The Online Program Restoring & Strengthening Marriages

The Short Version: If you want to strengthen your marriage, Dr. Bill Harley advises you to build up the best parts of it. We talked to the psychologist, bestselling author, and marriage expert about why marriages may struggle and what you can do to restore your connection.

My parents love watching movies together. They have a lot more time to watch movies now that three out of four of their kids have moved out of the house, but back in the day, their movie nights looked a lot different than they do now.

They would try their best to get everyone situated for bed early so they could have the living room to themselves. Sometimes that worked out. Usually it didn’t. My younger siblings were top-tier bedtime evaders, and they loved asking for another round of bedtime stories or making one last plea to stay up late.

I never gave too much thought to my parents’ movie nights as a kid. Looking back, I’m sure their consistency wasn’t a coincidence. You’ve probably heard it a million times that keeping regular date nights in your marriage is the best way to stay connected.

But that’s a big ask.

We talked to psychologist, author, and marriage expert, Dr. Bill Harley, about what it means to restore relationships with romance. He talked to us about the struggles you may face in marriage and how you and your partner can create uplifting, strong, and long-lasting unions. 

Dr. Bill’s online program is called Marriage Builders, and it gives you tools and resources to fortify your connection with your spouse. Instead of just focusing on conflict resolution, Marriage Builders takes a unique approach to helping struggling couples. It focuses on restoring love and attraction.

The program doesn’t ask you to talk your relationship problems into the ground. Marriage Builders puts the love, trust, and passion back into your relationship so you can navigate the tricky spots with care and empathy.

“Marriage is a mutual relationship of extraordinary care,” Dr. Bill said. “When you marry somebody, you have to be prepared to make that person the number one priority in your life. We express extraordinary care.”

Before exploring what Marriage Builders has to offer, Dr. Bill said it’s essential to talk about what marriage is and, more importantly, what it means to you. 

It all centers around the “mutual relationship of extraordinary care” that Dr. Bill was talking about earlier. “You meet each other’s most important emotional needs. You avoid hurting each other and you make all your decisions together. You become a partnership.”

Dr. Bill said married partners become a team for life. You dedicate yourself to each other and your life together. Showing up and expressing that love is what makes marriages work. 

“Romantic love is the key to the whole thing,” Dr. Bill said. “But it gets complicated. How do you keep romantic love alive when you’ve got small children running around? When you have dual careers? When somebody’s lost their job? When tragedies occur?”

You’re never going to be able to avoid obstacles, either inside your marriage or outside of it. Having a spouse means you have someone who will face all of life’s curveballs with you. “Our website is really devoted to being not only about having a great marriage, but being in love,” Dr. Bill said.

Dr. Bill created Marriage Builders after years of teaching psychology and working with clients as a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. As a practitioner he was treating thousands of patients, and Dr. Bill realized that traditional therapeutic approaches didn’t work for many couples.

He created a collection of materials designed for couples in therapy, including his book, “His Needs, Her Needs.” Eventually, Dr. Bill’s approach became widely accessible through his website, which he named Marriage Builders.

Marriage Builders resources can help you learn strategies for adding more romance into your marriage. The website’s materials center around three basic rules he has for romantic marriages:

• “Have a minimum of 15 hours a week of high-quality time together”
• “Never deceive each other about anything”
• “Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse”

Dr. Bill said the first rule ensures you and your spouse are attending to each other’s emotional needs. Fifteen hours a week could feel daunting if you work long hours or have busy schedules with kids, but when you do the math, it’s less than 10% of the time in the week.

“This helps you meet the emotional needs of affection, intimate conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment,” Dr. Bill told us. “One of the biggest problems that people have in marriage is they start neglecting each other’s emotional needs. We do this intentionally with the policy of undivided attention.”

The second rule can get tricky. Being completely and radically honest even with yourself can be challenging, much less a partner. Still, Dr. Bill said it’s essential that married couples get on the same page about everything, including their life stories, histories, and dreams for the future.

“It’s extremely important to be able to understand that person’s personal history because you didn’t grow up with that person,” Dr. Bill said. “Before I counsel anybody, I have them write me a personal history of themselves, and I want a detailed account of everything they’ve done.”

Marriage Builders has a Personal History Questionnaire. This is a great way for you and your spouse to share the important details you need to know. 

Full disclosure isn’t always easy, especially when you’re talking to your spouse about a sensitive topic.The questionnaire helps take away some of the emotional load that comes with talking about past experiences. By putting everything on the table with your spouse, they can do a better job of supporting you and helping you fulfill your needs.

The third rule is about keeping you and your spouse on the same page. “This rule gets rid of harmful independent decisions where people are going their separate ways, doing their own things, without considering the feelings of other people.”

Dr. Bill said these three rules were designed to keep you in love. Instead of trying to dissect disagreements and conflicts, Marriage Builders encourages couples to focus their energy on what they love most about their relationship and partner.

“These things are what got you to fall in love,” Dr. Bill told us. “That’s what will keep you in love.”

Marriage Builders offers videos and articles you can start exploring whenever you like. If you’re looking for a deeper approach, check out one of the site’s programs. 

You can find details about Program #1 here. The program has you and your spouse read several of Dr. Bill’s books and complete the accompanying workbooks and questionnaires that come with them. The program has you engage with what you read in a way that actually brings meaningful change to your marriage.

Program #2, or The Marriage Builders Online Home Study Program, includes two courses and 20 lessons that are designed for spouses in a relationship rut. It’ll help you understand your problems and create plans to change habits to overcome those problems.

Program #3 combines everything from Program #2 with an online seminar. The online seminar gives you the chance to hear all of Marriage Builder’s core principles explained by Dr. Bill himself. 

The seminar includes over eight hours of video instruction and helps you organize the problems so you can face them strategically.

Program #4 gives you a fully customized plan for marriage success. With this program, you and your spouse will get one-on-one marriage coaching from the Marriage Builders team. If you’re stuck in the same problems and can’t seem to get through them, Dr. Bill said this program is the right fit.

“Neglect is the biggest cause of divorce,” Dr. Bill said. “All of a sudden, this person that you married isn’t with you anymore. There’s no emotional connection. Our website prevents neglect from ever happening in marriage.”