Protecting A Long Marriage After 50 - Episode 324

In this episode of Sandy K Nutrition – Health & Lifestyle Queen, I explore what actually protects a long marriage after 50 — and why the people and pressures around a couple matter as much as what happens between them. This isn't typical marriage advice. I bring the research on family systems and relationships, then connect it to something most conversations leave out: your health.

Long marriages don't hold or come apart by accident. The research shows that outside influence — friends, extended family, social circles — quietly shapes a marriage over time, for better or worse. I walk through what that looks like in real life, and how couples in midlife can protect what they've built without cutting everyone else out.

I also talk about why this belongs in a health conversation at all. The state of your closest relationships isn't separate from your wellbeing — chronic relational stress affects the nervous system and shows up in the body. I don't look at wellness in pieces, and your most important relationships are one of the most powerful health variables you have.

What I cover in this episode:
- How outside influence shapes a long marriage over time
- What family systems research says about in-law dynamics and boundaries
- How the people around you can quietly shift a couple's norms
- The difference between protecting a marriage and isolating it
- Why your closest relationships are a real health variable after 50

This episode is for women in midlife and anyone in a long marriage who wants the real research.

ABOUT SANDY
I'm Sandy Kruse, a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & Certified Metabolic Balance coach with certifications in functional lab testing, clinical nutrition, hormones and endocrinology, and peptides and anti-aging. I've hosted Sandy K Nutrition – Health & Lifestyle Queen for over six years, with more than 1.4 million downloads worldwide — no agenda. Passion over profit. No bias. Science + soul.

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Website / all links: https://www.sandykruse.ca

Join here:  Sandy K Inner Circle

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Transcript

Sandy Kruse 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse. Welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. For many years now, I've been a trusted voice for people in midlife and beyond who want a deeper, more honest conversation about wellness. One that includes the

Welcome And Podcast Purpose

Sandy Kruse 0:24

physical, the emotional, the mental, and the esoteric. Most episodes are solo now because I want to bring you thoughtful research, lived experience, and grounded insight without noise or bias. And when I do bring on a guest, it's because their work genuinely adds something meaningful to the conversation. Here we explore the full spectrum of what it means to be well, how the body functions, how the mind heals, how the spirit expands, and how all of these layers shape life lived with clarity and joy.

Speaker 1:13

Thanks for being here. And if this show resonates with you, please follow, rate, review, and share it. It truly helps the message reach more people.

Sandy Kruse 1:31

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. Today, the hits just keep on coming, my friends. This episode is all about why I don't believe in divorce. There's going to be caveats before you come at me. I am going to get into all of that.

