134. 3 Things You Keep Saying That Are Slowly Killing Your Marriage
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your marriage. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
There are 3 things you keep saying that are slowly killing your marriage. I share what these 3 things are, and why saying them is causing problems.
If you are struggling with saying these things, there is still space to save your marriage. This is just a communication issue, and I explain what you should say in these situations instead.
You can turn things around in your marriage with the right words. The right words will bring you and your partner closer, instead of pushing each other farther away.
Click the link to listen, and let me know what you think - I’d love to hear from you!
If this episode hits home and you’re ready to work with me, book a call so we can chat. On the call, you’ll share what’s going on, what you’ve tried, and I’ll share how I can help. Can’t wait to connect!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos, welcome back to the Relationship Reset with me, your host, Karina F. Daves marriage expert, speaker and podcast host of this dope podcast. This episode is going to be called five things we did in 2024 that changed the game for our marriage. And this is actually a spin-off of or an extension of a post that I did earlier this year that really talked about, you know, what we did as a married couple that really changed the dynamic, changed communication, just changed a lot for our marriage.
Amigos, welcome back to the Relationship Reset with me, your host, Karina F. Daves, a marriage expert, speaker and host of this dope podcast. So if you listened to the last episode, you know that I have been on this carousel frenzy. In 2025, I really started experimenting more with carousels. And I really had this belief that my community didn't like to go through carousels because I didn't like going through carousels. I don't like reading in that way, or at least I don't like observing content or taking in content in that way. I'm much more of a video person. And so what we've realized is that our carousels have taken off.
If you follow me for a long time, you know that I love reels and have always made reels, but in 2025, I was heavily focused on carousel. So a couple of these episodes are going to be focused on the carousels and the content from those carousels, okay? So last week, I believe we talked about one of the carousels that got about 2.5 million views that had to do with the fact that I put my husband before my kids. And that was fun.
So, but this week we are going to talk about the three things that you keep saying in your marriage that are slowly killing your marriage or three things you keep saying that are slowly killing your marriage.
Okay. Number one, and we're going to get right into it. Number one is you always. Now, if I had a dollar for every single time a person became triggered from the always word. I mean, I would be a gazillionaire, right? How triggering is it when your partner decides to say always it immediately magnifies the problem, right? And then it spins you off, right? You instantly get locked into a box that you feel like you can't escape. Like you just told me that I always do something and what this does for the argument is that it focuses on the past instead of leaving any type of room for y'all to grow, right? And then it has your partner then wondering, the person who's told you always, it has them wondering like, why are you with me then? Like, don't be with me. If I'm the type of person that is always doing this to you, then why are you with me? Leave me. And then you start talking about things like, divorce and whatnot, and you get so out of whack on what actually is the problem. What I want you to do instead, when the word is you always at the tip of your tongue, I want you instead to say, help me understand, right? If you're arguing about, you know, the fact that you feel like your partner consistently forgets to ask you, you know, if you want something to eat on their way home, tell them, Help me understand why you keep forgetting or help me understand not why you keep, help me understand why you forget to ask me. And then your partner can be like, I'm just really bad with memory. I, you know, that's just not something that I think about. And then you can talk about like, listen, it's really important to me that I am thought of.
I remember when we first got married, my husband and I were both these like individuals that were hyper, hyper independent. We loved each other and we were thoughtful people. But when it came to our everyday nuances, eating and putting things together and purchasing stuff, we were very much individuals. And it took some time for us to include each other. And I know it sounds crazy. Like, how can you not think about your wife? How can you not think about if your husband is hungry? Well, I didn't. I would just order a sushi. And that just came from years and years of being by myself and just having to worry about myself. It in no way meant that I didn't love or didn't care for my husband. And the same goes for him. And I think the way that we got to a lot of those real conversations of it has nothing to do with you. It's just a habit that I need to change. It opened up the floor for more grace when we stopped using you always. Okay.
The second phrase that you keep using is that's just who I am. Like take it or leave it type of thing. Like you guys will be in the most heated argument and you will feel like, you know what? Just be by yourself. You don't have to be with me. This is the response you wanna give your partner because you're fed up, because you feel like there is no other solution that can make your partner happy in that moment. You have put it on yourself the weight of figuring out how to solve the issues in this marriage. And because you gave yourself that weight, your final statement is, you know what? Nothing's gonna change. This is just who I am, so don't expect me to try anything different. And what I want you to do instead, because many of these responses will spiral you both into different arguments, right? The first one being divorce, right? This one also being divorce or the last one also being like investigating all the times that you always, this one is mainly like most likely gonna lead to divorce.
And instead, all I want you to say is, when you're fed up, I want you to say, listen, this is hard for me, or this is really hard for me, but I'm willing to work on it. Let's keep, let's continue talking about it or explain it to me again. That way your partner understands that you're here. You're not ready to go out the door. You're physically here and you're wanting to make this work. You're just out of options, you're out of choices, you just don't understand. And when you are vulnerable enough to tell your partner that this is hard for you, your partner will then begin to feel like, dang, okay, they're admitting that this is hard for them and they're not putting all the weight on me to figure out. And maybe now I can also admit that it's hard for me, right?
The third and final way that you are slowly killing your marriage is the ultimate, told you so. I told you so. I can't tell you how recent this is in my marriage. And I'm going to share this very funny quick story about how I cursed my husband out in my head about three or four times before I brought to him. the situation I'm going to share. When we say, told you so, it automatically makes your partner feel like a piece of crap. You've weaponized their mistake and it is the quickest way. I told you so is the quickest way to create shame instead of what you really want and what you asked for, which is safety.
