How can I prevent my struggles with depression and anxiety from having a negative impact on my wife and children? It’s bad enough having to cope with these debilitating feelings, but the thought that I’m making life difficult for my family is almost too much to bear. What should I do?
Relationships & Marriage Q&As
Is it our responsibility to cover the expenses for our adult daughter’s wedding when she and her husband-to-be have good, professional jobs and earn more than we do? They expect us to do so even though we have limited financial resources after putting our children through college. Do you think this is right? We feel …
What can we do to get ready for the departure of our youngest child? He’ll be going off to college after the end of this year, and my spouse and I will be left “on our own” as empty nesters. I’ve heard that many couples in our position face serious adjustments and are at risk …
What’s the best way to handle the revelation of an affair when one guilty spouse has come clean or been exposed, but the husband or wife of the other unfaithful party is still in the dark?
What’s the difference between obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder?
How do I mediate problems between my son and his stepfather? I remarried about four years ago and everything seemed to be going well until recently. The trouble seems to have begun about the time my son reached puberty and became interested in girls. Since then, the conflict has developed into open hostility. There have …
How should I respond to my husband’s repeated infidelities and his blatant request to date other women?
How can I make my husband understand that I don’t want to have intercourse as often as he does?
How can I overcome the bitterness I have about the way my parents treated me growing up? I don’t want these memories to affect my relationship with my own kids. After all these years, I continue to struggle with negative feelings about my mother and father. When I think of them, I remember only their …
As a Christian, how do I sort out the difference between my obligation to family on the one hand and to the work of the gospel on the other? And what’s my responsibility to my extended family as compared with my obligation to my immediate, nuclear family? Is there any distinction between the two? My …
How can my spouse and I resolve our disagreement about starting a family? I’m anxious to be a mother, but he says he isn’t ready to have children yet. My biological clock is ticking away, and the tension between us is growing. What should I do?
Are repeated emotional affairs biblical grounds for divorce? On several occasions my husband has become emotionally involved with other women in ways that have been seriously destructive to our marriage. The most recent incident involved a lady with whom he’d been emotionally intimate in the past. I’m tired of his betrayals, and though we’ve been …
What is Focus on the Family’s position on divorce and remarriage?
What can I do about a husband who won’t get a job?
Is it possible for a married couple to have a healthy sexual relationship in the present even if they’ve had troubling experiences with sex in the past? I was sexually abused as a child and my spouse was promiscuous during adolescence. Now these issues have come back to haunt us and are major roadblocks to …
Now that I’ve found the man I want to marry, how can I help him connect with my three-year-old daughter? He loves her and is genuinely excited about becoming a dad to her (she’s never had a relationship with her biological father). The problem is that he doesn’t understand what toddlers are like, never having …
Our kids are alienating us from our grandkids. What can we do?
Is it common for a couple to “fall out of love”? We’ve been married a couple of years, and already I sense that something has begun to change in our relationship. The original “glow” of our romance seems to have faded. To be honest, our life together is becoming rather routine and dull. Is something …
Where in the Bible does Focus on the Family get its definition of “marriage” and “family”? Whenever I browse your website I come away feeling excluded and marginalized. I know you’ll disagree with what I’m about to say, but I consider myself a dedicated Christian and a homosexual. My partner and I love each other …
What does it mean to be the “spiritual head” of a family?