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The Enneagram and Marriage Podcast, hosted by Christa Hardin, MA, is rooted in two decades of experience counseling and coaching couples. On top of her expert marriage advice, Christa uses the Enneagram to add another layer of understanding in how we work as individuals and gives us deeper insight into how we connect and shine together in marriage and relationships across the collective community.
- 680 - An E + M Mini: The Three Instincts and Your Faith
In this mini episode, Christa walks through the three instincts as three distinct invitations into a more vibrant, grounded faith. The self-preservation instinct calls us to truly rest in Christ, to replenish and receive rather than strive. The sexual instinct, our spark of creative aliveness, invites us to activate our faith and let it make life feel vivid and awake again. The social instinct draws us toward helping and serving others, reminding us there are many ways to give and belong. Each instinct challenges us differently as we reach beyond ourselves, while also giving us permission to rest, connect, and be renewed. This conversation will help you notice where you may need to shift so you can live from your healthiest place. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get your free ticket to the Spiritual Formation Summit here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 21 Oct 2026 - 679 - Burnout in Ministry Marriages and the Way Back w/Monika Kirkland (Type 1/4)
This week, Christa welcomes Monika Kirkland (Type 1/4)m a Christian writer, host of the Inner Revival podcast, and a wife and mom of four. She and her husband, a worship pastor and her high school sweetheart, have served in ministry together for over a decade, her new book, Ever With You: Becoming Fully Awake to the God Who Is Near, was born out of a season when she was running on caffeine and cortisol until anxiety-induced vertigo stopped her in her tracks. Christa and Monika talk about what burnout does to a marriage when both partners are pouring out and neither is being filled, and how Monika found the rest she was desperate for - in intimacy with God. They also explore why stillness can feel so uncomfortable when the first voice we hear is the inner critic, and how each Enneagram type tends to look for rest in its own familiar substitutes. If you’re feeling depleted in your marriage, your ministry, or your walk with God, this episode is a gentle invitation back. Listen here! https://youtu.be/mNBach9QOQshttps://youtu.be/mNBach9QOQs! Connect with Monika at monikakirkland.com and on Instagram @monikakirkland, and find her book, Ever With You, wherever books are sold or here! https://a.co/d/0ewfpScw Get your free ticket to the Spiritual Formation Summit here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 19 Oct 2026 - 678 - Breath Prayers for Every Enneagram Type
Each of us struggles with various deep concerns, and in today’s mini episode, Christa walks us type by type through various breath prayers, one for each type. Take some time to pause, breathe, and join us in a collective prayer time as we place a hand on our hearts, release stress, and embrace the light and love of God. Calling on Matthew 11:28, we are all reminded that rest and refreshment, and being carried, not just carrying, is part of the blessed journey. Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 14 Oct 2026 - 677 - Free Subscriber Series: Spiritually Resetting for a Healthy, Vibrant Faith
Although spiritual loves are collectively shared, in our individual walk with God we each have matters, too. Today, Christa breaks down several areas for you to assess your spiritual journey: service, collective church time, worship, and when it’s time to take a break to heal, rest, or recover. Take some time to sit with this episode so you can grow foundationally today!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 14 Oct 2026 - 676 - Our Daily Breath: Praying with Your Body, Heart, and Mind with Kayla Craig, 7
This week ,Christa sits down with Kayla Craig, a former journalist, bestselling author, and spiritual director whose work blends contemplative faith with tenderness for the world God loves. Kayla shares the story of her mistyping, why wings and seasons of life can blur what drives us, and how her own growth has shaped the way she prays. Together they explore the practice at the heart of her new book, Our Daily Breath Devotional, which offers daily wisdom to borrow, breath prayers to exhale, and space to connect with the One who gives each breath. You’ll hear why placing a hand on your heart matters, how pairing Scripture with the inhale and exhale settles body, heart, and mind together, and how God meets us when we are brokenhearted and out of words. Watch on YouTube! Get the book here! https://a.co/d/0ffkG7Un Take the quiz here! KaylaCraig.com/quiz Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 12 Oct 2026 - 675 - Bearing Witness at Home: Learning How to Encourage Each Other
Encouragement is essential as you walk together through the emotional, spiritual, and physical ups and downs of your family story. Christa invites you on a journey of spiritual and psychological safety and connection-building as you learn to encourage and bear witness to one another's stories. Together you'll explore what it means to stay present to someone's story without rushing to fix or steer it, and how to remain close while honoring that each person's formation belongs to them. Christa also helps you understand and support every Enneagram type on their spiritual formation journey as a person who is both connected to you and differentiated from you. Don't miss this episode! Listen here! Watch on YouTube, and for Tyler Zach's Spiritual Formation Summit, click here! The Type·ish Spiritual Formation Summit begins on Oct 20, 2026 and runs through Oct 23, 2026! If you’ve been meaning to register, there’s still time to get your free ticket. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 07 Oct 2026 - 674 - Healing the Sexual Shame Stories Inside of Us w/Dr. Dan Allender, 8
Many individuals and spouses have experienced or been exposed to materials, whether explicitly sexual or suggestive, that have caused wounds in our marriages. Today we bring an important topic Christians and non-believers alike may struggle with: shame and what to do with it, when it rears its ugly head in a marriage. Whether you're more likely to fight, freeze, or fawn, this episode helps you to do the slower, worthy storywork to find out where you and your spouse have been, and as the kindness of God (Romans 2:4) gets revealed under the scars, where you also may go as you heal. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Here are the links for the Recovery Weeks over at The Allender Center so you can make a plan to take some time healing (there are men's weeks and women's weeks) https://theallendercenter.org/offerings/workshops/ Here is the free sexual abuse audio series Dr. Dan Allender and those at the Allender Center walk you through: https://online.theallendercenter.org/order?ct=a30acd8a-824b-4db2-b216-70d6b015b31d Here is Dan's Healing the Wounded Heart virtual course: https://online.theallendercenter.org/courses/healing-the-wounded-heart Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 05 Oct 2026 - 673 - What Grows in the Dark: Spiritual Shadows and the Enneagram with Amy Wicks, 7
Just as roots do their most important work underground, much of our spiritual growth happens in the places we'd rather not look, at the understory of our Enneagram type. Together we explore the shadows we hide from ourselves and how God meets us there with grace instead of shame. Today, Christa welcomes author Amy Wicks to open the pages of her new book, Wholehearted Enneagram: From Type to Transformation, where each Enneagram type is met with a tree, a story, and a wholehearted invitation to thrive. Stay until the end, because Amy is sharing a sample chapter with listeners, too, with her beautiful vocal reader at the end of the episode as a bonus. It's a perfect conversation for spooky season, and our fall contest is part of the fun, so listen closely right here! Watch on YouTube! Win a copy of Amy's book, Christa's book, and a Supper Sleuths Mystery Dinner Game - Winner Chosen Sun Oct 4, 3 Winners Announced Oct 5th! Send your vote in to enneagramandmarriage@gmail.com Spooky Season Clues: I sit in the heart center, yet I'm the type most likely to lose track of what I actually feel. I can read a room in three seconds and become whoever it needs. Somewhere along the way I learned I was loved for what I did, so I kept doing. Visit Amy here at her website! www.wholeheartedenneagram.com Get Amy's book here! https://amzn.in/d/01Pt8YnK (tell her you pre-ordered, too!) Enter the contest by sending your contest entry here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 30 Sep 2026 - 672 - I Never Knew: Family Secrets and Shadows w/Phyllis Robertson Thomas, Type 5
Past family shadows affect us in ways we may never know, and today we talk to Phyllis Robertson as she walks us through the story of when you have surprises in your family story. Today we talk about how Phyllis (now married 32 years, 5-4 pairing) found out at age forty-four, and a past that included significant trauma, that Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson was her father. Her life changed dramatically as the changes unfolded, and she began to deal with old trauma on new levels, which led to career change as well, becoming a trauma therapist. Today we invite listeners to deal with their own painful stories with good practices, the pacing of a logical type Five so negative feelings don't take over, and yet with redemption and hope, even in your most broken and difficult places. Her new book, I Never Knew: Finding Healing and Renewal after Trauma, is ready for order as well! Watch on YouTube! Find Phyllis on her website: https://phyllisrobertsonthomas.com/ Get Phyllis' book also: https://www.ineverknewbook.com/ Find Phyllis on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phyllisduckdaughter/?hl=en You can find her on the Duck Dynasty Pod here below: https://youtu.be/9n4Ab6mL9W0?si=YD9337YYIr5_AC6n https://youtu.be/kA4BCl5mhbY?si=MJgoQOfNB0EXjkwk Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 28 Sep 2026 - 671 - Attachment Healing for Every Enneagram Type
Friends, no where in the world is there a perfect spouse who is one hundred percent of the time securely attached, yet we all know secure attachment is what we ALL truly want. In this clarifying and practical episode, Christa walks you through every Enneagram type and ways they can move from the shadows of anxious and avoidant attachment to finding deeper security. It takes a bit of healthy risk, realistic expecations, and a bit of grit, but you'll be so happy you tuned in as you WILL find deeper and healthier connection for putting these tips into practice! Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 23 Sep 2026 - 670 - Brave Love, Great Sex - Healing Attachment Shadows in the Bedroom w/Laurie Watson, Ph.D., Type 2
Most couples have deep desire for sensual and intimate love in the bedroom, and today we're looking at perhaps. the biggest shadow, your attachment shadows in the bedroom with best-selling author Dr. Laurie Watson, Ph.D, (2-9 pairing). We get to talk personality a bit here as Dr. Laurie learns about the Enneagram with us but the foremost (and fascinating) conversation here is about how to bring you safer connection, whether you're anxiously or avoidantly attached. We're also bringing you Laurie's brand new and #1 release book, Brave Love, Great Sex: Harnessing Attachment Theory for Passionate Relationships on attachment and your sex life here! https://a.co/d/0dGyNQ0g. You don't want to miss this fresh and brave conversation about true intimacy! Watch on YouTube! Laurie's podcast, Brave Love, Great Sex is Here! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brave-love-great-sex-couples-therapy-podcast/id1083324677 Get Inside Your Sexy September Intimacy Vault Here! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find Amy here at her website! www.simplywholehearted.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fri, 18 Sep 2026 - 669 - Buried, Not Gone: Rediscovering the Spark You Thought You Lost
To kick off a special Sexy September with Date Your Spouse and a whole collective of marriage voices, Christa reframes fading desire as something covered over rather than lost. Drawing on the dual control model of desire, she shows that most couples don't have a broken accelerator, they have a brake pressed to the floor by stress, resentment, routine, and feeling unseen, plus the hidden shadow layers of shame and old messages about sex. She names the specific things that bury the spark, the mental load, unrepaired hurt, over-familiarity, and the loss of feeling wanted, and offers real hope: buried things can be unearthed. With practical ways to start clearing even one layer this week, this episode is a hopeful, freeing start to the month. And if you want the full science of turning the spark back up, the deep dive shows you exactly how. Get Inside Your Sexy September Intimacy Vault Here! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Get inside the FREE Wholehearted Summit for Weary Women Sept 9-11 here! http://www.simplywholehearted.com/a/2148302131/MhoTboBT Find Amy here at her website! www.simplywholehearted.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 16 Sep 2026 - 668 - Big Feelings, Safe Places: The Shadow of Emotion in Marriage, with Bailey Gillespie, 4
Almost all of us carry a shadow around our own feelings, either we fear them, stuff them down, or let them flood a room until no one can hear each other anymore. In this warm and honest convo, Christa welcomes writer Bailey Gillespie to talk about the shadow of big emotions, and how to bring real containment and boundaries to our feelings without silencing them. Bailey and her husband navigate a rich, layered marriage: neurodiversity including ADHD, a ten-year age gap, and two passionate, emotionally alive temperaments as a type 4 and type 6 pairing. Together, we explore why differentiation is key when both partners feel things deeply, how to hold a big feeling without being held hostage by it, and how to actually express what's real in a way your spouse can receive! If you and your spouse keep losing each other in the storm of big feelings, this one will meet you right where you are, with real hope. Watch on YouTube! Follow Bailey and her writing journey here: https://www.instagram.com/baileylgillespie/ FInd her Substack here: https://baileygillespie.substack.com Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 14 Sep 2026 - 667 - The Shadows That Cost You Closeness For Every Type
We're deep in our month on shadow work, and this one gets personal. Your shadow is the part of you that you'd rather not look at, the old reactions, fears, and wounds running beneath the surface, formed long before you ever met your spouse. And here's the catch: what we won't look at, we tend to act out, usually on the person closest to us. In this episode Christa explores how your shadow shows up in marriage, the overreaction that's bigger than the moment, the story you tell about your spouse that's really about your old wounds, the pattern you swore you'd never repeat. Your spouse often isn't the real problem, they're the screen your shadow gets projected onto. But there's freedom here: when you own your shadow, you stop handing your spouse the blame for what's yours to heal, and the marriage you want may be closer than you think, waiting on the other side of the part of yourself you've been avoiding. Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Get inside the FREE Wholehearted Summit for Weary Women Sept 9-11 here! http://www.simplywholehearted.com/a/2148302131/MhoTboBT Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 09 Sep 2026 - 666 - Couples in the Shadow of Addiction, with Caroline Beidler, MSW, Type 1w9
