Your Marriage Can Change This Week — Five Small Things to Start Doing

[00:00:00] The 15-Second Moment at the Door

Most men can relate to this moment. You walk in through the front door after a full day, and you're done. Your body's home, shoes off, keys on the counter, but your head's still somewhere else, still running through everything you didn't finish, everything waiting for you tomorrow, and your wife's there.

She's been waiting. She wants to connect. She wants to tell you about something that happened, ask you about your day, and she does. "Hey, how was your day?" And you give her the autopilot version. "It was good. How was yours?" And here's the first thing I want you to know. She can tell. She can tell that you're on autopilot, that you're not really there, that you're just going through the motions.

She always can. And I lived this exact moment for years. I went through two totally different careers, same walk through the same door, same woman on the other end, wondering when I was actually going to show up.

And those small moments, the ones I thought didn't matter, the ones I figured she'd just understand because I was tired, those moments, along with a lot of the other things I've talked about on this podcast, are what brought our marriage to the brink of divorce. So when my marriage was falling apart and I was trying to figure out what I had to do to really start changing it, to transform it into the marriage we both wanted, I started asking myself this question.

If small moments can destroy your marriage, can small moments heal it? And from the research I've read, from the experience in my own marriage, and from the stories of the men I work with every week, the answer is yes. Small moments can absolutely transform your marriage.

That walk through the front door was just one of the things I learned that makes a huge difference. In this episode, I'm going to share five of them. Five small things that actually change your marriage, and I'm not talking about weekend retreats or a ninety-day overhaul. These are five small things you can start doing today, tonight, this week.

And I'm not just gonna tell you what they are. I'm going to explain why each one matters, what the research says is actually happening in your marriage when you do it, and what starts breaking down when you don't, because most of us have been living in the when you don't part without even realizing it.

I'm also going to show you how to make these yours wherever your marriage is right now. If things are going well and you want to keep building. If things are tense and you need a way back in. If your marriage is in crisis mode and you're just trying to figure out what can move it in the right direction. These five things can meet you where you are.

By the end of this episode, you'll have five new skills that you can actually use in your marriage, understand why they work, and exactly how to put them to use starting today. Stick around. You don't want to miss this one.

[00:02:33] What I Didn't See for Years

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, and every week I bring you practical insights to help you strengthen your marriage and become the best husband you can be.

Now, here's the thing about those walks through the front door. I didn't just do this at one job. I did it at two completely different careers, years apart, same pattern both times.

When I was a mechanical engineer before I ever became a firefighter, I'd sit in front of a computer all day. Meetings, project deadlines, design reviews, the kind of stress that sits behind your eyes and doesn't let go. I'd get home at six, sometimes later, and I had nothing left. My wife would be there wanting to connect, wanting to talk about her day, wanting me to be present, and I'd go through the motions, ask the questions, nod in the right places, but I wasn't there. I was just trying to get through the conversation so I could go sit down somewhere quiet.

Then I became a firefighter. Different kind of drain. Forty-eight hour shifts, physically exhausted, hadn't slept, my body ached.

I'd drive home already tense because I knew what was coming. She'd been holding everything together while I was gone for two days. She had things to share, things she needed from me emotionally, things for us to plan together.

And I was pulling into the driveway thinking about how fast I could get to the couch. Two completely different jobs, same walk through the same door, same woman on the other end, same exact move from me. And here's what I didn't see at the time. I thought I was just tired. I thought she'd understand. I thought those little moments of checking out didn't really matter because I was still showing up, still providing, still there physically, but she wasn't experiencing a tired husband. She was experiencing an absent one.

Every time I walked through that door on autopilot, every time I gave her the surface version of me, the connection between us got a little colder. Just silence and distance. And those small moments, the ones I thought were nothing, along with all the other things I've shared about my story, are the things that brought us to the brink of divorce.

When I made the decision to go all in on healing and transforming my marriage, to putting in the work on myself, uncovering all the ways I'd struggled, gaining a deeper understanding of the things I was never taught about being a husband, I started learning something new from the research, the therapist I went to and later trained with, from doing my own work.

I started to do something different. Same exhaustion, same long day, but instead of walking through the door and heading for the couch, I stopped, I looked at her and gave her a hug, touched her hair, looked her in the eyes, said something real, even if it was just, hey, it's so good to see you.

