What an awesome responsibility, to become the parent of a child. When you have taken care of feeding them and protecting them from harm, you still want to give them all the love they need and all the advantages you can offer. You teach them to walk, do homework with them, take them to soccer practice, pay for their SAT prep classes. You monitor their television time, show them how to hold a...
We all get there. The marriage is not enough. An empty hole drains us. We are certain our spouses have the ability to fill it, but they don’t. We cannot get by on this much money, help, sex, support, appreciation, or recreation. One more day of this is just too much. The answer? Expect Love. Everything else we expect from our mates causes us grief or anger. Sure, some husbands take care of...
Paul McCartney married Nancy Shevel yesterday. It’s got me singing All You Need is Love again today, one of the world’s (and the Beatles’) most touching songs. “All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.” And what do we need it for? To become our best selves. “Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It’s...
Does your wife caution you to slow down, pass that car, take a different route, keep up with traffic, stop riding that bumper? Does she wince, grab the dashboard, brace her feet, check the side mirror? And does it make you wonder why in the world she agreed to marry someone she trusts so little? Does it make you feel like a kid with a learner’s permit again? Especially if you have been...
Lots of married people, men and women, cheat. Some do it repeatedly, believing they are somehow entitled to do so. Others do it once, looking for emotional or sexual relief when there is great tension in their marriage. This second group usually decides never to try that again, whether they get caught or not. Cheating is contagious. Research shows that those who know someone who has cheated are...
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.