Why I Question Divorce

Sandy Kruse 1:54

And this is based on an article that I wrote in Substack, I think it was 2024 when I wrote this. And it was quite popular then. And I decided I would record a podcast on this with more research behind it and a little more substance and premise around it with examples. And by the end of this, I am not a therapist, first of all. I have done a ton of mindset coaching, and I've also been married for 26 years. It's going to be in a few days, and have been with my husband for almost 29 years since we met. So I have a few things to say about this. And I have a few things to say about this based on, of course, there's always going to be a little bit of experience in this. But of course, I reserve the right to keep things private as I choose. And then on top of it, based on research, what's out there for 50 plus year olds? Because I'm sure every one of you have seen this. You have one or two friends who seem to be fine in their 40s. All of a sudden, the kids grow up, they go off to university or leave the house, whatever it is they have empty nest syndrome. They look at each other and they're like, I can't fucking stand you. Right? I'm not meaning to laugh, but I'm just saying this is a very real podcast. So most of you know I look at everything holistically. W H O L E, whole, body, mind, spirit, soul. I look at all of it. And I do look at some science. I look at some soul. I am a registered holistic nutritionist. I am also a certified metabolic balance coach. This is one of the reasons I did a lot of mindset coaching as well. Meaning I actually learned about it and I still do it because food as medicine and why we do certain things and why we have certain habits, it's all intertwined. We can't look at the body, we can't look at health and wellness in a silo. That's what the medical system does, right? You have your endocrinologist who you see specifically for your thyroid, and they only check your thyroid markers. But what they're not seeing is the fact that I'm a 56-year-old woman. I don't have a thyroid gland and I'm in menopause, and maybe there's a little more to the picture. So this is why my podcast goes really, really holistically. It is not medical advice. This is not mental health advice. This is really just to help you think about your life a little more deeper, let's just say. And one of the most important relationships in our lives are our partners. Whether it's you've just gotten remarried, whether you're divorced, whether you've been in a marriage as long as you have, this is a really important podcast because we also hear a lot on TikTok, we hear a lot on Instagram about how he's only in his masculine, she's the only in her uh masculine. Then the two clash, like you hear a lot of these little tidbits. So I'm gonna try and break this down and really help you to see where maybe, and think about it, where you may have some leaks that could be causing damage in your relationship. Okay, so this episode is for the woman who's been through it over 50 in a lived real marriage. This is not the brochure or tick tock version. Outsiders may have interfered in your marriage. Partners may have stepped out of loyalties in big ways or small ways. Um, people may have told you to leave, people may have told you to stay, maybe you did leave. That takes a different kind of courage. Either way, this is really for the woman who knows that a long marriage is not what the wellness industry sells. So, this this podcast, it might trigger some of you who have been divorced, but stay with me because this is not judging anyone. This is just sharing what I believe and research and experience all together. As you know, I'm not a therapist and I don't need to be. And I actually don't need to call one on my show. And that's the other reason why I do a lot of these shows just in silo as solo episodes, because I have found there's just too much bias in this wellness industry where you know people go on and do podcasts and they're trying to sell you their shit. There's nothing wrong with that. We have to have a way to promote, but you often wonder what is subjective, what is objective, what is biased research, what isn't. So I come from a perspective of non-bias. So let's get going here. Here's um, you know, a shift that maybe you have been watching the last few years. The world has been okay with not loving anyone but ourselves. Self-care has become code for selfish, loving from a distance, right? You know, you hear even about these younger kids who only go on dating sites. They don't meet the love of their lives organically. Uh, people who call it quits before you really get into deep effort, or maybe you see a marriage therapist, and I'm not saying all therapists are bad. I'm just saying that sometimes marriage therapy isn't, you know, you're looking again outside of yourself instead of turning inward to each other to try and fix the problem. I'm sure there are caveats to this, and therapy is good in some situations. In some cases, it's absolutely necessary. So I'm gonna give you a little stat here. Divorce rates in Canada and the US are at 50-year lows. Okay, this is a stat from 2024. The US divorce rate dropped to 2.4 per 1,000 in 2024. That's the lowest it's been since 1970, down

Gray Divorce Stats And Costs

Sandy Kruse 8:32

from 4 in 2000. Okay, so now it's 2.4 per 1,000. Okay, the lowest was four in 2000. Sounds like it's good news, but actually it's not because people aren't getting married anymore. The stat is misleading because the denominator collapsed. So here's the twist. While overall divorce rates dropped, gray divorce, that is a term for divorce over 50, has doubled since the 1990s. So adults over 50 now make up nearly 40 percent of all divorces, up from just 8% in 1990. For adults over 65, the rate has tripled. So that's the real story. Long marriages falling apart in the second half: empty nest, retirement, kids gone, two people staring at each other, wondering if they know who they still are. This is the chapter that the industry really doesn't have that many answers for. And the financial reality for women, okay, in 2021, the Journal of Gerontology found women's standard of living drops 45% after gray divorce versus 21% for men. Only 22% of women repartn a decade after versus 37% of men. Poverty rates for women who divorce after 50 are nearly double those of women who divorce earlier. And these stats, I'm not giving you this to scare you because this entire podcast is to say maybe your tolerance level is something you need to work on. Maybe you need to work on yourself, but I'm gonna get into that. So this podcast is really just to be honest, what the culture isn't telling women, just leave. It comes with a cost, and the wellness industry won't push this, okay? Just leave, just leave. So I'm not saying never leave. I have my own list. This is called my big five. These are really the main reasons why I would leave, and yours might differ, and that's fine, but but name them for yourself, not in the heat of an argument. One time when you're cool, calm, collected, balanced, that's when you name it. And I'm gonna go into mine here. Number one is abuse, physical, once and never again. That's a boundary, that's just not one that that you know I would ever cross. Emotional, not a trend or a moment, not sorry, a trend and not the moment. We've all said shitty things, but when it's a

