Free gift from Stan & Tracey: get an excerpt of Stan's book In Each Other's Care, including the introduction and the full "Fighting Dos and Don'ts" chapter:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/ieoc-giveaway

"If your driving guiding force in a relationship is love only, you're not going to make it." Dr. Stan Tatkin, the developer of PACT, and his wife Dr. Tracey Boldemann-Tatkin, co-founder of the PACT Institute, say love is real, but it rises and falls like the weather. What holds a couple together under stress is something you design on purpose.

Courtney Wren-Mabbutt and Mike Elliott sit down with Stan and Tracey for an honest, funny and deeply practical conversation about secure functioning: a relationship built on shared purpose, clear agreements, fairness and quick repair. They explain why it's not him or her. All of us get difficult under stress, because a lightning-fast threat system takes over before we've chosen anything, and suddenly the person we love looks like the problem.

The invitation: decide together why you're here, plan for your hardest moments, and learn to catch the shift in each other before it runs the show.

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open
2:24 Welcome to The Sacred We
3:21 Welcome Stan and Tracey Tatkin
6:03 It's not him or her
11:43 Mentor couples and pro-relationship teams
15:37 Most couples never design their relationship
16:50 Secure functioning and one crazy at a time
18:32 Shared vision, agreements and purpose
23:11 Return to love
26:45 Protecting each other
30:07 The red wagon: attachment is survival
34:13 Know your partner's nervous system
37:38 Why love alone isn't enough
41:36 Pillow talk after 27 years
45:03 From island to clingy
54:37 Rituals and the touch-toes rule
58:02 Never fight in the car
1:00:40 The "it", the threat loop and catching the shift
1:09:51 Worth it, but hard
1:11:59 Their legacy and the Real Life Report Card

Stan & Tracey resources:
Stan & Tracey (official site):
https://www.stanandtraceytatkin.com/

The PACT Institute:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/

Wired for Love retreats and workshops:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/retreats

Stan's books:
https://www.stanandtraceytatkin.com/books

Stan's TEDxKC talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kKTsz0OcuI

Stan on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/drstantatkin/

About Stan & Tracey:
Dr. Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a couple therapist, researcher and the developer of PACT (A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy). His books include Wired for Love, We Do and In Each Other's Care. Dr. Tracey Boldemann-Tatkin, PhD, AMFT, co-founded the PACT Institute with Stan in 2010 and co-leads Wired for Love retreats and workshops with him.

Connect With Us:
Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Join Harville & Helen's online Getting the Love You Want weekend workshop for couples, Oct 23-25, 2026:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/calendar/

What if there were a tool to end war in your relationship? Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, say the answer is not to work harder on yourself. We are wounded in relationship, and we heal in relationship. The healing lives in the space between you, and dialogue is the tool they have taught to couples for decades.

Courtney Wren-Mabbutt and Mike Elliott sit down with Harville and Helen for a warm, wide-ranging conversation on the practice that changed their own marriage: dialogue. Instead of two people talking in parallel monologues, one person sends, the other listens and mirrors back, and something in the nervous system finally relaxes. They explain, in plain language, why hearing is not the same as listening, and why feeling seen and heard is what makes a brain feel safe enough to open.

Along the way they name the fights every couple knows: the grievance that says "why are you doing it that way?", the unconscious wish that your partner would just be you, and the long road from opponents to partners. They share a story of dialogue used to end a border war between countries, in their account. They talk about why the self-love model is really an individual-paradigm answer, what Martin Buber's I-It and I-Thou distinction means at your kitchen table, and how couples who embody this end up changing everything they touch, including schools and workplaces.

There are practical takeaways too: move at the pace of connection rather than the pace of ambition, use curiosity and affirmation in everyday moments, and remember that the space between you is where two whole people grow. If you have ever felt like you were doing all the inner work and still ended up far apart from your partner, this conversation is for you.

Harville & Helen resources:
Official site:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/

Online couples retreat, Oct 23-25, 2026:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/event/getting-the-love-you-want-46/

Getting the Love You Want (book):
https://harvilleandhelen.com/books/getting-the-love-you-want/

Couplehood, on-demand course for couples:
https://harville-and-helen.teachable.com/p/couplehood-a-new-way-to-love

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/harvilleandhelen/

About Harville & Helen:
Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt co-created Imago Relationship Therapy. They are couples therapists and New York Times bestselling authors.

