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Stephen Hedger

Stephen Hedger

Crisis Marriage Coach | Harley Street London

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NEVER let your partner enter a “CRITICAL NEEDS DEFICIT!” – Mini post

Who knew each person on a planet is driven by different and very specific emotional needs? When these needs are not met couples will always experience disconnect.

Remember critical means critical and this means if the relationship doesn’t meet these needs the person will feel compelled to go where they can meet them.

What’s worse is most people do this without conscious thought.

Many people decide to marry but don’t have a sufficient understanding of how different they are and this will be a significant source of stress for any couple.

Couples are not aware of many dangers in their relationship if they don’t understand how to feed it.

Not understanding or meeting a partner’s CRITICAL NEEDS is one area of concern that can lead them into a painful emotional disconnect.

So please hear this message – if a partner’s critical needs are not met they can eventually feel compelled to leave the marriage.

These needs are called CRITICAL for a reason.

Not meeting a person’s critical needs is the emotional equivalent to the physical stress of not eating, it just takes a little longer to emotionally kill their emotional connection.

Relationships need feeding and the couples in crisis I see will present one or both people starved of emotional needs that are important to them.

They won’t always know what’s wrong all they know is they feel bad and have attached that growing feeling to their partner.

One person can be very busy doing what they think is right for their relationship only to discover none of what they did connected to what was important to their partner so both people end up frustrated.

I hear many women say “my husband says he loves me, but I just don’t feel it”.

I remember one man, distraught because his partner told him she no longer loved him.

He said I worked hard in my job and provided for my family every day. He was clearly a very nice man but he was dramatically disconnected from her emotional needs.

They didn’t make sense to him so he dismissed her emotions as unimportant.

As a result, she felt alone, abandoned and unloved.

This man loved her, but he only gave her the love he wanted, because it’s all he knew.

He never considered that for her to feel “love” she had to have it in the way she needed.

People are simply not aware of how important this is and how destructive a needs deficit can be to a person’s emotional system.

I remember two well-known musicians came in both in a state of disconnect and were totally unaware that meeting each other’s needs was even a thing.

So NEVER let your partners’ critical enter a deficit because they will suffer and attach that suffering to you and this leads people to self-numb or emotional detach.

A significant part of helping couples reconnect is understanding how and why their partner is so different to them.

When differences are understood and critical needs are met…

  • They can rebuild their connection.
  • Trust can reform.
  • They can reignite attraction.
  • They can build the desire to sexually reconnect.
  • Plus it helps them become a team

So this is a powerful skill to learn.

If you too see this as critical to understand and you want my help please click to apply here.

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Stephen Hedger
Stephen Hedger
About the author:

Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach

With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.

Find out more >>> The Marriage Breakthrough Program
Stephen Hedger
Latest posts by Stephen Hedger (see all)
  • What If You Knew the Exact Mistakes That Destroy Marriages? - July 8, 2025
  • “What Do You Hear When I Speak?” - July 5, 2025
  • Your Marriage Isn’t Broken — The Pattern Is. Here’s How to Fix It. - July 2, 2025

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  • “What Do You Hear When I Speak?”
  • Your Marriage Isn’t Broken — The Pattern Is. Here’s How to Fix It.
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  • The Silent Killer of Marriages: When You Stop Being You
  • Emotional Intimacy in Marriage: The Key to Trust, Connection, and Lasting Passion
  • Please Save Our Marriage – My Wife has Asked for a Divorce
  • Loss of Love? How to Save Your Relationship
  • Passionless Marriage: “Sex life dying – want to know why?”
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I’m not going to ask you how you “feel", pay me to watch you argue, or try to find the person to blame.

I am looking to discover if the couple can become a team, overcome their problems together and create a dynamic that will create a loving and passionate life together.

My approach is to take you from where you are, to where you want to be… fast!

I can not recommend Stephen highly enough – he not only saved our marriage, but has improved my marriage and myself as a person.

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Hi, I'm Stephen Hedger. I'm determined to help couples discover what their marriage is capable of with the right information. My only question is, will it be yours?

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A 30 minute call with Stephen

In a short phone conversation, Stephen was able to quickly get to the heart of what the real issue was in our marriage – and why in almost a year of working on our marriage including 10 weeks of marriage counselling through a relationship therapy organisation, we weren’t really making any progress. I found Stephen to be extremely perceptive, as well as empathetic to our situation, while being able to quickly pinpoint the real sticking point in our marriage.
Many thanks
Olivia

Dear Stephen
Thank you for your time to listen to my experience in my marriage. You gave me encouragement to speak out to my partner in confidence. You made me realise that sometimes the way we make comments on each other can aggravate the situation and make it worse. Your advice made me feel revived.

Kind regards

Chipo

Success Stories

From Battlefield to Breakthrough: How to Save Your Marriage Without a Toxic Fight.

January 31, 2025 By Stephen Hedger

Most people who come to me for help believe their marriage is broken, so their level of hope is not high. Many will have tried to fix the problems without success. These people are unaware that there is a critical mindset shift: if you don’t make it, your chances of success dramatically drop. As you […]

“By changing yourself, you can change a relationship… because I did!”

September 16, 2024 By Stephen Hedger

We were in the process of physical separation, with my husband arranging to move out at the end of the month, and I was getting legal advice on proceeding with the divorce.  On one of those distressed and sleepless nights, I came across Stephen’s website and his blog. I was fascinated. What Stephen has written […]

“There’s no hope in hell – I want a divorce!”

April 22, 2024 By Stephen Hedger

So what do you do when the trust is broken so badly that their relationship ends with them selling their family home and moving into separate homes? Most people would consider this the end, but this gentleman decided something different. He wrote to me to see if I could help. I wanted to encourage his […]

Marriage Crisis from Infidelity & Communication Breakdown

August 21, 2023 By Stephen Hedger

Today’s post is about a professional couple in the UK who decided they wanted to share their experience of their tailormade program that was designed to help them out of their marital challenges. They were in crisis due to communication breakdown and infidelity. They had 12 meetings over five months to learn how to reconnect […]

His Marriage was Over!

June 5, 2023 By Stephen Hedger

This man was in the depths of sadness; his marriage was over, but he didn’t want it to be. They had seen numerous counsellors who had all concluded the marriage was indeed over. He had lost all feelings for his wife. Due to being so stuck for so long, he had started an affair. But […]

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Recent Clients: Scotland, Ireland, Texas, New York, Dubai, Los Angeles, Austrailia, Japan, Germany, France, Ireland, UK, Monaco to name a few.

Stephen Hedger offers married couples in crisis across the globe a comprehensive strategic roadmap to overcome their marriage problems.

Today Stephen works with Celebrities, CEO’s, Lawyers, Bankers, Royalty, Judges, and business owners helping them transform their family and personal relationships with massive breakthroughs, seemingly against all odds.

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Recent Posts

  • What If You Knew the Exact Mistakes That Destroy Marriages?
  • “What Do You Hear When I Speak?”
  • Your Marriage Isn’t Broken — The Pattern Is. Here’s How to Fix It.
  • The 5C Marriage Blueprint: The Foundation Every Relationship Needs to Thrive
  • The Silent Killer of Marriages: When You Stop Being You

*Disclaimer:
Any testimonials stated on this page or on any pages on the Stephen Hedger Marriage Coach website/s are proof of our success, naturally, results may vary from person to person.

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