The Big Five Deal Breakers

Sandy Kruse 11:46

pattern, it's different. I have heard so many different stories from so many different scenarios and social media and everything, and you know, only you know when it's a trend. Addictions. So I would hold out if they're actively seeking help for a period of time. But if alcohol, drugs, gambling interferes with your relationship or your family, then I'm out. I'll give you an example here. If your partner is a heavy smoker and they go and they smoke outside, A, the personality doesn't change. It might smell, you might not like it, but it's not deeply affecting the marriage. If your partner has a drink every night before they go to bed, it doesn't cause any damage, doesn't cause any, you know, I'm not really interested. I don't really like that stuff and in relying on any substance. However, you have to assess it for yourself on is this causing damage in my marriage, in my relationship? Infelidelity. So there's a couple of different kinds of infidelity. People don't talk about, you know, people think infidelity just cheating with someone. There's other types, there's financial infidelity as well. So this is one of those, you know, if it's if it's a infidelity cheating, that's a zero tolerance for me personally. Some say, especially with young kids, it's it's hard. It's hard. I personally don't know. I'm one of those people that I have a hard time forgiving. So that's what I'm gonna say about that. I understand. So and and I meant some stay if they have young children, and I understand that too. And there's a lot of fear around women who have experienced infidelity from their partner, especially when they're with these young little kids. There's a lot of fear around that. So this one is a tricky one. Let's say they give up, let's say your partner gives up. You get to a point where you can't beg for someone to stay, where you realize that you're sacrificing so much of your own sense of self by begging someone. Sometimes people change, sometimes beliefs change, and we can't control another human. So that's another reason. You know how they say if you love someone, set them free. I don't know if that fits. Anyway, a complete misalignment. Sometimes the person you married becomes someone you fundamentally don't even recognize on values, morals. People can change. So outside of those five, I'm pretty much in it. And I have no difficulty, I don't have a hard time doing hard. Some people do, so I don't believe in this. Oh, I fell out of love bullshit. I think it's bullshit. If you fell out of love, it's actually on you. You let it happen. I know this sounds like tough love, but it's true. You, oh, I just fell out of love. You can work your way back, and then there's all this whole thing about boundaries. Boundaries uh became the new excuse to leave in this, you know, age of social media. And I'm I'm certainly not against boundaries. I am all about boundaries. But marriages test boundaries every single day. You know, if I use boundaries as a reason to end relationships, I would certainly be alone in this world. So, you know, we have to look at love, compassion, empathy, tolerance, all of those factors. So I'm gonna give you an example here. In 2010, our daughter was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. I can't talk today. She was five, and life was hard, and marriage was also hard because we dealt with it so differently. He went very silent. I needed to purge my feelings, then I also needed to give back somehow. I couldn't make him the way I wanted and needed him to be. This is the key here. You can't make somebody be something they are not. That's not who he is in his core. So, what I did was what I knew. I actually started a website, I started writing a blog. I still have that website, I don't update it anymore, but people actually contacted me through that for

Falling Out Of Love Myth

Sandy Kruse 16:51

so many years, and I became a strong health advocate for those moms who didn't understand this tumor. I also have a very close-knit family, and I have a very few close-knit friends. So he dealt with his things his way. We had we we did come back together. It's not like we lived apart, we were never apart in our marriage. We just addressed our needs separately, and that's what we needed to do. That is the ebb and flow. Most marriages don't tell you. Um, sometimes you have to process the same crisis in completely different ways, and that's not a sign that your marriage is broken, it's a sign that you're two very different humans, and the trick is always come back to each other. There's some research behind this research on couples who survive a child's illness or a major trauma finds the difference between marriages that make it and marriages that don't, is whether the partners process grief differently and most do. It's actually not, sorry, finds the difference between the marriages that make the uh and that don't is whether they process grief different differently, and most do. It's also whether they can hold space for each other to grieve in their own way without taking it personally. There you go. He allowed me to be who I wanted and needed to be. I needed to talk, I needed to resolve, and then he kind of kept quiet. The rule I live by always is come together. There is um, if there's any non-communication for a stretch, always go back and turn inward, not outward. The marriage industry sells tells you to, you know, schedule date nights and read books and book the couple's retreat and get your marriage therapist. But I'm telling you something much simpler, but harder. When things get hard, go towards your partner, not towards the friend, not towards the family member, not towards the booze, not towards the phone, not towards numbing, toward each other. Marriages don't live in a vacuum. So there's friends, there's family, they all have influence on what happens inside your marriage. And here's what nobody talks about. And this is big, so I'm gonna talk slow. Some of those people will erode your marriage from the outside. Sometimes it's intentionally, sometimes just by being who they are. I'm gonna get into this because this is probably not probably, this is the most important part of the podcast. I don't know if anybody here has ever watched 90 Day Fiance, what's his name? Pedro, and uh his ex-his-wife's family were so interfering. It basically eroded their marriage. And you know, the whole thing, you are who your friends are, there's a lot of truth to that too. So I'm gonna get into making that marriage of yours an iron gate. Research from the Journal of Family Psychology shows in-law dynamics are a measurable predictor of divorce risk, particularly when one partner is enmeshed with their family of origin. About one in 10 marriages end in divorce, at least partly due to in-law problems. And being friends with somebody who divorces makes you 147% more likely to divorce yourself. The web around your marriage is not neutral, it's shaping you. So I'm fortunate I have never had interference from family. My family supports me, they support

