then, when I got more serious about my faith, this emphasis on suppression of my negative emotions took on a spiritual connotation, as well. I went from exalting mental toughness for it’s own sake to viewing it as God’s expectation for me. Some of my thoughts at the time included:

• “Why would we ever complain, cry or grieve when Jesus has already paid the ultimate price for our salvation?”

• “Christians should be the most joyful people. If I’m not happy all the time, it’s from a lack of gratitude.”

• “All the saints thank God for their pain and suffering, and then they beg for more. I need to be more like them!”

Needless to say, I carried around a heavy dose of guilt about my normal human response to hardship.

But, then I got married. I became a couples therapist and, far more importantly, a mother. I began to see the detrimental effects of what is commonly called “spiritual bypassing” in my own life and in the couples I’ve worked with. Eventually, the pedestal on which mental toughness had sat for so long in my psyche came crashing down.

What is spiritual bypassing?

“Offer it up”. “Don’t worry, your grandma is in Heaven now.” “At least you already have other children.” “It’s going to be okay.” And, maybe my least favorite, “Everything happens for a reason.”

These and other common responses to suffering are some of the more cliché examples of spiritual bypassing. Instead of allowing ourselves to dip into the pool of pain, either our own or someone else’s, we keep our distance, making sure to stay dry. When we guard ourselves against the natural human response to suffering - that is, emotions like grief, sadness, shock, anxiety, anger, and frustration - we miss the opportunity to connect with the other person’s humanity as well as our own. And, it is precisely this connection that leads to healing.

Bypassing began as a psychological term meant to indicate when we avoid facing pain in ourselves or others. It becomes a spiritual issue when we hide behind our religious belief system, specifically. For example, if a friend came to me about her grandmother dying and I said, “Don’t worry, your grandma is in Heaven now”, I’d be using my religious beliefs to avoid the effort of simply being there for my friend, experiencing her pain alongside her.

True empathy hurts because it requires us to enter into another person’s pain, to allow it to wash over us without trying to fight it. However, when we aren’t equipped to help carry such a burden, we can start to feel like we’re drowning.

Why do I address this post to women specifically?

Women are not uniquely guilty of spiritual bypassing, but in many ways we may be uniquely able to solve it.

St. John Paul II said:

“The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way.”

As women, God entrusted to us all of humanity: to raise our children, to comfort the afflicted, to care for all in need. We carry the next generation into existence, through pregnancy, infancy, and into adulthood.

As the caretakers of humanity, women (more so than men, at least insofar as I’ve noticed in my work as a therapist) transmit society’s lessons to the next generation. I believe that when God entrusted the human being to women he also endowed us with the ability to fulfill the essential responsibility of this transmission of wisdom.

In other words, in how we think, speak, and act as mothers, we instill in our children (more than anyone else!) lessons of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, what it means to be human, who God is, what goals are worth pursuing, and more.

One of these lessons involves how we should respond to and express emotions. Let’s look at an example.

Imagine yourself holding your small baby, maybe just a few months old. How do you respond when your baby laughs? What about when he cries? For healthy, well-adjusted moms, our facial expressions change automatically in response to our babies’ emotions. When they cry, we frown and rush to cuddle or feed them. When they laugh, our faces light up, too. Even more than men, we’re biologically primed to empathize with our little ones.

This empathy teaches our children that their emotions matter, that they matter enough to hold our attention. Our emotional responses, when congruent with their emotions, help them build the emotional regulation and social skills they’ll need for the rest of their lives. This is how things should be.

Now, imagine the opposite: your baby cries, and you look away or get angry. Your baby laughs, and you ignore him. He reaches his arms out to be held, but you’re too busy to pick him up. Over time, your baby learns that his emotions, his expression of his needs, will only be met with hostility or distraction. Eventually, he’ll stop crying altogether. This is detrimental to a baby’s psychological development.

But, here’s the kicker: how we respond to others’ emotions isn’t just important for our babies. It matters a lot for the older children and adults in our lives, too. Fortunately, a woman’s empathy doesn’t dry up when her baby starts walking. God granted us a strong feminine intuition when it comes to the needs and feelings of others, but it’s up to us to use that intuition to lean into others’ (and our own) emotional experiences rather than running from them.

The power of feminine intuition

Even for the highly intuitive woman, it can be scary to open ourselves up enough to experience not only our own suffering but the suffering of others. If at this point you’re noticing that you sometimes bypass negative emotions, and you want to change that habit, you can start by thinking about the painful parts of your life you’ve been avoiding. Oftentimes, when we struggle to face others’ pain with them it’s because that pain brings up too much of our own hurt.

Once we’re willing to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that are hurting, to feel what we’ve bottled up for so long, we can begin to integrate that suffering into our personalities and our memories in a healthy way. Serious suffering is like a broken ankle: every step we take is going to hurt until we address the pain head on. Then, with our own suffering integrated, we’ll be able to use our empathy and intuition to support others in their struggles.

Stay strong, mamas and wives. You’re doing the Lord’s work!

~ Cameron

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Have you ever walked into a house and noticed a sort of emotional atmosphere? Sometimes a home can feel warm, inviting, and full of love. Sometimes it can feel tense, on edge. Other times, cold and detached. You can’t quite put your finger on what exactly creates that feeling, but it wells up inside you nonetheless.

Part of it is in how the shoes are arranged by the door, what is (or isn’t) sitting out on the kitchen countertops, and how worn the furniture looks. Part of it is how the house sounds: do you hear the sound of laughter, of little pattering feet? Or, is it silent? Is the silence peaceful or fearful?

More than anything, you can tell the atmosphere of the home in the faces of the people who live there. Who greets you when you walk through the door? Is it a little smiling face or a dejected husband? Are voices spilling over with joy at your arrival or are they feigning calmness to cover up the fight had earlier that day?

In my personal and professional experience as a couples therapist, in the majority of homes I’ve experienced, women dictate this atmosphere*. As wives and mothers, we set the tone for our homes by our own emotions. When we’re stressed, our homes are stressed. When we’re angry, our husbands and children tiptoe around us to avoid triggering an outburst. When we’re distracted or detached, our loved ones feel neglected. When we hold a grudge, our homes are flooded with anxiety. To be clear, far from being a condemnation of the emotions of other women, these examples are more a personal reflection on my own life and shortcomings.

