I hated conflict in my marriage. I always wanted to end whatever argument we were having as quickly as possible and run away to go do something that didn’t involve uncomfortable conversation. The thinking at the time was: Conflict is bad. Two people who are fighting all of the time must not be compatible. Two people who frequently have conflict probably shouldn’t be together. And because I believed things like that, I would get upset with her every time she’d introduce some new conversation (which I registered as another unfair complaint about me!) which she was using to help me understand s ..read more

In today’s video, we’re discussing the idea of knowing your spouse or relationship partner. I think most of us default to the belief that we know the people in our inner circle, with whom we see and interact with most, including our romantic partners. But I think we might be confusing ideas like familiarity, or being comfortable with someone, with the more critical idea of knowing them. I wrote in my book This is How Your Marriage Ends at the beginning of Chapter 4: “I never really knew my wife even though we were married for nine years and met when we were teenagers. Not because of any craz ..read more

A really cool thing happened when The Atlantic decided to publish an excerpt from my new book This is How Your Marriage Ends. It introduced my work to a bunch of new people, boosted book sales (which I’m guilty of really wanting to happen), and it added me having a byline in The Atlantic to my career accomplishments which I feel super-fortunate to have had happen. But there’s always a consequence to a bunch of new people being introduced to the work I do, exacerbated even more by The Atlantic editorial staff’s decision to make the excerpt about the whole She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes ..read more

Many people (usually men) type into internet search engines: “my wife is never happy no matter what I do.” I remember thinking and feeling things just like that. In today’s video, I talk about how the sneaky erosion of safety and trust in relationships might be responsible for your spouse or partner appearing to be unhappy with you, no matter how much good you believe you’re doing. Safety and trust in relationships isn’t just about not being harmed physically, financially, or even emotionally; or being someone who is sexually faithful and tells the truth. Safety can also be about the idea o ..read more

(Image/Holy Trinity Lutheran Church) Hey everyone. Some housecleaning items. 1. Welcome to MatthewFray.com Hi. It’s new and it looks different, and it’s hard to like new, different things, so I hope you’ll bear with me as we adjust to the new digs. One of the significant things about moving the old Must Be This Tall To Ride blog to this new site was that we lost all of the blog followers and subscribers along the way. We think we’ve remedied that problem, which we’ll find out when we publish this new blog post. Anyway. I hope you like it here. It should keep getting better. 2. Follow me on Ins ..read more

You know, I never imagined writing non-fiction. Certainly not about divorce and relationships, and certainly not about me, personally. But from a very young age, I did dream about writing a book. I kind of thought some super-cool novel that everyone wanted to see made into a film would be the neatest version of that, but sitting here on the cusp of turning 43, nine years removed from those unforgiving, tearful, vomity early days of divorce, I don’t have the vocabulary to properly explain how much gratitude I feel about everything that’s been happening. I’m proud of the personal growth I’ve gon ..read more

As we move both frighteningly and excitingly closer to book launch day (March 22, 2022), media interest in my work has increased. Which is a good problem to have when you’re me—a largely unknown blogger hopeful that this new book can find some footing in an increasingly loud and busy world. Chris Mikolay, host of the young and upcoming podcast Three Questions, Three Drinks, had heard me on another podcast, then reached out with an invitation I couldn’t refuse—an opportunity to drink adult beverages and “work” at the same time. Which, I’m not afraid to tell you, is glorious. As a bourbon whisk ..read more

(Image/The Belltower – the Mount Aloysius College student newspaper) A friend of mine—female—was in a work meeting with a bunch of guys. It was a corporate meeting of department heads several months ago discussing how to fairly handle dress code policy surrounding the culture war between the Black Lives Matter crowd and the Make America Great Again crowd. She was advocating for the company to take an empathetic position regarding experiences other people have even when we, ourselves, aren’t necessarily affected by them. For example, how me, a middle-class white guy in the United States, doesn ..read more

I like the book cover. I hope you do too. (Image/HarperOne) On January 17, 2020, I was sitting in my office cubicle wrapping up another workday in corporate marketing. Before shutting down my computer, I checked my personal email and saw the subject line “TIME SENSITIVE coaching request – NY Times reporter wants to feature you.” I had experienced some attention from large online publications in the past, had been invited on a handful of podcasts and radio shows, been mentioned in a couple of books, and certainly from the viral blog post She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink. But th ..read more

(Image/Big Think) I always made things about me in my marriage, even though I would have told you I thought of myself as an unselfish person and valued the idea of selfless love. Back then, my wife would say things like: “It’s always about what Matt wants,” and I’d think she was being an asshole. Then I’d defend myself, obtusely proving her right. If you’re someone like me who is accused of “making everything about you,” please consider that you may also have the same blind spots that I had. It doesn’t make you a bad person. You literally don’t know, and I don’t think you should be judged or m ..read more