About this episode

Zach interviews Neal and Rachel Miskell about their journey from marriage to divorce and back to remarriage, focusing on the work that led to their reconciliation.

Zach sits down with Neal and Rachel Miskell, a couple who got married in 2008, divorced, and remarried years later, and asks the question most people never get to ask a couple who made it back: what actually happened in between? Rachel is a mom of three and a marketing director for the 11th Force Support Squadron on an Air Force base. Neal had just come home from Afghanistan when their marriage started to unravel, carrying PTSD, contempt, and a habit of projecting his pain onto Rachel. The conversation is less about what broke them than about the specific, unglamorous work that put them back together. Neal traces his turning point to therapy, and to one question from his therapist that he still remembers word for word: have you ever listened to yourself talk? That's the moment he learned what congruency meant, that his thoughts, words, and actions weren't lining up, and started doing the harder work of owning his part, including a small, petty story about refusing to buy Rachel a birthday gift that he still isn't proud of. Rachel tells her side plainly: she wasn't interested in fixing anything at first. She wanted to tolerate what was happening, not repair it, and she refused to…

People in this episode

Host: Zach

Guests: Neal Miskell, Rachel Miskell

Topics covered

• marriage
• divorce
• remarriage
• therapy
• PTSD
• relationships

Keywords

• marriage
• divorce
• remarriage
• therapy
• PTSD
• relationships
• communication
• personal growth

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: 11th Force Support Squadron

Places: Afghanistan

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