Aug 3, 2026 · 29 min · 14 segments
One belief about your marriage can shape every conversation, every disagreement, and every moment of disconnection. But what if that belief just wasn't true? In this episode, I'm sharing one of the…
Lindsay CavanaghHost
So I'm actually gonna start before I had kids, like, before I ever struggled in my marriage, because I was working with a lot of other marriages at that time as a psychologist, and I would have people say to me all of the time, like, "I just don't think my spouse cares about me," or, "It's totally obvious that my spouse doesn't care about me because XYZ," right? Long list.
Or, "My spouse wouldn't do these things to me if they actually loved me," right? Versions of that.
I would be talking to their spouses, and I feel like I've always had this innate ability to be able to assess and determine if somebody, like, actually cares or if they're just, like, saying the words, you know? I can see the narcissist, which I do think is a term that is grossly overused these days, but I can pick 'em out.
I can tell the ones who don't really care, who aren't at all willing to do the work, you know, who don't actually care if their spouse is upset, versus the ones who really, truly have no clue.
They're doing the opposite, and then they're genuinely surprised that their spouse is responding in a not nice or in a negative way.
The ones who want to be doing a good job at home, but they're just missing the mark.
So I'll always go hard, hard, hard, hard if I think that people are gonna go hard with me kind of thing.
But I would hear these, let's face it, mostly moms saying that they were sure that their spouses didn't care about them.
It was just so obvious to me that they cared, and so it had to then just be confirmation bias.
It was a negative belief that their brain was finding a lot of evidence to support.
So I knew that I needed to make sure their spouses actually communicated their love and care more effectively, and I needed to, like, make sure that they stopped doing the things that were actually, like, hurting their case.
And then with the moms, like, we were going hard and, like, challenging that negative belief.
We were like, "Okay, this isn't true, but, like, what can we do until you start to feel like it is?" You know? But then I found myself struggling.
So I'm actually gonna start before I had kids, like, before I ever struggled in my marriage, because I was working with a lot of other marriages at that time as a psychologist, and I would have people say to me all of the time, like, "I just don't think my spouse cares about me," or, "It's totally obvious that my spouse doesn't care about me because XYZ," right? Long list.
Or, "My spouse wouldn't do these things to me if they actually loved me," right? Versions of that.
I would be talking to their spouses, and I feel like I've always had this innate ability to be able to assess and determine if somebody, like, actually cares or if they're just, like, saying the words, you know? I can see the narcissist, which I do think is a term that is grossly overused these days, but I can pick 'em out.
I can tell the ones who don't really care, who aren't at all willing to do the work, you know, who don't actually care if their spouse is upset, versus the ones who really, truly have no clue.
They're doing the opposite, and then they're genuinely surprised that their spouse is responding in a not nice or in a negative way.
The ones who want to be doing a good job at home, but they're just missing the mark.
So I'll always go hard, hard, hard, hard if I think that people are gonna go hard with me kind of thing.
But I would hear these, let's face it, mostly moms saying that they were sure that their spouses didn't care about them.
It was just so obvious to me that they cared, and so it had to then just be confirmation bias.
It was a negative belief that their brain was finding a lot of evidence to support.
So I knew that I needed to make sure their spouses actually communicated their love and care more effectively, and I needed to, like, make sure that they stopped doing the things that were actually, like, hurting their case.
And then with the moms, like, we were going hard and, like, challenging that negative belief.
We were like, "Okay, this isn't true, but, like, what can we do until you start to feel like it is?" You know? But then I found myself struggling.
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