Send us Fan Mail

“As you wish.” Three words that sound like a servant talking to his boss, and Buttercup knew Westley by them the instant she heard them. Why did those words get through when the line about pain didn’t?

In the second of six episodes of The Princess Bride, licensed marriage and family therapist Eddie Eccker returns to the farm, where a rude farm girl orders a farmhand around, and he answers the same way every time. The scene usually gets read as proof that love is action, not words. Eddie thinks that reading is wrong, and the real lesson is more useful.

What’s in this episode:

The pitcher she could have reached herself, and what John Gottman calls a bid
Turning toward, away, or against: what Gottman’s lab actually counted, and the 86 percent to 33 percent gap between couples who stayed married and couples who didn’t
Why the famous divorce prediction numbers deserve skepticism (Heyman and Slep, 2001)
Harry Reis on responsiveness, the feeling that your partner gets you
What the 2024 review of love languages found (Emily Impett, University of Toronto)
The bad version of “as you wish,” and why going quiet to keep the peace isn’t it
Two things to try this week: count your partner’s reaches for seven days, and make one bid plain

For the listener who does everything and says nothing, and the one who says all the right things and can’t figure out why none of it lands. And for anyone who, like the grandson, didn’t sign up for the kissing parts.

Next episode: Vizzini, his favorite word, and the mistake smart, careful people make about their spouses every day.

Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, is co-owner of Voyages Counseling in Colorado and the author of You Are Not Finished (coming 2027) at eddieeccker.com and voyagescounseling.com.

Sources:

• Gottman Institute, Turn Toward Instead of Away, on the 86 and 33 percent figures
• Heyman, R. E., & Slep, A. M. S. (2001). The hazards of predicting divorce without cross-validation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(2), 473–479. Full text
• Reis, H. T., Clark, M. S., & Holmes, J. G. (2004). Perceived partner responsiveness as an organizing construct in the study of intimacy and closeness. In D. J. Mashek & A. Aron (Eds.), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy (pp. 201–225). Erlbaum.
• Impett, E. A., Park, H. G., & Muise, A. (2024). Popular psychology through a scientific lens: Evaluating love languages from a relationship science perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science. Abstract | University of Toronto summary

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

Connect
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyagescounselingco/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573649534384
X: https://twitter.com/thevoyagecast
Website: https://thevoyagecast.com
Eddie Eccker: https://www.eddieeccker.com
Voyages Counseling: https://www.voyagescounseling.com

Send us Fan Mail

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” It’s the most quoted line in The Princess Bride, and the man who says it is right about pain and wrong about the woman he loves.

In the first of six episodes on The Princess Bride, licensed marriage and family therapist Eddie Eccker takes the hilltop scene apart. Westley, masked as the Dread Pirate Roberts, tells Buttercup that life is pain while believing a story about her that isn’t true. The episode is for anyone in a hard stretch who keeps thinking this shouldn’t be happening.

What’s in this episode:

Why valuing happiness too highly can make people less happy (Iris Mauss, UC Berkeley)
Radical acceptance, where Marsha Linehan’s DBT skill came from, and how it gets misused
The 2018 study that found accepting your feelings helped and accepting your situation didn’t (Brett Ford, University of Toronto)
Cynicism as armor, and why Westley couldn’t tell his real injury from the story he built on it - A two-sentence practice for the next time you think this shouldn’t be happening

Haven’t seen the movie? Watch it this week. The sword fight on the Cliffs of Insanity is one of the best in cinema, and the actors did it themselves.

Sources and research notes:

• Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092. Abstract | Full text
• University of Toronto summary of the Ford study: Don’t brood or wallow when feeling bad
• Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. Full text
• Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The radical acceptance skill is in the Distress Tolerance module.

Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, is co-owner of Voyages Counseling in Colorado and the author of You Are Not Finished (Coming soon).

More at eddieeccker.com and voyagescounseling.com

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

Connect
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyagescounselingco/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573649534384
X: https://twitter.com/thevoyagecast
Website: https://thevoyagecast.com
Eddie Eccker: https://www.eddieeccker.com
Voyages Counseling: https://www.voyagescounseling.com

Send us Fan Mail

What are you supposed to be doing on an ordinary Tuesday? Plenty of people can answer the big question of purpose. The harder one is the day to day: you get up, make coffee, go to work, come home tired, and wonder if the repetition means anything.

In this episode, licensed marriage and family therapist Eddie Eccker brings Scripture and clinical research to that question. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells the story of people made to be with God. Attachment research from John Bowlby and René Spitz, along with Thomas Joiner’s work on thwarted belongingness, shows how much we depend on each other.

Eddie’s answer for daily purpose is to be connected and generative. Connected means actually known, seen and heard, by God first, and by the people you trust with the real you. Generative, a term from Erik Erikson, means bringing your best, to the degree you can, to the people around you. Little by little it grows you and plants seeds that God can grow in those who are willing.

In this episode:

• Finding purpose in ordinary, repetitive days
• Identity and the cost of managing what people see
• Attachment theory, loneliness, and belonging
• Erik Erikson’s generativity and Dan McAdams’s redemption stories
• What Groundhog Day shows about purpose
• Romans 12, worship, and the drummer boy’s offering

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US).

The Voyage Cast is hosted by Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, co-founder of Voyages Counseling in Colorado. [Add your site links]

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

Connect
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyagescounselingco/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573649534384
X: https://twitter.com/thevoyagecast
Website: https://thevoyagecast.com
Eddie Eccker: https://www.eddieeccker.com
Voyages Counseling: https://www.voyagescounseling.com

Send us Fan Mail

“I never thought I would be the one.” It is the sentence people say after an affair, and it points to why affairs happen to people who were sure they were safe.

How do affairs start? Why do good people cheat, including people in happy marriages and committed Christians? In this episode of The Voyage Cast, Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, walks through Proverbs 7 as a three-thousand-year-old case study of infidelity and sets it beside what he sees in his counseling office and what the research on affairs shows.

Most affairs do not begin with a stranger. They begin with a coworker, a friend, a neighbor, or someone from church. Eddie explains the four things a person is offered at the start of an affair (being chosen, a clear conscience, pleasure, and secrecy) and why the real decision gets made long before anyone thinks they are deciding.

This episode covers:

• How affairs start, and why most begin as friendships or at work
• Why good people cheat, even in happy marriages
• What arousal and secrecy do to your judgment
• Why the people most confident in their self-control are at higher risk
• The confusion after an affair: “What have I done?” and “Who am I now?”
• What an affair costs: your marriage, your family, your reputation
• How to protect your marriage from infidelity before temptation shows up
• What Proverbs 7 and 1 Corinthians 10:12 say about temptation

If you are the spouse who was betrayed, parts of this episode may be hard to hear. An explanation is not the same thing as an excuse.

Research referenced: Shirley Glass (Not “Just Friends”), Dan Ariely and George Loewenstein, Daniel Wegner, Helen Fisher, Loran Nordgren, and Leon Festinger.

This episode is based on Eddie’s article “I Never Thought I Would Be the One.” Read it, with all the sources and Scripture references, on his website: https://www.eddieeccker.com/post/i-never-thought-i-would-be-the-one

Topics discussed: how affairs start, why people cheat, infidelity, emotional affairs, workplace affairs, affair prevention, protecting your marriage, Christian marriage, temptation, Proverbs 7, marriage counseling.

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming?

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

For more, check out EddieEccker.com & VoyagesCounseling.com

Send us Fan Mail

What do you do when someone in your church tells you they’re thinking about suicide?

For many people in crisis, the first person they tell isn’t a therapist. It’s a pastor, youth leader, small-group leader, friend, or someone else they trust in their church community. That puts churches on the front line of suicide prevention—often without much training for what to do next.

In this episode of The Voyage Cast, Eddie Eccker, MS, LMFT, talks candidly about suicide, faith, mental health, and the role churches can play when someone is in serious emotional distress.

The goal isn’t to turn pastors or church members into therapists. It’s to help them become a bridge to appropriate care.

Eddie explains why suicidal despair can narrow a person’s thinking until death begins to feel like the only available exit, why directly asking someone about suicide matters, and what to do if they say yes.

He also challenges a false choice that sometimes exists within Christian communities: faith or treatment.

Prayer, Scripture, pastoral care, therapy, medication, crisis intervention, and community support do not have to compete with one another. They can work together. The church can also provide something a clinician often cannot: people who notice, bring meals, give rides, sit with someone through a terrible night, and continue showing up during the other 167 hours of the week.

The episode also speaks directly to Christians experiencing suicidal thoughts themselves. Struggling this deeply does not mean you have failed spiritually or that God has abandoned you. Scripture itself contains people of profound faith who experienced extraordinary despair.

If you remember nothing else, remember this:

Ask. Stay. Connect. Keep showing up.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a mental health crisis in the United States, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is immediate danger, contact emergency services.

This episode discusses suicide and suicidal thoughts. Please listen with appropriate care.

Topics discussed: suicide prevention, Christian mental health, faith and therapy, pastors and suicide prevention, church mental health, suicidal thoughts, depression, crisis intervention, 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, pastoral care, youth ministry, therapy, and mental health treatment.

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming?

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

For more, check out EddieEccker.com & VoyagesCounseling.com

Send us Fan Mail

Most of what we think we know about grief is wrong. The five stages. Closure. The push to let go and move on. Dr. Thomas Attig has spent nearly 50 years making the case for something better.

Dr. Attig is an applied philosopher, emeritus professor at Bowling Green State University, and past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. His 1996 book How We Grieve: Relearning the World became a landmark in modern grief studies. His new collection from Oxford University Press, Seeking Wisdom in Death’s Shadows, gathers 50 years of his work in 23 essays.
In this conversation, Eddie and Dr. Attig explore why the Kübler-Ross stages were built for dying, not grieving, and what actually happens when someone we love dies. They discuss grief as relearning how to live in a changed world, the ongoing love that continues after death, the self as a web of connections, and the crucial difference between reacting to loss and responding to it. Dr. Attig also draws a line between problems, which we can solve, and mysteries, which ask us to be transformed.

This episode is for anyone grieving, anyone walking alongside someone who is, and every clinician who wants a deeper framework than the one taught in graduate school.

Get the book: order Seeking Wisdom in Death’s Shadows directly from Oxford University Press and use promo code AUFLY30 for 30% off - also on Amazon.

For additional resources and helpful information, go to voyagescounseling.com and eddieeccker.com

Support the show

What does it take to keep becoming?

What does it take to keep becoming? Eddie Eccker wrestles with that question on The Voyage Cast through interviews, topical discussions, and teachings on emotional health, marriage and family, faith, and the habits and stories that shape a life.

For more, check out EddieEccker.com & VoyagesCounseling.com