Took maybe 15 seconds. And then I could tell her I was wiped out. I could say, I need to lie down for a bit. And it landed completely differently because she'd already felt me arrive. She wasn't fighting to get my attention anymore. She'd gotten it for 15 seconds. And that was enough to change the whole experience of the rest of the day.

That's when I started asking the question, if small things got us to the brink, could small moments bring us back? The answer, from 50 years of marriage research, from the couples I coach every single week, and from my own marriage is yes. Small moments have a bigger impact than the weekend retreats and the overhauls we try to plan and get perfect.

It's not even close. So let's not waste any time. Let me give you five of them.

[00:05:50] Why 15 Seconds Changes the Whole Evening

Number one, make contact when you walk in the door. The move is simple. When you come home or she comes home or you see each other for the first time after being apart, stop what you're doing, look at her, say something that invites her in, touch her, a hand on her back, a hug, eye contact. Fifteen seconds, that's all this takes.

John and Julie Gottman are the leading relationship researchers in the United States with over fifty years of experience. They focus in on something they call bids for connection. A bid is any attempt to connect. It can be a look, a touch, a question, a smile, any invitation that says, "I want to be close to you right now."

When your wife is at the door waiting for you, she's making a bid, and you've got three options. You can turn toward it, engage, even briefly. You can turn away, just notice, stay in your head, and walk past. Or you can turn against it. Shut it down with irritation or distance. The research is clear on this.

They studied a hundred and thirty newlywed couples and followed them for six years. The couples who stayed together had turned toward each other's bids eighty-six percent of the time. The couples who divorced, thirty-three percent. That gap starts at the front door. When you make real contact, even for a few seconds, you're depositing something into what the Gottmans call the emotional bank account.

Every time you turn toward her, you put something in, and when things get hard later, a disagreement, a stressful week, a miscommunication, you've got something to draw on. The hard moment doesn't wreck everything because there's enough in there to absorb it. When you don't, when you walk in on autopilot day after day, the account drains, and the next time something goes wrong, even something small, there's nothing to cushion it.

That's how a bad evening turns into a bad month. That's how distance becomes the default. One of the men I work with put it this way. He said when he didn't manage his stress before walking through the door, he put the key through the door and carried it through the house. His whole day came home with him.

His wife felt it. His daughter felt it. He made no bids for connection with anyone. Since then, he's been working on doing the exact opposite. You don't have to solve everything at the door. You just have to arrive. Fifteen seconds of real presence changes the trajectory of the whole evening.

[00:08:08] One Real Question That Says You're Still Interested

Number two, ask one real question. Not, "How was your day?" on autopilot. Not, "Did you call the dentist?" One real question. Something that tells her you're actually curious about what's going on inside her. What's on your mind right now? What are you looking forward to this week? Is there anything you're carrying that I don't know about?

The Gottmans use a concept called a love map. It's your knowledge of your wife's inner world,. What she's worried about, what she's excited about, what she dreams about, what keeps her up at night. And most men don't realize this, you don't just build a love map once.

You have to keep updating it. She's not the same person she was when you met her. She's not even the same person she was six months ago. Her fears change. Her goals change. What she needs from you changes. And John Gottman, after 34 years of marriage, still asks himself every day, "What am I missing?"

Not because he doesn't know his wife, but because he knows people keep changing, and his job is to keep paying attention. When you ask a real question, you're telling her, "I'm still interested. I don't think I've got you figured out. I want to know who you are right now."

When you stop asking, you start running on an old map. You make assumptions about what she wants based on who she was two years ago, and slowly, so slowly you don't notice, the marriage turns into a logistics partnership.

At that point, you're managing a household, not building a life together. You're asking, "Did you pay the bills?" instead of, "Is this the life you still want?"

The Gottmans worked with a couple who'd been married for 20 years, high-powered jobs, three kids, a beautiful home, and they hadn't really talked, not about anything that mattered, in years.

They'd swiveled their attention to the kids and the house and their careers and never swiveled back. By the time they came in to see them, they were strangers living under the same roof. The fix wasn't a huge overhaul of their entire life. It was 10 minutes a day with real questions and real conversations. It's like they met each other all over again.

For you, start with just one question. That's the move. One question that says, "I don't already know everything about you, and I want to." And as you get better at it, you work towards deeper conversations every day.

