Live Your Best Marriage Podcast

About Live Your Best Marriage Podcast

The Live Your Best Marriage Podcast, hosted by Pesa Shayo, helps cross-cultural Christian couples build a united front through in-law pressure, loyalty conflicts, culture clashes, communication, faith, and family expectations. Whitney Shayo appears in selected episodes from the show archive and future conversations.

Publisher

Pesa Shayo

Category

education · religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Aug 2015

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

110 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   What’s Missing From Your Marriage? Partner, Friend, or Lover with Rebecca Mullen

   You can be great at paying bills, raising children, managing schedules, solving problems, and keeping the household running, yet still feel disconnected from the person you married. In this episode of Live Your Best Marriage, Pesa talks with relationship communication coach Rebecca Mullen, host of Habits for Your Happily Ever After and author of Six Steps to Better Marriage Communication, about her Partner, Friend, and Lover framework. Rebecca explains that many couples become extremely good partners. They know how to get things done. But over time, the responsibilities of marriage can crowd out friendship, play, affection, curiosity, and romance. One of the most practical ideas in this conversation is that your complaints can help reveal what may be missing in your marriage. If you feel misunderstood, the friendship may need attention. If one spouse feels like they are carrying all the responsibilities, the partnership may be out of balance. If affection, play, kissing, or romance have disappeared, the lover relationship may need to be rebuilt. Pesa and Rebecca also talk honestly about what happens when one spouse is a natural go-getter while the other values slowing down, talking, and enjoying the moment. Pesa shares how his own drive to accomplish and provide sometimes made it difficult to simply sit with Whitney and enjoy time together, and how learning to release some control eventually made family time, travel, and even everyday responsibilities more enjoyable. Rebecca introduces what she calls the “dirty ask” and the “clean ask.” A dirty ask sounds like criticism, hinting, or expecting your spouse to read your mind. A clean ask begins by naming how you feel, stating what you desire, and then making a clear request your spouse can actually answer. The conversation also explores how couples can talk about unmet needs without making their spouse feel like a failure, why boundaries should come after clear communication and agreements, and how curiosity can help couples understand what is really happening instead of immediately blaming one another. Another important theme is control. Sometimes helping turns into controlling when we give our spouse responsibility but still insist that they complete it exactly the way we would. Pesa shares how learning to step back and trust Whitney with things like grocery shopping and travel planning reduced conflict and allowed her strengths to emerge in ways he had not expected. Rebecca describes friendship as the bridge between partnership and romance. The partner gets things done. The lover brings play, affection, and vitality. The friend helps both people slow down, become curious, understand one another, and remember that they are not enemies. The United Front takeaway is simple: a strong marriage needs more than good teamwork. Couples need to be able to accomplish things together, but they also need friendship, curiosity, affection, play, and intentional connection. The goal is not to eliminate the responsible partner side of marriage. It is to make sure the responsibilities of life do not bury the friendship and romance that brought you together in the first place. Are culture, family expectations, divided loyalties, or outside pressures making it harder for you and your spouse to stay connected and on the same side? Take the free United Front Quiz at: https://liveyourbestmarriage.com/quiz In just a few minutes, you will discover where your marriage is strong, where family or cultural pressure may be creating a gap, and your next step toward becoming a true united front. Rebecca’s book, Six Steps to Better Marriage Communication, is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and her website. You can also listen to her podcast, Habits for Your Happily Ever After. Live Your Best Marriage helps cross-cultural Christian...

2. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Your Marriage Is Becoming Your Child’s Inner Voice with Jodi Hill