Addiction rarely stays in one person, it touches the whole family, and it casts a long shadow over marriages, parents, children, and homes. As we continue our month on shadow work, Christa welcomes Caroline Beidler, author, speaker, and Managing Editor of Recovery.com, for an honest and hopeful conversation about loving someone in recovery, with a non-shaming yet healthy boundaried stance as needed. Drawing on her new book and her own lived experience of addiction, mental health, and trauma recovery, Caroline speaks with the warmth, grit, and insight her readers know her for in her Type 1w9 gift of goodness and active peace. Together, we explore what it means to love someone through addiction and recovery without losing yourself, how the shadow of addiction shapes a family's patterns and roles, the boundaries that protect both love and safety, and where real hope and healing take root! Whether addiction has touched your family directly or you walk alongside someone whose has, this conversation will meet you with compassion and light. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get Caroline's helpful book here, When You Love Someone in Recovery! https://a.co/d/0faMBOJI Find Caroline on www.recovery.com Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 07 Sep 2026 - 665 - NEW Sept Series: The Shadow Side of Selflessness
Serving is beautiful, but there's a shadow side to it, the point where selflessness turns into self-erasure and a person, more often a woman, slowly disappears inside their own marriage or role. In this episode, Christa gently names coercive control, the slow stripping away of a person's freedom, voice, and even their grip on reality, and how it can hide behind spiritual words and show up alongside narcissism. She reframes boundaries as part of how love stays healthy and safe, sometimes even lifesaving. If this names something you're living, you don't have to carry it alone. Christa shares real support, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You were never meant to disappear. You were meant to be seen, safe, and whole. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Get inside the FREE Wholehearted Summit for Weary Women Sept 9-11 here! http://www.simplywholehearted.com/a/2148302131/MhoTboBT Find Amy here at her website! www.simplywholehearted.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 02 Sep 2026 - 664 - Subscriber Series (FREE): The Two Shadows in Every Type: Overly Controlling and Complying
Here in this (free) subscriber series episode, Christa goes deeper into how self-erasure takes root for each of the nine types in this subscriber episode released for our entire audience. For a lot of women, it started early, praised for being easy, agreeable, and self-sacrificing, until saying no felt impossible. That's not always humility. Sometimes it's a wound wearing the costume of virtue. She looks at how coercive control and narcissism find and exploit that shadow, and how faith language gets twisted to keep a person silent. Then she turns toward healing, telling yourself the truth, finding a safe voice, and slowly rebuilding a self that's allowed to want, feel, need, and say no. Listen here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 02 Sep 2026 - 663 - When You're Too Weary for the Work, with Amy Wicks, 7
So many this 2026 are bone-tired, pouring themselves out for everyone around them until there is nothing left, and then feeling guilty for having no energy left for the inner work they know matters, especially if they're going to have anything to bring to their spouse or familiy. In this warm and honest conversation, Christa welcomes Amy Wicks to talk about the conference she has created just for the weary, happening September 9 through 11. Together they explore why so many people are running on empty, how our own weariness and unhealed places show up in our marriages without our realizing it, and what it looks like to be restored when we are too tired to even begin. Amy shares about the remarkable voices gathering to teach, including Chuck DeGroat and Aundi Kolber, and Christa, who will be speaking on the marriage piece, talks about why our relationships need us to come full rather than empty. For the one who is too weary for the work, this is a gentle invitation to be filled first. Come join the convo + conference!! Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Get inside the FREE Wholehearted Summit for Weary Women Sept 9-11 here! http://www.simplywholehearted.com/a/2148302131/MhoTboBT Find Amy here at her website! www.simplywholehearted.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 31 Aug 2026 - 662 - The Gift Your Marriage Never Knew It Needed: A Full You
As we have named what our spouses cannot carry for us, now we turn the corner to the best gift your marriage never knew it needed, and it is not a date night or a new technique, it is a full you. If your spouse cannot give you your worth, your aliveness, or your sense of purpose, then where do these things actually come from? Christa explores the needs that do not disappear when we stop asking our spouse to be our everything, and the things only we can tend for ourselves with the SPARKS analogy she uses, to help you find your way back to your own joy, your own worth, your own inner growth, and your own relationship with God, where we are fully seen even when the people around us are depleted. Far from being one more burden, she shows why this is a gift: when you come to your marriage full rather than empty, you free your spouse from a job they were always going to fail at, and you free yourself from the ache of waiting. With practical ways to begin tending your own soul this week, this is a freeing turn toward wholeness! Watch on YouTube! We also share about the Enneagram and Marriage coaching certification, starting 9/15 where Christa trains others to help couples reclaim what is theirs to tend. Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 26 Aug 2026 - 661 - When Parenting Takes Everything, with Abbey Howe, 3
When the kids need everything, there is often very little left over for the marriage, and yet if our family is going to make it, fighting for it is your work to do. To this end, Christa welcomes Abbey Howe, theater graduate, beloved Enneagram voice, and the mind behind memes that have made so many of us laugh and feel seen on IG and YouTube, for a real talk about marriage in the thick of the parenting years. Abbey is living this season herself, adjusting to the genuine demands of raising a little one, and she brings both honesty and hope to this convo in her 3-4 pairing. The research is clear that marital satisfaction often dips when children are young, with less time, less sleep, and less connection to go around, and yet the couples who stay intentional come through these years with a bond that grows deeper, not weaker. Together, Christa and Abbey talk about what a spouse can and cannot carry in this season, why a parent has to tend our own self-care rather than wait for the marriage to refill us completely, and how learning to play again, to laugh and lighten up, can bring life back to both a weary parent and a tired marriage. If you are deep in the parenting years or want to remember how to bless someone in this season as you offer wisdom, this one will meet you right where you are! Watch on YouTube, too! Abbey's Team Workshops and Websites! https://abbeyhowe.com/ Abbey's book is here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1632175681?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Follow Abbey Howe's wildly popular YouTube here! https://www.youtube.com/abbeyhowe Find Abbey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enneagramwithabbey/?hl=en Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 24 Aug 2026 - 660 - What Your Spouse Can and Can't Hold (Mind the Gap!)
As we're talking about all month, every marriage has gaps and seasons where connection runs thin or a need goes unspoken for too long. As you're learning to healthily differentiate, don't move so far away that you lose sight of the connections you DO need to have. Find where your healthy and unhealthy gaps are right here and make the healthiest move for you and your family as we learn together in this mid-week mini! Watch on YouTube! Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 19 Aug 2026 - 659 - Grief, Remarriage, and the Love That Lasts, with Clarissa Moll, 6
This is a special and tender episode to close our month on what our spouses can and cannot carry for us, because some things, like grief, are simply too heavy for any one person to hold alone. Christa welcomes the award-winning writer and podcaster Clarissa Moll, who produces and moderates Christianity Today's flagship news podcast, The Bulletin, and who has become one of the most trusted voices on grief and hope. In 2019, Clarissa's husband Rob (type 9) died suddenly in a hiking accident at Mt. Rainier, leaving her to raise their four children as a widow, and out of that valley came her best-selling book, Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss. Now a remarried widow (6-2 pairing) building a joyful blended family, Clarissa shares what it means to move through grief rather than around it, how a new marriage holds the memory of a former love, why no single person can be the whole of our healing, and where hope must take hold again after loss. No matter your loss, this conversation will meet you right where you are. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Clarissa Moll is an award-winning writer and podcaster who helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Her writing (https://www.clarissamoll.com/writing) appears in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, RELEVANT, Modern Loss, Grief Digest and more. She cohosted Christianity Today’s [“Surprised by Grief”](https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/surprised-by-grief/) podcast and is a frequent guest(https://www.clarissamoll.com/speaking) at events, on podcasts, and radio shows. She also hangs out behind the microphone as the producer and moderator of Christianity Today’s flagship news podcast, “The Bulletin.“(https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/bulletin/) Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 17 Aug 2026 - 658 - Your Virtue, Your Vice, and Awakening to Your True Purposes
So much of what we hand our spouse to fix is really our own inner work in disguise. In this episode, Christa turns to two of the most useful words the Enneagram gives us: your vice and your virtue. Your vice is the emotional pattern that runs the show under stress, the overused survival strategy of your type, and your virtue is the higher quality that naturally emerges as you heal and grow. We'll walk together through all nine types, and show you that the journey from vice to virtue is intentional and costly, but truly worthy too as your purposes become clearer each day. When we instead ask our spouse to soothe all of our aches instead of doing our own work, we exhaust them and stay stuck, but when we own it, we free them and we grow. With honest, practical steps for naming your vice, catching it in the small daily moments, and taking one step toward your virtue, this is a freeing reminder that the most loving thing you can do for your marriage is often to go do your own inner work! Plus a look at the coaching certification where Christa trains others to walk couples through exactly this. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Use the code COACH for $250 off - or - use a payment plan!!Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.comTake the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.comLove what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here!Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 12 Aug 2026 - 657 - The Blind Spots Between Us, with Beatrice Chestnut, 2
Christa welcomes the beloved Beatrice Chestnut, one of the most respected voices in the Enneagram world, for a rich conversation on the three centers of intelligence, the body, the heart, and the head, and how each one shapes the way we love, fight, and connect in relationships. So much of what we wrongly ask our spouse to carry comes from the parts of ourselves we have not yet done our own work on, and Bea's teaching gives us a map for exactly that work. Together they explore how most of us lead from one center while neglecting the others, often without realizing it, and the blind spots that creates between two people trying to love each other well. They look at how a body-led, a heart-led, and a head-led partner can so easily misread one another, why meeting your spouse in their center rather than expecting them to move to yours is essential, and how the passions beneath our types quietly drive the same fights on repeat. This pivotal conversation offers a way to see yourself and your spouse with more compassion, and to stop handing your partner what was always yours to tend. This is a meaningful part of this month's series on what our spouses were never meant to hold. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get inside the Enneagram and Marriage Coaching and Masterclass classroom here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 10 Aug 2026 - 656 - Where Our Deeper Needs Really Belong with Coach Linda Hannigan, 3
This week Christa welcomes Linda Hannigan, 3 (3-1 pairing), an Enneagram and Marriage certified coach, gifted orator, and truth teller whose candor and artistry make her a joy to learn from. Together they continue the August question of what our spouses can and cannot carry for us, and where our deeper needs actually belong. Linda brings her signature honesty, willing to talk openly about the strengths and the tender places in her own marriage, even as she helps us tend our spiritual lives along the way. They explore how we so often hand our spouse longings that were never theirs to hold, why bringing those deeper needs to God and to a wider community brings such freedom, and how truth telling, done with grace, actually draws a couple closer rather than driving them apart. It is a rich, warm, and honest conversation. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Find Linda's coaching website: https://www.9lumens.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/9lumens/ Watch Linda's Galatians sermon: https://youtu.be/j6B9vsq5f7I?si=jIGcPIfnZd9meoCL Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 05 Aug 2026 - 655 - Feeling Unnoticed in Marriage: What Your Spouse Can't Do for You
So many of us have handed our spouse a job description they were never meant to fill, to notice our every need, validate our worth, provide our purpose, and keep us feeling seen, alive, and whole. And when they fall short, we feel unnoticed, disappointed, and we start to wonder if something is wrong with the marriage. In this opening series episode, Christa asks a different question: what if the problem is not your spouse, and not your marriage, but the weight of an impossible expectation? She explores the real ache of feeling unnoticed by the person closest to you, why one human being simply cannot be your entire world, and how your instinctual wiring, whether self-preservation, social, or sexual, shapes exactly what you long for your spouse to notice. Along the way she offers a warm challenge, do not be afraid to be the one who loves first, as well as practical, hopeful ways to tend your own aliveness, worth, and purpose so you can actually free your spouse to love you well. Because the less you need them to be everything, the more you get to enjoy who they truly are. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 03 Aug 2026 - 654 - The Intimacy of Being Believed In: The Michelangelo Effect
Close partners sculpt one another by drawing out each other's ideal self, as we learn from the Michelangelo phenomenon, we find that couples who idealize each other are more likely to last and even grow into the best version the other sees in them, Christa explores how love, at its healthiest, is not blind but prescient. She also names the wise center of it all: we are not called to flatter a partner in ways that leave them feeling unseen, but to idealize their virtues while still truly knowing their reality, holding both grace and honesty at once. And she names the shadow side, the Pygmalion pattern, where a critical gaze draws out the lesser self, because we are always sculpting one another, the only question is in which direction. A beautiful, research-grounded invitation to catch the best in the person you love, and call out the self they are still becoming. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 29 Jul 2026 - 653 - The Body Keeps the Score in the Bedroom: Intimacy, Safety, and Learning to Regulate
We often treat physical intimacy as something that happens only in the moment, but the body carries far more than the moment. It carries our history, our stress, and our old wounds, everything it has learned about whether it is safe to open. Drawing on Bessel van der Kolk's landmark work, The Body Keeps the Score, Christa explores how stress and trauma live not just in the mind but in the body itself, and how, when a person who has been hurt tries to be close, the body can tense, freeze, or flood with anxiety before the mind ever gets a vote. She gently unpacks why couples so often misread this as rejection when it is really the nervous system keeping the score of something old, why pushing through only re-teaches the body that intimacy is unsafe, and how the body comes back online, slowly, through safety, patience, warm touch, and the freedom to stop. Most of all, she offers a word of hope: a body that protects itself is one that once needed protecting, and it can learn a new score, written in the language of safety rather than force. If this is your story or your spouse's, this episode will meet you with real gentleness. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 27 Jul 2026 - 652 - How The Odyssey Maps the Journey of Your Own Growth
Many Enneagram teachers have used the Odyssey as a way to talk through the nine types, since there are nine temptations, nine believable reasons to never make it home. Yet each island of trials offers the hero (you!) a real gift of virtue, if you can look past the trap of the very thing keeping you from home. When we instead finally face God and the open sea, when we finally humble ourselves, virtue begins. Whatever your number, whatever gift has quietly become your hiding place, the sea is still out there, and so is home. Come discover which island you have been hiding on, and take one brave step back toward the open water, because the journey home to your truest self is always worth the crossing. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Read the Odyssey Substack here! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 - 651 - When Sex Feels Like One More Thing to Do
Here Christa turns to a different weight so many couples carry: what happens when the body is simply depleted, exhausted, touched-out, and running on empty, and sex stops feeling like connection and starts feeling like one more thing on an endless list. Going under the hood of the dual control model, she explains why exhaustion is one of the most powerful brakes on desire there is, why the depleted nervous system treats wanting as a luxury it cannot afford, and why being touched-out after a day of being physically needed is real and physiological, not a character flaw or a lack of love. She names the trap couples fall into, that adding pressure to something already felt as a task only presses the brake harder, and offers the real way back: reducing the load, protecting rest, sharing the mental and physical labor, reintroducing warm no-agenda touch, and reframing intimacy as restoration rather than one more output. Because you cannot guilt a depleted body into desire, you can only refill it and let desire return. Warm, freeing, and deeply practical for anyone in a full, weary season. Listen here! Watch YouTube here! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 22 Jul 2026 - 650 - The Art of (Married) Seduction w/Dr. Anna Elton, PhD
Seduction inside a long marriage sounds like a contradiction, and Dr. Anna Elton is here to tell us it is anything but. In this rich conversation, Christa welcomes Dr. Elton to unpack her framework for what she calls the desire equilibrium, the idea that desire is not one thing but three: desiring yourself, desiring your partner, and letting yourself feel wanted. Most couples pour all their energy into the middle one and wonder why nothing shifts. Dr. Elton explains why self-desire is the least threatening place to begin and also the most skipped, why receiving desire is genuinely harder than giving it, and how we quietly push love away the moment it arrives by downplaying a compliment, deflecting with humor, or changing the subject before the feeling has time to land. She also makes the case that context changes everything, that the very same loving gesture can feel inviting in one moment and invasive in the next, and that timing, mental load, and emotional transition often matter far more than the gesture itself. This episode offers a real path back, one that begins not with technique but with learning your own worth, and not being afraid to truly focus on the magic you can create together once again or for the very first time! Watch on YouTube! Read Dr. Anna Elton's book, The Formula of Desire, here! https://a.co/d/0hc3qCLe Visit her website here! https://annaelton.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 20 Jul 2026 - 649 - Beloved and Imperfect: Meredith Hite Estevez, Loving One Another As Works of God's Art
As a special invitation in the middle of our summer exploring desire and intimacy in marriage, Christa pauses to learn from and to share an experience with a soulful friend, welcoming Meredith Hite Estevez, a Juilliard-trained oboist, writer, creative coach, and Enneagram Type 4 married to a Type 7, for a conversation about her beautiful new book, Art Is How God Loves Us. Meredith reframes art not as a measure of talent but as something available to every one of us, a way God speaks, heals, and draws us close. Together they explore how beauty and brokenness alike become places of divine connection, why creativity is a form of communion, and what it means to see yourself as a work of art, beloved, unfinished, and held by a Creator who has not stopped creating you. This is an invitation to dig in personally, not just as a couple, but just you and God! Read Art is How God Loves Us here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G6TGQDVX?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback www.ArtistsforJoy.com Listen to Meredith's award-winning podcast here! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/artists-for-joy/id1509742324 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fri, 17 Jul 2026 - 648 - Play as a Path Back to Desire: How Fun Reignites Your Sexual Intimacy
Today, Christa reveals the surprising other half of the connection coin when it comes to sexual intimacy: desire does not only need safety, it needs aliveness. Christa names the play deficit that creeps into long marriages as we become expert co-managers of a household and forget how to delight in each other, and shares Amy Muise's fascinating research on self-expansion, the finding that novel, creative activities done together are directly linked to higher sexual desire in long-term couples, even for those genuinely struggling with low desire. Come learn about play as the neurological fuel for wanting, a kind of foreplay that lowers the brake and presses the accelerator at once! Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 15 Jul 2026 - 647 - Seen, Known, and Wanted: The Three Keys to Real Sexual Intimacy
Why do so many couples feel stuck in the bedroom even after decades of marriage? Christa goes straight at the real reason in this episode, the armor we put on to avoid being truly seen. Being physically intimate with your spouse asks something genuinely brave of us, to be seen not just in body but in our wanting, our desire, our reaching, and most of us have gotten very good at hiding those tender parts. She unpacks why being fully known is the very thing that lets the body open, why emotional safety and physical desire are never actually separate, and how protecting what is tender, including offering a kind but firm no when you need one, keeps intimacy safe enough to thrive. If you have ever felt unseen or guarded with the person who loves you most, this one is for you. Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 13 Jul 2026 - 646 - Afterglow: The 48 Hours That Change Your Marriage
We tend to think of physical intimacy as a moment, here and then gone. But the research reveals it is actually a window, a lingering afterglow that lasts up to forty-eight hours, and what happens inside that window may matter even more than the moment itself. In this episode Christa unpacks Andrea Meltzer's fascinating research on sexual afterglow, the finding that satisfaction stays elevated for about two days after intimacy and quietly predicts relationship happiness months later. She also does something most teachers skip: she checks whether the finding holds beyond newlyweds, and shares the honest answer, that it has since been replicated in married and committed couples across a range of relationship lengths, so this is not just a honeymoon-phase sparkle. Rather than framing intimacy as a chore, she reveals it as a catalyst, a rolling buffer of goodwill that softens conflict and helps you see your spouse more generously. She connects it to positive and negative sentiment override, why stress quietly tilts us toward reading our partner negatively, and how the healthiest couples catch that tilt in themselves, and names why the sting of rejection lingers even longer than the glow, which is why tender repair matters so much. Warm, freeing, and grounded in real science. Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 08 Jul 2026 - 645 - Initiation: Who Reaches, Who Pulls Back, and Why
Almost every couple navigates it, and almost nobody talks about it openly: the vulnerable dance of initiation. Who reaches for whom, who tends to pull back, and the quiet hurt that builds around it over the years. In this tender and practical episode, Christa brings one of the most unspoken dynamics in marriage into the light. She explains why the lower-initiating partner is so often not less interested but more wounded, how the pursuer-distancer cycle plays out painfully around physical intimacy, and why it is almost never about frequency but about the meaning each reach and pull-back has come to carry. She shows how your Enneagram type and especially your instincts shape who reaches and who waits, why a self-preservation-led spouse may need to feel settled before desire comes online, and why a sexual-instinct-led spouse may feel the lack more acutely. Then she offers a clear, gentle path to change the dance: naming the pattern without blame, separating a no to this moment from a no to you, and making reaching feel safe again for both people. If initiation has become a sore place in your marriage, this episode will help you understand that you are not broken, your spouse is not broken, and the pattern can change. Plus, the Awakening Intimacy course is open and on sale now, one hundred dollars off, with this tender work woven right in. Watch on YouTube! Show notes: Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 06 Jul 2026 - 644 - Lighting (Safe but Sexy) Fireworks in Your Marriage
Today we open the July series on sexual intimacy, and there's no better week for lighting the (safe but sexy) fireworks. Not the ones in the sky, the ones in your marriage. Christa dismantles the myth that real passion just strikes like lightning and reveals what the thriving couples actually know: fireworks are built, not stumbled upon, and synthesizes her decades of experience of working with couples to the often-misunderstood Enneagram sexual instinct, reminding listeners that the sexual instinct involves not only the foundational intimacy that we covered in June, but also novelty, intensity, and creative aliveness, not just one-to-one bonding. You'll learn why that matters for your spark, helping you to dissolve years of, sadness, shame and confusion around this area. Warm, honest, faith-friendly, and genuinely freeing, this episode is for you! Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 - 643 - The Foundation Before the (Sexual) Fireworks
This is the turning point of the Summer of Intimacy, the bridge from everything we have built in June into the sexual intimacy series beginning in July. But this episode names something deeper that has been happening all along. All month, Christa has not been teaching you to try harder at your marriage, she has been guiding you toward second-order change, a concept from family systems work that means transforming the actual rules and patterns of your relationship rather than just doing more of the same. In this episode she unpacks the difference between first-order change, pressing the gas in a car stuck in the mud, and second-order change, getting out of the mud entirely, and shows how learning to bear witness, build love maps, and put safety before closeness are not just techniques, they were a rewiring of the whole system. Then we land in the research on desire, why for healthy people, desire is responsive and flows out of emotional connection rather than appearing on its own. This is the groundwork we lay before the fireworks. Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 29 Jun 2026 - 642 - Two Essential Paths to Intimacy: Joy and Connection
In this crowning summer episode every listener needs to lean in for, Christa unpacks the two paths back to each other: connection, the path of being deeply known, grounded in John Gottman's research on love maps and turning toward bids, and joy, the path of shared aliveness, grounded in Arthur Aron's self-expansion studies on novelty and lasting passion. You will learn why you and your spouse may reach in different directions, why that mismatch causes so much hurt, and why the thriving couples learn to walk through both doors. Christa closes with a simple reflection to help you name which path your marriage is hungry for this season you don't want to miss. Plus, the Awakening Intimacy course is open and on sale right now with two tracks built around exactly this. Watch on YouTube! Get the Awakening Intimacy Journal here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Take the E + M Quiz at www.QuizforCouples.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 24 Jun 2026 - 641 - 25 Years In: What I've Learned About Intimacy
Today Christa talks through 25 years of marriage to Wes - and instead of a typical teaching episode, we're reflecting on the story arc of marriages that thrive. Christa shares a lessonn about her own parents and their 25th, that didn't go the way she expected, what her dad unwittingly taught her about really seeing the person you love, and what 25 years has shown her about intimacy. She also shares a few practical tips through the lens of the three desires - SP, SO, SX - and the story behind The Three Desires book cover (releasing Feb 2, 2027), featuring the breathtaking Antelope Canyon. If you're newlywed, in the trenches, or approaching your own milestone anniversary with thoughtfulness and a desire to genuinely grow in character, this one is dedicated to you. Show notes: Sign up for the Awakening Intimacy Intensive 5 week courses now (Awakening Connection or Awakening Joy) now!! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! OPEN for Registration! The E + M Summer Intensives, Awakening Connection (Track 1) and Awakening Adventure (Track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Click here! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 22 Jun 2026 - 640 - What to Do When Sharing Backfires: Emotional Processing Containers
When you finally open up and say the vulnerable thing that needed to be said and shared, what next? Often, your spouse gets defensive, shuts down, or fires back, and now you're less likely to ever share again. This is one of the most common and heartbreaking cycles in marriage: vulnerability that backfires actually creates MORE hiding, not less. In this episode of the Summer of Intimacy series, Christa introduces the concept of emotional processing containers - structures that protect vulnerability so that sharing actually leads to connection instead of more hurt, so you can create a marriage where both of you feel safe enough to keep showing up and delighting in your live and shared light. For every Enneagram type, in every season of marriage, this episode will give you practical tools to make vulnerability work, even after a hard start. Listen here to this hope-filled message! Watch on YouTube! Show notes: Get on the waitlist so you can get info about our Awakening Intimacy Intensive! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 - 639 - Subscriber Series: The Container Method - Emotional Safety for Every Type in Marriage (Free to All This Week!)
