Caleb Tate’s Reviews > The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight > Status Update

We are mortal creatures. We have evidence for it through our everyday suffering, frailty, and the inevitability of death. And yet we do our best to push it away. Holding these realities actually gives us the urgency to be the face of God to our beloved today. We have the capacity to empathize, but we need to adopt the mindset of the psalmist that says “teach us to number our days”.


“Eat more ice cream”

“Our work in marriage is not simply to resolve conflict but to integrate fruitful ways to stay connected to each other throughout it.”

We want resolve in conflict so that things feel stable. But trust is built when there is disconnection that is repaired, not when there is an absence of conflict. Conflict as well is not about being understood, but to grow in understanding of your spouse

When threat evolves in a relationship, common responses are fragmentation, numbing, and isolating. High-alert responses are anxiety (flight), anger (fight), or avoidance (freezing or fawning). The encouragement in these processes is to learn to pause and to invite the perspective of individual story.

Beautiful narratives and articulation of how parent loyalties play out in marriage.