As I realized that my words, emotions and actions have an intense gravity that shapes our home, I was tempted to shirk this responsibility. “How could this be mostly on me? I’m not the only one who lives in this house!”, I would say to myself.

But, reality is true whether I believe it or not. So, eventually, I chose to view this responsibility as a blessing rather than a burden, and here’s what I realized: for the majority of us women, we were gifted this opportunity to create the sort of atmosphere in our homes that we want our favorite people (our husbands and children) to get to experience.

If you’re interested in reflecting on this idea more for yourself, here are a few questions I’ve asked myself that helped me think more about the sort of emotional atmosphere I want to create for our home:

1. What emotions or experiences were missing from your home growing up that you want your husband and children to have?

2. What words would you want people to use to describe your home after staying with you for awhile?

3. In what ways could you adjust your approach to homemaking (how you think, speak, act, and express your emotions) so that these desires of yours come true?

After asking myself these questions, I realized several areas in my approach to emotional homemaking that needed some revamping. For example, cleanliness. At times, I’ve prioritized keeping the house clean above making my family and guests feel comfortable. And, as I value hospitality a lot more than cleanliness, I decided my actions needed to change to accommodate that higher value.

As we enter the holiday and hosting season, this post seemed particularly timely. What feelings do you want your guests and, more importantly, your own immediate family to walk away with after having lived in your home for the next several weeks? What do you want them to remember?

For me, I hope they remember squeals of delight from our toddler, cuddles with our infant, happy dogs wagging their tails, warm food and hugs, and a whole lot of joy. I hope they remember being served and appreciated for who they are. And, if that means more mess for me to clean up once the hosting is over, that’s a sacrifice I’m grateful to make.

Hang in there, wives and mamas! You’re doing the Lord’s work.

~ Cameron

*A clear exception to this rule is in situations of abuse. By no means am I asserting here that women should be happy in abusive situations. Rather, they should always seek safety for themselves and their children.

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My husband and I had our second baby a few months ago, making us the exhausted but joyful parents of two under two boys. I imagine I’ll always remember the moment I looked into our newborn’s eyes, just a few weeks postpartum, and thought, “I hope God gives me many more babies like you.” Still sore from being ripped open by the delivery, almost exclusively wearing makeshift adult diapers and milk-stained baggy t-shirts, and surviving mostly on caffeine and prayer, none of the discomfort of our new reality could deter me from me deep desire for a large family. I had fallen so madly in love with both of our kids that I struggled to imagine a life without a hoard of little troublemakers dominating our home every day for the next 25 years.

But, I recognize this mindset isn’t the norm. In today’s world, the idea of having a lot of kids - or even any kids at all - can seem unfashionable or burdensome. The political right likes to blame this waning interest in parenthood and the resulting falling birth rates on selfishness. I believe the insult stems from a place of fear. A lot of people are scared of what having fewer babies means for our society’s future.

Yet, what are we actually doing to address that problem? We’re blaming the solution: young women. We tell them they’re self-absorbed, short-sighted, and doomed to a future of regret. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sort of rhetoric doesn’t have people sprinting to the altar and then to their marital beds to start another baby boom.

I’m not saying that self-focus has no role in the falling birth rate. Selfishness is at the root of most of society’s ills.

Yet, at least according to Christian theology, the vast majority of women are called to marriage and motherhood. And, God tends to do this funny thing where when we’re supposed to do something with our lives, he gives us the ability and desire to do that thing. He wants us to want to do his will, not just to begrudgingly accept it. So, if most women are supposed to be mothers and are, thus, born with an innate desire and ability to joyfully have and raise children, wouldn’t you think we’d see more people having kids even if out of purely selfish reasons to fulfill that desire?

But, we’re not. In fact, 21% of women ages 18-34 say they don’t want kids. That’s the highest number in recorded history. So, what is going on?

From the work I’ve done as a couples therapist, I see selfishness as far less relevant compared to another reason, a reason no one is talking about: safety, or a lack thereof.

It wasn’t until that moment when I prayed for many more babies that it dawned on me: the confidence I feel that allows me to hope for a large family has nothing to do with my own strength or virtue. It’s because of the support around me.

My husband could not be more supportive of my work as a mother, my extended family is actively involved in our kids’ lives on a daily basis, and we live in a densely populated area with a lot of good families who we’ve grown to love and lean on.

Heartbreakingly, so few women have anything resembling this sort of support. Most women, even if they have wonderful husbands who are capable of being the primary or sole financial providers, are missing their village. They’re missing the major source of safety we all desperately need while raising small children.

Then, once you throw childhood trauma or strained relationships with their own parents into the mix, you have the perfect recipe for a generation of young women scared out of their minds about the prospect of motherhood. And, since fear is nobody’s favorite emotion, we see a lot of it being transformed into a fixation on career goals, preference for more free time, or complaints about there being “no more good men” out there.

So, what do we do about it? How do we help women feel safe and supported enough to not only want to have kids but feel capable of being good mothers?

I think there are a few things:

1. Being more open about the joys, not just the hardships, of motherhood

2. Acting as the village for those around us

3. Praying for each other

As one of the most pro-family, pro-motherhood women you could ever meet, I still get fed content on social media about how hard it is to raise kids. Additionally, it is often the norm for us women to bond over complaints about the difficulties of parenting. Don’t get me wrong. It can be incredibly beneficial to know that you’re not alone in your struggles with sleepless nights, cleaning up after your defiant toddler, or your out-of-whack postpartum body. However, when we combine what we see online with the stories we hear from our mom friends, it’s no wonder so many childless women are scared of motherhood! But, if we made the intentional choice to publicize more of the good things about our vocation as wives and mothers, what difference might that make for another woman on the fence about starting a family?

Next, let’s rebuild the village. Thankfully, it’s a lot less daunting than it may sound. Being the village means making a lasagna for your neighbor who just gave birth, offering to watch your cousin’s kids while she goes out on a date with her husband, or even going on more playdates with other moms who, like me, have toddlers who are way better behaved when other kids are around. Being the village doesn’t mean raising other people’s kids. It means playing some role in helping other moms feel less alone in the day-to-day.

