In The Martian (2015), astronaut Mark Watney is accidentally left behind on Mars after his crew assumes he’s dead.

NASA is 140 million miles away, the food supply will run out in weeks, and the planet is an endless expanse of red dust and silence.

It’s not unlike some marriages—barren landscapes, poor communication, and the sinking feeling no one is coming to help.

Watney survives not because of a single act of heroism, but because of thousands of small decisions: taking stock of what he has, innovating under pressure, keeping himself mentally engaged, and refusing to quit.

Those are of the same survival skills couples can use when their relationship feels stranded in hostile territory.

In April 1970, three astronauts found themselves in a situation you wouldn’t wish on your worst Tinder date: floating 200,000 miles from Earth in a damaged spacecraft, oxygen bleeding into the void.

The moon landing was out. The only mission left? Get home alive.

If you’ve seen the movie Apollo 13, you know the beats: the explosion, the frantic calculations, the MacGyvered CO₂ filter made from socks and duct tape.

You also know the moment where panic could have taken over — but didn’t.

That’s a masterclass in emotionally regulated, essential communication, the kind of skill that works in Mission Control… or in your kitchen when your spouse just “accidentally” put the good cast-iron skillet in the dishwasher.

Some couples fight like they’re in a kitchen-sink drama. Others fight like they’re in Jaws — except instead of a shark, it’s a mortgage payment, a teenage son with a vape habit, or the silent accumulation of dishes in the sink.

And most of us, in the moment, handle it with about the same grace as an inflatable raft in a hurricane.

But then there’s Quint.

If you’ve seen Jaws, you remember the scene: he’s half in the bag, singing sea shanties, the boat rocking lazily in the twilight — when suddenly, bang.

The shark slams into the hull. Quint doesn’t flinch, doesn’t panic, and doesn’t start narrating his feelings. He drops the song mid-verse, sits up, and starts issuing calm, precise orders.

No “What the hell is that?” No “Oh God we’re all going to die!” Just:

“Shut off the engine.” “Hooper, get forward.” “Brody, you come with me.”

This, gentle reader, is emotionally regulated, essential communication — the kind that can keep a marriage afloat long after it’s taken on water.

Most people picture the apocalypse as something out there — mushroom clouds, superviruses, maybe an asteroid with bad aim.

But for married people, the end of the world can be smaller, quieter, and a lot closer to home: a pink slip, a diagnosis, a betrayal you never saw coming.

And yet, throughout history, couples have made it through disasters big and small.

Even in the ruins of Pompeii, archaeologists have found skeletons curled toward each other — ancient proof that love sometimes survives the ash.

So what separates the couples who pull through from the ones who can’t?

Science actually has a lot to say about that.

Once upon a time—say, around 1982—Americans treated marriage like an avocado: you just grabbed one and hoped it wasn’t rotten inside.

Now, it’s more like artisan sourdough from a boutique bakery. Pricey, selective, Instagrammed. And apparently, harder to ruin.

According to a new report from the Institute for Family Studies, divorce is at its lowest rate in 50 years, and the percentage of children living with married parents is finally climbing.

The Atlantic even ran a feature titled “Are We Witnessing a Marriage Comeback?” (Wilcox, 2025).

Cue the headlines. Cue the pundits. Cue your divorced aunt forwarding you articles about how “people are finally doing it right.”

But hold the champagne. This isn’t a comeback tour. It’s a boutique performance for a smaller, more exclusive audience.

You didn’t Google “my husband hates me” for fun.

You're here because something in your marriage feels off—maybe devastatingly off.

Maybe he rolls his eyes when you speak. Maybe he sleeps on the edge of the bed like you're radioactive.

Maybe he hasn’t said “I love you” since your last anniversary dinner, which you planned, paid for, and cried in the bathroom halfway through.

If you're here, it's because you're wondering something painful and unspeakable: Does he even like me anymore?

As a couples therapist, let me say this first: You are not crazy. And you're not alone. That phrase—"my husband hates me"—shows up more often in therapy than most people realize.

It's a placeholder for exhaustion, distance, resentment, rejection, and disconnection. And behind it, there’s often a deeper story waiting to be uncovered.

This blog post is for anyone who’s whispered that phrase into a pillow, typed it into a search bar, or heard it echo in their own mind.

Let’s talk about what it really means—and what you can do about it.

Why Generalized Anxiety Disorder May Be More About Emotional Rigidity Than Just Worry

Let’s talk about what happens when your brain becomes a well-meaning but extremely annoying overprotective parent. That’s generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in a nutshell.

It means waking up every morning convinced that something is about to go wrong—and having the receipts to prove it, all neatly misfiled in your frontal cortex.

Now, new research out of China suggests that the problem isn’t just worrying too much.

It’s how people with GAD process emotion itself.

Think less “too many feelings” and more “bad emotional software with a tendency to crash during emotionally charged updates.”

It started like a routine hospital visit. A 59-year-old man walked into a Beijing clinic for a standard medical procedure.

But then—sharp chest pain. Gasping for air. His heart, it seemed, was under siege.

What followed wasn’t a typical heart attack. Doctors diagnosed him with takotsubo cardiomyopathy—a condition so closely tied to emotional pain that it's often called broken heart syndrome.

For months, this man had quietly carried the heavy weight of fear and anxiety following cancer surgery, never letting his family see just how frightened he was.

That silent stress—unspoken and unresolved—may have played a role in stopping his heart.

And he’s not alone.

Let’s start with the obvious: if you feel like your partner holds all the cards—whether or not they actually do—your relationship might not feel so dreamy.

And thanks to a large new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, we now have data to back up what therapists have been watching for decades: relationship satisfaction is less about how much power you hold, and more about how much power you think your partner has.

But this isn’t your grandma’s relationship research.

Led by Eleanor Junkins and colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, this study pulls the thread on the old, straight, heteronormative fabric of power dynamics in love and weaves in something much more expansive: diverse identities, relationship structures, and nuanced personality variables.

It’s time to retire the idea that power in relationships is just about who earns more money or who gets to control the remote. Turns out, the truth is far messier—and far more interesting.

In a culture where we’re told to “marry your best friend,” it’s surprising how few people actually do.

According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, only 14.4% of adults in committed romantic relationships in the U.S. identified their partner as their best friend.

The rest? Either they called someone else their best friend—or didn’t include their partner as a “friend” at all.

That’s not a failure of romance. It might be a quiet revolution.

Long before you argued over laundry or in-laws, you were a sibling—or maybe an only child—waging psychological warfare over the front seat, the last cookie, or whose turn it was to walk the dog.

Turns out, those ancient power dynamics don’t retire; they just get repackaged with adult language and romantic undertones.

Welcome to the world of birth order psychology, where who you were in the family lineup still whispers into the ear of your adult relationships.

Birth order theory—first popularized by Alfred Adler—suggests that our position among siblings shapes our personality, coping styles, and even mate selection (Sulloway, 1996).

But newer research adds nuance, indicating these dynamics aren't deterministic—they interact with attachment, temperament, and family context (Paulhus et al., 1999; Eckstein et al., 2010).

Still, couples therapists know: sibling scripts are often running in the background like old software, occasionally crashing the marriage OS.

At a certain point, success becomes its own insulation.
The gestures that once built connection — mistakes, doubts, the unscripted laugh — are replaced by coordination and polish.
What’s lost isn’t love, but access.

A marriage becomes another achievement: admired, functional, and faintly routine.
Many won’t notice.
But a few will.

And for them, the real work begins:
learning how to be human with each other, again.