Couple Forward

05/05/2026

05/05/2026

I have figured out that being man has four legs, like a good stool, the four Ps.

Protection: emotionally, physically, spiritually
Provision: food, shelter, resource, teaching, wisdom
Presence: listening actively, undistracted, leaning in & forward
Partnership: noting is too small, everything is my job

Stardate 2026.34

05/03/2026

In 1847, women were dying in a Vienna maternity ward at five times the rate of the ward next door.

Same hospital. Same city. Same year.

A Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis traced it to the medical students coming straight from autopsies without washing their hands. The solution was simple. His colleagues refused.

Not because the evidence was weak. Because accepting it meant they had been the cause all along.

The most dangerous thing you can say to someone you love is "I know you."

In 1847, women were dying in a Vienna maternity ward at five times the rate of the ward next door. Same hospital. Same city. Same year. A Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis traced it to the medical students coming straight from autopsies without washing their hands. The solution was simple.....

05/02/2026

Kepler had his own inherited assumption. He believed the planets moved in perfect circles. The circles were Plato’s. The circles were Copernicus’s. The circles were everyone’s. They had been the orthodoxy for almost two thousand years.

On the Inherited.

05/02/2026

Certainty is not a sign that you are right.

It is a sign that you are invested.

The nervous system defends a threatened map the way it defends a threatened life. Because at some level, they are the same thing. Your model of reality is what you navigate by. Challenge the model and the body responds as if survival is at stake.

This is why you can be completely wrong about someone and feel completely certain at the same time.

Certainty is not evidence. It is attachment to the rendering.

The map is not the territory. I write about what it costs when we forget that — and what becomes possible when we remember. Click to read The Map Is Not the Territory, by Christian J Charette, LMFT, a Substack publication. Launched 3 months ago.

04/18/2026

To love someone well is to love them with the same generosity and charity that we love children. With children we always think in 3D. We are instinctively aware that their grumpy tantrum represents something missing, a nap, some food, attention. We often forget this truth when it comes to our partner, who is always seeking their most unmet need in development and life with us.

Les Paul and the Relationship Soundboard Mix of Love

04/13/2026

A year in the making! The Inner Compass Assessment for Relationships is here!

Amber and I sat at Starbucks a year ago and had a brainstorm of building a better assessment. Not just an assessment that labeled the problems, but an assessment that offered people matched solutions-so they didn’t have to waste their time. Psychology is long on problems and short on solutions.

This assessment takes 20 years of experience and helps identify the code running a nervous system underneath the relationship patterns and offers solutions you can start today!

Your nervous system has a plan for every situation. You've never seen it. Map your operating system for $79.

04/13/2026

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Sacred cows make gourmet hamburgers.