Suzanne Venker
Author and Relationship Coach
Hello Suzanne, I just wanted to thank you for the work that you do. Here is a little testimony on why I’m glad I found your content: I was born and raised in an African country. I had a good childhood and moved to the West when I was about 9 years old. I was …
I had a conversation with my daughter recently, where I (sadly) learned that she’s uncomfortable with the expectation that a man should pay on a date. Whaaat? I asked. That’s what men are supposed to do! I know, she said, but you don’t understand how things are today, Mom. It just feels wrong to expect the guy …
How are men and women supposed to relate to each other in today’s culture? Despite societal questions concerning gender and masculine/feminine roles, most women still hope for marriage and motherhood sometime in their lives. But too many of them follow the cultural narrative that tells them to put off marriage until they've achieved career success. …
Did you know that just being nice to your husband can save your marriage? It’s true. And yet the number of women who’ve been groomed to think being nice to their husbands is beneath them is off the charts. (Thanks, feminism.) Women who win at love reject this bogus narrative because they love and understand, rather …
If I had a dime for every breadwinning wife and mother I’ve heard from who’s angry and resentful for having to keep the family afloat financially and who wishes she and her husband hadn’t reversed roles, I’d be rich. Yes, some wives are content in this role. But they’re the exception, not the rule. It …
I had a coaching session the other day with a young woman who’s not engaged but who’s wisely assessing whether or not to continue a relationship with her boyfriend. Apparently this young man is very good to her and loves her very much, but she has legitimate concerns about whether or not their relationship will …
In her excellent book, What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us, Danielle Crittenden writes this about feminism’s effect on American women: “It had seeped into their minds like intravenous saline into the arm of an unconscious patient. They were feminists without knowing it.” I first read those words almost twenty years ago, and I’ve thought of …
I received an email recently from a wife and mother named Aimee, who has a Ph.D. and was, until recently, her family’s primary breadwinner. When she was laid off, things turned ugly. “I became resentful because my husband didn’t have the same drive and motivation I did to succeed. As such, I’m now separated with …
Are you super busy, always trying to get something accomplished? In “The Hidden Trauma of Overachievement,” Amanda Westland explains that overachievement is a survival instinct resulting from unresolved childhood wounds that leads many people to associate their value with how productive they are. It’s a flight response that causes some folks to stay perpetually busy …
It was a jarring transition, going from reading about women who choose to be single and childless and then celebrate it (as opposed to quietly living an unconventional life) to reading Chapter X of Jordan Peterson’s new book, Beyond Order. In the former—such as here and here and here and here—the focus is on the …
In her 2000 book Ten Things I Wished I’d Known—Before I Went Out into the Real World, Maria Shriver wrote the following: “Even though you think your career is your life and your identity, it’s not and it shouldn’t be.” I used that citation in the first book I ever wrote to drive home the …
COVID-19 changed everything, and the lifestyle of today’s mothers was no exception. Over two million women left the workforce in 2020, in large part due to the demands of caring for their children while working full-time. Our current administration considers this a tragedy that must be remedied. But what if it’s a blessing in disguise? …
What if the secret to staying married is simply choosing to do so? This mental thought process is much more powerful than it seems. For one thing, the decision to never get divorced leaves all the room in the world for the marriage to improve over time, which it typically does. One study by the Institute …
First, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. Now, Bill and Melinda Gates. Divorce among middle-aged adults is so popular these days there’s a term for it: gray divorce, or married couples who break up in the second half of life. Gray divorce doubled between 1990 and 2012 and is largely a Boomer phenomenon. Not one their children …
What if you could be satisfied with what you have and never again wonder what else is ‘out there’? What if your love life were 100% aligned with your expectations? Unfortunately, we live in a culture that encourages people to search for something better when they’re dissatisfied with their marriage or relationship. This is especially …
This article was originally published at Evie Magazine. When I was 23, I married my college sweetheart. We’d been together since freshman year, although he was two years older than I was and as a result had been out in the real world for two years before I graduated. But he was only three hours …
President Biden’s train wreck of a press conference last week overshadowed an equally disturbing event the day before. We would be wise not to forget the words he used on that day. March 24 was Equal Pay Day, a day that means absolutely nothing to the vast majority of Americans who are too savvy to …
“I did things backward. I started my career first, and marriage came much later.” Those are the words of my then 36-year-old mother in a 1966 article in The St. Louis Post Dispatch about her career as a stockbroker. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was born in 1930, my mother got …
Dear Suzanne, I’m 29 and don’t feel anywhere close to marriage. Part of my frustration comes from the fact that for a large part of my 20s I haven’t been prioritizing the pursuit of romantic relationships at all, and I’m regretting it now, as I have been feeling more and more over the past few …
Modern marriages are a mess. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal brought this reality home with its claim that millennials are embracing pre-nups. There’s no pretty way to describe a pre-nup. It simply means to pay a lawyer to prepare financially for a divorce before you’ve even walked down the aisle. Pre-nups have …
In the film Leap Year, the main character Anna (played by Amy Adams) is a complete control freak. Toward the end of the film, Declan, Anna’s love interest, says to her, “Why don’t you stop trying to control everything in the known universe? It’s dinner. Have a little faith that it will all work out.” …
I’m at that parenting stage when our adult sons and daughters are knee deep in college, in jobs, and in relationships. As a result, I’m watching many of my friends’ kids, as well as my own, start planning for the future. My husband and I have a son and a daughter. And unlike many modern …
This past week I discovered entrepreneur Rebecca Lynn Pope who has a You Tube channel called “Life with the Popes TV.” Her most popular post (over a million views) is about modern women’s high expectations, a topic I’ve covered at length in my own work. (Not long ago I posted this on Facebook, and, unsurprisingly …
So I’ve changed my coaching practice a bit in that I’m now working with both husbands and wives (in separate sessions). Until now, I’ve mainly coached wives—although I always have a session or two with the husband as well, and he has access to me via WhatsApp, too. I did it this way because it …
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