Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to what will be a brutally honest episode of the Mel Robbins podcast.

So first off, I'm super, super excited that you're here. My name is Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on change and motivation.

And since we have started this podcast, I have been flooded with questions, and I love getting all of your questions. But this one right here has stuck with me.

Hey, Mel, it's Jennifer. Can you do a podcast not on marriage advice, but something about how marriage is so wacky hard and unusual and worth staying the course?

I went back and listened to your opening podcast and was so blown away by the exposure of what you'd gone through, but also of the impact upon your marriage.

And so I'm kind of blown away that your marriage existed through all of that. I feel a lot of cultural pressure and voices about leaving marriage, but not so much about staying.

Like maybe the pendulum has shifted generationally from, quote, Steve for the kids to, quote, leave to make yourself happy, but isn't there another way, another kind of perspective on the why of staying?

I love the show, your vibe, your honesty. It really helps. Thank you so much, Mel.

Thank you for this question. I love your vibe, and I love the question itself. And I also want to thank you for distinguishing between the request of asking for advice about marriage and relationships versus just talking about my experience.

And the truth is, I don't talk about this topic of relationships and marriage and giving advice about it all that much because the fact is, I don't think I do know the secret to marriage.

I've been married for 26 years, but I feel like my husband, Chris and I, we are still figuring out the secret to marriage.

And I also worry that if Chris and I started giving relationship and marriage advice and we somehow held ourselves out there as the model for a marriage that works, it would blow up our own marriage.

I mean, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it seems like every other day there is some author influencer that has been giving relationship advice who then announces that they're getting divorced.

Personally, do not want to get divorced. But I can't stop thinking about your question. And you're not the only one who has been asking me to talk about some of the things that Chris and I have learned along the way after being together for 28 years and being married for 26 years.

So, Jennifer, after much trepidation, I decided, fuck it, I'm going to answer this. But I want to be open with you because I see what you're writing to me.

And you're turning to me because you've heard me and Chris on the podcast, you've heard our family sharing a lot on the podcast, you see pictures of us online and we're smiling and we're happy.

But I want to tell you something, it hasn't been easy. For example, we just had our 25th wedding anniversary about 18 months ago and we didn't celebrate it.

We didn't celebrate it because we were in a really hard spot with one another. We were deep in therapy. There was a lot of stuff that we were working through because as we're going to talk about, I promised a brutally honest conversation with you today.

Over the course of 25 years, whether it's a friendship or a marriage or family relationship, ship builds up. And there was a lot of things that had built up between Chris and I, resentments, pain, shame, all kinds of crap that happens in every single marriage that we were plowing through.

And frankly, neither one of us felt like celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. And that was 18 months ago. And I've done a tremendous amount of work with Chris since then. And we are now in a better place and a more connected, profound place with one another than we've ever been.

And so, Jennifer, I'm going to give you six things that I've learned in recent years. The years where Chris and I have been working with Dr. Cooper, a psychotherapist as our therapist as a couple.

And it's six things that have really helped me and helped Chris in terms of changing how we show up in our marriage, changing the dynamic, clearing out the crap that is built up and forging something stronger in this next phase of our marriage.

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