For marriages that aren't broken.

Finally start resolving the one issue your marriage keeps getting stuck on, in 8 weeks.

Even if your spouse isn’t ready yet.

You still love the person you married. You’re just done wondering whether this is how it’s going to be for the next decade.

From Roommates to Us™ is an eight-week marriage coaching programme for the spouse who is ready to begin first.

We take one real unresolved issue from your marriage, identify the repeating pattern that helps keep it stuck, and help you build the capabilities to start shifting it.

As the issue begins to move, there’s more room to Feel Close Again.

8 weeks · one session a week · starts 1 November 2026 · 8 spouse spots

For marriages that aren't broken.

Finally start resolving the one issue your marriage keeps getting stuck on, in 8 weeks.

Even if your spouse
isn’t ready yet.

You still love the person you married. You’re just done wondering whether this is how it’s going to be for the next decade.

From Roommates to Us™ is an eight-week marriage coaching programme for the spouse who is ready to begin first.

We take one real unresolved issue from your marriage, identify the repeating pattern that helps keep it stuck, and help you build the capabilities to start shifting it.

As the issue begins to move, there’s more room to Feel Close Again.

8 weeks · one session a week · starts 1 November 2026 · 8 spouse spots

Married
since 2013

185 married Singaporeans surveyed

As featured on:

Certified:

Married
since 2013

185 married
Singaporeans surveyed

As featured on:

Certified:

THE ISSUE THAT KEEPS COMING BACK

You probably already know what the issue is.

For most marriages, the big issues aren’t mysterious.

Maybe it’s parenting. One of you thinks the children need more structure while the other thinks everyone needs to relax. You disagree about screens, discipline, school, sleep, grandparents or the thousand small decisions that reveal how differently two people can think.
Children don’t create the gap between two spouses, but parenting can expose very quickly where the two of you aren’t aligned.

Maybe it’s money. How much should you save, spend, invest or give? What counts as responsible?
Maybe it’s sex and intimacy. One person wants more connection while the other feels tired, pressured, rejected or misunderstood.
Or maybe it’s in-laws. Whose family gets priority? Where do the boundaries sit, and what happens when keeping everybody happy puts the two of you on opposite sides?

Your issue may be something else entirely.

But when it comes up, you roughly already know how the conversation is going to go.

You raise something because it matters to you. Your spouse hears something slightly different from what you meant, so you explain. They become defensive, you feel misunderstood and you explain even more.
Or maybe they go quiet, and you find yourself pushing because you don’t want another important thing left unresolved.

Eventually somebody gets tired and the conversation stops.
Then life carries on.

There’s work, children, ageing parents, school schedules, tuition, insurance, family commitments and all the ordinary things that keep life moving.
So you tell yourself you’ll deal with it properly when life settles down.
Except life rarely settles down.
And somehow “we’ll deal with it later” becomes a few months, then a few years.

By then, it isn’t only the original issue sitting between you anymore.
There are the conversations that went nowhere, the things you stopped saying and the conclusions you’ve quietly started making about each other.

And while that issue is still unresolved, life keeps happening.
New decisions come up. New disagreements happen. New hurts get added.
Sometimes the newer issue even brings the older one straight back with it.

There’s just a lot more stuff between the two of you now.
And if time alone was going to resolve it, it probably would have by now.

THE PATTERN UNDER THE ISSUE

The issue is what you notice. The pattern is what keeps it stuck.

The issue is what you notice first.
The repeating pattern around it may be what helps keep it stuck.

Say the issue is your spouse’s parents. You raise something that bothered you, your spouse hears criticism of their family and becomes defensive. You feel dismissed, so you push harder. They pull away.
Nothing really gets resolved.

The next time the subject comes up, both of you are already bringing the last conversation into the new one.
So yes, the issue is the in-laws. But the way the two of you keep getting stuck around the issue may be part of why it has stayed unresolved for so long.

The same thing can happen with parenting, money, intimacy or anything else that matters.

You can spend years talking about the right topic and still get nowhere if every conversation keeps following the same pattern.
More conversation by itself won’t fix that; something in the pattern has to change.

That’s why From Roommates to Us™ begins with:
One unresolved issue.
One repeating pattern.

