Why Your Marriage Has Inertia
The Entropy Problem
Like many college kids back in the 1980s, I drove an… ummmm… temperamental car. Meaning, it loved to strand me. One day, I was in the parking lot of a church near my home... and it wouldn’t start. And this was long before cell phones... so... I was stranded.
I knew, from several prior experiences, that I could roll-start the car. I just needed it rolling fast enough to pop the clutch. But I was operating on my own. I would need to get it moving, get into the driver’s seat, put it in gear, and release the clutch. That would start the engine, and I could be on my way.
So, I pointed my car on the incline to the back parking lot, started pushing hard, and got the car rolling. But the laws of physics were in play. So, yeah, gravity was helping me get it going.
Momentum and inertia, however, were starting to win. The car was moving faster and faster, and I was struggling to go from pushing to running.
Oh, did I forget to tell you that at the bottom of the parking lot was a road... followed by a ravine? And yes, we were headed straight in that direction!
Long story short, I did manage to get into the driver’s seat after a very adrenaline-spiked run. And at the last minute, I did get it to start.
It took more than a few minutes before I was actually able to drive. My plan was infallible... except for accounting for physics. The laws of physics, as my high school teacher always said, would win out. Every time.
You may be wondering, “what does this have to do with my marriage?” Well, let me tell you.
I Only Solved for the Crisis in Front of Me
Here’s what I got wrong that day: I was so focused on solving the immediate problem - car won’t start, need to get it rolling - that I didn’t think through ALL the physics at play.
I accounted for gravity. Check. That would help me get the car moving.
What I didn’t account for: once that car started rolling, momentum and inertia would take over. The car wouldn’t just politely roll at my preferred speed. It would accelerate. And I - running behind it, trying to catch up, trying to jump in before disaster - would have less and less control the longer it rolled.
I created a solution to one problem that generated a bigger, more dangerous problem. Because I was young, panicked, not thinking it all through, and only dealing with the crisis right in front of me... not the looming one that would come because of actions I took.
Oops. Physics again.
This is exactly what couples do. They focus on the immediate crisis - we’re not connecting, things feel off, we should probably do something - but they don’t account for all the physics at play. They don’t realize that their marriage isn’t just sitting there waiting for them to fix it. It’s a dynamic system governed by laws that don’t care about your intentions or your timeline.
Two laws in particular are destroying marriages while couples assume they have time to figure things out: entropy and inertia.
The Entropy Problem: Everything Decays Without Energy
Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics, and it’s ruthlessly simple: all systems naturally move toward disorder unless energy is continuously applied to maintain order.
Your house doesn’t stay clean on its own. Your garden doesn’t maintain itself. Your car doesn’t run forever without maintenance. Everything degrades. Everything falls apart. Everything requires ongoing energy input just to stay functional, let alone improve.
Your marriage is no exception.
Here’s what most people get wrong: they think if they just maintain their current effort level, their marriage will stay at its current level of connection. Like a car parked in the driveway — if you don’t drive it, it just sits there, right?
Wrong.
That parked car is degrading. Seals are drying out. Battery is dying. Rust is forming. Fluids are breaking down. Even doing nothing, the car is getting worse. It’s not staying the same. It’s moving toward disorder.
Your marriage is the same. When you’re on “autopilot,” going through the motions, handling logistics, being pleasant roommates, you’re not maintaining your current connection level. You’re actively losing ground. Entropy is winning.
Every day you’re not intentionally adding energy to your marriage, like attention, affection, curiosity, vulnerability, effort, is a day the system degrades a little more. The emotional intimacy weakens. The goodwill erodes. The sense of “us” diminishes. The patterns that once worked stop working.
This is why “pausing” your relationship doesn’t work. There is no pause button for entropy. You can’t say “we’ll focus on us once work calms down” or “we’ll reconnect after the kids are older” or “let’s just get through this busy season.” Because entropy doesn’t wait. Entropy works 24/7, breaking down what you’re not actively building up.
You’re not choosing between “maintaining” and “improving.” You’re choosing between “actively investing energy” and “allowing decay.”
The Inertia Problem: Momentum Works Both Ways
Now add the second law working on your marriage: inertia.
Newton’s first law of motion: an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest, unless acted upon by an external force.
When your marriage is rolling forward, when you’re connecting regularly, you have healthy patterns, you’re investing in each other, you’re moving in the same direction, then you have positive momentum. And here’s the beautiful part: keeping that momentum going takes far less energy than it took to build it initially.
Think about pushing a car. Getting it rolling from a dead stop? That takes massive effort. Keeping it rolling once it’s moving? Much, much easier. You’re working with inertia instead of against it.
This is why couples who have strong connection don’t have to work as hard to maintain it. They built momentum early. They established good patterns. They created habits of attention and affection. Now those patterns have inertia. They’re easier to maintain than they were to create.
But — and this is where it gets brutal — inertia works both ways.
Once your marriage slows down or stops, you lose that forward momentum. And restarting from a dead stop requires exponentially more energy than maintaining would have required. You’re not just working to create connection. You’re working against the inertia of disconnection.
