During all the different seasons of marriage, it can be a challenge to keep romance alive. Here are some ideas!

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Is your marriage struggling around trauma, grief, PTSD, depression, betrayal, or other serious challenge? For those of you staying together through it, here are some tips for working on marriage with difficulties such as these in the picture.

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What did you think the empty nest or retirement would be like? Was it what you expected? For many of us, it wasn't! What about navigating marriage during these seasons?

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Sharing beliefs is communication at its deepest. To get here, we're likely already doing well talking about almost everything else and feeling a good bit of trust to share.

Can you unite on needs and goals? These are deeper topics of communication. Sharing on this level deepens intimacy.

Can you share your feelings without a verbal and emotional explosion? This is a deeper level of communication. To get here, we first want to get better at more surface levels of small talk, facts, and opinions.

Sharing opinions goes deeper than our usual surface level of communication. Here, we can learn to respect each other's differences, which sets us up to go deeper.

A lot of us easily communicate on the surface. It's in this zone we can work through going deeper.

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Do you long to talk on a deeper level? Here's a good starting point. _______

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We're always investing via our time, energy, and focus. We receive a harvest from the direction of our investment. The question is, what are we investing in? If it isn't our marriage, we shouldn't be surprised if it is no longer fulfilling. To enjoy what God intended, we should invest as God intended.

Have you felt disillusioned in your marriage as you notice his and her imperfections? So, what do we do with that?

How do you maintain a healthy marriage while parenting? Here are some ideas.

Parenting together well requires husband and wife coming together, blending very different ideas about parenting. Here are some thoughts to get you started.

Here’s an overview of resolving conflict in various relationships.

Have you been married long enough to realize your spouse isn't perfect? Once the honeymoon is over, reality of day-to-day life sets in when everything isn't as perfect as we'd imagined. So how do we adjust?

Returning to our first love and doing the first works (Revelation 2) maintains our walk with the Lord and also applies to our marriage.

What do we do with negative thoughts about our family? We can control our thoughts and avoid assuming.

When we over-address, it can seem everything's wrong and push the spouse toward losing hope, but when we pretend nothing's wrong, we neglect cleaning out the relationship and allow walls to build.

When we over-address, it can seem everything's wrong and push the spouse toward losing hope, but when we pretend nothing's wrong, we neglect cleaning out the relationship and allow walls to build.

If we address issues too frequently, we create the feeling we are unhappy and dissatisfied, but if we address them infrequently, we come across as not caring. How can you land on somewhere in the middle?

Temper your sharing frequency toward your spouse's to avoid overwhelming an under-sharer and to meet the conversational needs of the over-sharer.

When we talk more easily, we can come across as aggressive, and when we don't talk as much, we can come across as withdrawing. This can send a message we didn't intend.

Tone of voice can twist a well-intentioned message. Anytime we express negative feelings via tone of voice, it's likely to return a negative response.

Our marriages speak to others and are a testimony of what we believe - especially about how we see God. How might we pattern our marriages after God's heart to share a better message?

To make a marriage plan to walk out of distress, you first need to see where you are and decide where you want to grow. Too many times we're living as if the marriage were where we wish, rather than in the reality of where we actually are.

Our relationships are living and functioning. As such, they produce waste. In marriage, resolving conflict removes waste and prevents its buildup between husband and wife.

What's a man to do with a crying, wounded woman? (Yes, the idea for the title came from the movie, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.")

Merging families is a challenge, and there are many pieces to this picture. Here are some conversation starters to help.

Let's look together at what God says in His Word about marriage.

Let's look at what God says in His Word about marriage.

How do we make decisions together when we have such different perspectives? We're supposed to have different perspectives! Let's look at how to blend.

We both have something to say, but we can only work through one topic at a time and must wait until it's our turn to share.

Before we can address issues well, we should create an environment of unconditional love and acceptance of our spouse as-is without trying to change him/her.

We expect so much in marriage! Regardless of what we think our spouse SHOULD do, we need to be Ok with what our spouse CHOOSES to do. (We're not talking about destructive choices here)

How do you let your spouse know what you need in the marriage? Couples need to be aware of the different needs of the husband and wife in the deepest of relationships to facilitate marital growth. Let's talk about his and her core needs and a good way to make those needs known.

Repairing and soothing can help us stay calm during conflict and keep it healthy.

What can you do to improve the chance your spouse may really listen when you share?

If we're not careful, we can get in our own way when it comes to catching our spouse's heart message.

Keeping our cool while sharing a challenging thought can be difficult, but it's the only way to talk things through.

Dr. John Gottman recommends strengthening a marriage by adding these 6 hours per week.