Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After

Incompatibility is the Leading Cause of Divorce AND It's a Myth

• Monica Tanner - Marriage and Intimacy Coach for Christian Couples • Season 4 • Episode 338

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Conflict and differences in marriage don't mean you married the wrong person; they simply mean you're two human beings from different backgrounds working together to build a life. Statistics show "incompatibility" is the leading cause of divorce, but what couples often interpret as irreconcilable differences are actually normal variations in perspective.

• Differences between spouses are normal and healthy, not red flags
• The idea that real love should feel effortless is a damaging myth
• Conflict isn't a sign of incompatibility but an opportunity for growth
• Working through differences builds intimacy and connection
• My husband and I had completely opposite backgrounds regarding travel and dining out
• Early conversations about money and lifestyle were extremely strained
• It took a decade to find solutions that worked for both of us
• We created unique approaches to travel and date nights that blend both perspectives
• Successful couples don't agree on everything - they collaborate creatively
• Turning differences into strengths makes marriages unbreakable

My book "Bad Marriage Advice: Debunking Myths That Will Make You Miserable And What To Do Instead" launches October 1st. Email me at moni@monicatanner.com if you'd like to join the launch team and help get it into as many hands as possible.


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Speaker 0:

Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, monica Tanner, and today's episode is a little bit vulnerable because I'm going to be talking about my own marriage. So first to set it up, have you ever looked at your spouse and thought how are we even together? Like when you realized you grew up eating out every single Friday night as a family and your spouse feels like going out is just for special occasions like birthdays, or when you're planning a vacation and you're used to getting on a flight, going to the beach, going skiing, and they're like well, why don't we just go visit family one state over, right? Today I'm busting one of the sneakiest marriage myths of all, and that's if you're not getting along, you probably picked the wrong person. Spoiler alert that is not true. Conflict and differences do not mean that you're incompatible. They just mean that you're two human beings from different backgrounds working together to build a life. And if you've ever felt like your differences were proof that you married the wrong person, today's episode is going to set you free and hopefully I'll make you laugh a little bit, even uncomfortably, because I'm going to give you the inside scoop on how my marriage started. So here is why believing that if you're not getting along, you probably married the wrong person is a very tempting thing to believe, because when things feel hard, our brains go straight to this idea that it shouldn't be this hard. Maybe we're just not right for each other. Maybe I made a mistake.

Speaker 0:

We see perfectly edited relationships on Instagram, right? People post their highlight reels. It's not like they're talking about when they're disagreeing or not seeing eye to eye. And then we watch movies where the right person just magically understands everything. These couples are perfectly compatible and they live a beautiful life together, or even if there's a disagreement, everything is worked out within the episode, right. So we suddenly think that real love should feel effortless. But here's the truth Differences are normal. No two people are created alike and conflict is normal. Working through conflict is actually what builds intimacy. So the truth is is that you're not incompatible. It's that you need to learn the skills of collaboration.

Speaker 0:

So here's a few statistics that I looked up before recording this episode. A survey of certified divorce financial analyst professionals found that basic incompatibility was cited as the leading cause of divorce in 43% of cases, more than infidelity and more than money issues. In a separate study, 31% of divorcing couples reported incompatibility, often termed irreconcilable differences, in the courts as their reason for divorce. Interestingly, among couples divorcing within the first year, the number skyrockets to 59%, citing irreconcilable differences, suggesting that early stage mismatches are a common trigger for divorce. More broadly, a 2025 overview noted that incompatibility remains the leading cause of divorce in the United States, confirming its prevalence across multiple sources. These numbers reinforce that incompatibility is not just common. It's often seen as the primary reason why marriages end. This makes busting myths like differences, equal incompatibility even more crucial to understand, because too many couples mistakenly interpret normal growth and divergence as deal breakers.

Speaker 0:

So if you listened to last week's episode, I told you that my husband and I couldn't have grown up more differently, and I promised in this episode that I would give you a picture of what early stages of our marriage was like. Now, this is something we didn't discuss in depth before we got married and something that we had to deal with very early on in our marriage. The first was that in my family, traveling was very normal. We went to the beach for a couple of weeks every summer and we went skiing for a couple of weeks every summer and we went skiing for a couple of weeks every winter. A trip for our family of four meant airline tickets, hotel rooms, eating nice dinners, exploring new places and spending lots of money. Also, we regularly ate out as a family, meaning every single week we went out to dinner, our family of four, and later, after my parents divorced, our new family of six went out to eat once a week. I also grew up seeing my parents go out together once a week on a regular basis. That means that in a seven-day week my family ate out twice a week. Now my husband's family was very different. Funds and their family were very tight when he was growing up. In fact he remembers on Saturday they would go to the store, pick out one candy bar and split it among the six children and that was their treat for the week. When they would travel, it meant loading into the car to go stay with a family member somewhere for a family event. When they did have to eat out on their road trips, each kid would order two things from the dollar menu at McDonald's or Taco Bell. And eating out for my husband's family growing up was something reserved for special occasions like a birthday once in a while.

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Now imagine we get married and we're combining our two experiences and trying to figure out what would be normal for us together, and I guarantee you there was a lot of conflict in these discussions. Our early conversations about money and budgeting and what a vacation would look like were very strained, and my idea of a date night meaning going out to dinner once a week was not something that he had ever considered to be normal. We clashed about this regularly and it was not pretty. I will tell you that the breakthrough on this did not happen all at once. It took at least a decade to be able to come up with something that both of us could live with, and when I think about this now, I laugh at some of the awkward situations that we put each other in because we disagreed so strongly over this.

Speaker 0:

Because we disagreed so strongly over this, in fact, I was just telling my children a story about when we were on vacation with two other couples and we were staying in an all-inclusive, meaning all of our meals were provided when we paid to book the vacation. Now, the two other couples that we were traveling with wanted to eat somewhere that wasn't a part of the resort we were staying at, so my husband was already super grumpy about the fact that we had paid the money for the vacation. All the meals were included and these guys wanted to go off site and spent money for dinner. In order to help the situation, I offered to split a meal with my husband so that we were only paying for one dinner. But the straw that broke the camel's back was when we stopped for ice cream on the way back to the resort. I can tell you it was one of the most awkward situations I had been in, when they were ordering ice cream and my husband was sitting with the grumpiest look on his face just daring me to order. Not really, I didn't order ice cream, and the two of us just sat there with grumpy looks on our faces as the two other couples enjoyed their ice cream together.

Speaker 0:

Now listen, my husband is amazing and I think working through all of these ideas about traveling and eating out have strengthened our marriage in so many ways. Now we love to travel. If you follow us on social media, you will see that we take several trips a year. In fact, when it's been too long since we've been anywhere, my husband will say I'm itching to get out, it's time to go on a vacation, and we eat out most weeks. Now I will tell you that many times we share a meal. We don't go to super nice restaurants every single week and a lot of weeks we'll just go get a treat, like our favorite drink or our favorite dessert, and we'll do something for date night that doesn't cost any money. I love these dates way more than eating out an expensive restaurant. Why? Because it defines us as a family.

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It was a collaboration and a negotiation that my husband and I worked hard to make it, so that I get all of the things that I want each week and he gets all of the things that he wants each week, the things that are important to both of us. We've combined them and we've made it ours. The same thing for when we travel. We take really cool trips and we've taken our kids to some very cool places, but a lot of times we will pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the drive or the flight.

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Couples who know us well and who have traveled with us laugh at some of the things we do, but they are uniquely ours and it's part of the reason why I love my husband so much and we have so much fun together because we can look back at our history and working these things out and the awkward moments that we've overcome, and we can just laugh and appreciate each other and appreciate how far both of us have come in order to create something that is uniquely ours. So when we travel, we drive a lot to see family, for family get togethers and events. Sometimes these trips are super quick and we do it in a very cheap way, but that also allows us the budget to be able to take our family on really cool vacations as well. It's the best of both worlds, and we certainly couldn't have come up with it any other way, besides collaborating in the way that I talk about in my new book Bad Marriage Advice debunking myths that will make you miserable and what to do instead. So I want to take a moment to just reiterate the big takeaway, and that is that conflict and differences of opinion are not red flags, they are building blocks.

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Every couple has differences, whether you're talking about money, habits, family traditions, the way you parent, even how you load the dishwasher. You're coming from two different backgrounds, two different experiences, two different preferences, and if both of you are showing up, then there's going to be conflict. The couples who thrive are not the ones who agree on everything. Couples who thrive are not the ones who agree on everything. They're the ones who say this is your background, this is mine. How do we create something new together that both of us love? That shift changes everything. You stop looking at each other as opponents or annoying people that think differently than we do, and you start playing on the same team. You start taking the best of what your partner brings and the best of what you bring, and you put it together into a winning combination. So the next time you bump up against a difference and that little voice inside your head whispers maybe we're just not meant to be, maybe we've made a huge mistake. Remind yourselves that differences do not mean incompatibility or irreconcilable differences. They mean that you have an opportunity to collaborate, to get curious and get creative and cooperate on something that becomes uniquely yours.

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If this episode resonated with you, you are going to love Bad Marriage Advice. It is full of myths that we've all heard and many of us believe or even cling to, just like this one, but it's also filled with the truths that make marriage stronger, healthier and a lot more fun. It's available October 1st and if you want to be on the launch team, meaning the team that helps get it out into the world and into as many hands as humanly possible. Make sure you email me at moni at monicatanercom. Let me know you're in for the book launch and I will send you all the information that you need.

Speaker 0:

I am so grateful that you spent this time with me. I'm grateful to be able to tell the story of how our differences almost broke us, but how learning how to navigate them with skill and respect actually has made us unbreakable. And this is what I want so badly for anyone who's listening. Don't fall prey to the idea that you just have irreconcilable differences. Take those differences and make them the strength of your marriage and join me same time, same place next week. And until then, happy marriaging.