There’s no getting around it. Your marriage is in trouble and it’s time to get help.
Yet, despite all the good reasons you offered and how nicely you asked, your spouse is dead set against therapy and is unwilling to budge. Continue reading
Author: Winifred M. Reilly
10 Surefire Ways To Turn A Small Fight Into A Big One
It’s no secret. Couples have fights.
But not all fights are created equal. Some start small and stay small while others pick up steam as they go and leave a mess in their wake.
And the difference in outcomes is not random.
Have you ever seen a fight coming a mile away and done nothing to stop it?
Or worse, just for the heck of it you did your best to provoke it?
Sometimes we’re like that. We’re short-fused or irritable or maybe we’re bored. Or, as a friend likes to say, we’re simply a fight looking for something to pick itself on.
Other times, the last thing we want is yet another knock-down-drag-out about unloading the dishwasher, but we feel powerless to stop it.
The truth is: we’re not. Continue reading
How To Talk With Your Spouse About The Things You Don’t Want To Talk About
It’s true. There are some conversations you’d rather not have.
Like the one about the credit card or your mother-in-law or how you hardly ever have sex.
Maybe you need to talk about quitting your job or having another baby, or how you lie awake worrying that your marriage is in trouble, or that you never have fun. Maybe you think your partner is having an affair.
And the very idea of bringing it up fills you with dread.
Maybe tomorrow, you say. Maybe next week.
Then again, maybe not. Continue reading
Mastering The Art of Shutting Up
Face it. When it comes to marital conflict, most of us don’t know when to hush up.
If you’re anything like me, it’s hard… no, let’s be honest… it’s downright impossible to resist throwing in that one last clever comeback, that sigh, that snarky retort— even though it’s guaranteed to get the two of you all fired-up. And not in a good way.
Most of the time it seems that nothing can keep us from jumping onto the old hamster wheel and taking a run. Not even our wisest, sanest voice asking us if the thing we’re fighting about is actually worth it, suggesting we drop it, begging us to, just this once, zip our lips.
For some reason, we can’t. Or, we won’t. Continue reading
Does Your Marriage Need A Boost? Try Some Tenderness
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
-Dalai Lama
Three seconds. Just enough time to slam on my brakes, grab ahold of the steering wheel and hope for the best. Between good brakes and good luck, I stopped barely an inch short of the car that had suddenly pulled out in front of me. Continue reading
Interview with Winifred Reilly
I was recently interviewed by the writer Cristian Mihai who has a blog about art, expression and the craft of writing. In the course of our discussions I realized how writing and working on a marriage are in many ways one and the same: both call for perseverance, creativity and intention.
Why Changing One Thing Changes Everything
If you had to guess the most frequently cited reason for divorce, what would you say?
Family violence? Infidelity? Money troubles?
Guess again.
In a recent study done in the UK, forty-seven percent of couples claimed that unreasonable behavior had prompted them to untie the knot.
My experience with couples in the US bears that out. It is well-documented that a vast majority of couples survive infidelity. Some studies suggest numbers as high as seventy-five percent.
Unreasonableness… that’s another thing entirely. Continue reading
Nominated for The Leibster Blog Award
Rosemary West, author of the wonderful relationship blog For Better – or What? was gracious enough to nominate my blog for The Liebster Award. When I was just starting to blog, Continue reading
How to Forgive Even If You’re A World-Class Grudge Holder
It happens to all of us. We want to forgive someone and we find that we can’t.
All we can do is think about the wrong that has been done to us— and each time we do, we’re as hurt and angry as the day we were betrayed.
If you’re like most people, when you’ve been betrayed, every waking hour can be filled with your outrage. Every song or movie, every sunset, every time someone says the word “love” or “friendship”, a switch flips inside you and there you are, once again, all worked up and upset.
People will spend years— or a lifetime— replaying and reliving the details of their injury, failing to recognize the toll it takes on their life.
Forgiveness is difficult, but it isn’t impossible, especially when you know what forgiveness is and what it is not. Continue reading
How To Make An Award Winning No-Holds-Barred Apology
Knowing the secrets of a really good apology can mean the difference between this:
And this:
Most of us learned to apologize back when we were in preschool and as far as I can tell, few people have upgraded their approach since then.
Fights Driving You Crazy? Try These Three Words
Say you’re about to get into one of your typical fights. The fight you’ve had ten thousand times before and it always ends badly. The one where you say this and your partner says that and the next thing you know you’ve turned into a matched pair of lunatics.
Maybe you slam a door or you yell. 
Maybe you turn into an ice queen or a sniper or you go silent as stone. Whatever your style, if you’re like most couples, when trouble brews you do the one thing that’s 100% guaranteed to get you into a fight. You get sucked in.
What if instead of “going with the flow,” one of you gets a grip on your sanity and says: Let’s. Back. Up.
Short, sweet, and incredibly powerful— if you have the wherewithal to not only say it but do it.
Let’s back up is the next best thing to Continue reading
Making It Last… and Last and Last
What if when you said “until death do us part” you were signing on to a marriage that may last as long as a century?
Today TIME.com ran a piece that talked about how with the possibility of some of us living to be one hundred fifty years old we may live long enough to have two or even three very long marriages.
I began to wonder, instead, what one would need to do to have one marriage that would remain vital and satisfying for a hundred years, or even longer? With a mere thirty-five years of marriage under my belt, my first thought was Continue reading
Complaining: The Anti-Problem Solver We Know And Love
Last April, at the annual Couples Conference in Manhattan Beach, therapist Michelle Weiner Davis said, “When women tell you that they’ve tried everything, what they really mean is that they’ve said everything.”
Precisely, I thought. Every day clients announce “I’ve tried everything” when the truth is they’ve barely begun to consider their options, let alone act on them.
Like the woman who came in last week for her first appointment. Continue reading
When One Partner Is Out and The Other Is In
What To Do When Your Spouse Wants A Divorce And You Still Think There’s Hope
Anyone who’s been in a relationship for more than ten minutes knows that no two people will see eye-to-eye about everything. One’s wearing a sweater while the other is fanning herself. One puts ketchup on eggs while the other is horrified.
Fine, you say. There’s no need to agree. You can say tomato and I’ll say tomahto.
But what if your 
difference is about something more serious than diction or condiments or setting the thermostat? What if one of you desperately wants to hold your marriage together while the other has met with an attorney and is now spending every spare moment looking at apartments on Craig’s list?
You can’t very well agree to disagree about this.
If you were to poll twenty-five couples therapists, at least twenty-four of us would say Continue reading
Want A Better Marriage? Change One Thing
Yes, just one. Even if there are ten things that keep you from being nominated for Spouse of the Year, start by changing one.
Maybe it’s your grouchiness or the way you’re quick to complain. Perhaps it’s your chilliness or your all-bets-are-off style of fighting or how you’ll hang onto resentments until hell freezes over. Then again, it might be your “look.”You know which look. I’m talking about the look that says, this again? Really? You’ve got to be kidding! The look that’s guaranteed to set your partner’s teeth on edge.
When I ask people to identify one thing they could do to be a better relater, very few Continue reading
Speaking of Marriage 