Show the world that you’re lovers, not fighters!
Does your marriage sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) feel like a battle zone?
The below list details some of the strained dynamics, unpleasant personality traits, communication disasters and general miserableness that can sink a marriage.
As you scroll down and read it, pretend that you’re looking at a form that instructs you to “Check off the boxes that apply.”
How many of the below would you check off?
defensiveness
walking on eggshells
constant arguing or bickering
cold shoulders
the silent treatment
an inability to resolve conflict without making things worse
feeling unloved or unappreciated
feeling micromanaged or nagged
feeling constantly criticized; living with negativity
an inability to act as a team with respect to key marital issues (e.g. parenting, money, housework)
irritation over personal devices and technology (e.g. your phones!)
lack of intimacy
divided loyalties (e.g. your spouse seems to prioritize other people)
threats or thoughts of divorce; feeling hopeless about the marriage
feeling misunderstood, unsupported or unheard
a marriage characterized by “adult temper tantrums”
feeling worried that you’re setting a bad example for your children
feeling embarrassed by how you treat each other in private and public
a history of failed attempts to improve the marital dynamics
Even if you only checked off one or two miseries in this unhappy list, make no mistake—the smartest move you could make in your life right now would be to prioritize making things better in your marriage.
I am a marital mediator with over 20 years experience working with higher conflict couples who are struggling with precisely these kinds of issues.
I can help you manage and resolve them, and I can do it whether you’re working as a couple or—more likely—the person who staring at this screen is working alone. That’s okay. That’s how it usually is.
Regardless, my book Stop Fighting to Get Along: Practical, Painless Ways to Improve Communication, Interactions & Conflict Resolution Skills in Marriage is the most comprehensive and creative book you’ll find on this topic.
And since my background is in mediation (as opposed to psychotherapy), you will find that my focus is always on real-world solutions and “try this, stop doing that” strategies, that you can actually put to use.
This book isn’t about theory. It’s about making palpable changes that last a lifetime.
Get back to “happily every after” starting today.
Marriage SOS partners with Google Play Books. Download the free app and listen to the audiobook or read the ebook on whatever device you’re on.
The S.I.G.N.A.L. Protocol™ Overlay
for Stop Fighting To Get Along
Using the Protocol: S.I.G.N.A.L. is designed to sit alongside the core guidance in Stop Fighting to Get Along, not replace it. While the book gives you the strategy or “Master Plan” for saving your marriage, S.I.G.N.A.L. is the lens you keep on during every interaction, so that each word and action you send is one that actually moves you toward repair instead of away from it.
After you have completed the book, including the Q&A’s at the end of each section, review the overlay. Remind yourself of key concepts and add to your master plan by incorporating the proper “signals.”
This approach offers an intelligent, pragmatic and meticulous way to approach conflict. Below, you’ll find a recap of the six pillars of the protocol, followed by the customized overlay for the book.
The S.I.G.N.A.L. Protocol™
Every marriage is a live exchange of signals — the words you choose, the tone underneath them, the timing of your silence, the set of your shoulders when you walk in the door. Your spouse is reading these constantly, usually without knowing it, and reacting to what they pick up. The S.I.G.N.A.L. Protocol is a six-part discipline for becoming fluent in that exchange — so that instead of broadcasting panic, resentment, or defense, you broadcast the kind of steadiness that makes real repair possible.
This isn't a script. It's a way of paying attention.
S — Signal Auditing
Know what you're actually putting out before you try to change what's coming back.
Most people in a struggling marriage are fluent in their spouse's flaws and half-blind to their own transmission. Before anything else shifts, you have to audit your own broadcast — the tone under your words, the message in your posture, the story your reactions are telling.
The Goal: Trade reflexive behavior for responsive, intentional communication.
The Skill: Build the self-awareness to catch your own signal in real time, and enough composure in your presence that your spouse's defenses have less to react against.
I — Intentional Incongruity
Stop feeding the script your spouse expects.
A difficult spouse has a prediction running in the background of every interaction with you — they expect the anger, the pleading, or the retreat, because that's the pattern that's played out a hundred times before. That prediction is what keeps the conflict cycle running on autopilot. Break the pattern, and you break the autopilot.
The Goal: Introduce a moment of genuine surprise — what psychologists call cognitive dissonance — that interrupts a withdrawing spouse's autopilot and forces them to actually look at you again, rather than the story they've built about you.
The Skill: Respond in ways that don't match the familiar conflict script — not to manipulate, but to become genuinely unpredictable in your composure.
G — Grounded Presence
Be the calm the relationship doesn't currently have.
A marriage in crisis is already unstable. If you match that instability — reactive, anxious, escalating — there's nothing left standing. Someone has to be the floor.
