The small things that hold a marriageStep 1 of 8

Before you read on

Before anything else. If any of these is true for you, this course is not the right one and you should not use what it teaches. You are afraid of your spouse. You change what you say to avoid a reaction. You have been hurt physically, even once. You are not allowed to see people, hold money, or go out alone. Your phone or your movements are checked. You have been threatened. Sex happens when you do not want it. Nothing is scored here and nobody is being told what is happening to them. But repair skills are not safe where one person is controlling the other, because technique in that situation becomes another tool for the person doing the harm. Go to the course called When home is not safe instead.

Lesson 6 of 6

How to tell it has outgrown a course

Some markers, and they are practical rather than spiritual.

You have stopped bringing things up at all, not because they are resolved but because it is not worth it. Contempt is now normal, in one direction or both. One of you has been living somewhere else in the house for months. There is an affair, current or recent. There is drinking or drug use that neither of you can talk about. One of you is depressed enough that the marriage is not really the problem. Or you have tried the things in this course honestly for a couple of months and nothing moved at all.

None of those means it is over. They mean the work is bigger than reading, and it wants a room with a third person in it.