When marriages come to you guys, what are some of the common things that have brought people to the place where there's some sort of fracture, discord?

discord?You know, uh, we have probably equal parts those that are in crisis because they've, uh, found out there's been some sort of betrayal.

But sometimes it's honestly what we call the slow fades, and we talk about the slow fades in our No More Perfect Marriages book, and those are what I call connection erosions.

That is when connection erodes in our marriage over just e- you know, every day little bits of places where maybe we respond with defensiveness instead of humility, or maybe we have unrealistic expectations day in, day out, and so our partner feels constantly criticized.

And those actually pull our hearts apart one little quarter inch at a time.

And it's not like there's some big crisis, but all of a sudden we're going, "I don't feel connected.

I don't even know if I love you." You know, those are the kind of things that start to pull a marriage apart just as much as those places where there's some big crisis.

What do you say, Jill?

Well, yeah.

Let's go back even further back to the pain part.

I would say that I was deep in pain.

It was the most painful thing I've ever been through.

And I've been through some painful experiences, including breast cancer.

And I look back and go, no.

The betrayal in my marriage was the most difficult thing I've ever walked through.

But how does that happen? I mean, it's one thing to read about Jesus being a certain way, but what does one do? How can one try to have that emotional maturity and security?

[laughs]

[laughs]

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Mm-hmm.