We choose something concrete, recurring and likely to come up during the eight weeks. Something where the spouse in the programme has a genuine point of influence.
That issue becomes the real-life place where you practise doing something different.

INTRODUCING THE MAP™ · MARRIAGE ALIGNMENT PROCESS

A practical way to stop ending up in the same place.

When the same issue keeps coming back, you probably don’t need more marriage information.
You need a practical way to recognise what is happening, see where you still have a point of choice and know what to do differently when the issue appears again.

That’s what The MAP™ is designed to help you do. And at the centre of the process is the reason any of this matters:
Feel Close Again.

The MAP™ takes you through three arcs:

Calm Under Pressure
When you’re already tired or carrying too much, ordinary moments become much more loaded. We help you recognise when pressure is shaping your reaction so you still have a choice about what happens next.

Navigate Loaded Conversations
When the same conversation has gone badly enough times, you start hesitating before you even begin. We help you raise important things more cleanly and make it easier for both people to stay in the conversation long enough to understand what actually needs resolving.

Same Side Again
Parenting, money, home, work and both families create endless shared decisions. We help you get clearer about ownership, expectations and what genuinely needs both of you, so marriage feels less like two separate lives and more like being on the same side again

HOW IT WORKS

What your eight weeks actually look like.

We begin with one real issue from your marriage.
Together, we map the repeating pattern around it, get clear on where things are now and define what meaningful movement would look like by the end of the eight weeks.

Early in the programme, you’ll have a private Why Do We Keep Ending Up Here? session with Verrill so we can slow the pattern down and make sure we’re working on something concrete rather than vaguely trying to “improve the marriage”.

From there, you’ll work through the six capabilities inside The MAP™: Restore Your Margin, Real Time Regulation, Create Emotional Safety, Talk Without Tension, Build Real Partnership and Align Shared Standards.

Each week, you apply what you’re learning to the issue you’re actually dealing with at home.
Between sessions, you’ll complete a short Marriage Issue Check-In (MIC™) so you can see what actually happened: what moved, what stayed stuck and what needs attention next.

At the midpoint, we review what is changing and where we need to adjust.

By Week 8, you should be able to see what you can now do differently, how the issue has moved and what still needs work. You’ll leave with a simple 30-day Protect the Marriage (PTM™) plan for what comes next.

After eight weeks, you shouldn’t be left thinking, That was interesting.
You should be able to see what changed.

From the people We've walked with

What can change when one spouse starts

Identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.

Marriage 01
WHEN ONLY ONE SPOUSE WAS READY TO BEGIN

She had already moved out and was staying with her mother.

Her husband never attended a session.

Before our work together ended, she had moved back home.

"I came swimming in dark waters.
I left seeing that my marriage could be loved to the brim."

She and her husband had been clashing over ordinary, everyday decisions, and the way they spoke to each other had begun to make both of them feel small.

As she worked with us, she began to see that two people can approach things very differently without either spouse automatically being wrong.

She became clearer about what was hers to own, what wasn’t, and what she could begin changing without waiting for him to go first.

She didn’t have to wait for both of them to become ready on the same day.

She began with what was within her control.

Marriage 02
WHEN YOUR SPOUSE IS THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO CHANGE

She was exhausted and carrying too much at home while her husband still seemed to have room for himself

From where she stood, the imbalance was real.

After a few conversations that finally landed, he began taking on more at home and encouraging her to take time off for herself.

"I have time off for myself, without planning what to do for the day.
I definitely feel so much better now."

She had been carrying a great deal, and from her perspective the problem seemed obvious.

What shifted wasn’t about convincing her that the imbalance didn’t matter, or asking her to become more tolerant of it.

She began looking more carefully at what she was carrying, what belonged to her, and what she could change in the way she was handling the situation.

As she changed what she was doing, the conversations between them began to change too.

Marriage 03
WHEN BEGINNING FIRST FELT UNFAIR

She was carrying deep hurt from choices her husband had made.

What he had done was still his to own.

Her taking the first step didn’t change that.

“It felt like it was a load off my heart.
Our relationship is now easier, happier, nicer and simpler.”

She had spent a long time trying to understand what had happened and why, while being the one left carrying the hurt.

Our work wasn’t about excusing what happened or asking her to pretend it no longer mattered.

It was about helping her work through what she was carrying so the hurt didn’t have to keep taking up the same amount of space in her life and marriage.