Outsiders And Marriage Interference

Sandy Kruse 21:17

my marriage. So this is from family systems research, Murray Bowen's work on triangulation. When two people are stressed and they pull in a third party to manage tension, that's triangulation. Sometimes that third party becomes a permanent fixture. The healthier the marriage, the less it needs of outsiders. Okay. The sicker the marriage, the more outsiders end up running the marriage. Your boundary. I don't this is my boundary. Okay. I'm I'm just saying maybe this is your boundary. I don't befriend or become close. To men one-on-one. I just don't. Nobody, I'm not buddies and best friends with any man. I might have conversations, but no guy is, you know, my buddy. My husband doesn't do lunch with girlfriends or ex-girlfriends or any kind of girls. No other woman is his buddy. So I'm going to put a little caveat to that. Sometimes in group dynamics, women think that they are buddies with your spouse. Be careful of this. And I recorded a podcast of this. This is actually not respecting the boundaries of your marriage when this happens. He doesn't share marital challenges with female colleagues or even male colleagues for that matter. Don't go deep into your marriage challenges unless you know that that person supports your marriage, not just you. That's an important part. So this isn't about jealousy, it's about protection. Your marriage is sacred. And that's where trouble starts. Outside validation from the opposite sex, blurred lines equals problems down the road. So let's talk about the leaks, interference, and the iron gate. Okay, I call it the iron gate. I'm going to go deeper than just outsiders have influence. There's a category of people who actively interfere with marriages. Some by accident, some not. And some because they don't know better, some do know better, some don't give a shit. Sometimes they feel like the loyalty to their spouse, your spouse, is higher than you. So they honor your spouse, but not your marriage. Be very careful. This is very dangerous because some know exactly what they're doing. So these might be the friends who never want the party to end and aren't happy when one of you wants to leave. They might be people who push more drinks, more lightness, more excess, knowing it might strain things between you and your spouse. They're friends, friends who treat marriage as an obstacle to the fun that they want to have with your partner. They're the ones who share things, stories, content, gossip, behaviors that don't belong inside a marriage. So they don't respect the boundaries of the marriage. They're the people who roll their eyes when one of you exercises judgment or sets a limit. Like, who is she to say it's time to go home? And that creates tension between you and your partner. They're the friends who quietly celebrate when your partner makes a choice that's bad for the marriage. They're also the ones who position themselves between you and your partner, not standing beside you both. So you can probably picture these people right now.