   Your children are listening to more than what you say directly to them. They are also listening to how Mom and Dad speak to each other, how you handle frustration, how you disagree, how you apologize, and what happens when someone makes a mistake. In this episode of Live Your Best Marriage, Pesa talks with author and parenting educator Jodi Hill about how the words used inside a marriage and family can shape a child’s confidence, identity, resilience, and understanding of relationships. Jodi is the author of The Parent’s Secret Super Power: Seven Simple Strategies to Raise Confident and Capable Kids With the Power of Words. Her message grew out of one of the most difficult seasons of her own life, when she went through a divorce and became deeply intentional about helping her children walk through the experience without allowing the conflict between their parents to define them. One of Jodi’s central lessons is that correction does not have to become a label. There is a significant difference between telling a child, “Your room is a mess,” and telling them, “You are a mess.” Words such as lazy, irresponsible, clumsy, or a disaster can become identity statements that children begin carrying into other areas of their lives. Pesa and Jodi also explore a challenge that many cross-cultural couples experience. One parent may believe children need encouragement and affirmation, while the other was raised to believe that pushing children harder is what prepares them for success. Jodi explains that accountability and encouragement do not have to compete. Parents can expect responsibility, consequences, hard work, and high standards without using shame to motivate their children. The conversation also explores: How everyday words become part of a child’s inner voice Why correction should focus on behavior instead of attacking identity How parents can teach responsibility without shame Why children need to see their parents handle frustration in healthy ways How husbands and wives from different cultures can become a united front in parenting Why parenting disagreements should usually be worked through privately instead of undermining each other in front of the children How parents can establish shared nonnegotiables even when their parenting styles are different Why children should not be recruited into conflict between divorced parents How criticizing your child’s other parent can affect the child’s own sense of identity The additional challenges that come with blended families How high-achieving families can teach children that mistakes are part of learning without lowering standards How parents can remain a trusted voice when children are also hearing messages from friends, teachers, entertainment, social media, and culture And what parents can do when they realize they have already said things that may have hurt their children. One of Jodi’s strongest reminders is that it is never too late to repair. Parents can acknowledge what they have said, apologize specifically, ask how it affected their child, and commit to changing how they communicate going forward. The United Front takeaway is that raising confident children begins with more than agreeing on discipline. Children also need to experience Mom and Dad treating each other with respect. When parents constantly criticize, shame, undermine, or dishonor each other, children are learning from that interaction too. When husbands and wives learn to disagree, apologize, repair, and speak respectfully, they are giving their children a model for how healthy relationships handle conflict. If you and your spouse come from different cultures, families, or parenting traditions, the goal is not for one background to win. The goal is to decide together what kind of home you want to create and what you want your children to e...

3. 

   2 Oct 2026

   Love Is Not Enough: The Conversations Every Couple Needs Before Marriage with Veronica Sutherland

   Couples can spend months planning a wedding while barely discussing the marriage they are about to build. In this episode of Live Your Best Marriage, Pesa talks with Christian marriage and premarital coach Veronica Sutherland about the conversations couples need to have before marriage and what married couples can do when they discover they entered marriage carrying very different expectations. Drawing from more than 40 years of marriage and decades of family life education, Veronica shares that when she got married, she expected love and their shared Christian faith to make marriage relatively smooth. But she and her husband had never seriously discussed finances, family involvement, roles, or many of the expectations they had absorbed from the homes in which they were raised. Pesa also shares how this showed up in his own cross-cultural marriage. He grew up expecting children to be named after grandparents, while Whitney came into marriage with a very different expectation about who would choose their children's names. Neither assumption seemed unusual until they had to make the decision together. The conversation explores why couples often prepare more carefully for the wedding than for the marriage, and why being deeply in love does not automatically prepare two people to navigate money, faith, parenting, conflict, family loyalty, or cultural differences. Pesa and Veronica discuss the important conversations couples need to have about finances, including spending and saving habits, as well as how involved parents and extended family will be in the marriage. They also examine questions about borrowing money from family, unannounced visits, religious practices, church involvement, and how children will be raised in the faith. For cross-cultural couples, some of the hardest conversations involve family loyalty. Who comes first after marriage? How involved will parents be? Will money be sent to extended family? What happens when one spouse believes supporting parents and siblings is a lifelong responsibility while the other believes no money should leave the household without mutual agreement? Veronica encourages couples to move beyond arguing about which family or culture is right. Instead, they can talk about what each family taught them, decide what values they want to carry forward, and intentionally create the family culture they want for their own marriage. The conversation also explores how couples can make decisions about sending money to extended family by understanding why the support matters, how much is actually needed, how often money will be sent, and what boundaries will guide future requests. For Christian couples, Veronica emphasizes that sharing the label Christian does not eliminate the need for difficult conversations. Couples still need to discuss prayer, church, giving, leadership, communication, individual goals, sacrifice, and what a Christ-centered marriage will actually look like in everyday life. She reminds couples that communication should be about understanding one another rather than winning an argument. And if you are already married and realizing you never had these conversations, it is not too late. Veronica encourages married couples to begin now, remembering that these conversations are not something you complete once. Marriage continually requires couples to revisit expectations, forgive each other, pray together, and learn to see their spouse as a partner rather than an enemy. The United Front takeaway is simple: love is essential, but love should not be used to avoid important conversations. Strong marriages are built when couples are willing to honestly discuss faith, family, money, parenting, conflict, culture, expectations, and the future they are creating together. The goal is not for one person's family, culture, or expectations to win. The goal is to understand what each person is bringing into t...

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Apple Podcasts (US)

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