When all else fails, prayer never does. Particularly for women in more rural or even some suburban areas, it may be hard to build a village with the moms around you. However, we all have the ability to pray for the well-being of the other women in our lives and all wives and mothers, more generally. In fact, here’s a beautiful prayer to take home with you:

Stay strong, mamas! You’re doing the Lord’s work.

~ Cameron

Having been born in the 90s to two successful, business-minded parents, as a child I was taught that girls and women were historically encouraged to hold their tongue, either directly or through peer pressure. Therefore, the only way to exist nobly in the world as a woman today is to speak up, to “lean in” (a phrase popularized by Sheryl Sandberg’s hit book that came out when I was in high school).

This philosophy took root in my mind in a lasting way largely because I played competitive sports. My life dream growing up was to be a professional soccer player, and I had my fair share of encounters with mean girls along the way. Usually the butt of their jokes, my loved ones encouraged me to stick up for myself by throwing their harshness back at them.

It seemed like a reasonable strategy to play tough so I could get what I wanted, both on and off the field.

Then, I met my husband. And, shortly after, I became Catholic.

My husband is the strongest yet most gentle man I’ve ever met. He will fight like mad to protect his loved ones, but you would never know it by how tenderly he talks to our children and me.

As the first few years of our marriage went by, as I got to know my husband more deeply and I became a mother, I began to realize just how much I lacked this tenderness and how much it hurt the people I love most that it wasn’t a virtue I had ever valued, let alone spent effort to acquire.

Every time I spoke harshly to my husband, I could see the damage it caused. Like ripping a small hole in a beautiful shirt, you can sew the rip up but the shirt will never look the same. It’s been a painful lesson for me: we can be limitless in our forgiveness with each other, but the words we say have a lasting impact.

Eventually, I stumbled across the book, The Virtues of Mary by Fr. Luigi Lanzoni, and it served as the final nail in the coffin on my realization that the “lean in” culture of my youth had been one of the most harmful lies sold to me. Here’s an excerpt:

“‘Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.’* How tender are these words, not of reproof but of enquiry… A question asked quietly and gently is usually far more modest, delicate and affectionate than an assertion… we admire in Mary’s words, authority with humility. Her complaint is just, but without bitterness. Her words are noble and tender”. - Fr. Luigi Lanzoni, The Virtues of Mary

*Luke 2:48

This passage is one of my favorites from the short book, and it’s now become my primary relational goal to replicate in my life this ideal of gentle speech, first with my family and then with the rest of the world.

What I love most about this passage is that it offers a hopeful alternative to being an assertive, domineering young woman: you can be gentle and righteous at the same time. You can seek justice “without bitterness”.

We can make requests of others, let them know how we’re feeling, and even give feedback in a way that doesn’t upset the situation further. The secret, according to Father Lanzoni, is to speak always from a place of love for God and the other person. To love is to want what’s best for the other. If I truly wanted what’s best for my husband, when I ask for his help or share feedback I’d do so in a way that reflects how much I adore him.

If I truly wanted that’s best for my toddler, I would tell him “no” firmly but without anger every time he acts up so that he knows Mommy loves him no matter what. And on and on to every other person I have the privilege of speaking with every day.

But, what if I’m not feeling so loving? What if I’m overwhelmed or frustrated or hurt? In these cases, I’m practicing holding my tongue, since if I can’t be gentle, then what is better than speaking harshly is to not speak at all. At least until I’ve had a chance to breathe, pray, and get ahold of my emotions. Then, my mind and heart are in charge rather than my feelings.

It’s been a difficult challenge so far, to say the least. I imagine it’ll be a lifelong process to learn how to speak more like Mary. But, Jesus in his infinite wisdom (and a good dose of humor, I think) has a way of convicting us most about those shortcomings that we may not even see in ourselves but are most damaging to our relationship with him and others.

Here’s what I tell myself when I’m struggling most to cultivate this virtue of feminine gentleness: Mother Theresa seems to have gotten it right when she said, “I see Jesus in every human being.” If we can see his heavenly face in the faces of our husbands, our children, and our community, then we have every reason to speak as gently and lovingly to others as we would to Jesus himself.

These numbers are far higher than in past centuries. For example, the number of women in their early 40s who never had children almost doubled from 1980 (10%) to 2000 (19%).

With 2023 ushering in the lowest U.S. fertility rate ever recorded, a debate has formed surrounding a woman’s decision on whether to become a parent or not. And, while some people claim that plummeting birth rates are largely a result of female empowerment and greater optionality, fear of what a changing global climate will mean for future generations, or just plain selfishness, I’ve found something different in my work as a marriage therapist.

Our psychodynamic culture

Psychodynamic therapy is essentially the modern day spin on Freud’s approach to talk therapy, preserving the early 20th century psychiatrist’s emphasis on deep exploration of one’s childhood as a means to greater insight about our present troubles and circumstances.

Unfortunately, while Freud’s contributions to the world of psychotherapy were significant, the influence his work has had over American culture more broadly seems like a mixed bag, at least where birth rates are concerned.

In recent years, a growing number of women are forgoing motherhood for fear of “screwing up” their future children. After reflecting in depth on their childhoods, either with a therapist or without, many Millennials and Gen Zers have decided that having children would be the irresponsible choice given how poorly their parents raised them.

This belief involves three key assumptions: (a) our parents are largely responsible for our greatest shortcomings, (b) it’s doubtful that any amount of “self work” can undo the harm done to us by our parents during our childhoods, and (c) our shortcomings will curse our future children the same way our parents cursed us.

It’s an intimidating proposition that would certainly make even the most baby-obsessed among us think twice about having kids of our own.

But, is it true?

Parenting is the greatest responsibility of a lifetime for most people, but should it be reserved only for those among us with rosy childhoods and near-perfect adult lives?

Perhaps a deeper look into the three above assumptions is warranted here.

#1: Our parents are responsible for our shortcomings

As comforting as it can be to attribute our flaws to the shoddy job our parents did raising us, this mindset leaves no room for the most powerful tool we have for personal growth: responsibility. If we aren’t responsible for an outcome, how much can we actually do to influence that outcome?