And if you wait even longer? Now the car isn’t just stopped. It’s rolling backward. Downhill. Toward the ravine.
Disconnection has momentum. Distance has inertia. And the longer it goes, the faster it accelerates, the harder it becomes to stop.
This is the brutal math of trying to save a marriage in crisis versus maintaining a healthy marriage. You’re not doing the same work at different intensity levels. You’re doing fundamentally different work. One is keeping something rolling. The other is stopping something that’s accelerating in the wrong direction.
When Entropy Meets Inertia: The Vicious Cycle
Here’s where these two laws create a devastating feedback loop.
Entropy is degrading your system while inertia is building momentum in whatever direction you’re currently moving.
Let’s walk through how this typically plays out:
Stage 1: Life gets busy. Work intensifies, kids arrive, aging parents need help, financial stress hits, health issues emerge. You stop adding energy to the marriage. You’re not choosing to neglect it. You are just handling what’s in front of you. Crisis mode. You tell yourself, “We’ll reconnect when things calm down.”
Entropy begins its work. The system starts degrading. Connection weakens. Patterns break down. But it’s subtle. Barely noticeable.
Stage 2: Disconnection becomes the pattern. You’re living parallel lives now. Roommates handling logistics. Maybe you’re pleasant, maybe you’re irritable, but you’re not really connecting. You’ve lost the habits of emotional intimacy, physical affection, deep conversation, playfulness.
Entropy accelerates. But now inertia shifts. You are no longer rolling forward together. Now, you’re building momentum toward disconnection. Distance becomes the default. And because of inertia, distance starts feeling normal. This is just what marriage is now.
Stage 3: The system falls into disorder. Maybe you’re fighting constantly. Maybe you’re emotionally numb. Maybe one of you is fantasizing about escape. Maybe someone’s having an affair. Maybe you’re talking about divorce. The marriage isn’t just neglected. It’s actively dysfunctional.
Entropy has taken over. And the inertia toward disconnection is massive. Every interaction reinforces the distance. Every conflict makes reconnection feel more impossible. Every day that passes builds more momentum away from each other.
Stage 4: Someone finally notices the crisis. Usually, one person wakes up first. Sees the ravine coming. Starts trying to fix things, suggests counseling, initiates conversations, and changes their behavior. “We need help. We need to work on this. We can’t keep going like this.”
The other person, often, doesn’t see it the same way. From their perspective, things aren’t great, but they’re not crisis-level either. This is just normal marriage. Maybe they’re uncomfortable, but they’re not panicked.
And here’s the brutal physics: the person trying to fix things is now trying to push a car that’s rolling downhill at increasing speed, while the system is simultaneously falling apart from entropy, while their partner might not even be helping push.
The math is devastating.
Stage 5: Recovery requires massive energy against massive resistance. To reverse course now, you’re fighting:
Entropy that’s been degrading the system for months or years
Inertia toward disconnection that has tremendous momentum
Patterns of distance that feel normal and safe
Resentments that have built up
Hopelessness about whether change is even possible
Often, one person working alone while the other is resistant or checked out
This is why recovery is so much harder than prevention. You’re not doing the same work at a higher intensity. You’re doing entirely different work against exponentially more resistance.
Velocity and Trajectory: Speed and Direction Both Matter
Even if you manage to get the car rolling again, you need to pay attention to two more physics concepts: trajectory and velocity.
Trajectory is your direction — where you’re headed. Your goals, your values, your destination.
Velocity is your speed — how fast you’re moving toward that destination.
Here’s what couples miss: you can have the same trajectory but different velocities, and you’ll still end up separated.
Maybe you both want a strong marriage, financial security, and healthy kids. Same direction. But one of you is racing toward career success at maximum speed while the other is moving slowly, prioritizing presence and rest. You’re headed to the same place, theoretically, but the distance between you grows every day because you’re moving at incompatible speeds.
Or worse: you can have the same velocity but different trajectories. You’re both working equally hard, putting in equal effort, moving fast… but toward different destinations. One person is sprinting toward autonomy and independence. The other is sprinting toward closeness and intimacy. Equal speed. Opposite directions. You think you’re both trying, which makes the growing distance even more painful.
Or the worst scenario: different velocity AND different trajectory. Different speeds, different directions, and neither of you realizes how far apart you’re getting until you look up and can barely see each other in the distance.
Connection requires alignment on both. Not identical (there’s room for variance) but compatible. Close enough that you can stay together while honoring who each of you is.
The Observer Problem Redux
And here’s where this connects back to what we talked about with quantum mechanics and the observer effect: often, one person sees the car rolling toward the ravine while the other person thinks everything is basically fine.
One person observes the entropy. Sees the decay. Feels the disconnection. Notices the inertia pulling you apart. They’re watching the speedometer climb and the ravine approaching and they’re terrified.
The other person hasn’t been observing. Or they’ve been observing through a different paradigm. From their perspective, this is just normal marriage. Sure, it’s not perfect, but whose marriage is? Things are fine. You’re overreacting.
By the time both people see the crisis, the momentum is often terrifying. The car is rolling fast. The ravine is close. And the energy needed to stop the descent feels impossible.