This I told you so will kill trust, safety and your marriage over time. It's like a chip over and over again. I told you so, I told you so. Like, why would you rather be right? I remember a sermon many years ago, our pastor said, it's not about winning the war, it's about winning the heart. And that is when I started to really take away the I told you so language from our marriage. So instead I want you to say, Listen, things didn't work out, but I got your back. I got your back. And when your partner says, aren't you gonna say, I told you so, I know you want to, you can be honest and be like, you know what? The reality is that it's human nature to want to do that. But I'm learning and I love you enough to know that that only is gonna create a drift between us. And it's not even gonna get us closer to resolving this. You understand? That's how I want you to follow up with that, okay?
So very quick story. I have broken both of my feet. I broke my fourth metatarsal in my right foot, ⁓ dancing and singing karaoke in maybe 2016, I believe. And then I broke my left foot in my fourth metatarsal. Yeah, one was fifth and the other one was fourth metatarsal about three years ago. I broke it in three different places. And so I've had some foot issues and I thought...that I had arthritis in both of my big toes because I was leaning too much on them when I was healing from the metatarsal breaks. And so in the last couple of months, I've been waking up with a lot of aches in my big toe thinking like, all right, it's definitely arthritis. Like, I guess it's like old age or whatever. And now I'm looking back thinking like it's not. But anyways, so on Friday, I told my husband like, really hurts. Like this arthritis is really getting to me. So I grabbed the ball and I rubbed it over and over again. And when you find out what was really wrong, you would be like, ⁓ girl, that ball was such a bad idea. I rubbed it over and over again. And by Saturday, it was horrible pain. I had to change my sneakers twice, went to my son's games, came home. We ⁓ had a couple of friends over. And I bumped into one of my friends and I was like, my bad. It's my gout because my husband had convinced me earlier that day that I had gout and I was like, gout? Like I'm not that old. And I went into my phone and I put in the word steak and a whole bunch of photos of steak came up in the last couple of months. So I was like, I definitely my uric acid levels are horrible. Like I definitely messed this up. And the entire night him and my friend were telling me how much like I definitely have gout. And so Sunday, I went to the urgent care and they told me I had gout too and they tested my uric acid levels. And I woke up on Monday like, nah, this ain't gout. I was like, I told my husband like, cause he was like, I had gout like a couple months ago. And like, you know, ⁓ I, I just went to work and I was like, if you want to work with gout, that's great. But this is not gout cause I can barely walk.
So I called Dougie and if you're in New Jersey and you have any foot issues, need to go see Douglas Appel, A-P-P-L-E-L, believe, amazing foot doctor. And as soon as I walk in, he's just like, you don't have gout. He's like, gout has like a fever on your toe. He's like, basically they did the X, he did the X-rays and there's these two little bones, they're circles under your big toe. And you have a right and a left one. And my left one broke and is severely bruised and or fract or could have been fractured but severely bruised. It's just bad. Okay. So I'm on a boot now for six weeks and he wrote this script and it said you can like basically you can go back to work and it said no Gout give the girl her steak to my husband Terrence because they also know each other. And I was like before my appointment I was like I know it's not Gout. I'm gonna curse Terrence out.
Like I was just having all these very flesh type of responses in my head. was like, I'm going to tell him, I told you so and blah, blah, blah. And then I was just like, and then I had another response where I was like, you know, I was going to share with him how like I understand that he didn't receive a lot of empathy for his pain growing up, but that's not how I want to be treated. And I was like, that's not going to fly either. And so yesterday when I come back, we were making popcorn before watching reasonable doubt, which you should watch actually. It's so good on Hulu. And I said, all right, this is it. And I said, all right, listen, I got to talk to you about something. I said, ⁓ obviously I don't have gout. My foot is broken. I said, I would really just appreciate. And I understand that it's super unconscious. You aren't intentionally being malicious, but it would just be really nice to have a little bit more empathy for my pain when I'm offering a different outcome other than gout. And he just looked at me because I stopped there. I didn't I didn't reel it in. He just looked at me. He was like, oh, baby, I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. Come here. And he gave me a hug and he apologized. And that was it. I didn't have to say I told you so. I didn't have to curse him out. It just stopped there. So anyways, these are three different things that are killing your marriage that I want you to stop.
If this is you, if you're struggling with this, I want you to know that there is still space to save your marriage. This isn't the end of everything, right? This is just about communication and the way that words are being transferred between two people who decided to say, do many years ago. I want you to go to link in my bio and book a call so we can talk about everything that's happened so far, what you tried and how I can help. Okay, let me pray for you.
Father God, I thank you so much for this day. I appreciate the patience that you give many of us that are in marriages to be able to see our partners, not just as husband and wives, but as children of God. And I think that many times that is literally the tool that we must use when we're talking to our loved ones, right? Instead of just seeing them as the uncle that cut us off when we were talking or the husband or wife that was rude to us like we should at times when we're expressing our needs and expressing the things that we want to share with them, really see them as children of God. I know how many times that has helped me. And I just really pray, continue to pray over our marriages and the significance that it is. I don't know why this is coming up for me, but if anybody that's listening has been in a relationship for a significant period of time and y'all are not married, this is for you. I want you to really bring that relationship to God and really ask yourself if ⁓ the relationship should be taken to a different level, especially after being together for so long. Okay. In your name, we pray. Amen.
All right. I love you so much. If you love this podcast, enjoy listening to it. Make sure that you leave me a review, share it with all of your amigos ⁓ and leave a comment. Email me at team@KarinaFDaves.com. And I can't wait to hear from you.
All right, talk soon, bye.