Unfortunately, while this likely wasn’t Freud’s intention, the pop culture equivalent to his version of therapy prompts people to view their adult personalities and tendencies as based solely on their childhood experiences. Yet, therapy that actually works teaches the opposite. In fact, clients I’ve worked with who make the most progress most rapidly are those who believe their choices are the greatest determinants of who they are and who they’ll become.

#2 We can’t improve upon ourselves enough to be good parents

If progress in therapy tends to start when a client accepts responsibility for his life, it accelerates when that client embraces his potential for growth. Oftentimes, the real hurdle for people isn’t a lack of belief in the possibility of change, but a lack of proof of change in their own lives. The solution? Every time we make the right choice, taking one small step forward, we embrace that step as proof of our ability to grow. After all, what are large improvements other than a collection of small ones, strung together over a long period of time?

#3 We’re destined to curse our children the way our parents cursed us

Our kids will be a lot like us, at the very least because they inherited our DNA. Yet, any parent will tell you they’ll also be quite different. Oftentimes those differences are what makes parenting so difficult. It’s humbling to be tasked with raising someone who seems like a clone of you one moment and a stranger the next. When push comes to shove, though, all that even the best parents can do is their best, then hope (or pray) that they end up with more of your good than your bad, then some unique good of their own.

~~

Perhaps it’s more accurate to embrace the reality of parenthood: the legacy we leave behind for our children is one of blessings and curses. Thus, when they grow up, it becomes our children’s responsibility to decide what to do with that legacy.

And what better legacy to leave than a deep enough hope in the future to justify having created new life to participate in that future?

