The Certainty Trap

There’s a quiet moment many long-term couples recognize.

Not the big fights.
Not the dramatic crises.

It’s the moment you think:
“We’re good. We’re solid. We don’t really have to worry about us.”

And oddly enough… that’s often when a marriage becomes most vulnerable.

In this Marriage IQ episode with Allison Carmen, which is one of our favorites, we explore a counterintuitive idea:
certainty doesn’t always create safety — it can create complacency.

When we believe our marriage is “set,” we naturally stop leaning in as much. We assume understanding instead of checking in. We listen less closely. We invest less intentionally. Not because we don’t care — but because we feel secure enough to relax.

And while comfort isn’t bad, unchecked comfort can quietly turn into emotional drift.

Allison shares how, in her own life, the one place she believed was completely certain — her marriage — was also the one place she stopped growing. Not intentionally. Not consciously. But subtly. And over time, that sense of “this is guaranteed” limited curiosity, vulnerability, and emotional expansion.

Here’s the paradox:

The belief that something is guaranteed often makes us protect it less.

We water the plants we think might die.
We stop watering the ones we think are permanent.

That’s how it happened for us. My parent’s both passed away this summer, and my attention deviated from our marriage to my grief.

The distance between us started to grow, and we didn’t even notice it.

Thank goodness, things got hard fast, causing us to sit up and pay attention. We recently made some pretty big changes to prioritize our marriage again.

Marriages don’t thrive on certainty.
They thrive on presence, attention, and ongoing choice.

Not “You’ll always be here.”
But “I’m choosing you again today.”

Action Tip:

Ask each other one question over hot chocolate or on a walk:

“What’s one way I’ve changed in the last year that you might not fully see yet?”

Then just listen. No fixing. No defending. No interrupting.

Curiosity is the antidote to complacency.
And curiosity is what keeps a long-term marriage emotionally alive.

If you want a relationship that stays vibrant — not just stable — this episode will gently challenge one of the most comforting myths we all carry:

That certainty is what keeps love safe.
When in reality, it’s attention that does.

Link: Listen to the Full Episode Here

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