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Hello, I am a marital therapist, communications trainer and author. I have thirty-five years helping couples and individuals make better relationships. I have written twenty-plus self-help books which include the international best-sellers ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ and ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ My books have been translated into twenty languages. I trained with RELATE the UK’s largest counselling charity. Perhaps it has been turning sixty but I have become interested in spiritual as well as psychological questions. Who am I? What are my values – as opposed to my parents, my teachers and the wider society? What makes my life meaningful? What do I believe about life, the universe and everything? Although my clients might come to me because of destructive arguments, falling out of love and infidelity, they are also interested in having more meaningful relationships and a more meaningful life. So what is the meaningful life? Why do we so easily lose our way and get lost in depression, anxiety, doubt, addictions and obsessions: the swamplands of the soul? One thing I know for sure is that there is not one answer. Each of us has to find out for ourselves what makes our life meaningful. But we can learn from each other, share our experiences of how to navigate the journey, how to endure and learn from the swamp, and finally how to find solid ground. I have decided to use my original training in radio and journalism to interview witnesses for what makes life meaningful. Each week, I invite someone who is a therapist, academic, self-help coach or who has an enlightening personal story to share their knowledge or experiences. I hope our discussions will help you discover what makes your life meaningful and find more purpose and contentment.
Episodes
21 hours ago
21 hours ago
How do you keep the spark alive in your relationship when there are kids involved and you have ten, twenty, or thirty years on the clock?
This week I talk to CAROLYN SHARP, a US-based marital therapist, and the author of Fire It Up: Four Secrets to Reigniting Intimacy and Joy in Your Relationship. We cover:
- Purpose: could you define a purpose for your marriage?
- Sex: how to talk about it honestly and effectively.
- Conflict: handling disagreements better
- Happiness: the habits that create lasting joy
- Acceptance: how practicing radical acceptance will feed your relationship.
Carolyn has a master of social work from Portland State University and has extensive training in attachment, neuroscience, trauma, and mindfulness. She is an experienced couples therapist and coach, with twenty-five years of training and practice in helping people build vital, vibrant, and secure functioning relationships through one-on-one and group couples coaching, workshops, retreats, and intensives. She and her husband and dogs live in northern Massachusetts.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- How to totally accept your partner
- Three Things Carolyn Sharp knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin
Read Carolyn Sharp’s book, Fire It Up: Four Secrets to Reigniting Intimacy and Joy in Your Relationship.
Take a look at Carolyn Sharp’s retreats and couple coaching work, or at her therapy website,
Follow Carolyn Sharp on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram @secureconnectionscoach and on YouTube @carolynsharp9053
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Mar 17, 2025
Monday Mar 17, 2025
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation” (Henry Thoreau).
In this classic episode, Andrew interviews therapist SIMON ROE. Simon has based his life’s work on helping men live an authentic life. After himself going through a period of quiet desperation in his mid-thirties, he went on to help men break the silence, find “the song inside” and overcome their experiences of depression, violence and loneliness.
Simon has also worked extensively with boys and their fathers to create rites of passage that help boys claim a strong, authentic sense of their developing manhood.
Simon Roe originally trained as a body psychotherapist, and is also a co-leader of the Mandorla Men’s Rites of Passage programme. He has worked extensively with perpetrators of domestic violence, and is a Respect approved trainer and supervisor. Simon is also trained in process oriented psychology.
Simon and Andrew also discuss the idea of answering “the call to adventure”, an idea powerfully captured in this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:
Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church , which he forgot.
Rainer Maria Rilke ( trans. Robert Bly)
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- Three Things Simon Roe knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin.
Visit Simon Roe’s website
Learn about the Kingfisher Project, a community dedicated to rites of passage for boys aged 13-16.
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Mar 10, 2025
Monday Mar 10, 2025
Many women long to be in a happy relationship, in which they feel safe, heard and understood, but have given up after years of disappointment and heartbreak. This week dating coach EVAN MARC KATZ joins Andrew to discuss why it’s so hard for women to find a man who wants to commit and to build a genuine relationship. They cover:
- How to get psychologically prepared to date successfully.
- Knowing which compromises to make in the service of love.
- The difference between compromise and “settling”.
- The importance of accepting men as they are, rather than viewing them as fixable works in progress.
- Balancing chemistry and compatibility in your relationship decisions.
- Evan’s personal experiences of dating frustration, and how they led him to write one of the first and most popular books about online dating.