If you missed part 1, you can find it here. Now, for part 2.

~~~

Women seem to have more choice today than ever of how to balance work and family life. Not only do roughly 3 in 4 mothers of minors work, but the rates of female breadwinners has increased dramatically over the past several decades. Yet, how often does this greater choice on the macro scale lead to greater well-being on the micro (individual family) scale?

The reality of working mothers

A couple of years ago I came across a Reddit thread of women bewailing the difficulties of the working mother lifestyle, particularly for mothers of young children. One women even commented that she’d never submit herself to the pressures of career and motherhood at the same time, but that “being a working dad sounds pretty great. Sign me up for that!”

Although working dads typically face unique challenges of their own, the reality of raising young children is full of responsibilities borne mostly by Mom.

Between pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the psychological changes a mother experiences when raising her baby, any mom will tell you that women tend to be far better suited to the care of infants (and probably toddlers, too) than men are. And, in most families, moms also prefer to spend more time with their young ones than dads.

For example, when our first child was born, I wanted to carry him around with me everywhere, using the proven medical benefits of skin-to-skin contact as an excuse. Meanwhile, my husband mostly wanted to take care of me and catch up on sleep. Don’t get me wrong: he has always loved our son deeply. But, the intense attachment I felt to our newborn was something that took my husband longer to develop, a very common experience for fathers.

Despite these biological and psychological realities, the societal push for greater opportunity for women to work while raising kids continues. Unfortunately, though, what is typically promoted as greater freedom for women often results in greater pressure on women to figure out how to “have it all”.

Greater choice, or greater pressure?

In the 20th century, advocates for equality between the sexes likely would look on our current economic landscape as evidence of huge strides in the proper direction. After all, we have more female breadwinners than ever, women are graduating college at greater numbers than men, and females are increasingly assuming leadership positions across a variety of industries.

But, how are working mothers doing? Not only are they a large and important part of the female labor force, they’re also, at least hypothetically, supposed to be the greatest beneficiaries of the push for greater female freedoms at home and at work. After all, what could be more freeing for women than the ability to have it all - a happy marriage, fulfilling career, and thriving children?

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprising to anyone who actually knows at least one working mother, recent polls suggest that over 40% of these women suffer from anxiety or depression, while nearly 80% face significant stress about living up to their standards for working motherhood. In other words, the utopia we were promised has yet to come to fruition.

Busting the myth of “having it all”

A significant number of families require two incomes to pay the bills or maintain their preferred lifestyle. And, while some couples may be able to cut back on hours worked if they chose to live more frugally, that isn’t always possible. When focused on making ends meet, necessity more than the myth of having it all seems to encourage women to join the workforce.

However, the story is different for couples with greater financial flexibility, and its on the backs of these families that the push for greater choice for women has largely left us feeling inadequate no matter the work/life arrangement we choose. For women who have many options for how to spend their time, what is the right choice? It’s no secret that more choice isn’t always better. Psychologists have long understand the phenomenon of choice overload, in which we’re actually far less satisfied when we have too many options than if we have just a few.

Thankfully, there is a silver living.

While life is full of stressors we can’t completely control, like economic uncertainty, health problems, marital strife, and misbehaved kids, we can control our own expectations for how much we can accomplish at work and at home at the same time.

As a marriage therapist, I’ve seen that a huge source of stress for working mothers is their standards for themselves. Admittedly, I often wonder what my life would be like if I never felt a pang of guilt over not finishing my to-do list at work on a day when I chose to spend more time with my kids.

Could the antidote to much of our working-mom stress really be as simple as a shift in mindset? It may not solve everything, but it’s probably a reasonable place to start.

Life is a game of trade-offs

“You can have it all, just not all at once.” Whether Betty Friedan, Oprah, or someone else first said this, it’s a good quote.

However, it fell short in helping me be truly more at peace with balancing work and family. After reciting it to myself for months, I realized that relying on a vision of a future in which I could have it all - when my kids are grown and I can finally itch that career-woman scratch - as my source of hope was robbing me of experiencing the full joy that my present life has to offer.

A mentor of mine once told me to “cherish the old kitchen table”. Embedded in a conversation about starter homes and thrifted furniture, this advice was his way of telling me not to wish too much for a future time with a bigger house, more money, and greater flexibility. Oftentimes, the most successful people reminisce most about the early days of their marriages, their families, and their companies. It seems that, perhaps paradoxically, when we have the most restrictions, we can often find the most peace in a simpler life.

Now, every time I look at our scratched, four-seat kitchen table in our current (and first) house, I try to remind myself to appreciate the blessing of limitation. Our house is just big enough for our growing family, so there’s little extra room to add unnecessary stuff. Our kids are young, so my schedule is largely dictated by their naps and needs. And our surplus income is mostly nonexistent, so our Valentine’s Day and birthday presents tend to be homemade or edible rather than expensive and shiny. And, there’s something truly special about it.

Sometimes the simplicity provided by real limitations offers a peace that optionality can’t, and a comfort that every mother, working or not, deserves to have.

Advocates for increased female presence in the workforce will view these stats as evidence of a trend in the right direction. Yet, what these numbers also miss is perhaps the most important question of all: What do these women actually want their financial arrangement to be, and how does that impact their marriages?

What do wives actually want?

My husband is currently a resident doctor training to become a surgeon. Perhaps in no profession are more highly qualified and educated individuals worked harder, for less money, and for more years than medical residents. He often works 90-hour weeks and makes less per hour than I did as a part-time nanny during graduate school. While, in my weaker moments, I sometimes wish for even a temporary release as the primary parent to our young children, I would never want to adopt the responsibility that comes with my husband’s “freedom” to commit so much of himself to work.

My husband faces the same dilemma that virtually every father does. He is the parent and spouse responsible for ensuring we have enough money to keep our house, feed our kids, pay medical bills, and fix stuff when it breaks. Similar to the immense pressure a mother feels to provide the optimal care and environment for her kids, balancing education with play, love with discipline, and support with independence, a father feels the pressure of providing genuine financial stability that allows his wife to create that optimal home.

The primary parent’s responsibilities largely depend on the ability of the primary breadwinner to meet the family’s basic material needs. After all, it’s difficult to provide a healthy home for your kids while facing threats of eviction or the hounding of debt collectors.

Through my personal and professional experiences, I’ve found that what most wives, and particularly mothers, want is the freedom to work that their husbands seem to have without the responsibility to earn that their husbands certainly have.

In other words, most wives don’t want to be breadwinners because the role of breadwinner is defined not by the freedom to work, but by the responsibility to provide for the family’s financial needs.

We often see the greater number of hours men spend at work as a greater freedom to pursue the meaning we would like to get from work. Yet, nearly 40% of fathers wish they could work less and spend more time with their kids. So, is it fair (or even helpful) to separate the freedom from the responsibility, or to assume that the spouse who works more automatically feels more fulfilled?

In fact, the same dilemma happens in reverse. Many full-time working parents may occasionally long for what their spouses have - the freedom to work less and spend more time with their kids - without acknowledging the responsibilities that lifestyle entails.

What about wives who have to work?

Of course, for a percentage of households, wives work as a means to financial stability, not necessarily self-actualization or enjoyment. For example, that same Pew study showed that 6% of married couples have a wife-as-sole-provider. However, these couples tend to report lower well-being than other couples, according to a 2024 study.