Connect With Us:
Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Most couples don’t fight about money. They avoid it until it leaks into resentment, sex, and every little decision. Jenn Pike and Chris Borsellino were in overdraft as a lifestyle — two kids, two businesses, ships passing — until they put every receipt in a basket and made money neutral. This is the conversation that shows how.

In this episode of The Sacred We, Mike Elliott and Courtney Wren-Mabbutt sit with Jenn Pike and Chris Borsellino — partners in life, business, and a decades-long experiment in making money safe to talk about.

They tell the real arc: overdraft as normal, Domino’s totals that shocked them, mason jars and a receipts basket, selling the truck for a Camry when pride said otherwise, and the moment looking at the numbers together changed their course. Along the way they name upper limiting when money finally arrives, pass-the-baton partnership, and the daily walks that became marriage therapy.

The teaching under the stories is simple and hard: avoidance is the fight. Structure creates flow. Money gets neutral when you turn toward it together instead of making each other wrong.

Guest resources:
Jenn Pike / The Simplicity Project:
https://jennpike.com/

Jenn on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/jennpike/

Chris Borsellino on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chrisborsellino/

Finance discovery with Chris:
https://calendly.com/chrisborsellino/60-finance-meeting

About Jenn & Chris:
Jenn Pike is a functional diagnostic nutritionist, founder of The Simplicity Project, and a longtime voice for women’s health, hormones, and embodied living. Chris Borsellino is a former custom carpenter turned financial advisor who helps families get clear on money without shame. Together they model what it looks like to build health and wealth as a shared practice.

Connect With Us:
The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

You know that place where love, pleasure, or success just leveled up — and then some sneaky sabotage pops the bubble? That's upper limiting. Nothing is wrong with you. It's a human condition.

Mike Elliott and Courtney Wren-Mabbutt sit down with Gay and Katie Hendricks — pioneers of conscious loving and body intelligence, authors of 40+ books including The Big Leap and Conscious Loving — for a deep dive into how couples upper limit their love the moment it expands. Gay and Katie share how three days of ease used to flip into criticism, victim loops, and weeks of repair… until they learned to see the pattern and recommit to expanding their capacity to give and receive love.

You'll hear the origin of the upper limit (Gay's ice cream sundae story), why unconscious intentions ride shotgun with your conscious vows, how deeper love reveals where you're stuck, and why trading every content fight for "oh — upper limit" changes the whole game. They go into body literacy (the Big Three: anger, grief, fear), spiritual bypassing vs. befriending the animal body, play instead of "working on" the relationship, and what 25+ years without criticism actually feels like.

This episode is packed with lived wisdom for conscious couples who want more love without the sabotage loop — and a clear invitation to recommit, expand, and enjoy the we-space.

Guest resources:

Hendricks Institute seminars (incl. Katie's Nov 2026 Art of Showing Up):
https://hendricks.com/

Art of Showing Up (Nov 6–8, 2026 · Ojai):
https://hendricks.com/seminar/the-art-of-showing-up-in-person-seminar-ojai-ca/

Foundation for Conscious Living (dozens of practice videos):
https://foundationforconsciousliving.org/

About Gay & Katie Hendricks:
Gay and Katie (Kathlyn) Hendricks are pioneers of conscious loving and body intelligence. Through the Hendricks Institute and the Foundation for Conscious Living, they have supported hundreds of thousands of couples, written 40+ books (including The Big Leap, Conscious Loving, and The Conscious Heart), and taught that relationship is a laboratory for expanding your capacity to give and receive love — one recommitment at a time.

Connect With Us:

The Initiated Man — Mike's men's community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Trigger alert: it's not him — it's you. (Well… not entirely you.). If you're aching for him to do the work and finally meet you emotionally — and you know what you've been doing isn't helping — Courtney and Mike go into the feminine's role in sacred relating.

They name the "if he changes, everything will be fine" shadow, the wall women yell over, and why mothering him kills polarity.

The invitation is a different seat: land in Me, know the little girl who's hyper-vigilantly managing him, and embody desire so he can actually feel it — consent before hard talks, fierce love, and delivery from the oracle (not accusation). This isn't another layer of self-blame. It's radical responsibility and freedom: do your part of the dance so the alchemy can come online.

