FamilyLife Today® Sleeping On It

Happy Couples and Healthy Conflict: Rethinking “Never Go to Bed Angry” – Miller/Hudson

Do happy couples really never go to bed angry? Surprising research might challenge the age-old advice revealing how to navigate conflict constructively, even if it means hitting pause for the night.

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Happy Couples and Healthy Conflict: Rethinking "Never Go to Bed Angry" - Miller/Hudson
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Show Notes


About the Guest

Photo of Allyssa and Jon Miller

Allyssa and Jon Miller

Jon and Allyssa Miller both serve with Cru; Jon in FamilyLife as a videographer, and Allyssa in the Campus Ministry as a student event planner. In their spare time, they can usually be found sipping coffee, trying a new recipe, spinning vinyl records, or taking a walk through their beautiful home city of Orlando, FL.

Photo of Brian Goins

Brian Goins

Brian and his wife Jen love building into families and eating great food together. They have three children who all want to move to Montana. Brian serves as Sr. Director Special Projects at FamilyLife. He is also the executive producer on an adolescent-focused documentary series called Brain, Heart, World (brainheartworld.org) aimed at helping change the conversation about pornography in our country and has written Playing Hurt: A Guy’s Strategy for a Winning Marriage.

Rob and Liz Hudson

Rob and Liz Hudson have served with Cru since 2015. Rob works with families navigating complex and personal family situations and Liz helps lead women’s health clinics internationally with Cru’s humanitarian ministry, Unto. They have 3 children and live in Orlando, FL.

Photo of Shaunti Feldhahn

Shaunti Feldhahn

Shaunti received her graduate degree from Harvard University and was an analyst on Wall Street before unexpectedly becoming a social researcher, best-selling author and popular speaker. Today, she applies her analytical skills to investigating eye-opening, life-changing truths about relationships, both at home and in the workplace. Her groundbreaking research-based books, such as For Women Only, have sold more than 3 million copies in 25 languages and are widely read in homes, counseling centers and corporations worldwide.

Shaunti’s findings are regularly featured in media as diverse as The Today Show and Focus on the Family, The New York Times and Cosmo. She (often with her husband, Jeff) speaks at 50 events a year around the world. Shaunti and her husband Jeff live in Atlanta with their teenage daughter and son, and two cats who think they are dogs.

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Happy Couples and Healthy Conflict: Rethinking “Never Go to Bed Angry”

Guests:Brian Goins, Shaunti Feldhahn, Rob & Liz Hudson, Jon & Alyssa Miller

From the series:Sleeping On It (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:March 21, 2025

Brian:Proverbs 29:11. I love that verse where it says, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” And sometimes in the moment that you’re angry is the worst time to actually talk about it, because I’m going to get full vent—

Shaunti:And you’re going to do damage.

Brian:And you’re going to do damage, right?

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

So how many times do you think we’ve gone to bed mad? In 44 years; give me a number.

Ann:I’m just thinking of the times I would cry into my pillow—

Dave:I said, give me a number. I’m getting mad right now.

Ann:Cry into my pillow alone at night being so mad and sad and upset.

Dave:There have been nights.

Ann:Yes.

Dave:Well, here’s the good news. That means we’re a highly happy couple.

Ann:Oh, is that what that means? Is that what that means?

Dave:That’s what it means. That’s what I just found out. In fact, our listeners are going to find out today.

Ann:We’re so healthy. High five—

Dave:I’m getting madder as I talk, but—

Ann:—madder.

Dave:No, we’re going to watch a clip today from our Married With Benefits podcast with FamilyLife. It’s actually a YouTube clip too. And I’d say go watch it. In fact, you can watch our show now on YouTube as well, FamilyLife YouTube channel. But we’ve been doing this for a little bit, and it’s been really fun because we have Brian Goins who interviews Shaunti Feldhahn and Brian’s with his wife Jen on this episode.

Ann:Yeah, that’s good.

Dave:Which is awesome. You get both their perspectives. But Shaunti’s a Harvard trained researcher, and all her books are based on research. So this book and this concept was based on she’s interviewing couples to find out who are the best, who are the happiest, who are having the most satisfaction in marriage. And she uses this crazy term called they’re highly happy. I don’t know what that means, but it means they have good marriages and they’re pros. And so Brian’s interviewing her with Jen saying, “Okay, what are the surprising secrets you found out? What do these couples do?”

Well, one of them that we’re going to talk about today is these couples go to bed mad, not every night. We’ll explain what that looks like, but that sounds like “That can’t be true.” It actually is true. And so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to watch a clip with Shaunti and Brian and Jen Goins talking about going to bed mad, but they start with a very familiar verse to a lot of people. Ephesians 4:26 says, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” And so, man, what does that mean? Well, they start right there.

[Recorded Message]

Brian:Let’s talk about the verse because that’s really, is it just going “Okay, that’s nice as the Bible says that.” And what I’ve appreciated about your research is that basically all the data always ends up backing up scripture. So as a researcher, you’re doing all this research and you’re like, but wait. And I’d be curious for you, when you looked at that verse, how did that apply to your marriage? I would imagine—Jeff’s a lawyer—wouldn’t you want to stay up and fight? Wouldn’t you want to like, “I’m just going to resolve this thing”?

Shaunti:No, Jeff is the opposite.

Brian:Is he?

Shaunti:He is totally the opposite. He is definitely like “It’s 10 o’clock, I am past my bedtime.” He is. I am the stay up late. He is the early to bed kind of guy, and he’s like, “My brain stops working.” And so I’d be like, “But we need God’s blessing on our marriage. We can’t go to bed.” And he says now, “You would wear me out. I just couldn’t.” And then he would take the lawyer hat on, he’d put the lawyer hat on, and he’d go, “Look, we did not start arguing until the sun was already down, so I have 24 hours.”

Brian:That’s when you’re really parsing the verse. That’s when you’re really getting into it and going, no, no, let’s understand. The sun goes down at six, and so if we started this at seven, you got another twenty-four hours.

Jen:I’m wondering if you have two people who do like to stay up late, they can still stay up late and figure it out.

Shaunti:Everybody’s different.

Jen:Right.

Shaunti:That’s the issue.

Jen:It’s just most people are married to someone who’s opposite.

Shaunti:Yes.

Jen:So someone’s going to want to stay up late.

Brian:Good point.

Jen:Someone might want to go to bed early.

Shaunti:Good point.

Jen:You have to really honor the other person.

Shaunti:Yes.

Brian:And if they’re using scripture as a bludgeon to go—

Shaunti:That’s a problem too.

Brian:—”You need to be like me because God’s saying we need to stay up and fight.” I mean for you, since that was you—

Jen:What does the verse mean, Shaunti?

Brian:Yes, what’s the verse mean?

Shaunti:Yes. Well, listen, I’m sure theologians have different ways of parsing it, but I will tell you for me that at the beginning of this, there was a lot of angst, I think is probably the right word. Because like you said, Brian, I’ve been doing this for so many years and all of these big expensive nationally representative surveys, oh wow, they back up what the Bible has said all along. It was so cool. And suddenly, here I am with this one, and I’m like, “Oh my goodness. Does it matter if it works, if it goes against what the Bible says? We can’t do that.”

And then even more of an angst. Why does it work if it’s anti-biblical? It shouldn’t work. And I was actually sharing this angst with a pastor we were talking to at one point, and he was also a licensed therapist, this pastor, and he started laughing. He was like, okay, first of all, there’s a lot of things to unpack here. But he said, first of all, just be aware that this whole section of the Bible, it’s not even talking about marriage, it’s talking about living in a community. Let’s realize that we’ve sort of put something on this maybe the verse never intended to be a part of it.

Brian:Or I would say we’ve used it in so many marriage contexts that we feel like we have, we’ve basically taken that verse and just, it’s only applying to marriage.

Shaunti:It’s applying to marriage.

Brian:But it is applying to community so you’re not going to go, “I had an issue with the guy that I bought something from at the mall that I need to go find his house and knock on his door at 11 o’clock. That would be a little weird.

Shaunti:That would be weird. But so people of marriage is a part of a type of community and so I was still angst ridden. And he took me to, he had a big Bible in his office, and he said, “Go look up this verse.” And so I’m like, “Okay.” And he said, “When you see 4:26 there, you see the little carrot.” Where there’s a little carrot, if you go look, you can look on your Bible app or you can look in a Bible right now and you’ll see that there’s a little carrot. And it shows that Paul was quoting a verse from the Old Testament.

The whole verse of Ephesians 4:26 is “In your anger, do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down in your anger.” So we always quote the second part. For some reason we’re not really looking at the first part. So what was Paul quoting this verse would’ve been very familiar to his listeners, and he was quoting Psalm 4:4. So this pastor goes, go look up Psalm 4:4. So I looked up Psalm 4:4, and it says, “In your anger, do not sin. Think about it overnight and remain silent.”

Brian:Wow.

Shaunti:And it’s like, whoa.

Brian:How did we get that translation off or weird?

Shaunti:Well, it’s not even, I think the issue is we’ve so put that into a marriage context, and we so focus on the second half that we miss that the whole point was really about the first: in your anger, don’t sin. And so the pastor’s like, “Look, if you need to think about it overnight and remain silent so you don’t say something you’ll regret and sin in your anger, do that. If you need to duke it out at one in the morning to not sin in your anger, do that.” That’s the bigger picture. And that’s sort of the way that we should be biblically processing everything anyway.

Brian:And I like one of the translations, it says, “Ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.” Now, ponder shouldn’t be stew, which is what I tend to do.

Shaunti:Interesting.

Brian:And if you read the rest of that passage in Ephesians 4 where it’s talking about don’t give the devil any opportunity, then it talks about being kind to one another harmonious. And so it’s like that’s actually what I should be stewing on in my bed is how do I start moving towards oneness? How do I start owning my part? How do I start going “What am I going to do to actually move back towards my wife or whoever I have an issue with?” I mean, this doesn’t just apply to marriage. It can apply to everything else.

And you think about all the other verses, it’s like, it’s amazing how we take one verse, and we make this massive practical theology out of, but Proverbs 29:11. I love that verse where it says, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” And sometimes in the moment that you’re angry is the worst time to actually talk about it, because I’m going to get full vent—

Shaunti:And you’re going to do damage.

Brian:—and you’re going to do damage, right?

Shaunti:You are. And that is actually one thing that we did see that was relatively common amongst the not highly happy couples, happy couples or the so-so and struggling couples is that was actually a pattern and that it would be healthier to think about it overnight and pick it up in the morning.

[Studio]

Dave:Yeah, you got to check out the full episode of Married With Benefits. It’s in the show notes and you can find it right there.

Okay, so we’ve got a couple couples in here going to talk about this anger thing, right? So we got Rob and Liz Hudson back. You guys have been married nine years with three kids, and then we got, Jon and Alyssa have been married 15 seconds so here we go.

Jon:We just did the ceremony. We don’t know why we’re here, we know nothing yet.

Dave:So anyways, you—

Ann:But Rob and Liz did your premarital counseling, so you probably do know a lot.

Alyssa:So much.

Jon:If we say anything wise, it is to their credit. If we say anything silly, it’s not their fault.

Dave:It’s yours.

Alyssa:Oh wow.

Dave:So when you hear what they just talked about, what hits you? Anything jump right out? Because it’s a pretty anti, this is not the kind of wisdom you would think makes sense. It doesn’t make sense, but it does when you hear the logic behind it. So what jumped out to you guys?

Alyssa:I have to say, I feel like I’m so relieved to hear that—

Jon:So much.

Alyssa:—because I don’t know. I’m just the type of person who in, the other day we talked about there was the clip that talks about being hungry, angry, lonely and tired.

Ann:Halt.

Alyssa:Yes, halt.

Jon:It’s a real thing.

Alyssa:It’s so real. If I’m hungry, hanger is real for me. But also being tired. I’m like, if I’m tired, I need to do something about that before I can approach anything else. Otherwise, I’m going to say something that I regret. And so I feel like there’s such relief in being like, it’s okay. It’s okay to go take a nap, to go be angry to do this.

Dave:How about you guys?

Liz:Where has the rest of that verse been my whole life? Where has the context of this been? I do. I’m curious what the beginning of our marriage would’ve looked like had we had that wholistic picture of what that verse is. Even that last part of something about be silent and processing. I mean, I don’t know the exact words, but I feel like that has taken nine years—

Rob:Absolutely.

Liz:—of marriage for me to get to that.

Rob:I remember one of the best pieces of advice I got from my first mentor was, and he’s kind of an old school, be a real man kind of guy. And that was just the language that he used. But this was right when, this was in our first months of marriage. And he said, “Rob, a real man always apologizes first.” And that’s really stuck with me. And it’s also been a real challenge.

Liz:Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard this. And that explains so much.

Dave: I was going to say, “Does it?”

Liz:I have never heard that.

Dave:Is Rob a real man?

Liz:Well, here’s the deal.

Rob:Why is there a deal?

Liz:Here’s the deal.

Dave:Here’s the deal. You’re supposed to say yes.

Liz:He would apologize whether he was there or not.

Rob:Yes.

Liz:And I knew it. I could call it and be like,

Ann:Oh, you’re like, that’s just fake. Don’t say that.

Liz:I was like, well, and there was just so much unprocessed stuff because it was like, “”Well, I’m just going to say sorry and it’s going to be done. And I’ve done my part as a man.”

Rob:Yes.

Liz:Oh my goodness.

Rob:So here—

Liz:I’m glad we could have this session for you guys.

Rob:So the continuation of that thought was I’ve realized that I need to take time before I can actually apologize.

Ann:And it’s okay to do that.

Rob:Absolutely. When I was thinking of the last time we went to bed angry, I left the front door unlocked. It felt at the time that it wasn’t a big deal, but it was a big deal. And so when she brought that to me, that it was a big deal, I exploded because the message that went through my head is “She thinks I’m a bad husband because I didn’t lock the front door. She thinks I don’t care about her security. She doesn’t think I care about her past and why that’s important.” And I spiral. I grab my pillow. I storm out of the room, and I go into the guest room and I’m like, “Alright, I’m going to sleep here.”

Dave:By the unlocked front door.

Liz:I had locked it.

Ann:But instead of saying, what I hear you saying is, I’m a bad husband, all the things you thought you never said to her.

Rob:No.

Ann:You just left.

Rob:Just left, just went to the other room. Because I did have the wherewithal to know anything that came out of my mouth past that, it was going to be bad. It was going to be bad. It wasn’t going to be helpful. And so then I knew that I needed to take the night to deescalate, calm down. But also what’s going through my head is, I know that I’ve messed up here. And I can logically, logically my brain could go through, and I knew what I had done wrong, and I could have parroted an apology to her in that moment, but it would’ve been—

Ann:It wasn’t sincere at that point.

Rob:It wouldn’t have been sincere. And so that’s kind of the new side of this is I do want to apologize, but I need to be at a place where that is an actual real apology, where I am able to enter in to how much what I have done has hurt and has offended.

Dave:I mean, actually tell me I’m wrong. It sounds like you just did what they said. You went to bed angry because you needed time to process it, and you wake up and—

Ann:Yeah, so I want to hear the rest of it. So you wake up and—

Rob:This was a unique scenario.

Liz:This was a unique scenario, and I think it speaks to some of the work we’ve been doing to know ourselves and know each other.

Rob:That both of us has done, absolutely.

