Kathryn Morrow’s Morrow Marriage Podcast is the Fastest Growing Marriage Podcast Worldwide
Cass and Kathryn Morrow are a husband and wife duo who are disrupting divorce all over the world with their unique coaching methods, books and podcast. Cass, an aware, managing, severe narcissist has built his men’s “Marriage Reset” program on 3 main pillars: Peace, Partnership and Passion. Men become so valuable that their wives would be crazy to leave them.
Kathryn is a narcissistic abuse survivor and aims to keep families together. Where many women would leave, Kathryn stayed and fought for her family. Trained in The Gottman Method, Kathryn is pioneering conflict management with her novel approach and methods.
Hosts of the Morrow Marriage podcast, together they have reached over 100 countries and have helped over 5300 couples worldwide. It can be found on YouTube, Spotify, Apple everywhere. As of this week it had 40k downloads per month.
Share your journey and when you were first married.
I met my husband in October of 2014. A mutual friend of ours introduced us, and there was immediate attraction. At the time I wasn’t interested in dating, so although I found him attractive, I wasn’t interested (and neither was he). At the time, I was prioritizing other aspects of my life and had pulled myself out of the dating world. Likewise, he was on a similar healing journey and wasn’t interested in romantic connections either. For the first 3 months, we developed a very friendly and extremely flirty relationship. The chemistry was undeniable. Finally, we decided to go on a date, and that date marked the rest of our lives and was the start of our story. One month from the day of our first date, we got married. We were madly in love and it was the obvious next step for us, despite the fast and furious timeline.
When did things change? When did you start to see narcissistic behavior?
About 6 weeks into getting married, I started to notice a few changes. The man I married was soft, tender, patient, and easy to talk to. The man who was being revealed to me was nothing of the such. He was easily frustrated, quick to anger, extremely critical, and emotionally violent. The safety I thought I found when we met was gone. Slowly I was losing touch with my own reality without even realizing it. Because this was not something I had ever experienced before, I met his emotional violence with a variety of behaviors that didn’t work. At first, I would fawn. I did everything in my power to help him manage his anger and make him happy, but I could only fawn for so long before I started getting so overwhelmed I would walk out on him. My fawning quickly turned to flight, with which he met with more contempt and emotional violence, so my flight turned into fight, and I became defensive. Incredibly defensive. His cognitive distortions and alternate realities caused me to think I needed to prove him wrong (and myself right). Boy was I wrong. This only made things worse for me. As I got defensive, he got even more overbearing. His emotional abuse turned into physical intimidation, sexual abuse, and narcissistic manipulation. At this point I was extremely reactive and returned his violence with more violence. I lashed out verbally on a regular basis. I had completely lost who I was and became an angry version of a woman I didn’t even recognize.
What happened to you that caused you to come to a crossroads in your relationship?
We had 2 distinct turning points in our marriage. The first one was when I finally had to call the police because of his extreme behavior. This resulted in a 12 month probation and “good behavior” for him. During those 12 months I was very complacent. I knew if he stepped out of line even slightly, he would go to jail. Knowing I was safe from him and I had some semblance of peace, I did everything wrong. I sat back and enjoyed the lack of emotional abuse in my home and neglected to show any gratitude whatsoever for his changes. My complacency in not showing any appreciation caused him to backslide to a place I couldn’t have imagined. At this point, we had twin baby girls to protect, so in an effort to keep them safe and to keep my family together, I started the fawning process all over again, and I completely checked out of my marriage, coasting along and faking my way through my own life. It wasn’t until I got pregnant with our third child that we hit our true rock bottom. This is the 2nd and final crossroads that inspired change in our marriage. You see, when I found out I was pregnant with a boy, reality hit me hard. I realized if we continued the way we were going, the little boy that was growing inside me might end up just like his father. I was not showing my children a healthy family example, and the thought of growing another abusive man in my belly made me sick to my stomach. In a moment of frustration with my husband I blurted out everything I had been feeling. I wasn’t in love with him, I found him unattractive for the way he treated me, and I had been settling for much less than I thought I deserved. These statements cause my husband to go into one of his narcissistic tailspins. He raged, he withdrew, he yelled and cussed and name called – and then we both got to work. We both knew this was serious and we were about to tear our family apart – the family we had worked so hard to create and keep together.
You and Cass are well-known marriage coaches who have worked with over 3,500 couples globally. Tell us about The White Picket Fence Project and The 4 stages known as: The Morrow Marriage Method.