This is the physics of why waiting to work on your marriage until both people see the problem is so dangerous. Entropy and inertia don’t pause while you convince your spouse there’s an issue. They keep working. Making everything harder.
The “We’ll Work On Us Later” Trap
This is the most common and most deadly mistake couples make.
“We’ll focus on us once work calms down.”
“We’ll reconnect after the kids are older.”
“Let’s just get through this busy season, then we’ll prioritize our marriage.”
“I know we’re distant right now, but we’ll fix it when we have more time.”
This is like watching my car roll toward the ravine and saying “I’ll start trying to stop it once it gets closer.”
The physics don’t work that way.
Entropy is working NOW. Every day you’re not adding energy is more decay.
Inertia is building NOW. Every day of disconnection is more momentum in the wrong direction.
The longer you wait, the worse the physics get. The more energy you’ll need. The more resistance you’ll face. The less likely recovery becomes.
There is no good time to let your marriage degrade. There is no safe period to ignore entropy. There is no acceptable window to build momentum toward disconnection.
The time to add energy is always now. The time to reverse course is always immediately. The time to stop the car is before it’s rolling fast downhill, not after.
The Lone Ranger Reality
For many of you reading this, you’re the person who sees the ravine. You’re trying to push the car. You’re working to add energy, reverse the entropy, shift the inertia.
And your spouse isn’t helping. Maybe they don’t see the crisis. Maybe they see it but don’t believe change is possible. Maybe they’re exhausted. Maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they’re already planning their exit.
The physics here are brutal, and I won’t sugarcoat it: one person trying to push a car that’s rolling downhill while the system falls apart from entropy is exhausting. The math is working against you.
But here’s what you can control: you can change YOUR input into the system. You can add energy in strategic ways. You can shift YOUR trajectory and velocity. You can work to build different momentum through your choices, your responses, your presence.
Will that guarantee your spouse comes with you? No. Physics doesn’t work that way. You can’t control their trajectory or velocity. You can’t force them to add energy.
But systems are interconnected. When you change your input, the system responds. Not always the way you hope, not always on your timeline, but it responds. You’re not as powerless as the physics might make you feel.
When You’re Working Together
If you’re both seeing the problem, both willing to work, both ready to add energy, you have a massive advantage. You’re working with the physics instead of against them.
You can add energy together, making the work lighter for both of you. You can align your trajectory and velocity. You can build momentum in the same direction. You can create patterns that use inertia to your advantage instead of fighting it.
This is why couples who catch problems early and work together have such different outcomes than couples in crisis where one person works alone. It’s not that they care more or try harder. They’re working with better physics.
What Adding Energy Actually Looks Like
Energy in a marriage isn’t abstract. It’s concrete, daily, sometimes mundane:
Attention. Actually noticing your spouse. What they’re dealing with, what they need, what they’re feeling. Not as background noise while you scroll your phone, but real attention.
Curiosity. Asking questions you don’t know the answer to. Being interested in who they’re becoming, not just who they were when you met. Staying engaged with their inner world.
Affection. Physical touch that isn’t transactional or goal-oriented. Hugs that last more than two seconds. Kisses that mean something. Hand-holding. Sitting close. Presence.
Vulnerability. Letting them see you. Not just your competent public self, but your scared self, your uncertain self, your hopeful self. Creating intimacy through being known.
Effort. Doing things that matter to them even when it’s inconvenient for you. Showing up. Following through. Demonstrating through action that this relationship gets your best, not your leftovers.
Repair. When you mess up — and you will — actually fixing it. Not just apologizing, but changing. Not just acknowledging harm, but making it right. Building trust through consistency.
Intentionality. Making choices about your marriage instead of just letting default patterns run. Deciding what you want to create together. Acting from values instead of reacting from fear.
This is the energy that fights entropy. This is how you build positive momentum. This is how you keep the car rolling forward instead of drifting toward the ravine.
It doesn’t have to be grand gestures. It has to be consistent. Regular. Real.
The Laws of Physics Will Win Out. Every Time.
You can’t negotiate with entropy. You can’t convince inertia to make an exception for you. You can’t pause the laws of physics while you figure things out.
Your marriage is governed by these laws whether you understand them or not. Whether you like them or not. Whether you account for them or not.
Like me with my car, you can focus only on the immediate problem right in front of you. You can create a solution that doesn’t account for all the forces at play. You can assume you have time to figure things out later.
But eventually, physics wins.
The question isn’t whether these laws apply to your marriage. They do.
The question is: are you going to work with them, or are you going to keep pretending they don’t exist until you’re chasing a runaway car toward a ravine?
You can add energy now, while the system is still functional, while positive momentum is possible, while the work is still manageable.
Or you can wait until entropy has devastated the system, inertia is pulling you apart at high speed, and recovery requires more energy than you might have left to give.
The physics don’t care which you choose.
But your marriage does.
Not sure where to start? Grab my Save The Marriage System HERE.
Working with your spouse? Grab my Un-Pause App HERE.
Working alone? Grab my Lone Ranger Pack HERE