If you’re trying to bring back a fire in your marriage, the problem usually isn’t sex - that's just the symptom of a deeper rupture that needs your attention.
Most marriage advice focuses on surface fixes instead of the deeper growth dynamics that actually sustain desire.
While ‘desire discrepancy’ in couples is known and talked about, what’s less addressed is something I see all the time in my work.
I call it the ‘growth gap’.
It’s where one partner is willing and able to take responsibility, regulate emotionally, and learn effective ways to communicate, while the other is…not.
It’s a heartbreaking scenario, for both parties.
Here’s the thing. There has been tons of research on what works to keep relationships alive and happy.
One recent example is from social psychologist Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh’s two decades of research on hundreds of couples. She found that these ‘ingredients’ are necessary to build a lifetime of love:
Cultivating these ingredients required an ability to self-reflect and a willingness to grow together, at the minimum.
And yet in my work, what I find is that marriages with a ‘growth gap’ are the norm. No one was assessing for emotional maturity, openness to growth, or curiosity about their inner world during dating.
Without emotionally mature communication in marriage, even strong attraction erodes over time.
Let’s be clear that this situation arises through cultural defaults and not personal failings. We simply don’t realize there can be another way.
Instead what clients have repeatedly told me brought them together was:
Even worse, when a marriage is struggling, there is tremendous pressure to not ‘fail’ — and keep it together at all costs. But the costs to our mental health are too big, and we bequeath a legacy of a lifetime of failed romance to our kids, who are imprinted with what we model.
Leila Hormozi says: “Your spouse is your life’s co-founder. They’ll either invest in your dreams or bankrupt your confidence. Choose wisely.”
It’s long past time we were handed down models of relating and incentives that allowed us to do just that.
If you’re in a relationship that already has a growth gap, the first step can be having compassion for your spouse and getting curious about what’s happening for them.
This is exactly the work I do with men who want to bring back the spark in their marriage without blame, pressure, or walking on eggshells.
The second step is to turn toward what you can do to change things, instead of waiting for them to change.
Which ‘ingredients’ does your relationship need more of, that you can provide?
Bring it.
I created the Chemistry Experiment to show you the highest leverage moves you can make - based on math.
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