Lessons from a couples therapist of 6 years, but a wife of 11 months

Mini killers of intimacy

As a therapist who has worked with couples since the beginning of my career, I have seen the underbelly of relationships.

I have witnessed:

• Lies

• Emotional infidelity

• Sexual infidelity without disease transmission

• Sexual infidelity with disease transmission

• Spiritual or biblical manipulation

• Physical violence

• Wives left raising several children

• Husbands left raising several children

• Spouses battling cancer

• The desire to open a relationship to other partners

• The desire to close an open relationship

• Addiction

• Children born outside the marriage

• Financial infidelity

• Slowly losing interest in one another

…and more.

I work primarily with a Christian population, and as a Christian myself, I was horrified to realize that these were not abstract stories or distant headlines. These were the lived realities of people I knew by name.

Reading about these things on social media, hearing them in the news, or encountering them through gossip never affected me in the same way. Those people were distant. I didn’t know them.

But sitting across from real people, carrying real pain, as a single Christian woman—that was terrifying.

While I was dating my now-husband, I would go home to my apartment filled with panic and outrage, projecting other people’s realities onto our relationship.

This isn’t supposed to happen.
What happened in their walk with Christ that led them here?
How can I avoid this?

Out of fear, I would ask him whether he had ever had “certain” thoughts, hoping to pre-screen for potential destruction. At the same time, I turned that scrutiny inward: What would ever lead me to do any of these things? Should I even get married if I don’t know who I’ll be—or what I’ll face—ten years from now?

I was an anxious mess. How could I dare to be married if all of this was possible?

So now, standing in the tension between a therapy career that outpaced my early years of marriage, I want to share some of what I’ve learned.

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Listening deeply

Entering my sixth year as a therapist and approaching my first year of marriage, I’ve noticed that I hear my husband differently than I did at the beginning of our relationship. We’ve been together for five years now, and the way I listen has shifted.

What I mean is this: although I don’t see my husband as a client (even though I admittedly tried in the early days), my training has shaped how I listen. I’m attuned to what might be happening beneath what is initially being communicated.

Ironically, this skill wasn’t strengthened most through therapy work itself, but through being in close, lived-in relationships—with friends and with my husband. Proximity teaches listening in a way textbooks can’t.

Listening, observation, and curiosity are essential to building intimacy. Their absence, on the other hand, slowly erodes it. I’ve seen many couples come to view their spouse as a problem to solve rather than a person to love, enjoy, and be curious about.

Something as simple as sitting together and people-watching—then sharing the different conclusions your minds come to—can offer a window into each other’s inner worlds and spark meaningful connection. I’ve often heard couples say, “I’ve never thought about it that way before.”

It makes me wonder: if we slowed down—if we sat still, listened, observed, and allowed ourselves to be curious—how much conflict, misunderstanding, or distance might we avoid?

Embracing otherness

What I’ve also learned is that it is both wise and loving to embrace one another’s differences.

On my best days—especially in the middle of frustration—I hear a quiet reminder from God: he’s not you.

I’ve learned, and am still learning, that this applies to every situation.

“He’s not you” can be as simple as this: he doesn’t care if the bed is made every day, just as I don’t care how the dishwasher is loaded. In those moments, I can choose irritation and ask God to make him more like me so life feels easier—or I can choose to honor the way God has uniquely knit my husband together.

He doesn’t enjoy all the things I enjoy. After years of trying to convince him otherwise—and one unused bike later—I’ve accepted this truth: he is not me. He doesn’t like bike rides. It’s not devastating; it’s disappointing, and I will be okay. Thankfully, one of my closest friends does love bike rides, and when I want company, I can have it.

Going a level deeper, he isn’t anxious about the same things I am—and that is a gift. His steadiness helps calm my anxiety, just as my awareness can help him at times. We balance each other.

He also doesn’t need space when he’s upset the way I do. He longs for closeness instead. Again, he is not me—and that difference invites me to love him more intentionally, not less.

Spouses are not containers for your projections

I’ve also come to recognize how often I project my own desires—especially my tendency to shut down emotionally—onto my husband. In doing so, I’ve sometimes used him (and others) as a container for my own unprocessed thoughts and feelings, avoiding the harder work of naming and owning them myself.

This makes me wonder how often, in marriage, we assume we already know how our partner will respond. Through projection, we decide what they think, feel, or are capable of hearing. And instead of disclosing the truth, we choose concealment.

I wonder how many of the tensions I mentioned earlier are quietly carried alongside small lies—omissions, half-truths, unspoken realities. Each one may seem insignificant, but together they create a bottomless pit of destruction for everyone involved.

What begins as self-protection often ends in distance.

Reality is best, Illusions are the devil

From sitting with couples, I’ve seen how the harshness of reality can quietly pull us toward illusion and fantasy. When disappointment goes unnamed or pain goes unattended, fantasy can begin to feel like relief. Sometimes it’s subtle—an internal drifting, a private wondering of “what life could be like if…” Other times it grows into something more deliberate, even dangerous, such as choosing to live out that fantasy with someone outside of the marriage.

Regardless of its size, fantasy always functions the same way: it pulls our attention, hope, and emotional energy away from our spouse and places it somewhere else. What begins as imagination slowly becomes disconnection. Instead of turning toward our partner, we turn toward an idea, a possibility, or a person who feels easier, safer, or more affirming in the moment.

I often think of illusion as the work of the enemy because it is rooted in falsehood. Illusion and fantasy are not of God; He operates in truth, presence, and reality. God meets us where we actually are, not where we wish things were. Yet the truth of dissatisfaction in a relationship can feel unbearably vulnerable to name. It requires courage to admit loneliness, resentment, longing, or disappointment—especially to the very person we fear might confirm those feelings.

So instead of telling the truth, we tell ourselves a lie. We convince ourselves that the fantasy is harmless, that it’s temporary, or that it somehow says more about our circumstances than our choices. Over time, though, living in illusion dulls our capacity for honest connection. What starts as self-protection slowly reshapes us, and if we are not careful, we risk becoming people who no longer know how to live in truth at all. We become the lie that we have told ourselves.

The end, is not the end

I have seen the ground—the brokenness, the grief, the places where hope feels exhausted. And I have also caught glimpses of His heavenly glory, at work in marriages that most would call dead. I have watched Him help, restore, and sustain in ways that cannot be explained apart from His presence.

When our hearts remain turned toward Christ, He can redeem our story. That redemption does not always look the way we expect. For some, redemption means the courage and clarity to leave an abusive marriage. For others, it means choosing the hardest road—extending forgiveness after betrayal or infidelity—because that is what the Lord calls us to do.

God’s redemption is not one-size-fits-all, but it is always rooted in truth, safety, and love. He is a Redeemer. And though I have not witnessed the final chapter of every relationship I’ve encountered, I often find myself wondering where those couples are now.

I don’t know—but the Lord does. And He is still writing their story and mine.