
Hosted by Christa Hardin, MA · EN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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