One thing I learned from screwing up my first marriage is that happy marriages start with happy partners. It’s not the other way around. As much as your mate might want to add to your happiness, he or she cannot make you happy when you are not. In my second marriage, Barbara Sher’s book Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want has been a big part of our efforts to find our own...
Today’s post is by guest blogger Russ Lane of Second Helping, a website about life after weight loss. It is unusual to address dating in Assume Love, but what Russ experienced affects us married folks, too, when our fears get in the way of seeing what is really going on. I never dated before I lost 200 pounds and transformed from wallflower to Mr. Adventure. Back then, I blamed this and...
Tit for tat may make you happier for the moment, but always at the expense of your relationship. Falling in love made your heart sing, not because of what your beloved offered you, but because it made you want to offer so much more.
Happy Valentine’s day! Be generous.
And thanks for three great years so far. Here’s a post from that first Valentine’s Day in 2006.
Pace and Kyeli Smith have knocked one out of the park with their new couples communication book, The Usual Error: Why We Don’t Understand Each Other and 34 Ways to Make It Better. What is the Usual Error? It is the very normal, very human, big-trouble-creating mistake we all make. It is assuming that others think like us, would react like us, or value the same things we do. When we do this...
This is a comment I wrote in reply to a post by Pam Slim today, in Escape from Cubicle Nation, asking how to handle a situation in which one spouse’s new business launch conflicts with another spouse’s planned job change. Don’t miss the other great comments there if this is an issue for you and your spouse. Pam, Dave, thanks so much for this opportunity to comment. Marriage and...
I am a widow who got it right the second time. I have been sharing here since February 14, 2006 what I learned from that experience and from positive psychology, marriage research, and my training as a marriage educator.