Over time, something began to lift.

She couldn’t change what had happened. But she could stop carrying it in the same way.

Three different marriages.
Three different issues.

Three different places of pain.
The same possibility.

When one spouse starts doing something differently, the old pattern around the issue can no longer keep playing out in exactly the same way.

Change the pattern, and the issue can begin to shift.
And when something that has been stuck for years finally starts moving, the marriage doesn’t have to keep heading in the same direction.

This issue doesn’t have to follow you into the next decade.

We've been there too

We were wildly in love. Within our first month of marriage, the word divorce had already come up.

That Saturday, my grandmother was celebrating her 八十大寿. She was the eldest in her generation, so the whole family came. Granduncles, grandaunties, uncles, aunties, cousins. Around 120 people in one room.

That morning, I had asked Charlene, “Would you be my girl?” She said yes.

So on Day One of our relationship, I walked her into this giant family gathering and introduced her to everyone as my girlfriend.

The next day, we went to Ion Orchard and looked at wedding rings.

Then on Monday, I found myself stuck with one incessant thought: Do I want to spend the rest of my life with her?
The answer was yes.

So, I asked her, “Would you marry me?” She said yes.

Girlfriend on Saturday.
Fiancée on Monday.

By January 2013, we were married in front of 600 people, surrounded by the people we loved and genuinely believing we had found our person.

Then Chinese New Year arrived.

We hadn’t stopped loving each other. We hadn’t suddenly discovered we’d married the wrong person.
We had simply taken two completely different family worlds, put them together and discovered very quickly that love alone didn’t tell us how to make them fit.

My dad has eight siblings. My mum has six. Chinese New Year in my world meant starting early, finishing close to midnight and travelling around Singapore with twenty to thirty relatives for both days. As a child, I loved it. It was noisy, tiring, chaotic and fun. To me, that was simply what Chinese New Year was.

Charlene is an only child. Her family is small. Chinese New Year for her might mean two or three houses in a day, with enough time to sit down, talk and breathe.

We could already see that our first Chinese New Year might be difficult, so like two newly married Singaporeans, we made a plan.
Then Chinese New Year actually happened.

There were parents with expectations, relatives with opinions, different traditions and an impossible number of decisions about where to go, how long to stay and whose family needed what.

By the end of Day One, both of us were exhausted, crying and the word divorce came up.
That really frightened us.

Just weeks earlier, we had stood in front of 600 people and promised each other for better or for worse. We meant it. And yet here we were, barely a month into marriage, letting Chinese New Year bring the word divorce into the room.

We had no idea how we were going to fix it.
But we knew we were going to.

We could have avoided the whole thing. Book a trip every Chinese New Year, disappear for a few days and come home when it was over.
But that wasn’t what we wanted. We still wanted our families. We still wanted the traditions that mattered to us.

We wanted to figure out how to win at this Chinese New Year game without our marriage being the thing that lost.

The whole thing felt too big to solve at once. There were too many people, expectations and decisions tangled together.
But there were things we could solve so that was where we started.

We worked out one decision, then another. Which houses really mattered? How much time did we want to spend with each family? Which traditions did we genuinely want to keep? What were we doing because it mattered to us, and what were we doing simply because somebody else expected it?

Underneath more and more of those decisions, we began answering a much bigger question:
Now that we’re married, who exactly is our first family?

Once we understood that our marriage had become our first family, it gave us a place to stand.
Our parents still mattered. Our relatives still mattered. Our traditions still mattered. But our marriage could no longer be organised around keeping our parents, aunties, uncles and extended family happy.

That didn’t magically fix Chinese New Year.
The second year was still difficult. So was the third. The fourth was easier.
But each year, there was less left to fight about.

A decision that had been painful the year before had already been made. A boundary had already been worked out. A tradition had already been agreed on.

We weren’t trying to conquer one giant “Chinese New Year problem.”
We were resolving what we could resolve, one piece at a time.

Then the fifth Chinese New Year arrived.
The relatives still had opinions. One auntie was still saying, “Wah, so long since you come my house to bai nian.” Our parents still had opinions. Chinese New Year itself had not suddenly become simple.
But Charlene and I realised we weren’t crying anymore.