Building The Iron Gate Rules

Sandy Kruse 25:26

Most women over 50 have at least one of these in their orbit or have had. And the reason it's hard to name them is they often present as friends, long-standing ones, people with history. But history doesn't make someone a friend to your marriage. Behavior does. In 2007, a study in the Journal of Family Psychology, looking at predictors of infidelity, found that having friends who approved, turned a blind eye, or engaged in infidelity was one of the strongest predictors that a married person would themselves engage in infidelity, independent of marital satisfaction. The peer environment is not background noise. It actively shapes behavior. Sociologists, I can't pronounce Rose McDermott and Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. Oh, I did say it right, Christakis, studied the social contagion of divorce during 30 years of data. They're finding people with a divorced friend are roughly 75% more likely to divorce themselves. Even friend of a friend divorces increases the risk by about 33%. Your social network is a strong predictor of whether you stay married than most people even focus on. Research on heavy drinking in marriage shows the same pattern. Couples whose social circles normalize excessive drinking show higher rates of marital conflict, infidelity, and divorce. The friends who push the extra drink aren't being playful. They're shaping your marriage from outside of it. So this isn't just about bad outsiders. The marriage has two doors. You hold the key to one, and your partner holds the key to the other. When friends push for that extra drink, your partner has a choice. I mean, unless they're hammered. We've all been there. When a friend shares something that shouldn't be shared with you, as someone who believes in being faithful to your partner, your partner has a choice. The power to close the door is theirs. Whether they use it or not is a separate question, but the power too is real. If anybody disparages my marriage in any way or doesn't support it in any way, family or friends, I close that door or I tell them. So outsiders can only interfere as much as the partner closest to them allows. The leak doesn't happen because the bad actor exists. The leak happens because the door wasn't held. Both partners have to be willing to be the ones to say, no, that doesn't work. Don't share that with me. Don't tell me that stuff. I'm not interested in that conversation, or you walk away. It's not okay. So saying it's not okay to a friend, a sibling, a colleague, a business partner, whatever it is, has to happen in a marriage for it to be safe, secure, boundaried. Being a nice guy or a fun girl isn't a virtue, not when it costs your marriage. And both partners have to agree. People who don't respect our marriage will test it. The question is whether we're aligned in refusing the test. Not interested. So, how do you actually protect the marriage from outside forces? How do you build the fortress? Well, I gave you a few ideas there. It's not about isolating yourselves, it's about being deliberate about who has access and on what terms. Here's what an iron gate around your marriage actually looks like. The marriage is an inner sanctum. Everyone else is outside of the gate. Your partner is the only one who has unconditional access to what happens inside your marriage. Not your mother, not your childhood buddy, not your work colleague. Your marriage is a closed system with a controlled gate. Nothing enters without you agreeing. Outsiders must earn access through behavior, not history. I don't give a shit if you've been friends with somebody since you've been five. If you're disparaging my marriage in any way, you are out. That gate is shut. Here we go. I've known them since we were 12, is not a credential and it's not a free pass. People earn ongoing access to your marriage by demonstrating that they respect you both and they respect your marriage. Period. If they don't, history doesn't save them. The gate's closed. Both partners actively defend the gate, not just the wife. This is where you know a lot of the work falls on the wife. This is what most marriages actually get wrong. The wife is usually the one tracking the threats, and the husband is usually the one giving the access. That's not a partnership. That's the wife doing security while the husband holds the door open. Both partners have to be willing to be the, I say the bad guy, but it's not the bad guy. It's the boundaried person with friends, families, outsiders when the marriage requires it. So here's a friend test. Would they help you or