Evan Marc Katz is an author, CEO, podcaster, dating coach and former screenwriter who works to support strong, successful women to find lasting relationships. He has been featured by Today, the New York Times, and CNN. A total of 13,000 women from 40 countries have graduated from Love U, his coaching course and community that helps women understand men and find love.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- Dealing with Unavailable Men.
- Three Things Evan Marc Katz knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Learn more about working with Evan Marc Katz on his website
Read Evan Marc Katz’s books
Listen to Evan Marc Katz’s Love U podcast
Follow Evan Marc Katz on Facebook @EvanMarcKatzfan, on Instagram @realevanmarckatz and on Twitter/X and YouTube @evanmarckatz.
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Mar 03, 2025
Monday Mar 03, 2025
For Andrew, it is the writings of Dr James Hollis, one of the world’s most eminent Jungian analysts, that have “sustained me through my dark times”. Dr Hollis’ books also regularly help Andrew’s marital therapy clients create change in their relationships and recover from infidelity.
In this classic reissued episode, Andrew speaks to James Hollis about what it means to be resilient - how do we discover and develop the strength nature gives us to “walk through the forest” when we inevitably hit dark times?
Bookshops and the internet are full of “five steps to happiness” style self-help manuals, telling us that if only we wake up earlier, change jobs, or eliminate caffeine, we will solve all our problems. In fact, life is fractious and difficult, and requires us to persist. The best way to do this is not an external solution, but to find and trust the strength within ourselves.
Dr. James Hollis is a Washington D.C. based Jungian psychoanalyst and the author of seventeen books. He was Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas for many years and Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington (JSW) until 2019. He also worked as a Senior Training Analyst for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, as a Director of Training of the Philadelphia Jung Institute, and is Vice-President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- Three Things James Hollis knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Take a look at James Hollis’ website
Read James Hollis’ book, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Read Andrew’s review of James Hollis’ book Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places:
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Feb 24, 2025
Monday Feb 24, 2025
Is your relationship a refuge from stress in a turbulent and demanding world? Do you always have each other’s backs? OR has the stress you face at work or in the culture seeped into your home life and created a rift between you?
Marital therapist ELIZABETH EARNSHAW, the author of Til Stress Do Us Part, works with couples to identify and address the life stress that is undermining their partnership. In this episode, Andrew and Elizabeth discuss:
- Setting effective boundaries
- Self-soothing when life gets rough
- Taking responsibility for what makes you happy
- Communicating with compassion rather than resentment
Elizabeth Earnshaw is a marital therapist from Philadelphia in the US. She owns the practice A Better Life Therapy, and over the past 15 years she has supported thousands of couples as they navigate the ups and downs of life. Elizabeth has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and other national and international publications. She is also the author of I Want This To Work, 'Til Stress Do Us Part, and a therapist's guide called The Couples Therapy Flipchart.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- How to Deal with Hot Button Topics
- Three Things Elizabeth Earnshaw knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Buy Elizabeth Earnshaw’s book, Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in our Relationships
Visit Elizabeth Earnshaw’s website
Follow Elizabeth Earnshaw on Instagram @lizlistens
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Feb 17, 2025
Monday Feb 17, 2025
When women and men argue, women can often be more comfortable in expressing their feelings of hurt and anger.
Men can feel distressed by this strength of feeling, and may pull away emotionally. They may feel a very strong urge to occupy the ground of rationality and objectivity, which in turn leads their partner to push harder, desperately seeking emotional connection.
Dr Avrum Weiss is a US-based author and psychotherapist specialising in the internal lives of men. His writing and his work with couples help men and women understand each other more deeply and build a stronger connection.
In this classic reissued episode, Andrew and Avrum discuss the emotion of anger and how our childhoods can influence our adult experiences of it. They share insights from Avrum’s book Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships , and look at how men and women can better understand each other’s internal world.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- Three Things Avrum Weiss knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Buy Dr Avrum Weiss’ book Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships
Find Dr Avrum Weiss’ other books via his website
Follow Dr Avrum Weiss on Facebook @AvrumWeissAuthor
Read Andrew’s books on relationships and self-development
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Feb 10, 2025
Monday Feb 10, 2025
Does something feel off about your intimate relationships? According to author and couples therapist Dené Logan, the answer to your problem may lie in the interplay of your masculine and feminine energies.
