Nobody warns you that the thing most likely to strain your marriage isn’t money, or in-laws, or differing parenting styles. Instead, it’s the slow, quiet drift that happens when two people pour everything into their kids and quietly stop tending to each other. Therapist and author Elijah Weinstein has spent nearly a decade watching this pattern play out in his practice, and he wrote the book on how to stop it.

---

The Moment Everything Starts to Unravel

Elijah has heard some version of the same story hundreds of times: a couple sitting across from him, saying we love each other, but where did we go? And almost always, the turning point traces back to having kids.

Not because kids ruin marriages. Rather, it’s because kids become the world’s best excuse to avoid hard conversations.

“It is a lot easier to deal with your kids sometimes than to actually have a hard conversation about pain and struggle and hurt,” Elijah says. “And the less you deal with it, the more it blows up later on.”

Think about it. A child who needs feeding, a bedtime routine, a shoe tied, that’s a concrete, solvable problem. Your marriage needs tending to? That’s murky, uncomfortable, and requires vulnerability. So we keep choosing the kids. Night after night. Year after year. Until, eventually, you look at the person you married and realize you’ve been roommates for a while now.

Here’s what Elijah wants you to hear: this isn’t a character flaw. It’s a skill gap. No one taught you how to maintain intimacy while simultaneously keeping small humans alive. As a result, the answer isn’t to blame yourself or your partner. It’s to build the tools you never had.

---

Stop Trying to Understand Each Other. Start Trying to See Each Other.

One of the most counterintuitive ideas Elijah brings up is his preference for sympathy over empathy, and before you push back, hear him out.

Empathy asks you to put yourself fully in someone else’s shoes. It’s the gold standard we’ve all been sold. But empathy requires understanding, and sometimes, often, you genuinely cannot understand why something matters so much to your partner. When that happens, most people get stuck trying to get there, and in the process, they miss the person standing right in front of them.

Sympathy, on the other hand, is different. Sympathy says: I see that you have feelings. I care about you. I don’t need to fully understand why this hurts. I just need to acknowledge that it does.

To illustrate the point, Elijah tells the story of his four-year-old losing his mind over a blue cup when he wanted a green one. You will never, as an adult, fully understand why the color of a cup is catastrophic. But you can absolutely see that your kid is upset. From there, you can meet him where he is, acknowledge the feeling, explain what’s available, offer choices, without needing to decode the emotional logic of a preschooler.

The same principle applies to your partner. You don’t have to understand why the dishes in the sink at bedtime feel like a personal attack. You just have to recognize that it genuinely bothers them and that it matters.

---

The Holy Trinity: Why Unspoken Expectations Are Quietly Destroying Your Relationship

Beyond sympathy and empathy, Elijah introduces a framework he calls the Holy Trinity, the relationship between expectations, perceptions, and reality, and it’s one of those things that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Here’s how it plays out in real life. You’re working from home. Your partner has what looks like a flexible schedule. So you expect (without saying a word) that they’ll handle the dishes. They don’t. Now your perception kicks in: they’re lazy, they don’t respect you, they don’t care. That perception, in turn, shapes your reality. You’re edgy, short-tempered, building a case against someone who had no idea there was even a trial happening.

But here’s the thing: you never actually said anything. You never gave them a chance.

“Stop with the ‘they should know’ thing. It doesn’t help anyone. My parents have been married for 40 years and they still have to communicate.”

The fix is almost painfully simple: say it out loud. Not as a demand, not as a passive-aggressive hint. Just a real ask. Hey, when you have a chance, can you take care of the dishes? That’s it. Now the other person can say yes, offer an alternative, or explain why they can’t. As a result, you get actual information instead of a story you made up in your head.

And if you’re on the receiving end? Don’t say yes if you don’t mean it. Give a real answer. The goal is a shared reality, not a performance.

---

The Import/Export List: A Tool Every Couple (and Family) Needs

So how do you get ahead of these unspoken expectations before they become resentments? One of the most practical tools in Elijah’s book is what he calls the import/export list, a values conversation he and his wife did when they were dating and still revisit every anniversary.

The concept is straightforward. What do you want to bring into your relationship, family, and home? And, just as importantly, what do you want to leave out?

Imports might look like:

• An open home where friends feel welcome to stay
• Monthly family adventures or hikes
• Dance parties on weekday evenings
• Teaching kids to make their case before getting an automatic no

Exports might look like:

• No slamming doors
• No name-calling, even in frustration
• No dismissing feelings without acknowledgment

The power, though, isn’t in making the list once and filing it away. It’s in the conversation, in being curious about why something matters to your partner, and then revisiting it as life changes. Because what works when you’re a couple living in a one-bedroom apartment is different from what you need when you’re two parents with three kids and a dog in the suburbs.

“Don’t laminate it and walk away. Your list needs to change as your life changes. It’s a constant work in progress.”

---

Full Communication: Giving Your Partner the Whole Picture

Building on the import/export list, Elijah also talks about what he calls full communication, and it’s less about talking more and more about giving the other person context.

There’s a real difference between “do the dishes” and “hey, I know you don’t care about this as much as I do, but a clean kitchen in the morning really sets my whole day up differently. Can you take care of it tonight?” Same request. Completely different experience for the person receiving it.

When you give someone the full picture, here’s what I need, here’s why it matters to me, here’s what it would mean to me if you did this, you’re not just making a request. Instead, you’re giving them the chance to show up for you in a way that actually feels like love.

Practically speaking, Elijah also suggests rating importance on a scale of one to ten. Not for everything, but for the moments where you really need your partner to show up. A ten means: I need you to set everything else aside for this. A five means: it matters, but there’s flexibility. Over time, this one small habit can eliminate hours of misread signals and misplaced resentment.

---

What Your Kids Are Learning Just by Watching You

Here’s the part that might hit the hardest: your kids are building their entire model of communication, conflict, and relationships by watching what happens in your house.

Not what you tell them. What they see.

Elijah’s daughter once said to him, completely earnestly: “Daddy, come sit down. Let’s talk about your feelings.” She was simply echoing back the language of her home. Dana noticed the same thing with her own kids. Her daughter came home from school confused about why her classmates were so scared to present in front of the class. She’d never learned to be afraid of speaking up, because speaking up at home was just normal.

“Emotional regulation, communication skills, how to repair. It’s all starting because of you.”

In other words, the investment you make in your relationship now, the tools you build, the conversations you stop avoiding, they don’t just save your marriage. They become the blueprint your kids will carry into every relationship they ever have.

---

The Takeaway

Your relationship didn’t break. It got deprioritized while you were busy keeping everyone alive. The good news is that’s fixable, but only if you’re willing to say the things out loud, stop the mind-reading, and give each other the full picture instead of expecting your partner to connect dots you never drew.

Elijah’s book, From I Do to We Do, is available starting March 17, 2026. Find it and all the links at eliweinsteinlcsw.com, or connect with him on Instagram at @eliweinstein.lcsw.

And if this conversation sparked something, a thought you’ve been sitting on, a conversation you’ve been putting off, consider this your nudge. The Boss Mom community is full of people doing the same messy, meaningful work of building a life and a business while staying connected to the people who matter most. You don’t have to figure it out alone.

---

Cozy Earth sponsorship…

The episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth.

Elevate the routines you live in. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code BOSSMOM for up to 20% off. And if you get a Post-Purchase Survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here!

I’m in LOVE with their Cuddle Blanket. It feels like a weighted blanket and is so amazing, we got a second one because my daughter kept stealing mine.