amuse themselves? When you're in trouble and you ask for help, do they help or do they enjoy the chaos? Do they even ask? Anyone who enjoys the chaos outside of the gate is where they go permanently. The disclosure test. Do they bring you to me or keep you from me? A friend who shares things with your partner that you wouldn't want shared is keeping that actively from you while your partner is into it. So a friend, a real friend operates as if as if the spouse exists, as if the marriage exists. And so this test is really simple. Does this person treat me as your wife or as an obstacle to your fun or someone who you can share your dark secrets with despite it having an effect on your marriage? Here's an audit for you. Every marriage that's been through real interference can look back and identify moments where the gate was open, but it should have been closed. That drink got pushed, the lunch with the ex, the phone call where your partner was talked into something they shouldn't have been talked into. The friend who got too close. The girl who's the buddy with all the guys. You and your partner have to be able to look at these moments honestly, not to blame each other, but to update your personal security protocols. We didn't know then what we know now. We do know now. So going forward, here's what we don't allow. This gate isn't built once and forever. It will continually get tested. New people enter your life, old friends behave in new ways, circumstances might shift. You and your partner have to agree periodically to check that gate together. Is it secure? Who's pushing? Who's earned access and who's lost access? Who's done things, said things, acted in ways that disparage your marriage? Research from Murray Bowen's Family System Theory introduces the concept of differentiation, the ability to maintain clear, defended sense of self and partnership while remaining connected to a larger family or social network. Bowen's research found that marriages with the highest differentiation, meaning the clearest internal boundaries against outside interferences, also had the lowest rates of dysfunction, infidelity, and divorce. The fortress around the marriage doesn't isolate it, it protects it so that authentic connection can deepen inside of it. So marriages don't always erode from one big betrayal. They erode from a thousand small moments where outsiders push and one partner didn't push back. You know, death by a thousand cuts. The drinks, the disparaging jokes about the spouse who isn't there, the lunches with the ex, the friend who doesn't get along with the wife, the shared content that shouldn't have been shared with you, that could threaten your marriage. Each one is a test of your container. Pass them together, and the marriage gets stronger. Fail them, and the marriage gets a little smaller every single time. An Iron Gate isn't paranoia and it isn't control. It isn't isolation, it's respect for what you built. It says, this is the thing my partner and I have that is sacred and it deserves protection. We don't leave it exposed to people who would treat it carelessly. That's not a small ask. That's the foundation of a marriage that lasts. So let's talk about secrets. The truth about secrets in long marriages. Listen, nobody knows you as well as you, and that's if you even want to look. There's a lot of people that don't want to look. But here's something I want every single woman in a long marriage to know. Deep secrets in a marriage will eventually reveal themselves. Always. Always. Not sometimes, not usually, but always. It might take five years, it might take 20 years, but the truth surfaces. The universe has a way of bringing the buried things up. You guys know I'm all about science and soul. And I do have some of this. I won't get into it in this podcast, but a very, very deep intuition within me. And I've done a lot of deep work. So I talked about this in my episode 2026, is the year of disclosure. We are in a collective moment as a collective where the things that have been hidden are coming to light in marriages, in friendships, in families. The veil is thinner than it's been in a very long time. This is as a collective, but it also affects us here individually in our little micro world. So if you're in a marriage where something feels off, your body's been telling you something, pay attention to it. If you're in a marriage and you keep something hidden, the cost of keeping it is bigger than the truth, the the bigger than the cost of telling it. Either way, the truth is coming. The only question is how and when. And here's some research for you.