We have 2 discreet programs. The White Picket Fence Project is the women’s program and The Marriage Reset is the men’s program. Each program relies on only one spouse to carry and lead the marriage to a place of healing and growth. We believe traditional therapy most often fails because both partners need to be interested in getting help. Our program, conversely, requires only one person to take a stand and make a change to influence the course of the entire family unit. We use a proprietary method called The Morrow Marriage Method. This method includes 4 stages: the inspire stage is where you make changes within yourself in order to influence those around you. The lead stage means people are following you and being influenced by you (you’re not a leader if you don’t have anyone following you). Stage three is the ask stage. This is when you ask your spouse to help you meet your needs, but only after establishing some level of connection. Stage 4 is the motivation stage. When we motivate our spouse in this stage, it’s by implementing a boundary with a consequence (because the ask stage has been unsuccessful to some degree). It’s very important to establish connection prior to laying a boundary, or the boundary will not be successful. Someone who doesn’t have any connection to you has no motivation to make changes for your benefit. They actually probably don’t care.
Which is your favorite stage? Why?
My favorite stage is the lead stage. In the lead stage you get to see the fruit of your labor. By focusing on YOU, you get to experience the joy of seeing other people succeed. Picture this: let’s say you’re 20 lbs overweight, you yell at your kids all the time, you have no respect for your husband and you rarely walk your dog. When you take the time to prioritize your health by going to the gym and eating right, and you start walking your dog, connecting with your kids, and giving your husband more respect (whether you think he deserves it or not), what do you think happens? Your whole family probably gets healthier, the kids start coming with you on walks and you build more connection with them, you lose a few pounds and gain more confidence, and your husband even starts to notice. Now you’re a leader. Your whole family is now benefitting from YOUR leadership, even your dog. This is a very simple, but common, example of the lead stage. The whole family wins.
You offer couples a 12-week program. Let’s delve into one of your programs. Tell us about The WPF Half Rap program.
The WPF Half Rap is a conflict intervention that is like active listening on steroids. Rap stands for Rapoport, and Anatol Rapoport was a man who studied peace and conflict during the Vietnam war. He determined that you can have more influence by empathizing with the position of the other party rather than by showing opposition. In the same way, we believe that as a partner or spouse, you’ll only have the power of persuasion or compromise, when you can show your partner that you truly see and hear him or her. The WPF HALF Rap has no expectation of actually being heard or seen yourself, and focuses solely on building trust with your partner. The long term goal, yes, involves your partner returning the favor and attempting to hear and see you, but if you cannot first role model this behavior, I teach my clients that this is an expectation that should be dropped. So many conflict interventions are transactional and there are underlying expectations from the start. This one; however, is all about my clients truly understanding and empathizing with their partners.
This 1-way conflict intervention program has been very successful among your clients. Before you can engage in any conflict intervention, what is needed?
Before you can engage in any conflict intervention, there are a series of skills needed. In marriage therapy training and education there is an area of study called micro skills. They are skills used to build a therapeutic alliance between therapist and client. These skills are intended to build rapport and trust between therapist and client. I’ve extrapolated these skills and have applied them to the husband and wife relationship. Where a therapeutic relationship wants to reduce early termination (client quits therapy prior to the end of treatment), the marriage relationship ideally wants to reduce or dissolve the possibility of divorce. One of the most misunderstood micro skills is the use of “I” statements. Am I statement should express a feeling or emotion. Most people know this, right? Or do they? So many of my clients will say “I feel like you don’t love me,” which is not an I statement. The moment you say “like,” it becomes a “you” statement and a judgement on the other person (and the statement didn’t actually say what emotion was felt by the speaker).
Take us through the key areas of your program. And explain the difference between The Gottman-Rapoport Intervention and the Half Rap program.
The Gottman Rapoport Intervention is an amazing intervention. The key difference between this intervention and the “Half Rap” intervention is that you can only do the Gottman version if both parties are on board (go back to what I said about traditional therapy earlier). So often, we do not have both spouses on board, and a two way intervention will not work. Another key difference between the two interventions is that The Gottmans have rules that do not allow contempt to be present during the intervention (they ask for a reframe when the 4 horsemen are present – stonewalling, contempt, defensiveness and criticism). In the WPF Half Rap, I believe if you can withstand the contempt, you can get down to a layer that has been buried in your spouse, and by controlling your own reactions, you can actually get underneath the contempt to a new level of vulnerability that you have yet to experience.
Morrow Marriage Podcast Premieres Apr 28, 2025
www.youtube.com/watch?v=umI85zHg2N4&list=PLzgMDD_noj4rUVhb9v9alyZe5ws_Su0I4
In Episode 262 of The ‘NEW’ Marriage, we tackle one of the simplest yet most avoided relationship principles: answering the question. Why do people dodge direct communication? What does it mean when your partner won’t give a straight answer? Discover how honesty, clarity, and directness can radically improve intimacy and trust in your relationship.
