Habits for Your Happily Ever After: Relationship Communication Advice

When you view all flavors of tired the same, it’s difficult to address your symptoms. So how do you distinguish too-much-tired from too-little-tired? Today we’re discussing too-much-tired—what happens when life drains your reservoir faster than you can fill it. You’ll learn:How to recognize too-much-tired and distinguish it from the emptiness of too-little-tired.How to identify what’s draining your reservoir—and the downstream consequences of running too low.How to find the “river” that can begin filling your reservoir again.Although we’ll define both types of tired, today’s episode is more heavily focused on too-much tired. Next week we’ll talk more specifically about too-little-tired and in the coming weeks we’ll address ways to cope with both flavors of tired.Date Night DiscussionI’m inviting you to create space in your calendar to have the following discussion. If you don’t feel tired, ask your partner if they feel tired. If neither you nor your partner feels tired, maybe you would be willing to look around your world and find a person who is tired. I invite you to pay it forward. After you’ve identified that tired person, ask them if you can watch their kids while they have this discussion with their partner. Or take over dinner. Or a soft scented soap. Be grateful that you are getting the sleep you need and your reservoir is full.If, however, you are the one that feels tired, ask your partner if they would just listen to you for a bit. If you sense that your partner is tired, ask them the questions included in this episode. You'll find them written down on this page of my blog.Check out the whole 4-part series:Part 1: Too-Much-Tired | Listen to the episode | Read it on my blogPart 2: Too-Little-Tired (available 10/1/26)Part 3: How to Prioritize (available 10/29/26)Part 4: How Pleasure Refills You (available 11/5/26)Want more?Next week, I’ll be back with another episode about too-little-tired. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!Until then, try listening to this episode about 3 types of rest to relaunch you.Connect to Improve Your Relationship CommunicationVisit the show notes.Buy my book.Listen to my book.Please subscribe to my newsletter here. This unlocks personal invitations from me only available to my subscribers.Follow me on Tik Tok.Follow me on Instagram.Reach me at 970-210-4480

How does laughter impact your relationship communication?It comes easily to my son, Logan. It’s his superpower. He was a guest on the 50th episode of this podcast, and today I’m bringing you his episode from the archives. You’ll hear:Logan’s elopement story and the advantages and disadvantages that come with elopingWhy laughter is a great choice for your relationship conflict resolutionHow our pets teach us about unconditional loveWant more?Hear more about how humor connects you to your partner in this interview with Chris DuffyCould a practical joke save your marriage? Find out in this episode.Connect to Improve Your Relationship CommunicationVisit the show notes.Buy my book.Listen to my book.Please subscribe to my newsletter here. This unlocks personal invitations from me only available to my subscribers.Follow me on Tik Tok.Follow me on Instagram.Reach me at 970-210-4480

Do you ever use your resentment (or your doubt, or your fear) to write the history of your relationship?Today, we’re exploring 5 cognitive distortions that feed your Kitchen Sink Voice all the resentment it needs to thrive.I’ll offer you a definition of cognitive distortions and help you see how they’re poisoning your relationshipWe’ll explore where and why these cognitive distortions arise, so you can head them off at the passAnd I’ll help you see how to access curiosity and compassion to turn your relationship aroundComplaint > Criticism > Curiosity > Compassion > ConnectionThis is the path from alienation to happily ever after.The trick is: don’t believe everything your Kitchen Sink Voice tells you. We’ve all made up stories in our head about our partners.He forgets the ice cream at the grocery store, and you tell yourself the lie, it’s because he thinks I’m fat. It’s not that your brain is broken. Far from it. We all want to fill in any incomplete information with certainty. Psychologists call these patterns cognitive distortions. In this week’s episode, I walk you through five of the ones I see most often in relationships:Mindreading: I know exactly what you’re thinking.Catastrophizing: You create the worst-case-scenario.All-or-nothing thinking: You always… You never…Personalizing: It’s all my faultDisqualifying the positive: Nevermind all the clean counters. Look at the one crumb you left behind.Habit for Your Happily Ever AfterThis week’s habit for your happily ever after is to notice when you experience the hiccough of a cognitive distortion. But it's not to catch yourself having a cognitive distortion and then beat yourself up.Instead, the goal is to become curious.Am I mindreading and certain I know what my partner is thinking?When am I most likely to catastrophize?Am I turning “sometimes” into “always” or “never?”When am I likely to take responsibility for things that aren’t mine?Do I overlook the positive to see what’s still wrong?When you get curious about your Kitchen Sink Voice, you take away its omniscient and omnipotent power. You expose the wizard behind the curtain.Date Night DiscussionThis week I invite you to find a moment to say to your partner, “The story I’m telling myself is…” This is a great way to introduce your Kitchen Sink Voice to your partner.Want more?Discover another cognitive distortion: compare and despairLinks I MentionExplore The Work of Byron KatieHow to stay in your own business in your relationshipConnect to Improve Your Relationship CommunicationVisit the show notes.Buy my book.Listen to my book.Please subscribe to my newsletter here. This unlocks personal invitations from me only available to my subscribers.Follow me on Tik Tok.Follow me on Instagram.Reach me at 970-210-4480

