The 5 Levels of Every Marriage (And How to Move Up)

Every marriage is sitting on one of five levels right now. Here is how to find yours and how to climb.

Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience

Recorded live at one of our online summits, Jayson Gaddis walks through the five levels of partnership, from survival at level one to the spiritual union at level five that most couples never reach. He is upfront that the model is his own, built from almost thirty years of sitting in circle with couples.

Most long marriages, he says, stall at level three: stable, functional, and quietly unable to talk about the hard things.

Then he gets practical about the one thing that actually moves a marriage up: repair. The conflict repair cycle, the two skills of speaking first and

listening first, why a man's urge to fix his wife's pain backfires, and what to do when you feel you cannot bring your own feelings into your own marriage.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The five levels, and how to tell which one you are on
• Level one: mating and survival, and why people stay where they are hurt
• Why most long marriages stall at level three
• The conflict repair cycle, and what skipping repair hollows out
• The two repair skills almost nobody is taught
• Why fixing your wife's pain isn't love, and what to do instead
• How to work with a partner who won't own their part

WANT MORE

This was a members-only online summit, so there is no public episode to link. It is the kind of room we build for dads who want to win at home the same way they win at work. Learn more at frontrowdads.com