Secrets Disclosure And Betrayal Blindness

Sandy Kruse 37:49

This isn't just spiritual talk. The research backs it up. A 2022 study published in Personality and Individual Differences looked at infidelity concealment strategies. Over 70% of unfaithful partners reported using seven or more deliberate strategies to hide their affairs, discretion, eliminating digital evidence, maintaining normal behavior, all of it. And yet, affairs still get discovered through digital footprints, through accidental exposure, through friends, through patterns in spending, through bodies that can't keep the lie any longer, through eventual confession. Research consistently finds that more affairs end in discovery somewhere between 56 and 70 percent are revealed within five years. The secret keeper believes the secret is sustainable, but the data says it isn't. And it's not just the affairs. Financial secrets, hidden addictions, buried family histories, things that one partner did and hoped the other would never find out. The longer the secret runs, the more energy it takes to maintain it. The more the body of the secret keeper has to compartmentalize, the more cracks appear in the everyday details. And secrets have a particular relationship with the universe. Okay, they want to come out, as I've explained. This is it, my friends. By the end of this year, you're gonna see the world and your life in a very different light. So secrets have a tendency to surface when the conditions are right. Sometimes it's through circumstance, sometimes through breakdowns, sometimes through one small slip that unravels everything. And what the other partner sometimes doesn't see, and here's the harder part the part that nobody talks about. Sometimes the partner being deceived doesn't want to fully see it. Not because they're stupid, not because they're naive, because seeing it would mean confronting something they're not ready to confront. And this is the real psychological phenomenon. And research has it, like researchers have a name for it. They call it betrayal blindness, the specific state in which a person doesn't see what would otherwise be is obvious because seeing it would threaten the relationship that they depend on. So attachment trumps betrayal detection. When the cost of seeing is the potential loss of the person you depend on emotionally, financially, the mind protects the attachment by just not seeing it. There you go. There's betrayal blindness, there's willful blindness. So I want you to hear this without judgment. If you've been the partner not seeing, I just want you to know like that's not stupidity. There's real deep emotional and psychological reasons for this. There's negative beliefs, there's fear, there's so much. It's your nervous system that's just protecting you from a truth that would have been broken, breaking something that you were trying to hold together. And if you've been the partner who's keeping the secrets, your spouse may have known on some level, even if they couldn't say it out loud. Your body knows what the mind isn't ready to hold. So here's what's both the cost on both sides. Secret keepers carry chronic stress, and that shows up in the body. Cortisol patterns, sleep disruption, cardiovascular strain. That's a big one. The body doesn't forget that it's been holding a lie, even when the conscious mind has compartmentalized it. And that's not, you know, and that's the non-seeing partner. So that's the seeing partner. The non-seeing partners also carries a chronic activation, hypervigilance of something that is off, but I can't name it. The energy overriding what the gut keeps telling you that registers in the body just as deeply. Both sides of a marriage with secrets are paying a tax. Both nervous systems know both bodies are doing the work of carrying what shouldn't be there and shouldn't be buried. It might be there, but it's buried. So this is why I keep coming back to turning inward, not out, and turning inward with truth and understanding, not fear and avoidance. What does a real marriage feel like in the body? It feels regulated and soft and not braced. A marriage with secrets feels different, and your body knows it. So if you're in the season right now or something is surfacing in your marriage, old secrets, new truths, things being revealed. I want you to know this is a part of a bigger moment. Like I was saying, 2026 has been a year of disclosure for many of us. There were things that were buried are coming to light, lies are being seen, the veil is thinner. This isn't catastrophic, it's correctional. The truth restores, even when it hurts. A marriage that survives the surfacing of buried things becomes stronger than one that has never faced them. Because what's left after the truth come truth comes out is what's real. Pretending isn't peace. All it is is postponed pain. Build the iron gate around your marriage from the outside. Yeah. Absolutely. But also build honesty on the inside. The marriage that lasts isn't one without secrets. It's the one where both partners can hold each other's truths, even the hard ones, without the marriage collapsing. That capacity is what makes long marriages impossible. I'm gonna talk about this too. This is gonna be interesting. I call it the vibration thing. Okay. I'm a decent looking woman, smart, educated, a good catch. I'm also a good person. I've never been hit on at work or in a professional setting. Why? Because I do not put out a vibration that my marriage is weakened. I can be friendly, I can even be a little bit flirty sometimes. But the iron door is shut past a certain point, past that boundary. Men can feel that. They don't even try. If you're constantly getting hit on while in a relationship, this might be hard to hear, but it's probably as a result of your vibration. The cracks that others sense before you've named them yourself. Validation seeking from the opposite sex is a slow leak. Validation from social media is the same thing. Sure, we all need a little validation. I do for my work, from my husband, from my kids, but not from men, not in that way. So here's the piece that nobody connects. Your body keeps the score in your marriage. If you're living inside a marriage that's actually safe and connected, your nervous system regulates, cortisol normalizes, your sleep deepens, hormones run more efficiently. Okay, let's let's call it what it is. If you're in menopause, that's another problem. If you're living inside