Liz:But that night in particular, I just knew he was spiraling. I could see him spiraling, and I was like, “You know what? I am going to draw near to him.” Yes, I’m really hurt, but I came in the guest bedroom and just laid there next to him.

Ann:So you’re giving him grace.

Liz:Yeah, and that is by no means every situation, but this particular night that is what happened. But I think this is where the kid piece comes into play and is complicated is I think in that moment it was totally sincere and I wanted to focus on him, but then I do feel like what I really needed to talk through did get lost. And the crazy of, from my perspective, I was like, “Well, he’ll come to me,” but life is crazy. Kids are crazy. And when’s the time? I mean, in real time, you’re seeing us learn stuff about each other with you guys because there’s just not that much uninterrupted time.

Ann:And so as we talked previously, things can get brushed under the rug and you want to go back and deal with it,

Liz:And it comes back up

Ann:And it builds up.

Liz:You’re going to trip over it eventually and we did. Eventually we did revisit it and there was more closure, and we were able to talk through it. But I think that situation is—

Rob:It was a multi-step process.

Liz:Yeah. Because stuff kept building on top of that because there was a bigger narrative underneath that one situation. And there was a broken trust too. So the undealt with stuff, I mean, there’s a learning curve with that situation of, what does it look like to revisit? Because most nights it isn’t the best time for us to talk. Seven o’clock is really, when the kids are in bed, there is no more. It’s already too late because we’re both exhausted. So when is the time?

Rob:So when is the time, Dave and Ann?

Dave:Well, I was going to say we were taught before marriage the opposite of what Shaunti just taught us on that video; was the verse meant literally you have to resolve it. You never go to bed angry. This is what the Bible teaches. I’m literally falling asleep. And Ann is, she’s a purist in terms of got to do it as. She is “You can’t go sleep. You’re in sin.”

Ann:You’re in sin.

Dave:I’m like, “I can’t even think right now” and no kids so it shouldn’t have been that hard. And then it was literally Shaunti’s revelation hit me one night; was “Okay, the fight started at 9:00 PM. It’s 2:00 AM, we got till tomorrow,” thinking that’s what scripture means. And it was years later where I realized that’s not even what scripture means. It’s more of a principle of don’t let anger fester for days and weeks and months; resolve it quickly.

Now, here’s one of the things they—

Ann:Well, wait, let me go back to their question because I think a lot of couples with kids that are just, it feels overwhelming, and it feels like you have no time to resolve anything. Everything is left unfinished.

Dave:Sometimes they’re part of the anger.

Liz:Oh, a hundred percent.

Dave:They’re contributing to that.

Ann:You’re just exhausted physically and mentally in every way. And so one of the things that we did, and we didn’t do it right at first because I need to resolve it quickly, Dave needs time to process.

Dave:Like a month.

Ann:But we would plan the time, even if it was after the kids were in bed the next night, we conserved enough energy and we knew, and he knew I couldn’t go another day with it being unresolved or not talked about. So you can reserve mentally, “We’re going to talk about this tonight.” So there’s a way of preserving yourself and reserving an hour.

Dave:And by the way—

Ann:It prepares your heart.

Dave:That’s in the book. They didn’t even get into it on that little clip.

Liz:That’s good.

Dave:But in the book, what Shaunti found out is the couples that did not have great marriages went to bed angry saying, “We’ll talk about it.” They never did.

Ann:And that was my fear, because if I call it a person that’s withdrawing a withdrawer, they’ll never get to it because secretly—

Dave:They don’t want to

Ann:—they don’t want to. And that just is my angst, like, “No.”

Rob:Yeah.

Dave:Yeah, so remember that. The couples that had a great marriage did get back to it. They said, “We should go to bed now. We’re not making any progress. I may need to process, but tomorrow at five o’clock or tomorrow at seven o’clock,” and they did tomorrow. And they’re the ones that are highly happy.

