It seems to be a natural human instinct to turn the Golden Rule on its head and do unto others what we really did not like them doing to us. He left you waiting in a restaurant for 20 minutes? Surely he will straighten up and fly right if you show up late for the next thing he schedules. She rejects your foreplay? Just show her who’s boss by refusing to kiss her, hug her, or hold hands with...
I received a comment recently on one of my older blog posts: Why should we assume love but not expect our husband to assume respect??? I knew immediately that I had done a bad job of writing that post. I do not recommend anyone Assume Love for the benefit of their spouse, only for their own benefit. When we Assume Love, we stop an unhelpful but instinctual response that’s happening in our...
I’ve been blogging for quite a while now, since Valentine’s Day of 2006. If you’re new to this blog, the Assume Love Archives must seem a bit overwhelming. So let me try to sum up the basics for you. First, I write about marriage and committed life partnerships, not about relationships in general. I write for people with a mutual and public commitment to love each other, an...
We all have both explicit and implicit memories. The explicit ones we can generally retrieve on demand: who taught our 9th grade Algebra class, what the weather was on our wedding day, what we ate for breakfast this morning. Alzheimer’s erodes these memories, and we have none from our earliest years because our brains could not form them yet. The implicit ones are the hidden influences on...
Have you ever had one of those discussions where you just know you’re right and your wife or husband is wrong? Not the sort where you debate whether Bigfoot exists or not, but the sort where you think it makes sense to buy a bigger lawn mower or to stay away from Aunt Zelda’s third wedding and you’re getting an argument. There are two ways to handle these. The most common seems...
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.
