Do you feel trapped, hopeless or broken in your relationship? Perhaps you hope by trying harder, being more empathetic or just plain knowledgeable, that everything will turn a corner. On one hand, that’s a great strategy and shows admirable tenacity but on the other, it can reach a point that’s bad for your well-being, your mental health and for your children too.

If you’re wondering whether your relationship has turned abusive, my witness on the Meaningful Life will provide lots to think about. Dr. Alina Kastner is a systemic family therapist and the author of ‘Break Up with Narcissism: How to break free and stay free.’

If You’re Looking for More….

You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

This week supporters will hear:

⭐️How to deal with emotional exhaustion

⭐️Three things Dr. Alina Kastner knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s mens’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Visit Dr. Alina Kastner's website

Follow Dr. Alina Kastner on Instagram (@dr.alinakastner) and TikTok (tiktok.com/@dr.alinakastner)

Read Dr. Alina Kastner's book Break Up With Narcissism

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

If you’re in relationship with a partner who is on the autism spectrum, the following may feel familiar:

• My partner seems to lack empathy and doesn’t care how I feel
• My partner misjudges me all the time - I can’t do anything right
• I can’t seem to find a way to communicate with my partner
• My partner feels attacked and criticised if I disagree
• We argue all the time and never resolve anything
• My partner just walks away when things get emotional
• We've been together for a long time and I am lonelier than I have ever been in my life

This week Sarah Swenson, a counselor specialising in working with neurodiverse couples, highlights some of challenges these couples face, and shares her ideas on how to build a happy relationship that can work for both partners.

Andrew and Sarah also discuss several listener letters on challenges faced by neurodiverse couples.

Sarah Swenson is a licensed mental health counselor based in Seattle, Washington. Her practice is focused on supporting the needs of neurodiverse couples in which one partner is or may be autistic.

If You’re Looking for More….

You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

This week supporters will hear:

⭐️The problems with being highly intelligent.

⭐️Three things Sarah Swenson knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s mens’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Visit Sarah Swenson’s website

Find out about Sarah Swenson’s online courses for neurodiverse couples.

Read Sarah Swenson’s Substack newsletter for neurotypical individuals whose partners are or may be autistic.

Find out about Sarah Swenson’s work counselling highly intelligent individuals.

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

We spend a lot of time feeling very serious about seeking meaning in our lives; but is it possible that the secret lies in making the search more fun? Can we say a creative, mutually affirming “yes” more often? And when do we need a self-protective “no”?

This week Andrew and improv comedy star Pippa Evans have lots of fun together as they compare the strategies of improvisational comedy with those of therapy. Perhaps the most interesting lesson from improv: “be in the moment that is, not the one you thought would come along”.

Pippa Evans is a comedian and writer known for her skills in improvisational comedy. She was a core member of the improv team behind the award-winning stage show Showstopper: The Improvised Musical which toured the UK and abroad, and has regularly appeared on BBC radio.

Pippa likes to “use jokes to find connection”, and teaches courses on improvisation and the ways it can help improve our relationships with ourselves and with others. She has recently written a book called Improv Your Life: An Improviser’s Guide To Working With Whatever Life Throws At You.

If You’re Looking for More….

You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50

This week supporters will hear:

• Three Things Pippa Evans knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s men’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Pippa Evans’ book Improv Your Life: An Improviser’s Guide to Working With Whatever Life Throws At You

Take a look at Pippa’s website

Find out more about the Sunday Assembly, a church for non-believers co-founded by Pippa and fellow comedian Sanderson Jones.

Follow Pippa on Twitter and Instagram @IAmPippaEvans

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

There is a coherent and meaningful map for our lives and we are given it one step at a time with the occasional glimpse into the whole picture. That’s the key idea of my witness today...

Sometimes the messages come from bodily instincts – you visit somewhere and you know it is going to be important for you – or your intuition telling something is true or resonates deeply within. At other times, the glimppses come from synchronicity (meaningful coincidences) But most importantly and most consistently the messages come, through our dreams.

Toko-pa Turner is the author of ‘The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams. She is a teacher and dreamworker who blends a Sufi Spiritual with a Jungian Psychological approach. In 2001, she founded Dream School from which thousands of students have graduated.

If You’re Looking for More….

You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

This week supporters will hear:

⭐️Three things Toko-Pa Turner knows to be true.

⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s couple’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026 or men's retreat in April 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.

Toko-pa's website: toko-pa.com

Substack: tokopa.substack.com

Facebook: @TokopaTurner

Instagram: @tokopa

Dream Drops (self-study course): https://toko-pa.com/dream-drops/

Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (belongingbook.com)

The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams (thedreamingway.com)

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

Who is your favourite literary character? According to Dr Josh Cohen, an academic working in literary theory and also a psychoanalyst, this can be a very important question.

Josh Cohen’s new book is How to Live. What To Do: In search of ourselves in life and literature. He believes that there are major similarities between psychoanalysis and great literature. For one thing, neither offers simple answers to complex questions.

With books, you have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of someone else, understand what makes them click and why they do what they do. With analysis, which is generally over several years, you do something similar with your unconscious, and come to understand yourself better.

In this episode Josh and Andrew discuss the books that have stayed with them throughout their lives. They also touch on the essential quality of imagination in childhood, and why we all need to “be more Alice”.

Josh Cohen is a professor of modern literary theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the author of many books on aspects of modern life.

If You’re Looking for More….

You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50

This week supporters will hear:

• Three Things Josh Cohen knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s couple’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026 or men's retreat in April 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Josh Cohen’s new book How to Live. What To Do: In search of ourselves in life and literature

Read Josh Cohen’s book Not Working: Why We Have To Stop

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Read Andrew’s book reviews on Goodreads

Get Andrew’s advice on creating change in your life and relationships in his book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and Be Stronger, Wiser and Happier

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall

How do we live knowing that we will die? How can we face death, and how should we prepare for it? Dr Kathryn Mannix has spent her professional life working in palliative care, and the teams she has worked on have been involved in 10-15 thousand deaths.

In this classic episode, Kathryn shares her insights into what it’s like to die and how we can love and support someone approaching the end of their life. If you struggle with thoughts of death - be it from a generalised fear, a terminal diagnosis, or the loss of loved ones - Kathryn’s calm and honest approach will help.

As well as working as a consultant in palliative care medicine, Kathryn is the author of With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well, a collection of powerful human stories of life and death. The book draws on a lifetime of clinical experience to offer advice on facing death and living life in its shadow.

Subscriber Content This Week

If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:

• Three Things Kathryn Mannix knows to be true.
• AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.

Follow Up

Attend Andrew’s couple’s retreat near Berlin in June 2026 or men's retreat in April 2026: details here

Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things

Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools

Read Kathryn’s book With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well

Follow Kathryn on Twitter

Find Oliver Sacks’ book Gratitude written at the end of his life.

Read Andrew’s book on grieving the loss of his partner My Mourning Year

Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.

Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall