I spent over an hour reading comments this weekend on Facebook, about a letter to Miss Manners in the Washington Post. Never saw her column, and none of the commenters even touched on etiquette. They opined on what everyone involved should do. I got sucked into this should show. I couldn’t stop reading. I just kept hoping for someone to stop looking in all the wrong places for what to do...
In a comment on my last post, The Easiest Way to a Happier Marriage, Clover asked a great question: I agree that we shouldn’t expect our partners to act exactly the way we want them to – they’re not robots. And no one really owes us anything.But sometimes it’s really hard to maintain this mindset. With my friends and family, I care about their feelings more than my own. For example, if they don’t...
The easiest way to a happier marriage does not include changing your spouse. Spouses are hard to change. Even when they know what you want from them, it can be hard for them to give it. Accusations about their failures to provide what you expect will get you defensiveness from all but the most self-aware spouses, because it’s a threat to their core relationship. Defensiveness is not pretty...
Best-selling self-help author Barbara Sher always said, “You cannot be modest about your gifts, because that’s arrogant. They aren’t yours. You didn’t think them up and work for them. They were there when you were born.” You can’t be proud or ashamed of being tall. It wasn’t you who did that. But when someone short needs helping reaching something, you...
Until I was so suddenly widowed, I did not understand fairness in marriage. I was feeling in the months before his death that I was stuck with the lion’s share of the effort. It felt so unfair. It’s hard to enjoy being married with a feeling like that, and I imagined the cure was for him to assume more of the responsibility and effort. I was wrong. The day after his death, this became...
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.
