An Online Program Helping Couples Rebuild and Strengthen Their Marriages

The Short Version: Want a stronger marriage? According to Dr. Bill Harley, the way to get there is by building on what's already best about it. We spoke with the marriage expert, psychologist, and bestselling author about why marriages hit rough patches and how you can rebuild your bond.

My parents adore watching movies as a pair. Now that three of their four kids no longer live at home, they have far more time for it, but years ago, movie night at their place looked very different.

They'd do everything they could to get us all tucked in early so the living room would be theirs alone. Once in a while, it worked. More often, it failed: my younger siblings were elite-level bedtime dodgers, forever begging for one more bedtime story or making a final case for staying up.

As a kid, I didn't think much about my parents' movie nights. Now I'm certain their regularity was no accident. You've likely been told countless times that sticking to regular date nights is the surest way to keep a marriage connected.

That's a lot to ask, though.

Dr. Bill filled us in on everything about Marriage Builders.

We spoke with Dr. Bill Harley, a psychologist, author, and marriage expert, about using romance to repair relationships. He walked us through the challenges married couples can run into and how partners can build unions that are strong, uplifting, and built to last.

Dr. Bill's online program, Marriage Builders, offers tools and resources to reinforce the bond between you and your spouse. Rather than zeroing in on conflict resolution alone, Marriage Builders helps couples in trouble in its own distinctive way: by bringing back love and attraction.

You won't be asked to dissect your relationship issues endlessly. Instead, Marriage Builders restores love, trust, and passion, so you can handle the hard moments 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.”

Dr. Bill Looks at What Marriage Truly Means

Before digging into what Marriage Builders offers, Dr. Bill said you need to discuss what marriage is and, even more important, what it means to you.

Everything revolves around the “mutual relationship of extraordinary care” that Dr. Bill described 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.”

In Dr. Bill's view, spouses turn into a lifelong team. You commit to one another and to the life you share. What makes a marriage succeed is being present and showing that love.

A healthy marriage depends on keeping the romance going.

“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?”

Obstacles will always come up, whether they start within your marriage or outside it. A spouse is someone who'll take on every curveball life throws alongside you. “Our website is really devoted to being not only about having a great marriage, but being in love,” Dr. Bill said.

Dr. Bill spent years teaching psychology and counseling people before he launched Marriage Builders. Over thousands of patients treated as a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, he came to see that conventional therapy approaches failed a lot of couples.

He put together a set of materials for couples going through therapy, among them his book “His Needs, Her Needs.” In time, his method reached a wide audience through his website, which he called Marriage Builders.

Marriage Builders Helps Partnerships Go the Distance

With Marriage Builders resources, you can learn ways to make your marriage more romantic. Everything on the site is built around the three core rules Dr. Bill sets out 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”

According to Dr. Bill, the first rule makes sure each of you tends to the other's emotional needs. Setting aside fifteen hours a week might sound like a lot if you work long days or juggle packed schedules with kids, but run the numbers and it's under 10% of your 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 be tough. Being fully, radically honest is hard enough with yourself, let alone with a partner. Even so, Dr. Bill said it's crucial for spouses to share everything with each other, from their life stories and pasts to their hopes for what's ahead.

“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.”

Being honest lets you and your partner stay aligned and make choices as a team.

Marriage Builders offers a Personal History Questionnaire, an excellent way for spouses to trade the key details each of them should know.

Complete openness can be hard, particularly when the subject with your spouse is a touchy one. The questionnaire lightens some of the emotional weight of discussing your past. Once you've laid it all out, your spouse is better equipped to support you and help meet your needs.

The third rule is meant to keep the two of you aligned. “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 he built these three rules to keep couples in love. Rather than picking apart arguments and conflicts, Marriage Builders urges couples to put their energy into what they love most about each other and their relationship.

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

Aiming Higher Than a “Good” Marriage

Marriage Builders has articles and videos you can dive into any time. For a more in-depth approach, try one of its programs.

Details on Program #1 are available on this page. In it, you and your spouse read a number of Dr. Bill's books and fill out the workbooks and questionnaires that go with them. The program gets you working with the material so that it truly changes your marriage in a meaningful way.

Program #2, also called the Marriage Builders Online Home Study Program, offers two courses and 20 lessons created for couples stuck in a rut. It helps you make sense of your problems and map out plans for changing the habits behind them.

Marriage Builders stands by you and your spouse through your married life together.

Program #3 includes everything in Program #2 plus an online seminar, where Dr. Bill personally walks you through the core principles of Marriage Builders.

The seminar offers more than eight hours of video lessons and helps you sort your problems so you can tackle them with a strategy.

With Program #4, you get a plan for a successful marriage that's tailored entirely to you. The Marriage Builders team coaches you and your spouse one-on-one. According to Dr. Bill, it's the ideal pick if you keep running into the same issues and can't seem to move past them.

“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.”