Jon:We’ve got some good friends, Marie and Kyle, for our wedding they gave us a little, a marriage journal, is what it’s called. It’s called The Marriage Journal. It’s like a weekly check-in with your spouse, and it’s got a little bit of content, little devotional, and it’s got a bunch of questions that you just kind of have a little discussion about. They’re the same questions every week. It’s like, what was your high? What was your low? And one of them is, do we have any unresolved conflicts that we got to tackle again?

And so we have built into our week a moment where if there was something that we did not get a chance to unpack and bring to full resolution, we’ve got kind of that last ditch opportunity on the weekend where it’s like, “Okay, I’m still bent out of shape about this. We got to talk about this more.”

Alyssa:Well, and I say it’s been helpful for us. And I have to say there have been weeks where we haven’t done it, and we’ve only been married for a short amount of time.

Dave:We’re talking weeks. They’ve only been married like 12 weeks.

Jon:I know.

Alyssa:But something that’s really helpful for me because I would be the type of person to shove it under the rug and not think about it is like, oh. I’m like, okay, is there any conflict? And so I’m like I want to resolve it before we get to that question. I’m like, “Oh.” So for me, it’s been helpful for us to think of, “Okay,” in the moment or after, it’s being able to do that so that it’s not every week we get together and I’m like, “Okay, here’s my list of conflict.” So that’s just been helpful to keep us accountable.

Ann:And I do think today it’s convenient to have our phones and a notepad on our phones that we can jog thoughts into. Because it’s with kids, you forget, what were we fighting about? What was I so in turmoil about? So to write that down.

And the other thing is, this sounds very impractical, like I’m not going to do that, but praying. If you have a 24-hour period that you’re going to talk about it, to let God go before you to pray about it, that helps. God enters into it. And even when it says, because don’t give the devil a foothold, that is a real thing.

Dave:And I would only add this, and they didn’t even get into it and the book doesn’t get into it, but if we’ve learned anything in four decades of marriage, this is big time when you’re talking about anger. If you have a phone to take a notepad, I would say also you need an extension cord. And I’m joking, but when I preached on this about anger, I had literally an extension cord wrapped around my waist with a plug dangling around.

And my point was, when we get angry, whether it’s in marriage with our kids, you name it. It could be road rage, whatever it is, you got to get to the root. There’s a root. That anger is plugged into something. And most of us, even our marriage, whether it’s 10 o’clock at night or not, our yelling or the anger’s coming out, and we don’t even know, it’s not really even about this. We’ve never gone, “I’ve got a, oh, this is something that happened today at work and I’m taking it out now on her.” Or “This is something you said yesterday, and it hurt.” And I’m not dealing with the hurt. I’m dealing with the anger and all she’s getting or he’s getting is an angry husband. It’s like, if we could get to the root, or your spouse can help you get to the root, oh my goodness, you can make some real progress. Is that true for you guys? Have you found that?

Rob:And that’s what changed the door locking scenario was once we did come back to it, and it was a day or two later that we sat down, and I don’t remember exactly, but when she explained, once I was in a place that because she had taken the first step and shown me the grace, I was able to then—it shouldn’t have been this way, but this was the way that the Holy Spirit worked in this situation. I was able to enter into compassion and ask questions like, can you help me understand why the door is so important?

And she walked me through, and it wasn’t things that happened that day or the day before. We went back 20 years. And there were things that had happened that made that really, really important. And it took time, it took intentionality, it took compassion. And all of a sudden, now, locking the door is really important. And the thing that I was so worried about hearing from her of, if it was important to you, you would lock the door, and it was true. It was true.

Dave:It is really, if I’m important to you, you would lock the door.

Liz:Well, and it’s the mental load too. I carry this. I need you to carry it with me. I don’t want to be alone in this.

Dave:That’s big.

Liz:I have so much in my brain, help me carry this.

Rob:And it’s gotten better.

Liz:Yeah, I will say it’s gotten better.

