The white horse
For most of my life I stayed up on the horse — performing strength, certain the people I loved would rather see me die up there than watch me fall. I was wrong about that. And learning why is the most important thing I know.
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Peacemaking
We were both conflict avoiders, and neither of us was actually peacemaking. The peacemaker the Savior promised would be called a child of God is not the person whose conversations are smooth. The peacemaker is the person whose heart is no longer at war.
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How can I help—for friends and family
If someone you love is going through a divorce or a struggling marriage, you want to help. This is what helps — and what doesn’t — from two people who have been on the receiving end of both.
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Expectations, communications, and the truces we never meant to make
Most marriage struggles don’t begin with bad intentions. They begin with unspoken hopes, quiet assumptions, and the slow accumulation of things we stopped saying out loud. Neither of us was doing anything wrong. We just weren’t doing one important thing right.
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I feel like I’m always wrong—just because I’m a man
There is an assumption that society often makes, that problems in marriage are always the man’s fault. This is a dangerous assumption.
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Sometimes you have to sell the farm
The same discipline that keeps you going through hard times can become the thing that keeps you from making the decision that needs to be made. Knowing when to persevere and when to let go — that is the harder wisdom.
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Good efforts, wrong target
Most spouses genuinely want to make each other happy. The problem is rarely bad intentions. It is almost always something quieter — a failure to understand what the other person actually needs.