This week's deep dive is FREE for everyone, and we mean everyone. Whether you're a longtime Collective member or brand new here, this one's a gift. We're going deeper into emotional processing containers, but this time we're breaking it down by Enneagram type. We cover every type in marriage: what backfires for each, what container works best, and how to create emotional safety with your specific spouse in your specific dynamic. This is the most practical, type-by-type episode we've done in the Summer of Intimacy series - and we wanted every listener to have access to it. No subscription required this week, it's a topic everyone desperately needs. Show notes: Get on the waitlist so you can get info about our Awakening Intimacy Intensive! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 - 638 - Hiding in Your Marriage: What It's Quietly Costing Your Connection
Do you tell your spouse every sip of coffee, every flirt at the grocery store, every small moment of frustration? Probably not, and that is not automatically a problem. But there is a real difference between healthy discretion and quiet hiding, and when we do the latter, it costs us more than we realize. This week we are opening up the question of what we share, what we keep to ourselves, and why. We will look at what faith and the research says about secrets and disclosure in marriage, and how our Enneagram centers shape our own particular flavor of hiding. Grab your coffee and settle in, this one gets personal but also has some lovely and light moments so you can connect with safety and fun, too! Watch on YouTube! Show notes: Get on the waitlist so you can get info about our Awakening Intimacy Intensive! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 15 Jun 2026 - 637 - The Tiny Moments That Make or Break Your Marriage: Emotional Bids
What if the thing that determines whether your marriage thrives or slowly fades isn't the big fights or the grand gestures, but the hundred tiny moments in between? In this episode, Christa unpacks one of Gottman's most important and least-talked-about discoveries: emotional bids. Every day your spouse is making small, quiet requests for connection, and you're either turning toward them, away from them, or against them without even realizing it. Learn what bids actually look like (they almost never announce themselves), why partners with the same love language can still miss each other constantly, and the one shift that changes the entire relational climate in your home. This episode is part of the Summer of Intimacy series. Show notes: Get on the waitlist so you can get info about our Awakening Intimacy Intensive! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 10 Jun 2026 - 636 - How to Stop Assuming the Worst About Your Spouse: Positive Sentiment Override
What if the distance you feel in your marriage isn't about love at all, but about a bank account that has quietly run low? In episode three of the Summer of Intimacy series, Christa dives into one of Gottman's most powerful research findings, positive sentiment override, and the hidden force that erodes it faster than almost anything else: mental load. If you have been quicker to snap, quicker to assume the worst, or quicker to feel alone even when your spouse is right there, this episode will give you the language for what is actually happening and a way back toward each other. Plus, Christa shares how she and Wes put last week's love maps questions into practice on a real date this week, and how you can do the same. The Awakening Intimacy waitlist is now open, link in show notes. Show notes: Get on the waitlist so you can get info about our Awakening Intimacy Intensive! Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 08 Jun 2026 - 635 - The Emotional Intimacy Secret Behind Couples Who Last
The couples who drift apart are rarely the ones fighting the most, they are the ones who simply stopped being curious. In this episode, Christa unpacks the love maps research and then hands you the exact questions each Enneagram type secretly longs to be asked, the kind of conversation starters made for a porch swing, a long summer drive, or those quiet few minutes at the end of the day. She also walks through the part that matters most, what to do after you ask, and the difference between hearing an answer and truly staying for it. Plus there is a free grab-and-go resource so you can take these questions straight to your next date night. Emotional intimacy is the foundation that every other kind of intimacy is built on, and this episode is where the whole summer begins. Listen with your love here! Listen on YouTube! Show notes: Get your E + M Love Map Questions Freebie here! Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 03 Jun 2026 - 634 - The Summer of Intimacy Starter Special
As we reflect on what irt really takes to create long-lasting, satisfying love, this summer season, we're coming into a place of focus, and this kickstarter episode launches the Summer of Intimacy, sixteen episodes across June and July covering every layer of what it means to be truly known and truly chosen by your spouse. June goes deep into emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and playful intimacy, everything that comes before the bedroom and matters just as much. July goes into desire, the body, and physical intimacy in full. Don't skip ahead. You can't have true physical intimacy without defining what intimacy really is on an emotional level as we discover what it means to truly know and love each other. Start here and stay all summer. Watch on YouTube! Show notes: Stay tuned for our Summer Intensives, Awakening Intimacy (track 1) and Awakening Adventure (track 2) beginning the week of July 13! Scroll down on our podcast page to find episodes on intimacy here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/pod Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 01 Jun 2026 - 633 - Limerence Uncovered: When Romantic Obsession Replaces Real Love w/Author Amanda McCracken
Meet author, New York Times viral writer, and wife/mom Amanda McCracken, the woman who sat beside Katie Couric and was told she had 'fairytale princess syndrome' as she dreamed of romantic love. This comment launched a ten year research journey that became the book, When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love, that we're talking about today on the brand new pod. Discover how limerence - obsessive romantic rumination - became both self-protection, avoidance, and self-sabotage all in one, not delivering and yet keeping thousands of individuals (married or single) from the healthy relationship they desired. Learn about the intersection of personality and limerent patterns, the science behind why we get addicted to unavailable people, and most, practical steps toward authentic love. Watch on YouTube! Show links: Get Amanda McCracken's book, "When Longing Becomes Your Lover" here! Learn more about Amanda and her writing here! Follow Amanda on Instagram here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 27 May 2026 - 632 - Hormones, Marriage, and Shifting Desire: Dr. Cathleen Gerenger, 7, on Thriving When Everything Changes
After a car accident sent her on a deeply personal journey into bodywork and healing, Dr. Cathleen Gerenge, Type 7, discovered that the path to thriving was not just clinical but deeply embodied, and that lesson changed the way she practices and the way she lives, and she brings her brilliance to us about thyroid, specific hormones, and taking care of us, just as she too found results and also the energy back for community in the Vietnamese beauty and wellness industry, winning Ms. Vietnamese Florida after age fifty! In this conversation we talk about every decade of a man and woman's life across hormones, what's happening with thyroid, progesterone, testosterone, and more, the hormonal connection to irritability and disconnection and lost desire in marriage, and what it actually looks like to take your health and your marriage back at any stage. This is a holiday weekend, which means food and gatherings and all the joy of being together, and it also means a beautiful moment to pause and ask: am I taking care of the body my marriage lives inside? Dr. Gerenger is warm, brilliant, and refreshingly honest about her own journey. This one is going to stay with you. Watch on YouTube! Follow her wildly helpful Instagram here ~ https://www.instagram.com/dr_cathleen/ Find Dr. Cathleen's Comprehensive Lab Checklist here and get on her list to learn more about her services! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 25 May 2026 - 631 - The Science of Staying in Love: Novel and Creative Events
As we learn more about what relationship science says, we learn that not only was your brain designed for continued new learning, but fascinatingly, your marriage was designed to benefit from it, too. Researcher Arthur Aron has spent decades studying what keeps couples not just together but genuinely in love, and what he found might surprise you: novel shared experiences do not just make a marriage more fun, they actually restore the feeling of falling in love all over again, sometimes surpassing even the honeymoon stage. In this episode, Christa brings the research to life, weaving together Aron's self-expansion theory, the neuroscience of dopamine and creativity, and what nervous system regulation has to do with whether you and your spouse can actually play together anymore. This episode is practical, research-backed, and full of the kind of insight that makes you want to go try something new with your person as soon as possible! Watch on YouTube! Want even more? Listen to an even deeper dive on Apple here with the subscriber series! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 20 May 2026 - 630 - Love Is Blind Star Kelly Chase: When a Type 3 Finally Comes Home to Herself (And Stops Self-Abandonment)
Kelly Chase, the breakout star of Love Is Blind, Season 1, brings something to this conversation that goes far deeper than what the world got to see when she said "no" at the altar. As a Type 3. we get to talk about the inside of the life of a type 3, as Kelly talks about both sides of the Performer personality, the side that performs to others and abandons self, and the version of herself that was slowly disappearing in the effort to keep everyone else comfortable, and the side that finally knows more and more who she is and what she needs to do for a healthy and balanced, authentic life. This conversation goes into nervous system regulation, rejection wounds, chemistry versus true compatibility, and what it looks like when a heart type finally stops performing her way through life and starts actually feeling it instead, plus ways for YOU to be coached and dialed in with your own business! Watch on YouTube! Here's the website! https://www.chaselifewithkelly.com/ Kelly's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chaselifewithkelly/?hl=en Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too, here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 18 May 2026 - 629 - Up Close and Personal w/Milana Vayntrub, Type 7, Project Hail Mary, Finding Rest, and Growing Into Your Best Self
Milana Vayntrub is an actress, comedian, and activist born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, who came to prominence as Lily Adams in AT&T commercials — and in 2026 she stepped into something entirely new, playing Olesya Ilyukhina, a Russian engineer and cosmonaut in the blockbuster film Project Hail Mary alongside Ryan Gosling. But this conversation goes somewhere the red carpet does not. Milana is a Type 7 with real threads of 3 and 8 running through her — and one of the most honest things she brings to this conversation is what it actually took to stop hoarding time. The 7 who is always planning the next thing, always keeping an escape route open, always making sure the calendar stays full enough to outrun the feelings — that is the pattern she names out loud. We go deep on what rest means for a type that treats stillness like a threat, what it looks like to actually be present in your own life and your own marriage, her co-founding of Can't Do Nothing, the organization she built to spotlight the refugee crisis, and what Project Hail Mary taught her about the kind of connection that makes survival possible. Warm, funny, and more honest than you might expect. Find Milana on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/mintmilana/?hl=en Get your Date Your Spouse kit for 90% off for a limited time here! https://shop.dateyourspouse.com/products/marriage-bundle-2026?sca_ref=6272364.4hv7IY3580 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 13 May 2026 - 628 - When Your Hormones Are Costing Your Health and Family w/Dr. Alicia Newsome, Type 3
There are times in life when you're exhausted, foggy, perhaps having headaches or gaining weight, and running on empty in your energy, and thus your marriage, and yet it's hard to explain why, since your habits haven't changed much. Dr. Alicia Newsome joins us today to talk about all of this and more as a physician who specializes in root-cause hormone care, and she is here to tell you that what is happening in your body is absolutely affecting what is happening in your relationship. In this conversation we talk about hormonal shifts, what blood panels you should actually be asking for, the role of rest as a clinical non-negotiable, and what it looks like to stop settling for a body that is just surviving. If you have ever felt like something is off but nobody has been able to tell you what, this episode is your starting point. Watch on YouTube!! https://youtu.be/Hyes4xveQxI Find Dr. Alicia Newsome here! https://www.dralicianewsome.com/ Follow Dr. Alicia on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/dr.alicianewsome/ Get your Date Your Spouse kit for 90% off for a limited time here! https://shop.dateyourspouse.com/products/marriage-bundle-2026?sca_ref=6272364.4hv7IY3580 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 11 May 2026 - 627 - Taking Care of You So You Can Bear Witness to Each Other