[00:10:18] What Cherishing Actually Looks Like

Number three, name something you noticed, not thanks for everything you do. That's wallpaper. It sounds fine and means nothing. Something specific, something you actually saw.

Hey, I saw how you handled that with the kids tonight. That was really beautiful.

Or you've been carrying a lot this week and you haven't really talked about it. Is there anything you want me to know?

Or how you talked with your mom on the phone earlier, you were really patient with her.

These things are specific. They're observed. They're recent.

Back in 1980, researchers put observers in people's homes, one per spouse, and tracked every positive thing each partner did. Then they had the spouses track what they noticed. Unhappily married couples missed 50% of the positive things their partner did.

It wasn't that happily married couples did more things. They were just better at seeing them. There's a term for what happens when the negative filter takes over. Psychologists call it negative sentiment override. You stop seeing the good because you're so locked in to scanning for what's wrong.

She does 10 things and you register three. The rest disappear and you hyper focus on the things she didn't do. In everyday life, not during a fight, just a regular day, happy couples maintain a ratio of 20 positive interactions for every one negative.

20 to one. When you name what you see out loud, specific, in the moment, you're doing two things. You're rewiring your own brain to scan for the good instead of the bad, and you're telling her she's not invisible, that what she does actually registers with you. When you don't, when everything she does goes unnoticed, when appreciation lives inside your head but never makes it out of your mouth, she stops feeling it.

You can feel grateful all day long. If you never say it, she doesn't know. One sentence, one thing you notice today, say it out loud.

[00:12:07] Say What You Need — Not What She Did Wrong

Number four, ask for what you need. This is the one most men skip, and not because they don't have needs, but because they've been trained not to voice them. Here's the pattern.

You want something. You drop a hint. You hope she picks up on it. She doesn't, because she's not a mind reader. Nobody is. So resentment builds, and eventually, instead of asking, you criticize. You never, you always, and now you're in a fight about her character when all you needed was ten minutes of her attention.

The Gottmans found that ninety-six percent of the time they could predict the outcome of a conversation and the relationship six years later by watching the first three minutes of that conversation. Ninety-six percent of the time. How you start up determines where you end up, and criticism is a guaranteed harsh startup.

The shift is simple. Instead of telling her what she's doing wrong or not asking for something and getting upset when you don't get it, tell her what you need. Instead of, "You never make time for me," try, "I miss spending time with you. Can we find an evening this week?" That's it.

Describe yourself, not her. Describe the situation, not a character flaw, and state what you actually need clearly and specifically.

I was coaching a guy on this recently. He shared a story where he was walking through a busy crowd with his wife, and she's grabbing his hand and steering him, pulling him left, right, speeding him up.

He felt like a horse being led by a bridle, and he was frustrated. But when I asked him what he actually wanted, he couldn't say it cleanly. He could complain about what bothered him. He couldn't make the request. So we worked it out together live, and it was something like, "I really like holding your hand when we walk. I like being close to you, especially somewhere loud and crowded like this. And when I'm being pulled around, it doesn't feel good to me. Can we walk together instead?"

That's clean. You lead with what's good. You own your part. You share how it makes you feel. You make a specific request, and you give her something she can actually say yes to.

When you don't ask, you stack up resentments like bricks until one day you unload all of them at once, and she's standing there thinking, "Where did all of this come from?" Ask for what you need. Say it out loud. Give her the chance to show up for you.

[00:14:19] Touch That Doesn't Come With Strings Attached

Number five, touch when it's not about sex.

A hand on her shoulder while she's cooking. A real hug, not a side pat, a real one, twenty seconds. A kiss when you leave in the morning, even if she's still half asleep. Sitting close enough on the couch that your legs are touching.

Touch that doesn't have an agenda. Touch that isn't going anywhere. Touch that just says, "I'm here."

And it's more powerful than you think. A neuroscientist named James Coan ran an experiment. He put women in an fMRI machine, a machine that measures what's happening in your brain in real time. He was tracking their fear response. He would then flash an image on a screen which signaled that an electrical shock might be coming, and their fear system lit up every time.

Then he changed one variable. He had their husband hold their hand. The fear response dropped significantly. In the strongest marriages, it nearly disappeared, as if the signal barely registered. The touch of a committed partner's hand calmed the brain's alarm system in a way nothing else could. That's what your touch does.

