It’s January. Time for all those post-holiday arguments. You two have different goals for the new year. You have different hurts left over from last year. You have different fears, different challenges ahead. You have different ideas of how important those threats or challenges will be. You have different ideas how to deal with them. Break out the arguments. And crank up the stakes. Your...
Helping Your Disabled War Vet Spouse
Rachel Cornell wrote a powerful blog post last week for the wives, husbands, parents, and friends of disabled war vets. A blind artist, author, and speaker, Rachel gets it. When your limb, your vision, your range of motion, or half your intestines are gone, you don’t “put your life back together again” — you build a new life. You don’t “get things back to...
How to Talk to Your Spouse about Money
I was asked on Twitter this morning by author Susan Kuhn Frost how to talk to your spouse about money. It’s a great question. In a word: gently. Prepare yourself for the discussion by counting your blessings. When we feel any lack of resources tightening its grip on us, it’s so tempting to pass the fears off to someone else, instead of laying them to rest. But do you really want to...
Sharing a Home with Diver or Scanner
After tonight’s teleclass on Divers (people with one interest they keep going deeper into) and Scanners (people with so many interests they can’t choose one) and how they can get along, someone sent me this question. Diver and Scanner couple. My husband does not understand all my piles. He calls them my “droppings.” I think of them as my “stations.” I...
Marriage Tips
Someone asked me recently for marriage tips. Here are mine, in a nutshell:
Assume Love when upset, Expect Love when disappointed, Look for Third Alternatives in a dispute.
These three things will make any marriage more enjoyable.