There wasn’t another enormous post-CNY conversation waiting for us. There wasn’t another year of “Okay, next year we try doing this instead.”

We didn’t become better at surviving Chinese New Year.

We stopped having a Chinese New Year problem.

Certifications

Why beginning now matters beyond the two of you

That changed how we approached every problem that came after.

For years, Chinese New Year had been the biggest monster in our marriage. It felt huge, messy and almost impossible to solve.
But year by year, we chipped away at it. One decision. One boundary. One unresolved piece at a time.
And eventually, the monster fell.

That changed how we looked at every problem that came after.
If something this big could be resolved, then the next issue didn’t have to become another five-year fight.
If we could take down that five-year monster, what else were we going to let sit between us for years?

So when new problems came – moving house, work, pregnancy, parenting – we dealt with them while they were still current.
We stopped letting things pile up.

And one day, we realised something that still feels quite extraordinary to us:

We weren’t carrying old fights anymore.

That doesn’t mean we stopped disagreeing. We still get annoyed with each other. We still misunderstand each other, and sometimes we need time to work something through.
The difference is that once something is genuinely resolved, we don’t keep carrying it forward.

Charlene and I have worked side by side since 2011. For years, we would go to work together, spend the whole day working together and then go home together.
People who see us run trainings or events together sometimes say,

“I can’t imagine working with my spouse. How do you guys do it?”

We’ve simply become much better at resolving things instead of letting unresolved stuff keep piling up between us.
And that matters for closeness too.
When I’m angry with Charlene, I don’t particularly feel like holding her hand or kissing her. That seems fairly normal to me.

But once we’ve genuinely worked through what happened, it doesn’t become another unfinished thing sitting between us.
It’s done.

So there’s less stuff between us, and reaching for each other becomes easy again.

Sometimes closeness doesn’t need more things added to your marriage.
Sometimes you need to start removing what has been left unresolved between you.

BEYOND THE TWO OF YOU

Your children are already learning what marriage looks like from you.

Over the years, we’ve coached people at different stages of relationships – single, dating, preparing for marriage and already married.

In fact, one of our earlier programmes was called Dating for Marriage. Our stand was very simple: if you’re not dating with marriage in mind, then what exactly are you dating towards?

So even when we were working with singles, we were already asking them what kind of marriage they wanted to build one day.
And again and again, the conversation came back to what they had watched growing up.

We’ve heard the same thought in different forms again and again:

“I don’t want the marriage that my parents have.”

They weren’t saying their parents were terrible people.
They were talking about what they had watched growing up.
Children notice how Mum and Dad speak when they disagree. Whether difficult things get talked about or avoided. Whether affection is expressed. Whether two people who get upset with each other know how to find their way back.

Nobody has to sit them down and announce, “This is what marriage looks like.” They’re already watching.

As parents ourselves, this became even more personal when Judah came along. We had waited 10 years for him.

And when he finally arrived, it made us think very hard about what would truly matter for him over the course of his life.
We thought about his education, enrichment, savings, health and all the opportunities we hope he will have too.

Those things matter. But they belong to particular seasons of life.
Eventually, the certificate goes into a drawer. The medal sits on a shelf.
His PSLE score will not decide what home feels like when he is 40. His marriage will.

His marriage will shape so much of the life he builds – the home he comes back to, the family he builds, the decisions he makes, the legacy he leaves behind and the person beside him through all of it.
That is why, from the night Judah was born, Char and I have prayed for the woman he may one day marry.

We cannot choose her. We cannot guarantee what their marriage will become. And we cannot build that marriage for him.

Long before he is old enough to marry, he is already learning about marriage from us.
He does not need to grow up watching a perfect marriage. There is no such thing.

What he can see is two imperfect people who disagree, get tired and misunderstand each other, but who also know how to repair, resolve what sits between them and find their way back to the same side.

We believe one of the legacies parents can leave their children is a marriage worth learning from.

Not a picture of a perfect marriage.
A blueprint for what a healthy one can look like. And that blueprint is being built in front of them now.

TWO WAYS TO BEGIN

Choose the level of support that fits you.

