Choosing Comfort Over Connection is Sabotaging Your Marriage

Introduction: The Quest for Peace in Marriage

If I asked you what you want most in your marriage. How many of you would say peace? I know I would have 10 years ago. I thought peace meant avoiding conflict and maximizing comfort, but here's what I've learned. Comfort is the death of intimacy.

The Comfort Trap: How Avoiding Conflict Erodes Intimacy

What if avoiding conflict for the sake of comfort is the very thing, erroding, the connection in your marriage today, we're going to explore why comfort is dangerous.

Intimacy, why modern marriage requires more than just companionship and how you can start repairing the gaps in your connection in your marriage. By the end, you'll have a new way of looking at conflict and why leaning into it might save your marriage, stick around and you don't want to miss this one.

Welcome to better husband, the podcast that helps you answer the question.

How can I be a better husband? I'm Angelo Santiago, a men's marriage and relationship coach.

Personal Story: Chasing Peace and Creating Distance

And to start us off, I want to share a little bit about my marriage. You see, 10 years ago, I was constantly chasing peace in my marriage. I thought if I avoided conflict altogether, things would be better.

But what I didn't realize was that my avoidance wasn't creating peace.

It was creating distance.

And although the distance made it feel somewhat like peace, intimacy was slipping away. I avoided hard conversations. I minimized emotions. I focused on surface level companionship. It felt easier at the moment, but it came at a cost. My wife and I weren't really connecting.

What I had to learn the hard way was that avoiding conflict didn't protect my marriage. It was ruining it. And once I started to sit in discomfort and improve my emotional intelligence and make better choices when triggered everything change. And that's what I want to share with you today.

The Evolution of Marriage: From Stability to Intimacy

Let me kick us off with why this happens for much of history. Marriage was primarily about financial stability and companionship. Our grandparents and parents may have been content with this arrangement, but in just a few generations, marriages have changed dramatically today.

People want love and connection and intimacy and so much more throughout their entire lives. And here's the catch. That kind of relationship requires skills that many of us weren't taught.

The Comfort Trap: Modern Relationships and Avoidance

Avoiding conflict. What I call the comfort trap is holding us back. Modern relationships, demand, cherishing behaviors, accountability, and repair work, and research backs this up.

According to studies by Dr. John Gottman, the leading relationship researcher, 70% of long-term relationships. Experience a decline in satisfaction within the first decade. Why. Because we get stuck in cycles of comfort and avoidance, instead of doing the hard work of intimacy.

Four Key Ideas to Avoid the Comfort Trap

I want to take a moment to talk about four incredibly important ideas that you need to integrate into your life and marriage.

If you want to avoid the comfort trap, the first one is about cherishing and vulnerability. Cherishing means actively showing your partner that you value them. This could be through small gestures, kind words, a genuine curiosity about their inner world. And vulnerability is the courage to say, here's what I'm feeling. Here's what I need. Without vulnerability, intimacy dies. The second idea is harmony disharmony and the repair process is he, every relationship moves through these three phases.

Harmony. Disharmony and repair the goal isn't to avoid disharmony it's to embrace it as part of growth, how you handle disharmony, determines the strength of your intimacy. And here's what you need to consider repair. Isn't about determining who's right or who's wrong. Instead, it's a process of rebuilding trust and restoring connection.

For example, listening without defensiveness and naming emotions can deescalate conflict very quickly. So the next thing I want you to know is discomfort is necessary. If you can't handle the discomfort of conflict, you'll never reach the deeper connection you're looking for. Intimacy grows when we face hard things together. I want to close off this section with a visual metaphor.

I want you to think about two pools of water. One is stagnant and one is flowing. Is he comfort in a marriage might feel safe, but it's like that still water it's lifeless. It's stale. It's unmoving intimacy. On the other hand is like a flowing river. It's dynamic, it's full of life and it's always moving forward, but that flow requires you to navigate the currents of vulnerability and repair.

Practical Exercises for Building Intimacy

I want to give you a few practical exercises.

Here are three actionable steps that you can take today. The first one daily check-ins. I want you to spend five minutes each day just asking your wife. How are you feeling today? What do you need? And then I want you to practice listening without interrupting or defending. I want you to then reflect back to your wife, what you heard her say, right.

And it can be imperfect. That's okay.

But it can be something along the lines of, wow. I heard you say that you're feeling really excited today because you're going on this very important business meeting and you think you have something big to contribute. And what you need is for me to just check in with you this afternoon to ask you how it went. Right.

Something as simple as that, not only invites more connection in your conversation, but it shows her that you're listening, that you care that you actually want to know more about what's going on in her world.

The next thing you can start practicing today is what I call a repair ritual. After any disagreement, whether it's big or small.

I want you to take a moment and reflect, and I want you to take accountability for your part, no matter how big, how small I want you to put yourself in your wife shoes and see how your actions or your words or your lack of action might have contributed to this disagreement. And then take ownership of it. Tell her, you see how you may have heard her and just ask the simple question. Is there anything I can do right now to make you feel better? And then listen once again and then be generous, do the thing that she tells you.

And if she needs time to come up with it, give her that space, give her that time and then follow up when it's appropriate.

The last action item I want to leave you with is what I'm calling the cherishing challenge. I want you to commit to three small gestures of love each week, like writing a note or planning a surprise or offering a sincere compliment or asking some curiosity questions about her day or about her feeling state. Find ways throughout the week that you can show her that you care, that you love her, that you cherish her.

Have it be an action, have it be a hug, have it be something that is out of the ordinary for you and make it part of the ordinary shift, your entire way of how you show your love in a way that your partner wants to receive it and do it often. And again, these can be small. It doesn't have to be grand gestures. Make it personal, make it loving and make it real.

Reflection and Closing Thoughts

As we close out, I want you to take a moment to reflect. When was the last time you had a vulnerable conversation with your wife? Can you think of one moment this week where you avoided conflict for the sake of comfort? What would it have looked like to lean into that instead? And why didn't you? What aspects of yourself prevent you from going into that level of discomfort for leaning into the confrontation, for taking ownership of where you may have done something wrong for asking for what you need for having those conversations, learn a little bit about yourself, and that will help you move in the direction that you want to go for the sake of your marriage.

You have the capacity to change. If you want to, if things aren't going well, the way they are.

Remember true intimacy comes when we prioritize connection over comfort, it demands effort, vulnerability, and the courage to engage in meaningful and sometimes uncomfortable conversations.

Ask yourself. This question. Am I prioritizing comfort over intimacy in my marriage. What can I do today to lean into connection instead? You don't have to figure this out alone, start small, stay consistent and watch how it transforms your marriage. And if you want support with this topic or any other issue in your marriage, schedule a free call with me at angelosantiago.com.

And let's talk about how I can support you. Thank you for being here on better husband. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.