It is Maycember and everyone is running on empty, and your marriage still needs you. Not the leftover version. The actual you. In this episode, Christa makes the connection nobody talks about: taking care of yourself is not separate from loving your spouse, it is what makes you capable of the most generous thing a marriage asks of you. Bearing witness. Staying in the dark with your person without fixing, reframing, or rushing toward the light. This one is going to name something you have been feeling but haven't had words for yet. Listen on YouTube! Get your Date Your Spouse kit for 90% off for a limited time here! https://shop.dateyourspouse.com/products/marriage-bundle-2026?sca_ref=6272364.4hv7IY3580 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 06 May 2026 - 626 - Finding Strength in Marriage When Your Health Fails w/Sydney Bennett
We are kicking off a new month of Enneagram and Marriage on health and wellness in marriage, and we are starting it in the deeps, in the heart of physical suffering. Today Christa interviews Sydney Anne Bennett, author, military wive, and storyteller with over 300K followers who became disabled two weeks after her honeymoon. Diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder, a condition where the brain misfires its signals to the body, she now lives with daily seizures, chronic pain, and mobility loss. What she built inside of that is something I could not stop thinking about. Her new book Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken is part memoir, part survival guide, and entirely honest about what it looks like to fight for faith when your body, your world, and sometimes your church are not cooperating. If you are walking through anything chronic, physical, mental, emotional, relational, this conversation is for you. Watch on YouTube! Show Links: Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken: Fighting for Faith When You're Falling Apart, Get Sydney's brand new book here! https://a.co/0cnmhIBE Follow Sydney on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/the.annegirl/ Get your Date Your Spouse kit for 90% off for a limited time here! https://shop.dateyourspouse.com/products/marriage-bundle-2026?sca_ref=6272364.4hv7IY3580 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 04 May 2026 - 625 - Finding Your Healthy Voice in Your Marriage w/Jamie and Ruthie Slingerland, 7-9 Pairing
Today's guests are #1 high-level ICF-trained (top 2% of coaches) Jamie Slingerland, MCC and Ruthie Perez Slingerland, MCC married coaches, Enneagram mentors, and business partners who, brick by brick, have built a healthy communication pattern across years, even with opposite though both joyful personalities. Listen as we chat with Jamie and Ruthie Slingerland (7-9 pairing), and what happened when and why their previous dynamic finally had to change, and what it took to find a healthy voice for both of them. If you've been living in a similar dynamic, but haven't had words for it yet, or you'd like to learn more about becoming an ICF coach under their academy, this episode is for you! Watch on YouTube! Find Jamie and Ruthie's Coaching Academy for an ICF Credential here: www.CatalystCoachAcademy.com To get coaching with Jamie or Ruthie, visit www.FreedomLifeJourney.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 - 624 - How We Really Fight - And Heal: A Conflict Masterclass w/Russ Hudson (Shock Points, Harmonics & the Instincts)
Russ Hudson, co-founder of the Enneagram Institute and author of The Wisdom of the Enneagram, joins Christa for a masterclass on conflict. This isn't just "here's what your type does wrong", Russ breaks down the deeper architecture of how we fight: shock points (the places where we get triggered and can't think), harmonic groups (the patterns underneath how we process conflict), and the instincts (how self-preservation, sexual, and social show up when we're wounded). He explains why understanding these frameworks changes everything. This episode is the capstone that ties it our work together all month, theoretically, practically, and full of heart and hope for you both! Watch on YouTube! Get connected with ALL Russ is doing in NYC, Cali, and all over the world! www.RussHudson.com Learn about your type and his work at www.EnneagramInstitute.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 27 Apr 2026 - 623 - Same Conversation, Different Experience: Why Couples Miss Each Other w/Jason VanRuler, 2
Christa sits down with Jason VanRuler (type 2), therapist and author who specializes in communication and relationships, for a conversation about why couples can walk away from the same conversation with completely different experiences. Jason breaks down the PATHS Assessment he developed to help couples understand their communication types and why what you say isn't always what your partner hears. They discuss how your family system growing up shapes the way you communicate now, the five communication types and how they show up in conflict, and what to do when you think you're aligned but your spouse is somewhere else entirely. If you've ever had a conversation where you thought everything was fine only to discover later it absolutely was not, this episode will show you exactly what's happening and how to bridge the gap. Watch YouTube! Show links: Jason VanRuler's new book: https://www.jasonvr.com/book/ Jason's website to get on the list! https://www.jasonvr.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 - 622 - When the Past Shows Up in Your Marriage: Narrative-Focused Trauma Care w/Dan Allender & Steve Call (8-9 Pairing and 3-4 Pairing)
Christa sits down with Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Steve Call, longtime therapists, professors, relationship theorists and practitioners, and authors of The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight, for a powerful conversation about trauma-informed couples therapy through the lens of The Narrative Focused Trauma Care® (NFTC) Model Dan Allender created. Here in this juicy and deep diving episode, Dan and Steve explain how the stories of our past drift into the present and create friction in our marriages - and why not stuffing the stories, but understanding those stories is the key to transformation. They break down why we fight the way we fight, how to address past trauma with courage and compassion, and how to disrupt cycles of conflict based on shame, judgment, and resentment, even those in place since childhood. With over 70 years of combined therapeutic experience, Dan and Steve offer hope that marriage can be more than just "getting along" - it can be a place of healing, intimacy, and genuine delight - their truest motivation for sharing with us. If you're stuck in repeating patterns, wondering why the same fights keep happening, or looking for a way to write a new story for your marriage, this conversation will meet you exactly where you are. Watch on YouTube!! Find Steve and Dan's work on Narrative Focused Trauma Care at Allender Center here! https://theallendercenter.org/about/nftc/ Find Steve and Lisa's couples intensive work at the Reconnect Institute here! https://www.thereconnectinstitute.com/ Find the book, Deep-Rooted Marriage here! https://online.theallendercenter.org/courses/growing-in-marriage-series?coupon=GROWING30 Find the $99 course mentioned on the pod here! Use the code enneagram30 if the discount does not appear! https://online.theallendercenter.org/courses/growing-in-marriage-series?coupon=GROWING30 Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 20 Apr 2026 - 621 - Learning to Love & Forgive One Another in a Divisive World w/Jessica Claire Bond (Salt & Light Collection)
Christa sits down with Jessica Claire Bond, founder of the wildly influential Instagram account Salt & Light Collective, for a conversation about learning to love and forgive one another even when it's hard. Jessica shares how her Type 3 gift for truth-telling - balanced by her 9 arrow - helps her navigate divisiveness with grace and bring people back to the example of Christ in a chaotic world. They discuss what it looks like to forgive when you've been deeply hurt, how to hold truth and love together without compromising either, and why forgiveness isn't weakness but the hardest form of strength. Jessica's work inspires thousands to choose love over division, and this episode will challenge you to do the same in your marriage and relationships. If you've been struggling to forgive someone or wondering how to speak truth without creating more division, this conversation will meet you right where you are. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 15 Apr 2026 - 620 - How to Apologize By Type + Using Your Stress Arrow in Conflict
In this pivotal conflict solution focused episode, Christa breaks down the 4-step apology framework that actually works (spoiler: it's not just saying "I'm sorry") and shows how each Enneagram type sabotages repair when they're stuck in their stress pattern. Together we joyfully walk through where each type goes under stress during conflict, from various caves and caverns on the mountain, we get ourselves stuck in as we're drowning in our stress numbers. This episode teaches you how to turn your stress arrow into your secondary growth arrow of sorts so conflict becomes reparative instead of destructive. If you've ever wondered why the same fight keeps happening or why your apologies don't land, this episode will show you exactly what's blocking repair and how to fix it. Plus, Christa gets personal about being a 7 who goes to 1 in stress and what she's learned about climbing out of idealism continually. Don't miss! Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 13 Apr 2026 - 619 - Too Tired to Process: Quick Conflict Wins for Overwhelmed Couples
More often than not, couples are just tired - there is so much to do, plus so much conflict to work through. What do you do when you and your spouse are too emotionally drained for another big conversation? Discover simple repair moves, easy, low-hanging fruit solutions, and permission to take breaks from heavy processing. Learn one quick tip for each Enneagram type plus five easy ways to reconnect when you're running on empty. This is an E + M mini you don't want to miss! Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 08 Apr 2026 - 618 - From Communication to Story: What Your Conflict Is Really About w/Chris Bruno, 8 & Tracy Johnson, 8
Today, we get practical with Type 8 counselor duo Chris Bruno and Tracy Johnson from ReStory Counseling and the Thrive Marriage Lab Podcast to talk about marriage conflict. Chris is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in men and masculinity, sexual addiction, trauma, and abuse, while Tracy is a storywork coach who sits with people in their untold stories, specializing in trauma, abuse, sexuality, marriage issues, and pregnancy loss. Together, they help couples discover the why behind the what in their marriage, and here they discuss the levels of conflict, why communication issues often stem from deeper emotional stories, how conflict reveals the landscape of your heart, and why understanding your narratives can enhance your marital connection. Chris and Tracy explain their ReStory approach: they don't settle for external behavior change or hand out tips and techniques. Instead, they hold out hope for true life-change that comes from heart-change. This conversation is about moving beyond surface-level communication problems to understand what your conflict is really revealing about your story, your wounds, and the restoration God wants to bring to your marriage. Find out more about ReStory here! Use the code ENNEAGRAMMARRIAGE for $20 EVERY Month of the Monthly Membership Group here! https://www.restory.life/thrive Restory for Men, Women, and Couples, https://www.restory.life/ Find the Thrive Marriage Lab Podcast here! https://thrivemarriage.transistor.fm/ Restory for Churches https://www.restory.life/restory-for-churches Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 06 Apr 2026 - 617 - The Mountain of Marriage Conflict: How Your Harmony Group Fights
In this month's new series, we're talking about conflict all month, and we're going to work at it together! Here today, we can discover together how the three Enneagram harmony groups approach conflict differently in terms of their worldview on a bigger picture scope before we get more granular. Learn how 147 Idealists can critically fight from their lofty principles, how 258 Relational/Rejection/Intensity types battle from the emotional middle ground, and how 369 Resourcing/Grounded types get caught up in the practical chaos as they try to resource everyone well. This episode is critical as a baseline for understanding your spouse's conflict style and finding your way to healthier disagreements. Take the Enneagram & Marriage quiz for COUPLES together here: QuizForCouples.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 01 Apr 2026 - 616 - Finding Main Character Energy in the Family System w/Randi Zuckerberg, Type 7 (7-6 Pairing)
Christa sits down with Randi Zuckerberg, entrepreneur, Social 7, and elite ultrarunner who recently set an FKT on the 82-mile Baja Sur trail and finished the wildly difficult 250-mile Cocodona race. Randi opens up on this month's final family systems episode about being more than "Mark Zuckerberg's sister", "Brent's wife", and mom, and becoming unapologetically and authentically her own person. As she moved from just type 7 encourager sideline energy to digging deep for her own purposes and goals too (she also has some 3), she also shares the deep threads of joy and empowerment that were released for her and her family as she's stepped fully into her own identity, strength, and path. Christa and Randi discuss the types that encourage Randi along the way (hello side character power!), what she'd say to parents who think their own life is over after kids, how she transitioned from corporate life at Facebook with all men to finding her (winning) path, and so much more! Randi also shares her hardest setback with injuries, how she works through challenges without losing joy (hello pivots!), what balance looks like across seasons, and what she hopes her kids learn from watching her do hard, seemingly impossible things. This conversation is about identity, growth, energy, becoming a solid person even as a 7 who is learning to finish things, and becoming more fully who you are. As Christa wraps up the Family Systems series this month, Randi's story offers a real and hopeful example of waking up to your own gifts even when the world already has a label for you, and is perfect for anyone who has ever been labeled in a family system who needs a fresh spark and encouragement. Watch on YouTube! Follow Randi's adventures here on Threads and Instagram! @RandiZuckerberg on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/randizuckerberg/?hl=en @RandiZuckerberg on Threads https://www.threads.com/@randizuckerberg Take the Enneagram & Marriage quiz for COUPLES together here: QuizForCouples.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 30 Mar 2026 - 615 - Cycle Breakers: Raising Kids Who Don't Repeat Your Story
What happens when you realize your family's version of "normal" wasn't actually healthy? Whether conflict meant someone stormed out and didn't speak for days or big emotions were shut down with "you're fine" or "stop crying, or even that maybe family problems were swept under the rug and never discussed, today we're talking about how you're looking at your own children and engaging with them around healthy communication in the family system. This episode is for the cycle breakers (you!) - the parents who are determined to create the family culture they wished they'd grown up in. Learn practical strategies for teaching emotional regulation when you didn't learn it yourself, how to validate your children's feelings when yours were dismissed, and simple daily shifts that rewrite (or build upon if you had a great upbringing) your family's legacy story as you get tools to actually break the patterns and give your kids what you never had. Watch here on YouTube! Take the Enneagram & Marriage quiz for COUPLES together here: QuizForCouples.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 25 Mar 2026 - 614 - An Enneagram Quiz Built for Marriage w/Wes Hardin, 1
Christa has a special guest fave on the show today, her husband Wes, Enneagram Type 1 as she dives into something new she and the E + M team created together: a couples Enneagram quiz. Today Christa and Wes share some of their inherent differences they saw on the fun DC E + M adventure they just took, and discuss how they compassionately dealt with them too, as they applied family systems differentiation and Enneagram to their relationship aspirations as well. This quiz will help you learn about how your types correlate and connect, too! Built specifically for relationships, you can take this Enneagram test FREE at QuizForCouples.com Your results tell you your type AND your spouse's type, gives you personalized strengthening areas for your couple dynamic, and we would LOVE your feedback as you take it. Watch the episode on YouTube here! Christa uploaded her most clarifying E+M content to build the system, using language from her community and focusing on deep motivations rather than surface behaviors and we invite listeners to take the quiz together at the same time, first one and then the other! CONTEST WINNERS: Congrats also to our two contest winners: Dana from the E+M contest and Melanie from Supper Sleuths!! Take the Enneagram & Marriage quiz for COUPLES together here: QuizForCouples.com Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 23 Mar 2026 - 613 - Emotional Cutoff Versus Healthy Boundaries: When You Stop Talking
Today, Christa helps you explore the crucial difference between the family systems concepts of emotional cutoff and healthy boundaries in family relationships. Learn why going completely silent often creates more problems than it solves, how cutoff patterns affect your marriage, and when boundaries might be a better (and even better for your nervous system) solution! Discover a simple repair framework for addressing family conflict without resorting to low blows, but also discern when cutoff might actually be necessary for safety! Listen here to this do-not-miss episode!! Watch on YouTube here! Show notes: CONTEST ALERT: We’re doing a St. Patrick’s Day week contest, too! Email your fave St. Patrick's day story to melody@enneagramandmarriage.com for a chance to win a FREE copy of The Enneagram in Marriage or another of Christa’s books! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 18 Mar 2026 - 612 - From Silenced to Strong - Finding A Healthy Path w/Couples Therapist Shane Birkel, 7
Listener-favorite and couples therapist Shane Birkel (host of The Couple Therapist Couch podcast) is back! Though last time Shane talked about how men can be strong but soft, this episode tackles the other side of the #1 issue Christa is seeing with couples these days: women who have learned to use their voice but how now she is coming across abrasively in a way that hurts versus helps in their marriage. This is specifically about tone, delivery, and how empowerment can accidentally create new imbalances. Shane shares the techniques he uses with his couples to help wives recalibrate without going back to silence, and husbands re-engage without shutting down. We cover personal anecdotes, family systems dynamics between husband and wife, and practical tools for finding the healthy path between silenced and too strong. If you've been told you're "too much" or if your spouse has shut down since you found your voice, this episode is for you. Watch on YouTube here! Show links: Find Shane on his podcast, the Couples Therapist Couch Podcast here https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 16 Mar 2026 - 611 - Why Your Nervous System Still Reacts to Family (And What We Can Work On)
Ever wonder why your body still tenses around certain family members even after years of therapy or spiritual formation? Today we explore a topic Christa works on as well, and explore the difference between cognitive safety and somatic safety - why your nervous system keeps reacting even when your mind has moved on. Learn three simple body-based practices you can use before, during, and after family interactions, plus quick nervous system tips specific to your Enneagram type. Discover why proximity affects your nervous system regardless of forgiveness, and get permission to love someone from a healthy distance. Watch on YouTube! Show links: Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 11 Mar 2026 - 610 - Reigniting Polarity: Overfunctioning, Underfunctioning & Desire w/Andrea Clark
Christa sits down with Andrea Clark, marriage and family therapist with 28 years of experience helping thousands of women reignite spark, polarity, and devotion in their marriages. Andrea breaks down the overfunctioning-underfunctioning dynamic that kills attraction and explains how it's deeply connected to masculine and feminine polarity. They discuss why women often take on masculine energy in their marriages (managing, controlling, doing everything), how this creates distance and resentment, and what it looks like to create space for your husband to step up. Andrea offers practical guidance on how to stop overfunctioning without becoming passive, how to access your feminine energy without losing yourself, and why polarity matters for desire and connection. If you're exhausted from carrying the mental load and wondering why the spark is gone, this conversation will help you understand the deeper pattern at play. Watch on YouTube here! Star here on your journey with Andrea! https://www.instagram.com/andrea.clark.mft/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 09 Mar 2026 - 609 - The Family Ledger: What You're Holding Onto & What You Need to Release
Have you ever caught yourself thinking, "I didn't get affection as a kid, so I'm going to make sure my kids get it" and then noticed you overwhelm them just a tad? Or maybe, "My parents never helped me, so I'm going to do for mine what I didn't get", but then your spouse gets your leftovers? That's the family ledger at work, an invisible accounting system tracking what you got, what you didn't get, and what you think you're owed. In this episode, Christa unpacks how this ledger from your family of origin often has so much to do with marriages right now (in the Contextual Family Systems Therapy frame), and how to finally put it down and build something new. Learn about the "revolving slate" (over-giving what you didn't get), destructive entitlement (withholding because you're "owed"), and the path to building merit instead of collecting debts. Practical homework prompts are included to help you and your spouse break free from ledger-keeping and choose love and light over scorekeeping. Watch on YouTube here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 04 Mar 2026 - 608 - The Longing Inside: How Family Systems Shapes Love and Sexual Desire w/Jay Stringer, 3 (3-4 Pairing)
Christa sits down with listener fave Jay Stringer, therapist and author of his brand new book Desire: The Longing Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow, for a conversation that bridges family systems, differentiation, and sexual intimacy in marriage. Jay breaks down how your family of origin shapes not just your attachment style but your sexual desire, why differentiation is essential for healthy intimacy, and how couples can stop triangulating their kids into their marriage. They discuss the family systems work that transforms your relationship in and out of the bedroom, how to work through attachment issues together as a couple, and why understanding where your desire comes from is key to healing and growth. If you've been doing family systems work and wondering how it connects to your sexual relationship with your spouse, this episode is a must-listen. Jay offers practical, research-backed insight into how we can grow in desire by doing the deeper work on our family patterns. Watch on YouTube! Get Jay's book and workbook here! https://a.co/d/00mubz6x Follow Jay on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/jay_stringer_/?hl=en Find Jay's website with his courses, The Journey, and more that Christa refers to in the episode! https://jay-stringer.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 02 Mar 2026 - 607 - Listener Requested Interview Flip: Christa’s Work in Marriage & Family Systems w/Hannah Hardin, 4
In this special listener-requested episode, the tables turn! Christa's daughter Hannah (the graphic designer behind Enneagram and Marriage) takes over as host to interview Christa about the questions you've been asking AND to share special E + M family news as another MFT in training gets added to the family: Hannah asks questions, What was her childhood like? What does she wish she'd known before marriage? Why does she love family systems theory so much? How does she regulate her nervous system after hard therapy days? Hannah asks the personal questions, from Christa's favorite thing about Wes, book talk, and more! This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at the person behind the podcast and a perfect bridge from the attachment series into March's family systems focus. Christa shares how her family of origin shaped her attachment style, what she's intentionally done differently as a parent, and what she hopes her kids remember about their family when they're adults. Whether you're a longtime listener or new here, this conversation will help you understand why Christa does this work, and maybe inspire you to look at your own story with fresh eyes. Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Thu, 26 Feb 2026 - 606 - How Your Type Processes Conflict (Attachment Series Finale) w/Jeff Cook, 1
In this final episode of the attachment series, Christa sits down with another Enneagram expert, Jeff Cook, Enneagram Type 1, philosopher, former pastor, and co-host of the popular Around the Circle Enneagram podcast, as we talk about attachment and how couples can process conflict. We also talk about his new book Around the Circle: An Enneagram Book (June 2025). Unlike most Enneagram books that profile types individually, Jeff's book explores nine essential questions everyone faces (like "How do I solve my problems?") and answers them for all nine types, creating a richer, more nuanced understanding. Jeff brings a Christian philosophical lens to the Enneagram, reminding us of the fact that relationships are all we bring with us into eternity, so it's important to grow here as an individual, and we try to answer what it means to be our healthiest selves. They discuss the power of naming our motives, why the Enneagram isn't about "putting people in boxes," the Harmonic groups (Positive Outlook: 2, 7, 9 who reframe; Competency: 1, 3, 5 who problem-solve; Reactive: 4, 6, 8 who intensify emotions). Whether you're new to the Enneagram or a seasoned student, this conversation will deepen your understanding and help you see yourself and your spouse more clearly. Watch on YouTube! Important Show Notes from the Allender Center's Marriage Class Marriage class coming up! Get live teaching from The Allender Center 's prolific teachers Dan and Becky Allender across three dates, starting tomorrow (or watch over Zoom) and use the code enneagram30 to get $30 off the course here! Growing in Marriage: A Guided Journey with Dan & Becky Allender. Jeff's Exciting Around the Circle Materials! Get Jeff's book here! https://www.amazon.com/Around-Circle-Enneagram-Jeff-Cook/dp/B0FD46YT16 Listen to the Around the Circle pod here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/around-the-circle-an-enneagram-channel/id1466446583 Visit the entire Around the Circle crew on their website as well! www.AroundtheCircle.org Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 23 Feb 2026 - 605 - What Secure Attachment Actually Looks Like (And What To Do to Get It!)