The Goal: Become what family systems theory calls the non-anxious presence — the person whose steadiness quietly signals safety to your spouse's nervous system, even mid-conflict.
The Skill: Concrete anchoring techniques, physical and emotional, that let you stay regulated and visibly "in control" of yourself, not of them.
N — Neutralizing the Alarm
Learn to recognize a trigger before it detonates.
In high-conflict marriages, certain words or moments function like an alarm — designed, consciously or not, to provoke a reaction and launch a familiar fight. Recognizing the alarm the instant it sounds is the difference between a conversation and a blowup.
The Goal: Defuse the alarm before it escalates, through self-control and pattern recognition rather than avoidance or suppression.
The Skill: De-escalation tools — anticipating known triggers, recalling what's worked before, and choosing your next move deliberately instead of reflexively.
A — Active Attunement
Hear what's underneath what's being said.
Anger is rarely just anger — it's often embarrassment wearing armor. Silence is often fear wearing a mask. To lead a marriage back from crisis, you have to read the signal beneath the signal.
The Goal: Develop real insight into what your spouse is actually communicating, not just what they're saying.
The Skill: Signal-naming — the practice of identifying your spouse's specific emotional triggers so you can recognize, manage, and navigate them with precision instead of guesswork.
L — Low-Frequency Gestures
Rebuild trust in small, steady signals — not grand ones.
You cannot force connection back into a relationship, and a spouse who's pulled away will often experience a big gesture as pressure, not love. Trust isn't rebuilt with a single grand signal — it's rebuilt the way it was lost: repetition, in small moments, over time.
The Goal: Re-establish warmth and commitment through quiet, low-pressure gestures your spouse can receive without feeling cornered.
The Skill: Consistency over intensity — small, repeated signals of care that rebuild the emotional foundation brick by brick.
Putting The S.I.G.N.A.L. Protocol™ to Use After Reading Stop Fighting to Get Along
Most communication advice fails because it assumes your spouse is ready to listen. In a high-conflict marriage, your words are often drowned out by the static of past resentment. To improve your interactions, you must stop focusing on the words and start focusing on the signals.
Use these four specific overlays after you’ve read Stop Fighting to Get Along (during your “review read”):
Overlay 1: The Entry Audit. The Pillar: S – Signal Auditing
·When to use it: Use this in conjunction with content that concerns starting conversations and timing.
·The Tactical Shift: As the book advises you to be aware with respect to timing a conversation, the protocol adds a three-point audit - jaws, breath and eyes. Before you use any of the communications strategies in the book, check that you are relaxed.
Ask yourself: "Am I broadcasting a signal of relaxed openness or closed anxiety?
·The Result: You will bypass your spouse’s conflict radar, keeping them at ease and open, so they’re receptive to the strategies in the book.
Overlay 2: The “Break It Up” Response. The Pillar: I – Intentional Incongruity
·When to use it: Use this when the book discusses interrupting the normal or predictable patterns of conflict.
·The Tactical Shift: Your spouse expects a signal of anger or challenge. Instead, give them a signal of cognitive curiosity. Deliver a three-second nod and a neutral comment: "That’s interesting. Tell me more." When you’re interested in your spouse, they’re interested in you.
·The Result: By stopping the escalation of conflict, you hijack your spouse’s brain so it can’t just automatically shift into “fight mode.”
Overlay 3: Detecting the “Silent Signal.” The Pillar: A – Active Attunement
·When to use it: Use this when the book addresses understanding your spouse and having empathy.
·The Tactical Shift: The book teaches you how to listen to their words and look for the meaning / intent / need below them. The protocol encourages you to try and “name” the signal your spouse is sending out. Do this by identifying the “subtext” of their broadcast. Are they feeling unheard or ashamed? Give the “signal” that name so you can quickly understand it.
·The Result: You manage triggers much better, and you stop taking their behavior personally or “reacting” to it so quickly. Your spouse feels heard and understood.
Overlay 4: The “Painless Reconnection.” The Pillar: L – Low-Frequency Gestures
·When to use it: Use this in conjunction when content on improving interactions and daily habits.
·The Tactical Shift: The book suggests many ways to reconnect, but the protocol emphasizes “barely there” gestures and signals. A wink. Holding a door open. Filling up their coffee cup.
·The Result: You reduce the pressure required to “reply” to every nice word or gesture. Let reconnection happen naturally and without making your spouse feel like they must one-up your efforts to reconnect.
Remember: Every signal counts. Cut through the static and find meaning.
By overlaying the S.I.G.N.A.L. Protocol™ over the already comprehensive content in Stop Fighting to Get Along, you can show your spouse that your marriage is already broadcasting great things - you just have to adjust the frequency a little bit.