Looking for some good news?
You can have a better relationship starting today.
While there are no quick-fix solutions, the effort you put into improving your relationship will pay off.
Maybe your relationship just needs a tune-up. Maybe it’s time for a major overhaul. Either way, change occurs in small steps, taken and sustained over time.
With that in mind, here are 52 practical to-dos—one for each week of the year—to get you started. Continue reading
How many people do you know who would wholeheartedly say that their marriage is great?
How many would say that they’re happier now than when they first got together, that their marriage is one of the most satisfying parts of their life?
Five? Ten? None? Continue reading
A few years ago a client gave me a refrigerator magnet that reads:
Yep. I agree.
Especially when one of the chores involves the word garage. That’s how our garage ended up looking like a scene from the reality show where they bring in five guys in hazmat suits while a team of kind social workers comforts the hoarder. Continue reading
January 1st. The day of fresh starts and new beginnings. The day we vow to eat more green vegetables, actually use our gym membership, and try, once again, to lose those hard to lose pounds.
As we look to the new year, we often focus on ways to be “better” — resolving to do more of what’s good for us and less of what’s not. To (at least most of the time) come from our best.
For a good many of us, finding ways to have a more satisfying marriage is high on our list.
But in our rush for improvement, we overlook this key fact: Continue reading
Ask ten happily married people, “What’s your key to success?” and you’ll get fifteen answers — many of which contradict each other.
Some will say couples should never to go to bed angry. Others will say it’s fine to sleep on your arguments. For them, World War III or not, it’s lights out at 11.
Many will say, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” while an equal number will tout the virtues of talking things out.
Do opposites attract or should we be birds of a feather?
Are we better off lowering our expectations, or setting a high bar?
And do couples really need to be each other’s best friend?
The truth is, many of the widely-dispensed bits of marriage advice are more fiction than fact. Continue reading
There are a hundred paths through the
world that are easier than loving…
But who needs easier?
— Mary Oliver
Raise your hand if you’ve heard this before:
Marriage is not a noun, it’s a verb.
It’s hard to dispute, isn’t it?
Anyone who’s been married longer than, say, a week, knows that marriage requires effort. Not back-breaking-drudgery kind of effort, but make-it-count, put-your-heart-into-it effort.
We build a marriage the way we build a house: day by day, brick by brick, from the ground up. Continue reading
Most of us step into marriage hoping for a lifetime of love and happiness, knowing far too little about what might give us our best shot at getting there. Many of us assume that because we’re in love, because we have common values and compatible dreams we’ve got everything we need to have a marriage that lasts.
Sure, lots of couples divorce. “But, honestly…” we think, “how hard could it be?”
The answer: Continue reading
“Chew with your mouth closed!”
“Don’t hit your sister!”
So much of childhood is about learning the rules and then striving to follow them — at least occasionally.
While some rules are unreasonable — like being told to sit perfectly still at age five or made to skip recess, as I was, for doodling on my homework — the basic relationship skills that we learned as children were, in fact, of great value. Continue reading
It’s the first question most people ask when seeking couples therapy after an affair: “Can my marriage survive?”
Most are relieved that the answer is, yes. Continue reading
They make it look easy, don’t they?
You know, those cheerful couples you see chatting away in the grocery line, holding hands in the movie theater; the ones who’ve been married forever and they’ve still got their spark.
Ever wonder, how do they do it? What do they know that I don’t?
Back when I was struggling in my marriage, everyone looked happier than my husband and I. Continue reading
It was a typical Saturday at the small neighborhood salon where I regularly go for my manicure and pedicure: a bevy of women giving and getting haircuts, perms and manicures, chatting in an upbeat banter over the background hum of classical music and blow dryers.
Across the room from where I was waiting, two young women sat side-by-side under a pair of hairdryers, giggling and pointing as they flipped through a dog-eared copy of Modern Bride.
After the Argument
Whoever spoke first would lose something,
that was the stupid
unspoken rule. Continue reading
Raise your hand if your spouse does something that drives you totally bonkers.
The wet towel on the floor. The toilet seat left up. The kitchen scissors that never end up back in the drawer.
Marriage is chock full of these petty irritations. Sometimes we joke about them. Sometimes we gnash our teeth over them.
Still, most of us would agree that putting the empty orange juice container back in the fridge is hardly worth getting ourselves all in a twist.
But, what is?
The mortgage payment mailed late?
The milk left out to spoil?
Consistent lateness?
A bad attitude?
Maybe.
Then again, maybe not. Continue reading
Let’s be honest. Most of us are more likely to upgrade the operating system on our computer than to revise our marriage vows.
As I sat writing my vows on the eve of my wedding (okay, fine, now you know that I’m a big-time procrastinator) I was no better prepared to face the rigors of marriage than I was to pilot a jumbo jet. And, no surprise, like most soon-to-be newlyweds, the promises I made were idealistic and romantic— based on what I imagined it would take to create a marriage that lasts. Continue reading
Like most newlyweds, my husband and I stepped into marriage bright-eyed, optimistic and flat-out unprepared. We’d had terrible family role models and possessed virtually no tools, yet — let’s hear it for young love — we assumed that our marriage would be a rousing success. Continue reading
Speaking of Marriage 