Group Experience

For the spouse who wants the complete eight-week programme, a personalised starting point and live coaching inside a small, private group.
S$ 2,000 per spouse · paid in full
  • The full eight-week From Roommates to Us™ programme
  • Weekly 90-minute live coaching sessions
  • Weekly Marriage Issue Check-In (MIC™)
  • Private "Why Do We Keep Ending Up Here?" Session
  • When the Conversation Gets Stuck Guide
  • The 10-Minute Closeness Reset
  • The "Here We Go Again😮‍💨" Check
  • Graduation and your 30-day Protect the Marriage (PTM™) plan

Group Experience Plus

For the spouse who wants the full programme, with more private space for issues that need closer attention.
S$ 4,000 per spouse if paid in full*
  • EVERYTHING IN THE GROUP EXPERIENCE:
  •  
  • MORE PERSONALISED SUPPORT:
  • Whatsapp support throughout the programme
  • 4 Private Breakthrough Sessions
8 SPOUSES

AN HONEST QUESTION

“S$2,000? For marriage?”

We understand why that can feel unusual.

Most of us already know how to budget for the life around our marriage.
There is the wedding, the home, the renovation and perhaps a car.
Then come the ongoing expenses: insurance, childcare, a helper, tuition, enrichment, holidays and all the other things that keep family life running.
The marriage itself usually does not have a line item.

Which is strange, when so much of the life we spend money building depends on the marriage holding it together.
And for parents, the marriage their children are watching will become part of their marriage template.

We put money behind what matters to us. Education. Protection. Experiences. Our children’s future.

So perhaps the real question is not only, “Why would I spend S$2,000 on my marriage?”

It is also, “Is my marriage something I am willing to invest in?”

Because when something between you has been unresolved for years, leaving it alone is also a decision.

From Roommates to Us™ isn’t S$2,000 for marriage information.
You’re not paying to spend eight weeks hearing that you should communicate better, appreciate each other and make more time for one another.

You’re spending eight weeks working on one real issue that is still happening in your marriage – understanding the pattern around it, practising what to do differently and seeing whether it begins to move in real life.

Because knowing what a good marriage should look like usually isn’t the hard part.

The hard part is knowing what to do when it’s this person, this history and this issue happening again.

IF NOTHING MOVES

The Less-Stuck Guarantee​

Do the work. If nothing meaningfully moves, you shouldn’t have paid.

We are not asking you to fix your marriage in eight weeks.
We are asking you to take one real issue that has been stuck and start moving it.
And we are confident enough in the process to put our money behind that.

If you stay engaged, complete your weekly MIC™ and reviews, and actually practise what we work on between sessions, we expect you to see meaningful movement in how that issue plays out.

That does not mean your spouse suddenly becomes a different person or that every part of the issue disappears in eight weeks.
It means the two of you should not still be stuck in exactly the same place, having exactly the same version of the same fight with nothing changing.

If nothing appears to be moving by Week 4, tell us. We want the opportunity to look at what is happening, challenge what needs challenging and course-correct while there is still time.

And if you complete the programme, do the work and there has been no meaningful movement at all, we will refund the full amount you paid.
No programme credit. No substitute offer.

Your money back.

Plus S$10 for a Ya Kun Set A.
Because if we are going to tell you that this issue can move, we should be willing to stand behind that.
And if it doesn’t?
Kaya toast is on us.

BEFORE YOU APPLY

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes.

A repeating pattern depends on both people making familiar moves. When one person changes their move, the interaction can no longer play out in exactly the same way.

That does not mean you can control your spouse or guarantee how they will respond. You cannot.

But you do change what they are responding to, which creates a different next moment between the two of you.

Sometimes your spouse responds differently too. Sometimes the first change is simply that the same conversation no longer spirals in the same way.

And if your spouse is willing to work on things too, there is naturally more you can address together.

But you do not need both of you to become ready on the same day before something can begin to change.

If your spouse wants to be involved, that is welcome too. There may be things you can work on more directly when both of you are engaged.

But their participation is not a condition for you to begin.

Maybe you have already said, “I think we should do something about us,” and they are not interested, think things are fine or say, “Maybe later.”

You do not have to stay in limbo waiting for both of you to become ready at exactly the same time.

If you are ready to work on the part of the marriage you can influence, you can begin.

If waiting has kept everything in the same place, more waiting is unlikely to create a different result.

Sometimes they might be.

If you are carrying most of the household load, your spouse may genuinely need to take on more. If they made a hurtful choice, that choice is theirs to own.

