‘Tis the season for gift ideas. Some are clever and fun to read. Few actually help with gift-giving. Why? Because your spouse is a unique individual, not a category, and so are you. Let’s start with attitudes toward receiving gifts. For some, all gifts feel like they come with strings attached. They create an obligation instead of delivering a message of love. The underlying beliefs...
A married woman on Quora wondered about this a few months back. She married her husband while both were in college. Today, in his 30s, he’s got a good bit of money, success, and younger women who would like to “bag” him. They have no kids to tie him to her, and she wonders what would make him stay. Here are a few things men stay for. Each one suggests a possible strategy for...
If you want to enjoy your marriage more, own your own needs. Don’t dump them on your husband or wife. Ask for what you want or need, but before you do, let go of any notion that your spouse is obliged to say yes out of fairness or marital obligation. Why? Well, first, it is only your own story that you are somehow entitled to what you ask for that can make you angry or hurt. It is not the...
Is this your first Thanksgiving as a couple? What goes without saying in your head on this holiday? Is preparing the meal and setting the table a joint project? Or should the non-cook stay out of the way? Does the football schedule dictate the flow of the day? Or is it your nieces’ and nephews’ schedules, as they try to fit in two divorced parents and three or four sets of...
Thanks to the two wonderful husbands who have given me their love, especially the current one, who goes with the flow on so many surprising changes in our lives. Thanks to my incredible son, who has given me a marvelous daughter-in-law and, with her, the wonderful experience of being a grandmother. Thanks to Barbara Sher for pushing me to do what I love. (This blog is a big part of it.) And these...
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.
