Are You “Falling Out of Love” … or is it Burnout?

This week, I am delighted to invite my colleague and friend, Dr. Jonathan Hoover, Ph.D., into this space. Not only is he a pastor and an encourager and advisor for this ministry, but he is also a fellow data nerd! Intrigued by his research into burnout for his recent release, Stress Fracture, I asked Jonathan to do a guest blog on how to avoid burnout in marriage. Also, do yourself a huge favor and catch his brand new podcast, The Dr. Jonathan Hoover Show (or listen on any of your regular podcast sources). Enjoy! – Shaunti

By Jonathan Hoover, Ph.D.

In the early years of my marital counseling ministry, some coworkers would give me a hard time about the “loud” sessions in my office. Usually, these sessions were loud because the couples I counseled had anger issues and struggled to communicate. My job was to help them talk to each other more effectively and “turn down the volume” on the emotional intensity.

But it wasn’t the loud ones that bothered me. It was the quietest ones that had me worried.

Here’s why: Some couples had grown so tired of trying to make things work that they didn’t even feel anger anymore. The bright colors of their marriage had faded into a cold, gray numbness. Often, this happens to individuals, especially women, who have been carrying the weight of an unhealthy marriage alone. By the time their partner realizes there’s an issue, they sit across from me and say, “I’d love to feel something again and work on this, but I don’t think I love him anymore.”

The husband is desperate to fix things, but there’s no switch to flip that brings back her engagement. That’s why those were my scariest appointments.

For years, I struggled to understand why people would “fall out of love” with their spouse, especially when both partners still wanted to work things out. Then, as I completed my graduate work in psychology, God helped me connect the dots. I’d been studying burnout, writing about it in my dissertation, and focusing on it in my academic research. Most burnout research centers on work: productivity, chronic stress, and coping strategies. But gradually, it dawned on me that the couples sitting in my office weren’t falling out of love—they were experiencing marital burnout.