Masculine and feminine polarities are present in every person and relationship. When we’re out of touch with the energetics within ourselves and those around us, it can create an internal struggle and sense of disharmony in our partnerships.
In this episode, Andrew and Dené discuss:
- Understanding the polarities in your partnership
- Integrating masculine and feminine energies
- Moving away from a codependent, transactional view of your relationship
- Some of the historical and cultural reasons our relationships turn out the way they do.
Dené Logan is an LA-based marriage and family therapist, who takes a depth psychology approach. She is also a group facilitator, public speaker, yoga and mindfulness instructor, and the co-host of the Cheaper than Therapy podcast. Dené is also a mentee to acclaimed couples therapist Esther Perel. Her book, Sovereign Love, was published in May 2024.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- How to heal the patriarchal mother wound.
- Three Things Dené Logan knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Read Dené Logan’s book, Sovereign Love
Follow Dené Logan on Instagram @dene.logan and on TikTok @denelogan
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Feb 03, 2025
Monday Feb 03, 2025
Life brings to all of us long periods where we feel lost or confused. We don't know how to get what we want, or even what it is that we want. The struggle to articulate the thing that might really make us “come alive” can be profound, even if we enter therapy.
Charlotte Fox Weber is a psychotherapist, author and the founding head of The School of Life Psychotherapy. Her bestselling book, Tell Me What You Want, explores how to identify and navigate our deepest longings.
In this classic episode, Andrew and Charlotte discuss the idea that we have 12 fundamental desires: to love and be loved; understanding, power, attention, freedom; to create, to belong, to win, to connect, to control; and to want what we shouldn't.
Identifying how these desires play out in your life can be liberating and beautiful, even if you also realise that acting on them is impossible.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- Three Things Charlotte Fox Weber knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Read Charlotte Fox Weber’s new book, Tell Me What You Want
Follow Charlotte Fox Weber on Instagram @charlottefoxweberpsychotherapy and on Facebook @charlottefoxweber
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Jan 27, 2025
Monday Jan 27, 2025
If you’re feeling anxious, meditation and mindfulness may not be the answer. Instead, author KARLA McLAREN would advise us to sit with the feelings of anxiety and hear the useful messages they’re bringing to help us cope with a tricky situation.
In this episode, Andrew and Karla discuss:
- How anger, shame and sadness can be the bearers of crucial information.
- “Negative” emotions and the skills and energy they can provide.
- Why understanding our emotions is so hard.
- How to engage with challenging emotions, when society has taught many of us it’s better to repress them.
Karla McLaren, M.Ed. is an award-winning author, educator, workplace consultant, and social science researcher. Her work revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics Inc.
She is also the author of many books, including The Language of Emotions, The Power of Emotions at Work, and Embracing Anxiety, and she is the developer of the online learning site Empathy Academy.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
- How to Deal With Confusion
- Three Things Karla McLaren knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Read Karla McLaren’s new book The Language of Emotions Workbook
Read Karla McLaren’s other books
Visit Karla McLaren’s website
Find out about upcoming courses at the online learning site developed by Karla McLaren, Empathy Academy
Follow Karla McLaren @KarlaMcLarenAuthor on Facebook, @karlamclaren.m.ed on Instagram, @EmotionDynamics on YouTube and on LinkedIn.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Jan 20, 2025
Monday Jan 20, 2025
Have you ever felt so defeated and frustrated that you want to just throw in the towel and run away? Author KAY HUTCHISON did exactly that, fleeing her annual holiday to the Cote d’Azur, moving out of her home, and leaving behind her marriage and a well-established career.
In seeking to understand what forced this huge rupture in a previously smooth existence, Kay tried a range of mainstream and alternative therapies. In the end, she took part in 37 different forms of therapy to explore her particular midlife crisis and experience of the menopause. From colonic irrigation through to Shamanic therapy, Kay found solace and insight that she was able to share in her powerful book, My Life in 37 Therapies.
In this reissued classic episode, Kay and Andrew explore the many different ways in which therapy can help us cope with midlife, and its tendency to throw at us so many of the unresolved issues of early life.
Subscriber Content This Week
If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:
- Three Things Kay Hutchison knows to be true.
- AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Buy My Life in 37 Therapies by Kay Hutchison
Find out more about dealing with midlife and the relationship issues it can cause in Andrew’s book It’s Not a Midlife Crisis, It’s an Opportunity.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall