Do Not Wait for the Crisis. A Tune-Up Beats a Rescue.

Most couples learn this too late. Somebody told me once that the average couple waits six years from the first real trouble before they ask for help. Six years. I do not know if the number is exact, but I know from my own marriage that it is not an exaggeration, and I know from coaching that by the time most people book a call, they are not asking for a tune-up. They are asking for a rescue.

And here is the thing about rescues. They are harder, slower, and scarier than tune-ups, and they happen for one reason: somebody kept saying "we're fine."

The check engine light

Every car has one. Little amber light on the dash. And every one of us has, at some point, driven around with it on for a month, because the car still runs. It still gets you to work. Nothing is on fire. You will deal with it when you have time.

Then one morning it does not start, and now you are paying for a tow, a rental, and a repair that would have been a $90 sensor if you had pulled in when the light came on.

"We're fine" is the check engine light of a marriage. Not "we're great." Not "we're in trouble." Fine. Functional. You run the house, you get the kids where they need to go, you are polite to each other. The car still runs. And because nothing is on fire, you tell yourself it is not the moment. You will deal with it when things calm down.

Things never calm down. That is not a moment that arrives. And the light does not turn itself off.

Our six years

I will tell you how long we waited. The first time my wife said "I feel like we're just going through the motions" was, I think, around 2013. I said something like "we're fine, it's just a busy season." Which was true. It was a busy season. It was also the light coming on.

By 2019 the car did not start. She was done. And when we finally sat down to rebuild, the thing that struck me was how much of what we had to clear had happened in those six years of "fine." The hurts that piled up, the reaching that stopped, the story each of us had written about the other. Almost none of it existed in 2013. All of it was there in 2019. We paid for the tow and the rental and the full rebuild, and I would give a lot to have pulled in for the sensor.

We are thirty-six years married now and stronger than we ever were. But I did not have to nearly lose it to get here. That was the cost of "fine."

You do not need a crisis to deserve help

This is the part I want to say clearly, because I hear the objection every week. "Things aren't that bad. We don't need coaching." As if you had to be bleeding to see a doctor.

You are allowed to want a better marriage than a functional one. Functional but disconnected is not a life sentence, and it is not "not bad enough." It is exactly the moment a tune-up works best, because there is nothing on fire and you both still like each other. Coaching a couple who are drifting is a completely different job from rescuing a couple who are drowning. The first one is a half day and some new habits. The second one is months.

Waiting until it is a crisis turns a tune-up into a rescue. That is the whole message. Everything else is detail.

The weekly tune-up: a twenty minute state of the union

Here is what keeps my wife and me out of the ditch now. Sunday night, twenty minutes, one drink each. We call it the state of the union, and it has five questions.

1. What went well between us this week? Start here, always. Not because it is nice, but because you cannot fix a marriage from a deficit. Name one real thing. "You covered Tuesday bedtime without me asking and I noticed."

1. What is one thing I did that landed wrong? Each of you, one thing, said plainly, no pile. The point of doing this weekly is that the pile never gets to nine inches. You are sorting the mail while it is still one envelope.

1. What is coming this week that could stress us? Travel, a deadline, a visit from somebody's mother. Name it now so that when you are both short on Thursday, you know why and it is not a mystery about the marriage.

1. What do you need from me this week? Specific. Doable by Friday. "I need you to take the Wednesday pickup." "I need one night where we don't talk about the kids."

1. Is the light on? This is the big one. Straight question: "On a scale of one to ten, how connected do you feel to me right now?" If either of you says a five, that is the light. You do not panic. You pull in. You talk about it that week, or you call someone, before it becomes a three.

Twenty minutes. It is boring. It is the most valuable twenty minutes in our week, and the couples I give it to tell me the same thing.

To the men reading this: "we're fine" is usually your line. I know, because it was mine. You say it because nothing is on fire and you genuinely do not see the problem. That is the point. The light is on and you are looking at the road. Ask her the one-to-ten question this week and believe the number she says.

If the light has been on a while

If you are somewhere between "fine" and "in trouble," and you would like to pull in now instead of later, I built the Jumpstart for exactly that couple. It is a single half day, online, from your own couch. We clear what has built up in the "fine" years, give you the tools like the one above, and send you home with a plan. It is the sensor, not the rebuild. It is the thing I wish we had done in 2013.

Get curious about your own dashboard. Fine is not a destination. It is a warning.

If you want to talk about what your light might be telling you, book a free fifteen minute call. No pitch, no pressure, and no requirement that anything be on fire. Tune-ups are what the call is for.