Marriage Health Nervous System Links

Sandy Kruse 46:37

one that's performing connection, but is actually not connected. If you're drinking with your partner every weekend and calling that connection, maybe that's not connection. There's chronic activation, elevated cortisol, gut issues, thyroid dysfunction, perimenopause, becoming chaos. These are all some signs. I see this kind of health stuff all the time. Women talk to me about thyroid issues, autoimmune flares, mystery cyst symptoms, labs, look normal, diets, supplements, hormone optimization. It only goes so far. The missing piece is the relational climate that they've been living in for years. You cannot fully heal a body that's living in a marriage that doesn't feel safe. You cannot optimize hormones in a body that hasn't been felt seen by their partner in over a decade. Now I'm gonna just pause there for a second. You can't rely on feeling seen only by your partner. You have to do the work within you. And I've recorded so many podcasts about this. If you rely solely on your partner to feel seen, then you need to do a little bit of work yourself too. So the warmth and quality of close relationships in midlife is the strongest predictor of physical health, cognitive function, and happiness in later life. Stronger than cholesterol or your blood pressure or your genetics. This is from a Harvard study of adult development that has followed people for over 80 years. This is what the data shows. Your marriage is a longevity intervention or your partnership, the most powerful one that you actually have access to if you have a partner, which means whether you stay and actually turn towards each other isn't a romantic question. It's actually a health question and a longevity question. Your body's been collecting data on your marriage every single day for as long as you've been in it. It knows things that no therapist will know or see in 50 minutes. Your intuition is more reliable than any framework. And the expert in your marriage is you. How many times I didn't get the stats on this? I should have. I should have gotten the stats on because I've heard some that marriage therapy doesn't work. Individual therapy can, but marriage therapy doesn't. Anyway, you can go look that up yourself. So I'm gonna practically close this episode. I think it's a big one. And these are my rules. Okay, and you might find that you resonate with some, you might not. I come from very, very strong Eastern European background with parents who have been married for 62 years. So, and a strong marriage at that, and a marriage where things were not swept under the rug ever. We can't we have a lot of emotion, we have a lot of feelings, and to me, this is the only way to walk lighter in this life and lighter towards our aging process. Number one, come together. Always come back. Short stretches of non-communication are okay, but walking out is not. Use nostalgia, go back to old videos, old photos. Remember why you fell for them. It can work. It's almost my anniversary, by the way. Text it out or write it out. Sometimes face-to-face gets too heated and too emotional. We don't often hear each other, so use technology. Write the hard thing and don't talk about it until you're able to come back to it when you're both in an emotionally calm state. Otherwise, let it breathe. Don't walk out, walk away to cool off if needed. Don't walk out, don't walk out and say you gotta sleep somewhere else. Don't walk out and leave and not come home. Walk away, which is fine. Don't threaten divorce, make it a taboo word in your marriage. Once you put it on the table, it's always there. It's always going to keep returning to that table. Watch your words. What you say in anger lives forever. Refer to rule three if you can't speak with care. That's the text it out or write it out. And don't come back to it until you know that the energy around it won't be so emotionally charged. Always make each other the priority over everything, over everyone. The marriage is sacred over your family, your friends, even your adult children. Tolerance and compassion. That's number eight. You are not them, and they are not you. They can't think like you, so stop expecting them to. And I'm gonna give you an example of this. I always bring 90-day fiancé, it is my favorite brainless show. One of the the women, one of the couples, there's a woman there, and she brought her fiance to a dance thing, and she's a dancer. She was so angry that he didn't want to dance. And I'm like, you can't make him, and I'm like talking to myself, watching the I'm like, you're not Slady. Sorry, I don't mean to say that, but I'm like, like, you can't make him like something that he doesn't, right? Like, and and force him to do something that is clearly not in his wheelhouse and lose your mind over it. Anyway, so yeah, you're not them, they're not you. Have your own personal growth and then come back. Grow together by growing individually and then reuniting. Don't grow apart because, like that whole thing of falling in love, you allow it to happen. You allowed it to happen. One vacation a year, just the two of you, even if it's just a weekend. Speak your truth. Have the hard conversations. Have, you know, I say the blow-ups, but try and keep it calm without being too emotionally charged. I've been working on that a lot lately. But speak with dignity, no insults, adult conversations, show your kids that you can argue, make up, apologize, and overcome. It's a great example for your kids. Be healthy in body, mind, spirit, and soul. It's the last one. That's number 12. That's the foundation. Everything else builds on it. If you're not healthy, it's hard to be healthy in a relationship. So this was a big episode, Why I Don't Believe in Divorce. I am going to do another podcast. You know, I get on these themes. And the next one that I'm going to do, I don't know if it'll be the next one. I don't know when it's coming out, but it'll be can using AI Save More Marriages. I think you're going to love this one. I've been married 26 years. In a few days, it's going to be 26 years. And this year will be 29 years since we met. It hasn't been easy. No long marriages. We've had hard chapters. We've kept showing up. We've kept choosing each other. And on the other side of every single hard chapter, the marriage becomes truer. Maybe not easier, but truer. I personally hope to be married until the day we leave this earth. It's not naive. It's a choice I keep making every single day. And I work on it. And I don't believe that we're meant to walk this earth alone. But I also don't believe that long marriage is for everyone. But for those of us who chose it and stuck it out, there's something on the other side that, you know, this whole wellness psychology industry can't sell you. Put a little more love, acceptance, and compassion into your hearts. No relationship is perfect and understand this. So this was a big episode. And I think I might include some of the research in the show notes. Or you can email me, sandy, at sandyknutrition.ca, and I can send it to you. And I really hope this was helpful for you. Please share it with a friend. And if you can, go to Apple Podcasts rate review with a few kind words. It just

Practical Marriage Rules And Closing

Sandy Kruse 56:09

helps me to keep going. Have a great week. Get in touch, follow me on all my social media channels, and thank you for being here.

Speaker 56:18

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit. And always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me keep going, bring these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new exciting conversation. Help you live your best life.