05/10/2026
Here's a question I ask couples early in our first session together.
Are you married — or are you happy?
Most people laugh when they hear it. Then they stop laughing.
Here's something 28 years of couples therapy has taught me: marriage and happiness aren't the same thing. You can be deeply committed, faithful, and present — and still feel completely alone inside your marriage. You can tick every box and still wake up wondering what happened to the person you used to be.
That's not failure. That's the honest reality of what long-term commitment asks of us.
Marriage is a covenant — a decision, a structure, a set of promises that create something real and binding. But happiness isn't something marriage produces automatically. It's something two people build, together and over time, through choices most couples don't even know they're making.
When the covenant and the cultivation fall out of sync — that's when couples find themselves in my office. Not because anything dramatic happened, but often because nothing did. They just drifted. They stopped building.
So, I'll ask you the same question I ask every couple.
Are you married, or are you happy?
Drop your thoughts in the comments — I'd love to hear from you. And if this resonates, the full article is on LinkedIn — link in bio.