Connect with us:

• Free: Bringing Your Oracle to Him → https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• The Initiated Man: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

• Courtney 1:1: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Mike coaching: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email:

transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com

IG: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

3 Somatic Practices for Deeper Connection

👉Sign up for a FREE guide here: https://www.sacredrelating.com/deeperconnection

When you feel disconnected from your partner, it’s rarely just about them. In this episode of The Sacred We, Mike and Courtney share why the disconnection so many couples feel isn’t ultimately about the relationship — it’s a disconnection from God.

Mike and Courtney open up about what it means to build a God-led relationship: the different names they each use for the divine, how spirit guided them to each other and into the very home where this podcast was born, and the daily practices — prayer, gratitude, communion — that keep them connected to something bigger than themselves and to each other.

They also unpack two often-misunderstood spiritual concepts, communion and matrimony, not as church rituals but as spiritual initiations every soul moves through — the ongoing practice of staying intimate with spirit and keeping the heart open, again and again, no matter what arises. If you’re ready to understand your relationship as sacred ground for your own awakening, this conversation will meet you there.

Connect With Us:

• The Initiated Man — Mike’s men’s community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Sign up for our couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

• Bringing the Oracle to Him: https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Work with Mike: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email:

transform@itsmikeelliott.com | relating@courtneywren.com

Instagram:

@mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Every couple knows this dance: she reaches for more and he braces, or he tries to fix what was never broken and she feels unseen. In this episode, Mike and Courtney unpack two of the most common wounds in relationships — the "too much" wound in the feminine and the "not enough" wound in the masculine — starting with a reframed reading of the Adam and Eve myth through a goddess mythology lens.

Then they get real: earlier that same day, Mike and Courtney had their own version of this exact rupture, and they walked through the entire thing — what was said, what was heard, where it went sideways, and how they repaired it. It’s an unfiltered look at how these ancient wounds show up in a real marriage, and what it actually takes to soften them.

If you’ve ever felt like you were "too much" for your partner, or like nothing you do is ever "enough," this conversation will change how you see that pattern — and your partner.

Connect With Us

• The Initiated Man — Mike’s men’s community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Sign up for our couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

• Bringing the Oracle to Him: https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Work with Mike: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: transform@itsmikeelliott.com relating@courtneywren.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeelliott.relating/ https://www.instagram.com/courtneywren.relating/

What if your relationship didn’t need one more insight — just a better dance? On this episode of The Sacred We, Mike and Courtney sit down with licensed marriage and family therapist Dayna Mullen, who has spent 18 years studying under Stan Tatkin and building a marriage of her own around the same principle she teaches every couple who walks through her door: secure functioning.

Dayna unpacks what Stan Tatkin calls the "couple bubble" — the shared ecosystem a couple creates when they agree the relationship comes first, not one partner’s needs over the other’s. She walks through what secure functioning actually looks like in daily life: the rituals that hold a marriage together, the practice of sitting on the floor to co-regulate instead of trying to talk through a fight, and the golden rule she and her husband Dennis live by — moving at the pace of connection, not the pace of being right.

The conversation goes deep on what secure functioning asks of each attachment style. Dayna names the specific sacrifice for the avoidant, the anxious, and the disorganized — and why none of it is really a sacrifice once you feel what’s on the other side of it. She and Courtney also draw a clear line between secure functioning and codependence, two things that get confused constantly, and talk candidly about why couples build endless structures for their kids and almost none for their marriage.

This one is for anyone ready to stop doing relationships alone — even inside a relationship.

About Dayna Mullen:

Dayna Mullen is a Registered Psychologist, couples therapist, and international relationship coach with more than 25 years studying what makes relationships work, professionally and personally. She helps high-functioning couples go beyond communication tips to the attachment patterns and nervous system dynamics that create real safety and connection. Married 23 years and a mother of three, her mission is to change the culture of relationships.

Learn more about Dayna:

Website: https://www.alignmentpsychology.ca/dayna-mullen

Email: daynavmullen@gmail.com

Connect with us:

• The Initiated Man — Mike’s men’s community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Sign up for our couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

• Bringing the Oracle to Him: https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Work with Mike: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email:

transform@itsmikeelliott.com

relating@courtneywren.com

Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating