Can One Spouse Change the Marriage For the Better? Episode 421

EmPowered Couples with The Freemans

Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman

Education, Society & Culture, Relationships, Self-improvement

5.0 • 589 Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the holiday season approaches, many couples find themselves hitting a quiet but undeniable breaking point. Something about this stretch of time—from mid-October through the new year—brings things to the surface. Maybe it's the reflection that comes with the end of a year. Maybe it's the pressure of finances, family expectations, or feeling like life is flying by. But without the closeness you hoped to feel by now. For many, it's a season where the question "Can we really keep going like this?" starts to creep in.

In this episode, we unpack a question so many couples wrestle with: Can one spouse change the marriage if the other isn't ready or willing? What happens when one person is trying, growing, learning... and the other seems stuck? Is it unfair to hope for more? Is it foolish to keep waiting? We're diving into the emotional weight of this question, why so many couples delay getting support, and what it really takes to shift the direction of your relationship. Especially in the seasons that feel the hardest.

In this episode we cover:

The surprising reason many marriages reach a breaking point during this season
The #1 personality trait that determines whether couples make it through hard seasons
Why some partners resist working on themselves or the relationship until separation is on the table
What delays couples from getting help—and how much damage that can do
The emotional cost of carrying the growth for two people

To then interrupt destructive cycles and finally start moving forward together:

🎥 Watch the free 1-hour Marriage WebClass: [The 5 Root Causes of Conflict and Disconnection in Marriage & How to Overcome Them]

This is the fastest way to learn what's really underneath recurring arguments, disconnection, and shutdowns—and how to turn it around together. Couples say it gave them more clarity than 6 months of counseling.

👉 Watch this Marriage WebClass now [with this link here]

👉 See all of our practical resources here - from couples challenges, guides, and in-person events.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Empower Couples podcast.
0:02.6	We're here you get modern, non-boring relationship advice for you and your partner
0:06.6	to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay on the same team.
0:10.7	No matter the challenge that you face, I am one of your host, Aaron Freeman.
0:13.6	And I'm Jocelyn Freeman, but you all just know us as the Freemans.
0:16.6	And this episode is about can one spouse change the marriage for the better?
0:21.9	It's a common question we receive in emails, DMs on podcast interviews, because we know that it can feel like one partner is either a bit resistant to the growth-oriented things, whether that's reading the books, listening to the, or even taking the step of, you know, going for a counseling session or a coaching session.
0:43.7	Or if it's not resistance, then it can be that one partner just wants to do it at a faster pace.
0:50.4	Like there's more urgency. Like, no, no, no. Like, we have to work on these things. And so they're
0:55.6	taking action, like listening to the podcasts, booking the sessions. And the other person's like,
1:00.9	hey, it doesn't feel as urgent to me. So there can be those different urgency levels as well.
1:06.6	We're going to unpack a bit as to why that's the case and some different dynamics contributing to that.
1:12.7	We're also going to talk about the most important traits required when it comes to really lasting in a marriage, especially in the hard seasons.
1:24.0	I wanted to bring this, I thought of this topic because I just have seen every year, we've
1:30.6	been doing this now 10 years and we have just seen every single year right around this time,
1:38.3	like mid-October through mid-January, is this influx of people truly feeling this urgency, almost like there's a
1:49.5	little bit more awareness to the fact that they're in a rough spot and or even being in a bit of a
1:56.8	make-it-or-break-it time where they kind of feel the relationship is like rocky.
2:03.6	And here's what I notice.
2:15.4	Collectively, we become very aware of time passing the impermanence of life as each year is going on. Right?
2:15.7	So it's like, oh, wow, it is the holiday season, another year has
2:19.8	passed, and we reflect even subconsciously on what's changed, what hasn't changed, what's better,
	...

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