This decreased well-being is likely related, at least in part, to significantly lower household income. The median household income for these wife-as-sole-provider marriages is by far the lowest of any family type, at $45,000 annually. By comparison, the median income for husband-as-sole-provider is $70,000 annually (in many places, an actual livable wage). For marriages in which both spouses contribute financially, the total annual household income shoots up to roughly $120,000.

Given such a discrepancy in these wife-as-sole-provider households, could we go so far as to say that the tripling of this financial arrangement from the ‘70s to now is less a sign of empowering progress and more a sign of increased economic insecurity for more couples, stemming from husbands facing unemployment they didn’t choose?

Perhaps most of these couples would prefer a different financial arrangement if they could have it?

Responsibility gives birth to meaning

There’s nothing wrong with preferring to work for meaning rather than strictly to make ends meet. In fact, in a perfect world, everything we do would bring an infinite sense of meaning to our lives. I wouldn’t be a therapist if I didn’t find it highly meaningful.

A problem only arises for couples when we undersell the meaning of a wife’s role at home or the responsibility of a husband’s role at work.

When this happens, both spouses find themselves in a grass-is-always-greener situation, wishing for the impossible: a sense of sustained meaning without the associated responsibility.

By treating parenting as if it’s all responsibility and no meaning, we rob mothers of the pride they should be allowed to take in creating the future. Without the next generation, there is no future. And without a future, what joy can we really expect to glean from life?

On the other hand, by treating work as if it’s all meaning and no responsibility, we place career on a pedestal that leaves the parenting spouse feeling resentful and the breadwinner spouse feeling misunderstood and underappreciated.

The antidote

Nothing meaningful in life comes without the strings of responsibility inseparably attached. As my physics teacher used to say, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” He was talking about the transfer of energy, but the saying is just as true in family life. If the problem is simplistic comparison, my proposed solution is simple: gratitude and negotiation.

The nagging envy I felt over my husband’s freedom to work outside of the home all but vanished the moment I realized I would never want the responsibility attached to that freedom. I’d much prefer the responsibility of primary parent than primary earner, and I’m thankful we’re blessed enough to have made that arrangement work for us so far.

I will admit, though, that I’m not an advocate for the strategy of indefinite grinning and bearing it. As much as marriage calls for lifelong gratitude, it also calls for lifelong negotiation.

If, after much honest thought, prayer, and discussion, a couple finds that their career/family arrangement isn’t working, can a different (hopefully better) arrangement be negotiated?

Certainly, some seasons will be more flexible than others. For example, medical residents get virtually zero control over their schedules. Little negotiating about my husband’s work schedule happens for us in our current season of life. But, that won’t always be the case. One day his schedule will be far more flexible and mine will likely be less flexible than it is now. When that day comes, we’ll negotiate a different career/family arrangement than we have now. Not to mention, as kids age, they need their parents for fewer hours of the day, a reason for mothers with young kids to feel hopeful that, even if they can’t fully answer their call to a career right now, one day they will be able to.

By making gratitude a habit, we’re better equipped to have effective negotiations in those more flexible seasons while being far better prepared to grin and bear it, together, through the inflexible ones.

As in Haley’s case, these are rarely stories of triumph or pride, although my clients wish they were. Haley shared this news with me remorsefully, lamenting that those who used to be her biggest supporters are now skeptical of what she considers her greatest accomplishment: finding and marrying her husband, Jonathan, and all the accompanying “changes” to her personality and character she’s experienced.

If most people believe that marriage is a big deal, particularly those who view it as a lifelong commitment, why is it that those closest to the bride and groom often tend to be the least comfortable with spouses influencing how each other operate in the world?

In some ways, it’s expected that marriage should change how we live. In choosing to spend the rest of your life with one person, you forego all other romantic options, establish a shared home and life together to serve your future plans, and, if you’re the bride, even take a new last name to symbolize this transformation. The potential controversy only seems to arise when who we are (not just how we live) seems to change because of our spouse, rather than because of the marital institution, and changes in unexpected and unapproved of ways.

After all, shouldn’t your spouse accept who you are fully rather than trying to change you? And, doesn’t any change judged significant by those that have known you the longest obviously point to your spouse trying to change you?

If this is the argument of parents watching their adult children transform and fly the coup with their spouses, the argument from the children goes something like this:

Haley: “I am different, I’ll admit. But I have never felt more myself than when I’m with Jonathan. He brings out the best in me. He makes me feel stronger, and braver, like I could do anything.”

The key here is the phrase, “brings out the best”. What does it mean to bring out the best in someone? By how you live in every way, but particularly how you treat that person, you give him reason and opportunity to reveal the best he has to offer the world. You aren’t creating in that person something that wasn’t there before. That would elevate spouse to the role of Creator or nature. You’re cultivating the environment in which your spouse can realize the good that was within him all along. In many ways, that’s defines love: ordering your life to not only want the best for someone else, but to help that best materialize.

Unfortunately, sometimes our friends and family are far less appreciative of this revelation of good. This typically happens when a couple’s values differ from the values of their loved ones. For example, Haley valued assertiveness and transparency, more than she realized in her childhood. Then, Jonathan was the first person to encourage her cultivation of the bravery necessary to live out those values. Haley’s parents, however, valuing politeness and non-offense, found her new “bluntness” offensive and disrespectful.

So, Is This Good or Bad Change?

The question is not whether Haley changed from the woman she was before she met Jonathan, but if the change is not only appropriate but good. How do we measure good?

By our conscience, informed by our values and beliefs.

With honest, intentional, and significant thought about what our values are, what we believe, and what our conscience is telling us, we can examine whether a change moves us closer to or further from the best versions of ourselves.

This is crucial: the conscience doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of any specific person, including our spouses or even certain (dark) parts of ourselves. While others can certainly help us realize when we’ve strayed, a well-informed conscience is based on intentional discernment about what we consider to be the best possible way we could live that would do the most possible good.

If your conscience is the yardstick for positive change in marriage, then change is only negative when it’s a movement away from what your conscience is urging you to do. This is why marrying someone who aligns with your values is so powerful: you have at least one other conscience you can trust aligns with the parts of you that want to improve. And, chances are, the longer you two are together, the more you’ll help each other improve.

Putting It Into Action

If you get pushback from your loved ones about letting your spouse “change” you, the first step is always to take the accusation seriously. Have you changed? And, if so, is that change moving you closer or further from your most virtuous self? Do you like who you’ve become, or did you simply change your exterior to appease some part of yourself or someone else?

If you determine the change is positive and aligned with your values, the next step is to support your friends and family in adjusting to the new parts of you that you’ve been brave enough to reveal. For Haley, as she worked up the courage to tell the truth, she also had to develop the virtues of gentleness and patience. She embraced the idea that truth can be delivered well or poorly, with the best way to deliver it with love. So, while they may have still struggled to accept the adult version of their daughter, as is the challenge for any parent, Haley’s practice of loving honesty certainly encouraged the best possible relationship with them.

In a way, Haley provided the reason and opportunity for her parents to change in their own positive ways, too. And, who could wish for a better outcome than that?

*The details of this story have been changed, while maintaining the important themes, to protect the anonymity of my clientele.