But here is the problem: if your next move depends entirely on your spouse changing first, then whether anything changes is now sitting in the hands of someone you cannot control.

Beginning first does not mean pretending everything is your fault. It means refusing to make your own next step dependent on theirs.

Sometimes that means making a clearer request. Sometimes it means stopping something you have been over-carrying. Sometimes it means becoming clearer about what belongs to you and what genuinely belongs to your spouse.

You are taking responsibility for what is yours without continuing to carry what is theirs.

Yes.

Because “okay” does not mean the issue is going to resolve itself.

If the two of you have been getting stuck on the same thing for months or years, waiting usually just means carrying it for longer.

And unresolved things rarely stay neatly contained. They show up in the next conversation, the next decision and the next season. Sometimes they even come out in the little remarks you make about your spouse in front of the children.

You can love your spouse, have a generally good marriage and still have something between you that needs resolving.

So the real question is:

How many more years are you prepared to keep carrying the same issue?

You do not need to wait until a good marriage becomes a hurting one before you decide it is worth doing something about.

What looks like one big issue often turns out to contain several smaller issues.

Take parenting.

You might come in saying, “We keep fighting about the kids.”

But once we slow it down, “parenting” may contain disagreements about discipline, screens, school, routines, grandparents and who gets to decide what.

So the goal is not to somehow “solve parenting” in eight weeks.

It is to untangle what is actually inside the issue and start moving concrete parts of it.

Instead of leaving with, “We still have a parenting problem,” you may be able to say, “We have agreed how we handle screens and who takes the lead on school decisions. What we still need to align on is discipline.”

That is a very different place to be.

You can see what moved, what has been clarified or resolved and what needs to happen next.

Yes.

This is a small, private cohort. Confidentiality is explicit, you may pass on sharing and you will not be required to disclose intimate details simply because you are in a group.

Nothing from your story is shared publicly without separate, explicit permission.

From Roommates to Us™ is marriage coaching, not therapy.

It is not designed for active abuse, coercive control, violence, current betrayal, addiction, acute mental-health risk or trauma requiring specialist care.

If something falls outside the scope of coaching, we would rather tell you clearly and point you towards more appropriate support than try to turn something serious into a communication exercise.

We are Christians, but From Roommates to Us™ is not a Christian programme.

Our own faith shapes how we understand marriage. From where we stand, marriage is a covenant, not merely a contract.

But we don’t teach from the Bible, quote Bible verses as part of the programme or require you to share our beliefs.

From Roommates to Us™ is open to people of any faith or no faith.
You do not need to share our faith to participate.

Life happens.

If you genuinely cannot attend live, we’ll make sure you have a way to catch up on what you missed and stay current with the programme.

What matters most is that you remain engaged, complete your weekly MIC™ and keep practising between sessions.

Because the most important part of the programme is not what happens during the Zoom call.

It is what happens the next time the issue comes up at home.

THE FIRST STEP

You don’t have to spend another decade carrying the same issue.

Maybe it’s been sitting there for months. Maybe it’s already been years. Maybe you barely argue about it anymore because both of you already know roughly how the conversation will end.
If it has already been years, don’t give it another one just because this has become normal.

Imagine a year from now and this simply isn’t the issue you keep having anymore.

Life will still bring new parenting decisions, money questions, work pressure and family changes.
The goal isn’t a marriage that never has another problem.

The goal is that you don’t keep carrying the same unresolved things into every new season.

You don’t need both of you to become ready on the same day.
Start with one unresolved issue, one repeating pattern and one willing spouse who is ready to get something moving.

FROM ROOMMATES TO US™
Feel Close Again.
founding intake

Starts 1 November 2026
8 weeks · one session a week · 8 spouse spots

The first step is a short application. There is no payment and no commitment at this stage. Tell us what is happening in your marriage, what the unresolved issue is and where the two of you keep getting stuck.

Verrill personally reviews every application. If it looks like the programme may be appropriate, we will invite you to a 30-minute Marriage Clarity Call. We will talk about what is actually happening, what you have already tried and whether From Roommates to Us™ is the right place to work on it.

If it isn’t, we’ll tell you.

P.S.

The moment you join, we’ll send you The 10-Minute Closeness Reset – one small thing you can try at home without announcing another ominous, “We need to talk.”