In this episode, Christa breaks down one of the most hopeful concepts in attachment theory: earned secure attachment. You are NOT stuck with the attachment style you developed in childhood. Whether you're anxious, avoidant, or disorganized, you can actually rewire your brain and nervous system to respond differently in relationships. Christa dives into the six-step roadmap to earning secure attachment: awareness, nervous system regulation, repair work, practice in relationships, and consistency over time. She breaks down what this journey looks like for all nine Enneagram types, and shows you the path forward. Transformation is possible, and it starts with one choice at a time. Watch on YouTube! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 18 Feb 2026 - 604 - Don't Settle for Lonely: Relationships Your Soul Needs Now w/Alli Patterson, Type 8
In this episode, Christa sits down with Alli Patterson, type 8 (8-1 pairing), teaching Pastor at Crossroads Church, author of Blueprint for Belonging and How to Stay Standing, and founder of the Ignite Conference to talk about the five types of relationships we all need to thrive: your core, circle, comrades, community, and crowd. Alli, who holds a seminary degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and just also released Spirit-Led Bible Study in February 2026 (this month!), breaks down how loneliness isn't about the quantity of relationships but the quality and variety of connection. Join us as we discuss how understanding these five relationship types can transform your marriage, friendships, and sense of belonging, and why so many of us are drowning in loneliness despite having more ways to connect than ever before. Christa also shares exciting updates and contests. Plus, we're giving away 5 copies of Alli's book Blueprint for Belonging. Follow Alli on social media Instagram account below (or on another social) and let us know at melody@enneagramandmarriage.com that you did for a chance to win one of them! This conversation is for anyone who's ever felt lonely in a crowded room or wondered if their relationships are truly satisfying their soul. Alli reminds us: your relationships are the key to a thriving life and healthy attachment, don't settle for lonely. Watch on YouTube! Follow Alli Patterson on Instagram and enter the contest for a copy of her book, Blueprint for Belonging, here! https://www.instagram.com/theallipatterson/ Find Alli's books, The Spirit Led Bible Study and Blueprint for Belonging here on her website! https://www.allipatterson.com/ Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 16 Feb 2026 - 603 - Valentine's Special: Attachment Styles Meet Enneagram for Every Type ❤️
In this episode, Christa continues the February series on Attachment Styles Meets Enneagram by walking through all nine types and exploring two critical questions: How do you attach well to yourself, and how do you attach well to your partner? She opens by acknowledging the need for God and self-regulation (and five fun Valentine's Dates!), and then we breaks down each type's unique attachment challenges and growth narratives together. Christa makes it clear that secure attachment starts internally, but you cannot give your partner what you haven't given yourself. Listen now! ❤️ We also give a final call for your chance to join the E + M Coaching Certification & Masterclass Course starting February 12th (last day for $250 off with code COACH). This episode is practical, compassionate, and grounded in the truth that real intimacy requires showing up fully, with God, with yourself, and with your spouse as we celebrate our love and marriage this month of love ❤️. Watch on YouTube! Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 602 - This Little Fire of Mine: Addressing Doubt as You Build a Bolder Faith w/Kendall Mariah, Type 3
In this conversation, Christa sits down with Kendall Mariah, author of the brand-new book This Little Fire of Mine: How Flickers of Doubt Can Spark a Bolder, Brighter Faith, to explore what happens when you stop performing faith and start living it authentically, especially in marriage. Kendall Mariah, 3, an adoptive mom, Army wife, and founder of Unapologetic Ministry, invites us to embrace holy discomfort, lean into doubt, and ask the hard questions we've been told to avoid. In this episode, they discuss how doubt can lead to discernment, why good friction is healthy in relationships, how to navigate different faith journeys with your spouse, and what it means to pursue an integrated life where your words and actions reflect the full truth of Scripture, not just on Sundays, but in your actual day-to-day marriage. Kendall says her book is about finding "a deeper, truer version of your soul," and Christa believes that when you find that truer version of yourself, you also find a truer version of your marriage. If you've ever felt the disconnect between your beliefs and your lived experiences, or if you're navigating faith questions alongside your spouse, this conversation will give you permission to embrace the journey and discover a bolder, brighter faith together as we work on deepening attachment all month long here on the pod! Watch on YouTube! Get your copy of Kendall's brand new book here! https://www.amazon.com/This-Little-Fire-Mine-Flickers/dp/1400251672 Learn about Kendall here on her website! https://kendallmariah.com/ Get connected with Kendall on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendallmariah/ Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 09 Feb 2026 - 601 - Attachment: Anxious Meets Avoidant - The Most Common (and Painful) Dance in Marriage
In this mini but important episode, Christa tackles the most common, and most painful, dynamic in marriage: the anxious-avoidant pairing. If you've ever felt like you're constantly chasing your spouse for connection while they pull away, or if you feel overwhelmed by a partner who won't give you breathing room, this episode will help you understand why these attachment styles are magnetically drawn to each other and how the pursue-withdraw cycle keeps you stuck. In this intro episode, Christa gives practical steps each partner needs to take to break the cycle and move toward earned secure attachment. The key insight: Your Enneagram type is the engine, your attachment style is the steering, understanding both is where real change begins. Whether you're anxious, avoidant, or somewhere in between, this episode gives you language for what's happening and hope that change is possible. Listen right here or watch on YouTube! Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 04 Feb 2026 - 600 - Using Your Voice in Marriage: The Cost of Being Too Quiet w/Colette Jane Fehr, Type 7
What if the real reason marriages fail isn't a lack of connection but years of staying silent and avoiding conflict? Licensed marriage and family therapist Colette Jane Fehr joins us in an attachment-based discussion to discuss her new book The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations That Create Secure, Lasting Love (releases February 3, 2026). As a Type 7, Colette shares how even optimistic, future-focused types can fall into avoidant patterns, sidestepping day-to-day disputes and brushing problems under the rug to "keep the peace." We explore how silence (as well as to damaging reactivity) often lead to emotional disconnection, self-abandonment, and essentially "quiet quitting" your marriage. Drawing from attachment science and evidence-based therapies, Colette gives us tools to approach our spouse with openness, honesty, and vulnerability. Whether you're the one staying silent or living with someone who won't speak up, this conversation will show you why a good relationship is worth fighting for—and how to start having the hard conversations that create secure, lasting love. Find The Cost of Quiet wherever books are sold starting February 3rd. Watch on YouTube! Get Colette's book here! https://a.co/d/5HMlsJh Get on her email list here! https://www.colettejanefehr.com/ Visit Colette here on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/colettejanefehr/ Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 02 Feb 2026 - 599 - When Instincts Turn Dark: Staying Human in Hard Times
As we wrap up the conversation on instincts, Christa brings you a powerful episode exploring how our three instincts—self-preservation, sexual, and social—can turn dark or animal-like when we're scared, threatened, or in pain in our marriages or world, and we talk about how to slow down, stay kind stay human, godly, and loving in hard or dystopic times. Though the episode is grounded and practical, Christa addresses cognitive heuristics and mental shortcuts humans can use to dehumanize the "other" including the Halo Effect as well as examines how each instinct goes dark, self-preservation leading to hoarding, sexual instinct leading to using people, and social instinct leading to outgrouping and tribalism—and offers practical ways to stay strong in faith. Drawing on CS Lewis's wisdom that evil must be unwound bit by bit, she calls listeners to not rush the stories of pain away or abandon friends who voted differently as you fight for justice - we're one human body, and we must rise together. Watch on YouTube! Need mental health tips in this time? Sign up for the FREE EnneaSummit here! https://www.tylerzach.com/mh26/enneasummit?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tylerzach.com%2Fa%2F2148228842%2FLS2nNmzL The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 28 Jan 2026 - 598 - Abandoning Misogyny and Misandry for Mutual Flourishing (Including Sexual Flourishing) in Marriage w/Dorthy Greco, Type 1
Dorothy Littell Greco, marriage ministry leader and author joins us for a powerful conversation about abandoning misogyny and misandry (disdain for all men or women) in favor of mutual flourishing in marriage, including sexual flourishing, especially since pornography use, perpetrating harm to women is rampant. Despite undeniable progress as we discover the mental loads women and men carry in the 20th and 21st centuries, misogyny and misandry are still alive in culture, often in ways more subtle and insidious than outright sexism of the past, and it shows up in marriages in ways couples don't always recognize. Statistically, misogyny especially hurts marriage intimately and sexually. In this conversation, we focus specifically on how it shows up in Christian marriages and what it costs both women and men since this is a lose-lose system where no one wins. A type 1 justice fighter with a long and successful marriage of faith and confession, Dorothy unpacks how dismantling misogyny isn't just good for women, it benefits men and marriages too, creating space for true partnership where both spouses can grow and flourish. Join us as we talk about why we need to abandon both misogyny (disdain for women) and misandry (disdain for men) in favor of a partnership that honors the image of God in both. Find Dorothy's book, "For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America" on Amazon: https://a.co/d/55qxeyd Find Dorothy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dorothylgreco/?hl=en Find Dorothy's riveting blog: https://www.dorothygreco.com/ The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 26 Jan 2026 - 597 - What Each Instinct Fears Most (And How to Break Through)
Week 3 of our January instincts series reveals the hidden fears that block intimacy for SP, SO, and SX types. Why does your SP partner hoard resources? Why does your SO spouse need constant social validation? Why does your SX partner panic when you're emotionally distant? Understanding these core fears changes everything - plus, discover how to rebuild weakened instincts instead of watching them decline. Watch here on YouTube! The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 21 Jan 2026 - 596 - The Marriage Habit with Marriage 365 Founders Casey and Meygan Caston (7-8)
Casey and Meygan Caston, creators of the Marriage365 platform that reaches millions each week, join us as authors of the brand new book, The Marriage Habit (recommended by Dr. Gary Chapman and many others, including Christa right here)! Join us for a riveting and inspiring conversation about the ten non-negotiable habits that successful couples use to maintain and repair their relationships. After fifteen years of helping couples and working through their own deep hurt, Casey and Meygan have gained tremendous insight into the common issues couples from all walks of life face and how they choose to solve or not solve them. Drawing on user data and candid stories from couples around the world, Casey and Meygan show how we create massive results including taking a four step apology process, the sex talk, weekly regular awareness inventories to appreciate how your partner's preferences, opinions, and differences are evolving, offering unsolicited apologies that break down walls of resentment and disconnection, and removing assumptions by being clearer about the specific ways you want to be loved. Focused on action and practicality (Casey and Meygan's 7-8 pairing gifts), this couple and episode provide hope for couples in any circumstances to solve their own problems as they work to create the relationship of their dreams. Watch on YouTube! Find Casey and Meygan on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/marriage365/ Pre-order your copy of The Marriage Habit now and get $320 worth of bonuses, too! (releases Feb 3!) The Marriage Habit right here! https://a.co/d/b9ZBUjW (Get bonuses here: https://marriage365books.com/ Find Casey and Meygan's courses, app, and SO much more right here! www.Marriage365.com The Enneagram and Marriage Coaching & Certification Masterclass course begins again February 12, use code COACH for discount here or at https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 19 Jan 2026 - 595 - When Opposites Attract: Different Instinct Stacks in Marriage
Now that you know more about the Enneagram instincts and desires, and you've heard that they're even MORE important than your types, what's one way you can build a bridge in an opposites attract pairing? Today we explore exactly that - what happens when different dominant instincts collide in marriage and what can you do. What happens when Security-focused (SP) marries Intensity-focused (SX)? Or when Social-focused (SO) pairs with Security-focused (SP)? I break down all 6 possible combinations with quick fixes for each. Real couples, real solutions, simple framework you can use today. Watch on YouTube! Deeper dive with us on Apple Pod, too! Don't forget! Use the special E + M Code Marriage100 for $100 the Russ Hudson Three Instincts course here! https://russhudson.com/the-instincts-and-inner-work-building-practices-for-transforming-our-life-patterns/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 14 Jan 2026 - 594 - How to Not Let Your Phone Steal Your Year Together with Hannah Brencher, Type 4
As we shift into this new year with intention, best-selling author and influencer Hannah Brencher, Type 4, author of The Unplugged Hours: Cultivating a Life of Presence in a Digitally Connected World, joins us for a conversation about building healthy tech habits in marriage and family life. Featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and more with a reach of 200K+, Hannah brings beautiful creative ways to unplug that cover all three instincts: self-preservation (creating time for health and rest), sexual (more presence in your marriage), and social (intentional with people, not just scrolling). As a Type 4 who needs depth, authenticity, and space for creativity, Hannah shares her end-of-day phone ritual where she turns her phone down, uses a brick phone of sorts, how she helps her type 2 hubby with his phone, and fascinatingly relies on yellow legal pads to inspire analog creativity instead of defaulting to screens. She and Christa explore how to navigate tech boundaries in marriage without conflict, too. Hannah also shares how she's thinking about tech habits for her family and building boundaries while her kids are young and most impressionable with habits. This conversation is full of practical wisdom, gentle encouragement, and honest reflection on how to reclaim presence in a digitally connected world with intention, too. Watch on YouTube! Find Hannah's work at HannahBrencher.com Follow Hannah at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hannahbrencher/?hl=en Find Hannah's book, The Unplugged Hours here! https://a.co/d/fmw0XqV Other E + M News: Don't forget! Use the special E + M Code Marriage100 for $100 the Russ Hudson Three Instincts course here! https://russhudson.com/the-instincts-and-inner-work-building-practices-for-transforming-our-life-patterns/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 12 Jan 2026 - 593 - Rebuilding Desire from Dating Days to Real Marriage Now
After Monday’s incredible conversation with Russ Hudson, we’re diving into our January theme: Instincts & Intimacy. Today’s episode reveals how your dominant instinct (Self-Preservation, Social, or Sexual) often shows up differently when dating versus being married. We talk through not only how those differences may look, but how you can still try to find the healthiest and most achievable desires you're missing from those early honeymoon days. Break down each instinct’s dating “performance” versus marriage reality, plus how to work with (not against) your and your partner’s instinctual drives as you do so. Watch on YouTube! Don't forget! Use the special E + M Code Marriage100 for $100 the course here! https://russhudson.com/the-instincts-and-inner-work-building-practices-for-transforming-our-life-patterns/ Find Russ Hudson's books here! https://russhudson.com/books/ For more about Russ, visit https://russhudson.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 07 Jan 2026 - 592 - The Three Instincts Clarified w/Master Enneagram Teacher Russ Hudson, 5