I got married young. 23 to be exact. My husband was 24. Our first child was born just 18 months later. While we never got significant pressure from our loved ones to put off the wedding, I knew we were going against the grain. Both still in graduate school, our only real income from my part-time nannying gig, and plans to live together in my husband’s two-bedroom apartment in a rough area of Durham, North Carolina after the wedding, we weren’t exactly established.

Meanwhile, most of the people I grew up with were traveling, bouncing around to different jobs across the country, dating if they had the time, and going to the gym as often as they wanted. It wasn’t until several months after our son was born when we moved across the country for my husband’s job that I noticed an inkling of longing. Longing for the freedoms my single (or, really, non-parent) friends enjoyed. I wanted to go out and meet new people, but you can’t leave a toddler at home alone. I wanted to work out every day, but exercising is a lot less enjoyable when your “morning” sickness lasts all day. I wanted to lay in bed when I was sick, but when you get sick, so do your kids, and then they need you more than ever.

I don’t spend much time on social media, but I imagine if I did, I’d see a lot of smiling photos of my old classmates and friends embracing what I call the “Find Yourself” 20s, a time when the only reasonable commitment is to yourself, to fit into that decade of life all the adventures, experiences, mistakes, and identities you’re not supposed to be able to have once you settle down.

Yet, when I talk to my peers, at least the female ones*, there’s something else on their mind: finding a husband. Particularly when we hit 30, a lot of single women today feel a new type of pressure. It’s more than social or psychological. It’s biological. The uncommitted approach to life that brought excitement in their 20s was now responsible for the anxiety and frustration of their early 30s. While I was longing for a bit more of that find-yourself freedom, my single peers were longing for what I had in my husband and children.

Why do we all want what we don’t have?

The only difference was that, in my case, I remember what life was like before I met my husband, before I became a mother, before we bought a house, and before we both started working to pay for that house. I remember a life when the only person relying on me was me, when my evenings were my own and my body hadn’t yet absorbed the immense responsibility of pregnancy and breastfeeding. I remember that freedom.

And, only in my recurring nightmare would I go back to that life. To go back, I’d have to give up the greatest freedom I’ve ever known, the freedom for. I’d have to give up the human relationships that give my life the most meaning: my marriage and children.

Of course, not everyone wants to have kids or even to get married. And, for women who don’t want children, the biological ticker and the 30-year-old deadline matters a lot less. But, the majority of women (and men) do want to become parents one day. For those individuals, I believe we’ve been told only half of the truth about what freedom really is.

In many ways, the Find Yourself 20s offers freedom from the restrictions former generations expected by their early-to-mid 20s (i.e., a lifestyle dominated by marriage, children, and a stable job). But, this freedom is one-sided: we’re free from, but what are we free for?

When I think about this dilemma, Exodus 9:1 comes to mind: “Let My people go, so that they may serve Me”. Whatever your thoughts about religion, Gen Z is living out this dilemma today. Freedom from the Pharoah, the tyrant who enslaved the Israelites of the Old Testament, wasn’t the end goal. Otherwise, the Israelites are left wandering in the desert, alone, confused, and sunburnt. God commanded the Pharoah to release his people (freedom from) so that they could serve him (freedom for). God had a plan for his people’s freedom.

Today, Gen Zers may feel like the shackles of tradition have largely been lifted for them, but what has that freedom left us? With a desert-sized dilemma and no real plan. We’re now responsible for choosing a life for ourselves with enough enduring meaning to justify the inescapable restrictions of humanity (i.e., pain, suffering, biology, aging, dying), but what do we know? Most of us don’t remember 9/11, let alone have the wisdom necessary to make choices today with consequences that will echo on our deathbeds.

Yet we’ve largely abandoned the tradition that supplied sustainable meaning for previous generations despite their similar lack of wisdom. Whereas our grandparents were enveloped in a tradition of marriage, family, and work as their reason for living, today’s 20-somethings tend not to adhere to much of any tradition and, thus, are left to fend for themselves. And, in the age of the internet when most of the people we listen to regularly are individuals we’ve never met and who are as clueless as we are, much of the advice we get is contradictory, over-simplified, and short-sighted.

We’re told that our 20s are largely a throwaway decade of self-exploration and self-gratification. “30 is the new 20”. But, if 30 brings with it a host of anxieties about our biological and logistical limitations, then our 20s matter more than we’ve been led to believe.

Unlike many of today’s supporters of “traditional family values”, I won’t argue that the freedom from a uniform life trajectory granted to my generation is inherently bad. It’s brought with it the opportunity for more young people to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, deepen their education, and build strong social networks outside of their immediate families. Both my husband and I finished graduate school before becoming parents. That would’ve been unheard of when my grandmother was my age.

However, Gen Z desperately needs a rounding out of the whole picture of freedom: if we’re freed from the Pharaoh of a rigid timeline for “settling down”, how do we best use that freedom to live well, virtuously, meaningfully? How can we ensure that our freedom from leads to a freedom for something that matters rather than to aimless desert wanderings?

For many people, the answer is likely to give credit where its due and take more seriously the benefits of getting married younger.

While getting married younger brings with it some restrictions, like sexual and emotional monogamy (yet, married couples tend to report better sex lives, so perhaps these restrictions are actually a net positive?), the lifestyle shift from singlehood to marriage is a paltry appetizer compared to the main course of marriage to parenthood. In many ways, marriage brings with it a host of benefits with few drawbacks when compared to becoming parents. A wife or a husband can still stay out late with friends on a Friday night or book a last-minute weekend getaway together or take a sick day with limited foresight. The vast majority of couples I’ve interacted with admit that they still felt “young, wild, and free” even after getting married, but before having kids, even if they married later than their peers.

However, marriage also encourages future planning, responsibility, and commitment in a way that the paradoxical “committed relationship” doesn’t. For example, having a live-in girlfriend doesn’t evoke nearly the same seriousness in a man as having a wife does. The evidence? Men don’t earn more money when their girlfriends move in. They earn more money when they get married (then a lot more when they become dads).

Getting married means planning a wedding, joining two families together formally, combining finances, changing names, choosing and maintaining a shared home, and attending all family events together. And, most importantly, marriage gets the ball rolling toward starting a family. Yet, contrary to popular belief, this ball rolling can take the pressure off of women to rush into childbearing rather than adding pressure. After all, they’ve already got the first and hardest box checked: Find a Husband. With that puzzle piece taken care of, spouses can plan their families intelligently according to their particular circumstances rather than rushing to beat the biological clock.

Getting married younger - as in, early-to-mid 20s - requires an accelerated maturity compared to the average 20-something today, but it’s still a significant developmental delay compared to previous generations. Yet, the real beauty in young marriage is the lock-in of meaning, the assurance of the freedom for that so many Gen Zers and young Millennials are lacking. Your life becomes not just about another person, but about the lifelong story you two will write together and the multi-generational impact you’ll have by how you choose to live.

If that’s not a worthy freedom for, then I don’t know what is.

*To be fair to the guys, they want to settle down, too, it just sometimes takes them a few extra years to figure that out :)

Start with What You Can Control

A marriage fails only when both spouses give up the fight. And, we’re never more tempted to give up than when all the problems we want to fix seem to be outside our control. So, what’s the solution?

If focusing on things outside your control is a dead end, try the opposite. Start any effort to improve your marriage by addressing what you can control.

This works for a few reasons:

1. You have a much greater chance of winning when the score depends only on your actions. These are battles you can win.

2. You don’t need luck or good timing to start improving the things within your control. You can begin today.

3. Anything one spouse does, good or bad, will impact the relationship. So, you don’t need your spouse’s cooperation or recognition to improve the marriage. Your efforts will inevitably bear fruit.

How to Do It