When you got married, did you have a basic outline of what marriage was supposed to look like? I did. And for a long time, that outline felt like a kind of safety net.But eventually, a safety net can become a cage.Marriage is messy: give it roomWhat if the goal isn’t to get marriage RIGHT, but rather to stay engaged with what your marriage is becoming? To keep discovering who you are becoming and who your sweetheart is becoming.To notice when the old agreement no longer fits and get curious about what might fit now?Ramona asks a question in her newest book: Where is the energy? What is alive here now?That question can change everything.Instead of: you were supposed to…Try:What is exciting to each of us now?What’s most intriguing to me now?How can we make room for what’s true for both of us?After decades of marriage, questions like these led me to see that every struggle, every change, every surprise, every ordinary Tuesday morning became part of our shared story.Has your marriage become something you couldn’t possibly have outlined in the beginning? Maybe that’s the point.Your happily ever after isn’t a destination. It’s your willingness to keep discovering the relationship you’re actually in.This is one of the ideas I loved most when I got to talk with writer Ramona Ausubel, author of The Last Animal, No One Is Here Except All of Us, and her newest book: Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading From the Blank Page to the Last Page.Connect with my guestVisit Ramona's website here.Connect on social media here.Want more?Listen to Ramona Ausubel’s interview on the Emerging Form Podcast. If you enjoy that, Christie Aschwanden and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer also interviewed me on the same show.Connect to Improve Your Relationship CommunicationVisit the show notes.Buy my book.Listen to my book.Please subscribe to my newsletter here. This unlocks personal invitations from me only available to my subscribers.Follow me on Tik Tok.Follow me on Instagram.Reach me at 970-210-4480

Do you have a place where you rehearse how dreadful your partner is?For me it was the kitchen sink. I stood at that sink and this was my litany while I washed dishes. “Here I am. Alone again. Cinderella. I’m the only one who cleans this kitchen.”We all do it, right? Poor me. My life sucks. Everyone else has it better. And we want to blame someone for our sucky life.If you are like me and everyone else I know, the easiest person to blame is your partner.Today we’ll focus on those moments you’re likely to be critical of your partner.We’ll discuss how your Kitchen Sink Voice turns an ordinary complaint into a courtroom where your partner is always the defendant.We’ll address how curiosity can interrupt the blame-shame cycle you might have when criticism shows up and how curiosity can allow you to discover what you’re actually feeling in your body which wakes up your compassion—for yourself and your partner.These three C’s—criticism > curiosity > and compassion can become a practice for you to transform the way you think, and thus the way you connect to your partner.Habit for Your Happily Ever AfterThis week’s habit for your happily ever after is to identify where your Kitchen Sink Voice lives. We all have one. When you can find your Kitchen Sink Voice, you’re able to begin to practice with the 3 C’s: criticism > curiosity > compassion.Date Night DiscussionTell your partner about your Kitchen Sink Voice.Ask your partner if they have a Kitchen Sink Voice.If you were able to find your equivalent for my Brown Grass Voice, how would the story change?Want more?The single most important habit for your marriageLinks I MentionThe Lizard BrainConnect to Improve Your Relationship CommunicationVisit the show notes.Buy my book.Listen to my book.Please subscribe to my newsletter here. This unlocks personal invitations from me only available to my subscribers.Follow me on Tik Tok.Follow me on Instagram.Reach me at 970-210-4480