It's not just nice, it's neurological. Physical touch releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone, the same one that connects mothers and babies. It lowers blood pressure, reduces cortisol, calms the nervous system. A 20-second hug is exactly how long it takes for oxytocin to hit your bloodstream.

And there's a study out of Germany that found men who kiss their wives goodbye in the morning live five years longer than men who don't. Five years. From a kiss.

But this is the part that trips men up. For a lot of us, touch leads to sex. That's the wiring, and our wives know it. So when every touch carries the weight of expectation, she stops wanting to be touched, not because she doesn't want closeness, but because closeness always seems to come with strings attached.

When you touch without an agenda, consistently, daily, you erase that expectation. And what the research actually shows is this. For many women, non-sexual touch is what stirs desire. Contact leads to closeness. Closeness leads to everything else. But only when touch gets to be its own thing first.

Reach out. Put your hand on her back. Hold her hand in the car. Let it mean nothing more than, "I'm right here."

But there's one thing I do want to say here. If you're at a point in your marriage where physical touch actually brings up discomfort in your wife's nervous system, maybe there's been a history of boundaries not being honored, maybe she doesn't feel safe or close to you physically yet, then you have to be able to not only read the signs, but give her the space.

If she's asked for that specifically, that is non-negotiable. You honor her request and you let her know that you heard her. Not all of these five things are going to work for every marriage right now, and that leads me to my next point.

[00:17:06] More Doesn't Mean Better

Don't try all five. I know that's tempting. You heard this list and part of your brain is already building a checklist, scheduling it out, turning it into a project.

Don't. Step back and take a moment to examine. What does your marriage need right now? What has your wife been asking for? Which one of these five things felt like it was aimed right at you? Pick that one. Not all five, the one that your marriage needs most right now. And know this, as your marriage evolves, it may need a different one of these.

What your wife needs from you today might not be the same thing she needs six months from now. So keep all five of these tools in your back pocket ready to go for when that moment comes.

More does not mean better. The right action, the right tool for what your marriage needs is the one you prioritize first. If there's distance between the two of you right now, someone needs to take a small step toward the other one. These five moves allow you to be the one to take that step. That's relational leadership.

That's what one small thing does. It doesn't fix your marriage by Friday. It gets you one step closer to each other, and that step is everything.

Pick one, commit to doing it, and do it this week.

[00:18:16] Awareness, Action, Accountability

Now it's time to put what you've learned into practice. Here's your awareness question, action steps, and accountability for this week.

Here's the awareness question I want you to answer this week. You just heard five small things you can do for your marriage: make contact when you walk in the door, ask one real question, name something you notice, ask for what you need, touch when it's not about sex.

Which one do you feel would have the biggest impact on your marriage right now? Really take an honest look at that question. Take the time to answer it because that awareness is going to lead you to taking the next right action you need on your journey to becoming a better husband.

Here are your action steps for this week.

One, which one did you just get clear on from the awareness question? The one that would have the most impact in your marriage right now. Write it down somewhere you'll see it every morning. A sticky note on your mirror, in front of your wallet, make it your phone's wallpaper, wherever it's going to be right in front of you.

Two, do it once. Don't worry about getting it perfect and don't make a big deal out of it. Just do it once on purpose before the end of the week.

Three, at the end of the week, check in with yourself. Did I do it? What happened? What did I notice? If you didn't do it, don't beat yourself up. Get curious about what got in the way and try again.

And four, if you've got a guy in your life who needs to hear this episode, send it to him. Don't explain it, just send the link. Let the episode do the work.

Now, for accountability. If this episode hit close to home and gave you new insights and tools to help you become a better husband, and you're listening and thinking, "Yeah, I need to actually do this, not just hear it," that's exactly what we do inside Better Husband Academy. Real men doing this work in real time with real support, practice, accountability, and other guys who are also doing the work of becoming better husbands.

Come join us at betterhusbandacademy.com.

[00:20:05] Closing Takeaway

Here's your closing takeaway for this episode. Your marriage is built in moments, small moments, and most of those moments are small enough to miss. A greeting at the door, a real question, a sentence of appreciation, a clean request, a hand on her back. None of these take more than 15 seconds.

None of them require you to be a different person. They just require you to be present for the person who's already there.

Small things done often, that's the whole game, and you can start tonight.

Thanks for listening to this episode and joining me on the journey of becoming a better husband. You're listening to Better Husband.

I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.