I’ll also say that there is something to sleep and self-care that really does the next morning. There are so many times I’m just overstimulated from the constant touch and the constant input of the day, and I do feel mad. There’s something totally behind the anger. There’s exhaustion, whatever, and so on and so forth and it’s usually going to be directed at the person closest to me, the other adult in the room.

Ann:Because you’re always hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

Liz:Always Ann, always. And so oftentimes I do go to bed, or I do just have some alone time, and I wake up the next day and I’m like, “Man, I’m glad there really wasn’t anything specific to talk about other than I just need to take care of myself and see myself and say, ‘Well, of course you feel angry. Of course you’re feeling some kind of way because you’re exhausted.’”

So do yourself a favor. Get a snack that you love, go by yourself, take a bubble bath, and then just see what the morning looks like. And I think that is something that I’ve really learned over the last nine years is to not be a slave to my emotions as well, of give myself the grace, care for myself well, and it has saved us a lot of hurt in the long run because a lot of times it did just make things worse.

Rob:One last thought on the when do we have the conversation is—I mean, this is probably not a great idea for everybody, but one thing, just out of necessity, there’s been a number of date nights that have started with harder conversations. Because one, living in Orlando, it’s going to take 25 minutes to get anywhere so we’ve got the time. We know that we’re going on a date, and we want to enjoy this time together, but there’s something between us. And so that drive time to wherever we’re going, I would say a fair amount of date nights have started out with, “Hey, we need to talk about this first so that we can really enjoy reconnecting with each other.” What would you add to that?

Liz:I mean, I would agree. And the kids aren’t there. And that’s huge.

Dave:That’s big.

Liz:Because you can, I mean, even after bed, let’s say you reserve that hour. I mean, for us, our kids are getting up 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and if it’s not one kid, it’s the other kid.

Dave:Your husband’s getting up too.

Liz:Really, there are no sacred spaces unless we leave the building. And so I think that being stuck in a car together is some of the greatest gifts.

Dave:We interviewed Debra Fileta, who’s a counselor, therapist, writer, author, incredible. And her husband’s an eye surgeon. And so he came with her, right? And he doesn’t do interviews, it’s just Debra’s the—

Ann:She’s written, Are You Really Ok? —a lot of books.

Dave:Her new one, Soul Care. She’s phenomenal.

Ann:And a marriage book too.

Dave:So he was here, and we said, “Hey, can we bring John in the studio?” And she’s like, “Nah, he doesn’t really do it.” Well, he did it. He came in and he was phenomenal. And I will never forget, one of the lessons they taught was—Ann mentioned it earlier—he says, “On my phone, every Sunday night at nine o’clock, ding, ding, ding. It goes off. We have,” what they call, “couch time.” And the kids are in bed and so the house is quiet. And every Sunday night is, and again, it could be any time, but they pick their Sunday night at nine. They have four or five questions they ask and one of them, is there anything happening right now? Anger, sin? Is there anything that we need to talk about? How are you doing?

So it’s a great thing, but here’s my big learning. They said, “On our dates, we don’t do couch time. Our dates, we want to have fun.”

Ann:We’re like, “Well, duh.” We fought every date night.

Dave:Every date. That’s why—

Ann:We had no time to talk except date night. And so then it’d be half the time we’re figuring something out. And then we’d be like, do we like each other at the end of the day? I think we do.

Dave:And so we’ve tried to apply couch times, like, let’s have those conversations and let’s go have fun on the date. And again, sometimes you can’t.

Rob:Absolutely.

Dave:Sometimes things come up the kid thing, you can’t. But if you try to say, “I’m going to try and separate it,” it’s not a bad practice. It’s a secret of highly happy couples.

Ann:You guys, thanks for being with us.

Jon:This was so good. Thank you.

Alyssa:This has been a lot of fun.

Dave:Let me just say this marriage is wonderful, but it can be really, really hard and difficult at times, and we know that. We’ve shared that many times here, but we would love to help you. Go to FamilyLife.com/MarriageHelp. We put some of our best tools there for you to get some help. We would love to help you. FamilyLife.com/MarriageHelp.

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