1. Take out two pieces of paper and a pen.

2. On the first piece of paper, write down a list of all the problems in your marriage. Don’t worry yet about whether you have any influence over these problems or not.

3. When you finish your list, move to the second piece of paper. Fold the paper in half, then unfold it, and draw a line down the crease you just made. You now have two columns. At the top of the left column, write “Controllable”. At the top of the right column, write “Uncontrollable”.

4. Next, write each of the problems from the first piece of paper in the appropriate column. If you have any influence over a marital problem, write it in the controllable column. If not, it goes in the uncontrollable column. Now, fold the paper again so only the controllable column is visible.

5. Now, number each item on your controllable list from MOST (#1) to LEAST (#n) controllable. This is your new marital to-do list.

6. For the next week, focus only on #1 on your list. Let everything else go (seriously). What can you do every day to improve that problem in your relationship? If your solution involves changes that may confuse your spouse, let your spouse in on your plans.

Then, once you begin to notice real improvement in this area, move on to the next item on your list. Focus and persistence. That’s often all it takes to make serious positive changes in your marriage.

Wishing you hope & joy,

Cameron

P.S. - Marriage is hard. It’s also worth the fight. HITCHED can help you fight as a team for the relationship you’ve always wanted. To learn more and to join the waitlist for your own personalized, evidence-based guide to lifelong marriage, go HERE. We launch next month (we’re so excited!), and our first 100 couples to join the waitlist get 3 months of the app completely free!

Start with the Weakest Link

Most people believe healing a marriage takes many months if not years. But, it can happen much faster when a couple prioritizes their efforts properly, if they start with the weakest link first.

When you want to solve a complicated issue efficiently, like a business nearing bankruptcy or a complicated health diagnosis, you find whatever individual problem is contributing most to the larger issue, and you fix that first. That’s what it means to start with the weakest link: what single problem is most responsible for your business losing customers or for your recent diabetes diagnosis?

The same is true in marriage.

Yet, when we think about all the problems in our marriage, we often want to start with the low-hanging fruit, the little issues that seem easiest to solve. After all, some progress is better than none, right? Yet, those low-hanging fruits tend to be symptoms of the deeper issues rather than the root problems themselves.

That’s where Seneca’s definition of bravery comes in. If you want to heal your marriage as efficiently (and effectively) as possible, you seek out the problems you’re most afraid to face rather than allowing them the time and space to grow.

How to Do It

1. Spend some time over the next week thinking about what scares you most in your marriage. What areas of your relationship have you two swept under the rug, for fear that addressing them may bring you to a point of no return?

2. Once you’ve both taken time to think about this on your own, sit down together, and write out these issues.

3. Read over the list together, and pick which issue you think would do the most good for your marriage if you were to fix it tomorrow.

4. Try asking yourselves the question, “What could our marriage be like if this problem didn’t exist?” Whichever problem gives you the answer to this question that you two are most excited about is where you should start. That problem is the weakest link.

5. Then, you create a plan together that you’re both invested in to address that weakest link.

If you want help implementing this technique in your relationship, I’ve reserved some consultation spots for subscribers to this newsletter. You can contact me on my website if you’re interested.

Wishing you hope,

Cameron

P.S. - We’re beyond excited to launch the first version of the HITCHED app soon as the first-ever personalized, evidence-based blueprint for lifelong marriage. You can learn more and join the waitlist here.

Our group of beta testers (everyone on the waitlist) will not only be the first to get access to the platform but will also receive a coupon code for themselves and up to four friends to join the HITCHED community at a steep discount.

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This narrative pushes the idea that people may be happy in the beginning, but that slowly and consistently over time spouses will grow weary of each other, leading to the relationship falling apart.

However, when you dig just a layer deeper into the stats on divorce, you’ll find that over half of these couples that get divorced end their marriages within the first five years, while 10% of first marriages end after just one year.

Those numbers don’t reflect a population of spouses who have tired of each other after a long, arduous life together.

So, what’s going on for these couples?

What I’ve seen as a marriage therapist and in my personal life is actually quite encouraging if you’re someone who hopes to have a lifelong marriage one day.

When the majority of couples get married, they rarely ask each other the right questions. In other words, they don’t really know each other that well, and they don’t know what marriage actually entails.

If you and your partner have talked about getting married at some point or are already planning the wedding, you’ve likely asked yourselves questions like

• Are we in love?

• Do we want to spend the rest of our lives together?

• Are we ready to take this next step?

• Could we afford to have the wedding we want?

These are the wrong questions.

Of course, you want to be able to answer “yes” to every one of these. So, they’re useful, they just aren’t enough.

They don’t probe at all into your expectations for or commitments to your future selves, and they certainly don’t address how you two will cope with the inevitable challenges of spending decades together.

You don’t have to do official premarital counseling, although it likely can’t hurt. But, before you get married, if you could only do one thing, have four honest conversations, one for each of these questions.

At the least, you’ll have a much better idea of what to expect from one another and marriage before you get to your wedding day. At best, these questions may just make the difference between a marriage that lasts one to five years, and a marriage that lasts for life.

4 Questions to Discuss with Your Partner before the Wedding

The most important quality to find in a future spouse is values alignment.

• Do you shares the same religious views?

• Do you have similar political philosophies (not necessarily how you vote, but what your worldview is that informs your political opinions)?

• Are you aligned on how many children you want and how you plan to raise them?

• What about your views on finance?

• Gender roles?

• What does healthy communication look like to you?

The “irreconcilable differences” so often cited when marriages end almost always point back to some fundamental misalignment in one or more of these core values.

You and your partner must be on the same page about what it means to get married. Are you committing to each other for life, come hell or high water?

Or, are you committing to each other for as long as this season of happiness and contentment lasts?

What is your line that, if crossed, the marriage would be over?

We become like the people we spend the most time with, so who could be more influential in our lives than who we sleep next to at night?

You and your partner need to make each other better people, not just because you’d rather be better than worse, but because the trials of life will demand a better version of you than who you are right now.

To at least tolerate, but hopefully overcome, those trials, you two will need to grow together every day.

I believe this day comes for every couple.

Our loved ones get sick. We lose our jobs, our kids experience extreme tragedy that may be even harder on the parents, and sometimes we even hurt our spouses in ways we never saw coming.

When life gives you the sourest of lemons, how do you respond?

When it would be easier or even make you happier to walk away, what will you do?

~~~

You probably noticed that these questions are worded in a way to look for the problems in your relationship. That’s intentional.

Before we get married, our thoughts are wrapped up in wedding planning, fielding all the congratulations from friends and family, and looking excitedly toward the future.

Rarely do we consider preparing for what life will look like after “I do”.

However, this preparation is by the far the best thing you can do for your marriage.

Just having read this article, you’re already ahead of the game. To take the next step, try out today’s challenge for yourself.

Today’s Challenge

• Pick at least one of these questions to ask your partner this week. Set aside at least 20 minutes to have an honest conversation about both of your thoughts and how you two plan to navigate the opportunities and challenges you expect to face in your future together.

Wishing you joy,

Cameron

Marriage therapist & Founder of HITCHED

Our app, HITCHED, is launching next month. I can’t wait! To learn more and to be among the first to access your personalized, evidence-based blueprint for marriage, you can go here to join the waitlist.

One of the tools in the app is a collection of values assessments so that you and your partner can discover exactly where you stand on the values that are most important for marriage.

Subscribe now