In our biggest kick-off of a new year yet, we introduce our listeners today to Russ Hudson, co-founder of The Enneagram Institute, best-selling author, and one of the world's most respected Enneagram teachers for over 30 years! Russ joins us for an hour-long, jam-packed conversation clarifying the three instincts: self-preservation, social, and sexual. This isn't surface-level learning, so get ready to transform with us while Russ explains what the instincts actually are at their core and why they're the engine of your relationships and marriage, not just an overlay to your type. Russ also dismantles common misunderstandings, and tells us about his deep diving course coming up! This conversation between Christa (Type 7) and Russ (Type 5) is full of joy, depth, and practical wisdom for you as you begin afresh this new year. Listen now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen or watch here on YouTube! In his riveting and personal deep-diving eight-week course coming up Feb 18, The Instincts and Inner Work: Building Practices for Transforming Our Life Patterns, Russ will walk you through these instincts in even far more depth in an 8-week live course "The Instincts and Inner Work". Join here to dive into personal and relational transformation together with Russ himself. Use the special E + M Code Marriage100 for $100 the course here! https://russhudson.com/the-instincts-and-inner-work-building-practices-for-transforming-our-life-patterns/ Find Russ Hudson's books here! https://russhudson.com/books/ For more about Russ, visit https://russhudson.com/ Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 05 Jan 2026 - 591 - All 45 Enneagram Couple Pairings (Part 3 of 3)
Happy New Year! We're completing our comprehensive series with the final 15 pairings - all combinations with Types 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Today explores how Head types (5-6-7) navigate their safety strategies in relationships, plus the powerful dynamics of Body types 8 and 9. From the double-withdrawal of 5+5 couples who risk becoming roommates, to the explosive intensity of 8+8 pairs, to the conflict-avoidant 9+9 dynamic that looks perfect until it isn't - each pairing gets practical insights and breakthrough moments. Whether you're navigating the 6+7 anxiety-meets-optimism dance or the classic 8+9 power-meets-peace dynamic, discover what makes your specific combination work. Plus, exciting news about Russ Hudson joining us Monday to discuss instincts and his upcoming course! Watch on YouTube! Get Your Glow Pairing Guide here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/store/c4/enneagramglow Get Your Type Deeper Dive Here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/deeper-dives Use code HAPPYNEWYEAR for 30% off everything at the website here! Become an E + M Certified coach here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/the-e-m-coaching-masterclass Get coaching packages here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/coachingpackages Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 31 Dec 2025 - 590 - All 45 Enneagram Couple Pairings (Part 2 of 3)
Happy holidays from the E+M family! In Part 2 of our comprehensive series, we’re covering more Enneagram types! (2+8 through 4+9)! From the 2’s emotional giving, to the 3’s achievement drive, to the 4’s search for authentic connection, we're learning about what happens when double Heart types unite (hello, intensity!) and how they dance with Body and Head types as well. Each pairing includes real marriage examples and breakthrough insights you can apply immediately. Plus, get ready for an Instincts Masterclass as master Enneagram teacher Russ Hudson joins us next week! Whether you’re navigating the 3+3 power couple dynamic or the 4+5 pursuer-distancer dance (or another!), this episode illuminates your unique relationship blueprint for you and your spouse or helps you understand another close family or friend dynamic as well. Listen here! Watch on YouTube! Get Your Glow Pairing Guide here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/store/c4/enneagramglow Get Your Type Deeper Dive Here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/deeper-dives Use code HAPPYNEWYEAR for 30% off everything at the website here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 29 Dec 2025 - 589 - All 45 Enneagram Couple Pairings (Part 1 of 3)
Today, we're covering ALL 45 Enneagram couple combinations over three episodes. In Part 1, we explore every Type 1 pairing (1+1 through 1+9) and begin the Type 2s (2+1 - 2+7). Discover how those types that fight for justice, those types that tend to lean out emotionally, and how those looking for security plan for safety in relationships, and most of all, how they merge together. Whether you're a 1+2 navigating righteousness with tender expression, or any other pairing, you'll gain insights into your unique dynamic as you see all the couples and families in real life and in media too. Each pairing gets practical marriage attention and examples as well as key breakthroughs. This episode makes for perfect listening as you reflect on you and your marriage and family relationship patterns heading for deep life changes, and our glow guides, book, and the deeper dive guides are a great accompaniment! Watch on YouTube! Get Your Glow Pairing Guide here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/store/c4/enneagramglow Get Your Type Deeper Dive Here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/deeper-dives Use code HAPPYNEWYEAR for 30% off everything at the website here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 24 Dec 2025 - 588 - Love & Understanding: The Gifts You Give: Week 4 of the Advent Series
In the final week of our Advent series, we explore love as the gift of understanding. After three weeks of learning about hope, peace, and joy through the lens of our instincts, we arrive at what matters most: choosing to understand your partner's instinctual needs instead of judging their behavior. When you see that your SP spouse isn't being cheap but protecting security, that your SO spouse isn't people-pleasing but creating belonging, or that your SX spouse isn't being needy but protecting intimacy, everything shifts. This episode recaps the four-week journey and invites you into a practice of choosing curiosity over blame, understanding over fixing, and compassion over criticism. If you've been following along this Advent season, this is where it all comes together, the gift you can give your spouse this Christmas and every day after. Watch on YouTube! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/deeper-dives Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 22 Dec 2025 - 587 - Nervous Systems: Calming Anxiety in Your Body, Marriage & Church with Sara Billups
Sara Billups (type 4, 4-5 pairing), author of "Nervous Systems: Spiritual Practices to Calm Anxiety in Your Body, the Church, and Politics," joins us for a conversation about anxiety that's especially needed as we head into Christmas. Sara explores how anxiety manifests in three interconnected ways, and how couples who are in the sandwich generation (Millennial, Gen X especially) navigate personal anxiety, church disillusionment, and political division all at once as their nervous systems rise up in anxiety. Drawing from her experience caregiving for aging ill parents while parenting teens with their own anxiety along with her own anxiety, Sara offers wisdom for couples in the sandwich generation stretched thin caring for multiple generations while trying to protect their marriage. She also unpacks scrupulosity and how being trained to pursue "being good" is often far from healthy holiness, especially for those raised evangelical, and how this performance anxiety shows up in marriage. Sara's prescription for anxiety is holy indifference, the Ignatian concept of open-handedness toward both blessings and trials, not as giving up but as giving into the Spirit, and what this looks like practically when anxious about outcomes or when life isn't going as hoped. Rather than offering prescriptive how-to lists, Sara offered a soothing balm for anxious hearts heading into holiday chaos. Find "Nervous Systems" wherever books are sold. Watch on YouTube, too! Get Sara's book, Nervous Systems, here! https://a.co/d/ieVOMum Deeper Dive Guides on sale here! Use code DEEPERDIVE for $10 off! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/deeper-dives Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 17 Dec 2025 - 586 - Joy & Connection: Not Losing Your Light in the Chaos: Week 3 of the Advent Series
The third episode in our Advent series explores why most couples don't feel joyful during the holidays and how to protect joy when everything feels like obligation and chaos. Joy becomes elusive when we expect it to be natural, when we prioritize mere survival over connection, when we forget to dig deep to remember God's love for us is the deepest reason for joy, when we lose ourselves in others' never-ending needs, when we escape instead of engaging, and when we don't pause during the chaos that puts your nervous system in survival mode where delight is impossible. There is so much to learn and we can take it step by step together! Listen here as you find centering and re-embrace delight this holiday or anytime of year!! Watch on YouTube! Use the code "GLOW" for $10 Couple Pairing Guides here! Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 15 Dec 2025 - 585 - Famished: Body Image, Faith & Intimacy w/Anna Rollins, Type 3
Anna Rollins, author of "Famished," joins us for an honest conversation about the intersection of purity culture, eating, body image, and sexual intimacy in marriage in general and especially Christian marriage. We explore what happened in the Christian movement around weight and body image that went beyond general cultural dysfunction and became particularly harmful in church spaces, such as Anna's church creating an eating based programs as she talks about here in and in her book. Drawing on research from Sheila Wray Gregoire's survey of 20,000 women (one of our favorite past guests), Anna unpacks the connection between body shame and sexual intimacy, including the often-hidden correlation between body shame and painful sex that many women don't realize exists. She shares her personal journey of moving from controlling her body through over-exercising to actually caring for and stewarding it well, how she's parenting with intention, and how her relationship with her body has drawn her at first farther but ultimately closer, ultimately, back to God. This conversation is essential for anyone navigating body image in marriage or raising children in the intersection of faith and culture. Find "Famished" wherever books are sold and connect with Anna's work. Watch here on YouTube! Get Anna's book Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing up a Good Girl here! https://a.co/d/eO5BbMa Follow Anna Rollins'Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/annajrollins/?hl=en Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sun, 14 Dec 2025 - 584 - Peace & Patterns: Breaking Your Holiday Argument Cycle
Get on our Advent adventure together too where we'll discuss hope, love, and joy starting December 1st at www.EnneagramandMarriage.com. Mark your calendars for Dec 9 as we meet over Zoom 1PM EST to discuss how to keep you from fighting all season long, too! Sign up for emails to get your link. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 08 Dec 2025 - 583 - Men, Intimacy, & the Marriage They Really Want w/Eric MacDougall, 4, Evolved Marriage
In this episode, Christa sits down with men’s marriage coach Eric MacDougall, an Enneagram 4 with 8 tendencies (4-3 pairing), to talk honestly about why so many men unknowingly disconnect emotionally, even while trying to “do everything right.” Eric shares the breaking-point moment when his Enneagram 3 (with-9) tendencies wife told him she loved him but wasn’t in love anymore, and how that revelation pushed him to confront his patterns of overworking, performing, and using sex or productivity as substitutes for true intimacy. Together, they explore why men often rely on sexual touch to soothe deeper loneliness, and how emotional leadership creates the connection they’re really longing for. Christa and Eric dive into differentiation, attunement, and how to become a safe, grounded presence instead of a fixer or withdrawer. Eric offers practical tools for rebuilding trust, cultivating intimacy that lasts, and leading with steadiness instead of intensity. This conversation is vulnerable, creative, and deeply hopeful for any couple wanting more connection and passion in their marriage. Listen here and watch on YouTube here! Find Eric's podcast at Evolved Marriage: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-evolved-marriage-podcast/id1564452959 Find The Evolved Marriage website and men's coaching groups: https://www.evolvedmarriage.com/ Find Evolved Marriage on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evolved_marriage/?hl=en Get on our Advent adventure together too where we'll discuss hope, love, and joy starting December 1st at www.EnneagramandMarriage.com. Mark your calendars for Dec 9 as we meet over Zoom 1PM EST to discuss how to keep you from fighting all season long, too! Sign up for emails to get your link. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Get Christa's Best-Selling Book, The Enneagram in Marriage, here! https://a.co/d/df8SxVx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 03 Dec 2025 - 582 - Hope As You're Waiting for Security, Connection, or Intimacy This Season: An Advent Series
What are you really waiting for this December? Not the polished answer—the honest one. What's keeping you up at night? What's making your spouse anxious? In this first episode of our 4-part seasonal series, we explore the three types of hope that show up in marriages during the holidays: Security (Will we be okay? Will we have enough?), Connection (Will everyone get along? Will anyone feel left out?), and Intimacy (Will we stay close intimately or sexually)? Will we lose each other in the chaos?). You'll discover why you and your spouse are often "waiting" for completely different things this season, and why that difference creates so much tension. More importantly, you'll learn how to honor both longings without making either one wrong, so you can actually experience renewal together instead of just surviving until January. Whether you're the one watching the budget, managing family dynamics, or protecting your marriage connection, this episode will help you name what you need and understand what your spouse needs too. Watch on YouTube, tooz1 Get your "Me-Time Coaching Session" package here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/coachingpackages-2 Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 55% off here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Get on our Advent adventure together too where we'll discuss hope, love, and joy starting December 1st at www.EnneagramandMarriage.com. Mark your calendars for Dec 9 as we meet over Zoom 1PM EST to discuss how to keep you from fighting all season long, too! Sign up for emails to get your link. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Leave Christa a podcast question anonymously by sending an MP4 recording to enneagramandmarriage@gmail.com. Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mon, 01 Dec 2025 - 581 - An E + M Mini: Triangulation: When Two Becomes Three (And Why That's a Problem)
The third episode in our family systems series explores triangulation, the pattern where a two-person relationship becomes unstable so you pull in a third person to stabilize it. Instead of dealing with issues directly with your spouse, you complain to your mom, get your best friend to tell them they're wrong, focus all your energy on the kids, or text your sister about your marriage. Triangulation feels safer than direct conflict because it gives you validation and emotional support without vulnerability, but it doesn't actually solve anything. Christa breaks down how each Enneagram type triangulates and also gives general tips in this quick, must-listen holiday prep episode! But here's the nuance: sometimes you need to triangulate for a moment. Listen for how to do both! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com if you're not on the email list yet. Watch on YouTube! Get your "Me-Time Coaching Session" package here! https://www.enneagramandmarriage.com/coachingpackages-2 Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 50% off here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Get on our Advent adventure together too where we'll discuss hope, love, and joy starting December 1st at www.EnneagramandMarriage.com. Find more about your type, the pod, freebies, and SO much more at our website right here! www.EnneagramandMarriage.com Leave Christa a podcast question anonymously by sending an MP4 recording to enneagramandmarriage@gmail.com. Love what you're learning on E + M? Make sure you leave us a podcast review so others can find us, too here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wed, 26 Nov 2025
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