10 Lessons From 10 Years of Marriage: The Highs, Lows, and What No One Prepares You For: Episode 413
EmPowered Couples with The Freemans
Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman
5.0 • 589 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week marks our 10-year wedding anniversary and if we're being honest, the months leading up to it weren't easy. Research even shows that around the 10-year mark, couples hit peak dissatisfaction.
But here's the truth: challenges don't mean your marriage is broken. They're invitations to grow, reconnect, and come back stronger.
In this episode, we're opening up about the 10 most powerful lessons from our 10 years together — the highs, the lows, the laughter, and the lessons that have shaped us as individuals, as partners, and as parents.
Whether you've been together 2 years, 20, or 50, these lessons will give you perspective, encouragement, and practical tools to stay on the same team in every season. Don't miss this one—it might change the way you see your marriage.
Relationship Resources:
In honor of our 10-year anniversary, we're keeping The Best of Us 30-Day Couples Challenge open for just a few more days! This special edition is designed to reignite emotional and physical intimacy, spark joy, and bring out the BEST in each other again.
Join here: mycoupleschallenge.com/best
Or explore all of our tools — from upcoming workshops to guides — at meetthefreemans.com/links
👉 If this episode gave you value, hit subscribe, drop a comment with your favorite lesson, and please leave a review so more couples can find this podcast.
Episode Timestamps of What We Discuss:
0:00 – Why 10 years can be a breaking point for couples
3:20 – Lesson 1: Keep updating your shared vision
9:17 – Lesson 2: Connection is more than just being around each other
15:52 – Lesson 3: Differences can make you a stronger team
25:14 – Lesson 4: Becoming parents forces you to reconstruct your marriage
32:09 – Lesson 5: How you show up daily becomes how your marriage feels
39:37 – Lesson 6: Be more committed to repair than being right (or hurt)
47:49 – Lesson 7: Most arguments aren't about the surface-level issue
53:03 – Lesson 8: Don't shift from biggest supporters to biggest critics
59:59 – Lesson 9: The same challenges repeat until you learn the lesson
1:08:48 – Lesson 10: Sometimes you just need to have fun and switch the energy
1:12:43 – Final reflections after 10 years
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Empower Couples podcast. We're here you get modern, non-boring |
| 0:06.4 | relationship advice for you and your partner to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay in the |
| 0:11.5 | same team no matter the challenge that you face. I am one of your host, Erin Freeman. And I'm |
| 0:15.8 | Jocelyn Freeman, but you all just know us as the Freeman's. And this week is our 10-year wedding anniversary. So naturally, |
| 0:24.1 | we have been reminiscing and reflecting about everything that we have done, grown through, |
| 0:30.6 | how far we've come, and being completely honest, in the month leading up to our anniversary, |
| 0:36.3 | we went through a little bit of a rough |
| 0:38.6 | patch. Now, we have the mindset that any challenge that shows up in our relationship is there |
| 0:46.5 | to have us grow, to strengthen us, to refine us, both as individuals and as a couple. So we always sift for the lesson. And I think |
| 0:57.8 | it's helpful for people to hear, by the way, a little high five for 10 years. We did it. |
| 1:03.1 | But the reason I say that because 10 years is statistically when couples, this is according to a really large study, hit peak dissatisfaction, |
| 1:16.4 | not peak satisfaction, peak dissatisfaction. I know it's weird to think of those. I saw that |
| 1:21.2 | studied and it's just those are weird words to put together. Yes. Peak? Disatisfaction. Okay. |
| 1:27.9 | Right. |
| 1:28.3 | And I think why is just helpful insight is because you're not alone. |
| 1:33.0 | You aren't alone if around or at 10 years, it feels maybe the hardest that it's been. |
| 1:40.9 | Because according to this study, right, it's kind of like this perfect storm of |
| 1:44.6 | when couples tend to, of course, as always exceptions, but tend to have a combination of young |
| 1:51.8 | kids as well as they're really working hard in their careers. They're really trying to save |
| 1:57.5 | financially. So it's kind of this perfect storm of a lot of pressure |
| 2:02.1 | on the individuals and the couple, the relationship. |
| 2:06.5 | But you're going to hear us time and time again |
... |
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