Today is the 35th anniversary of the day I got married. It was a gorgeous Spring day, and we married, surrounded by lilacs in bloom and our closest friends and relatives, in the garden behind Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Cambridge home. Would we still be married now, if I knew then to Assume Love, Expect Love, and Find Third Alternatives? If we had been able to stay close through those...
On February 17th, I was interviewed on Barbara Sher’s Live the Life You Love web radio show. Barbara is a wonderful interviewer, and the hour turned out to be great fun for me. The interview is all about how to Assume Love, Expect Love, and Find Third Alternatives and why these help us Enjoy Being Married. To listen, click on the link above and look for the 2/17/2008 show. You can play it...
How to feel more loved every single day: 1 – Assume love. When your spouse’s or life partner’s behavior upsets you, stop, assume for the moment he or she is still the same wonderful person and still loves you very much. Now try to explain how he or she might have done this if this is true. You’ll stop your knee-jerk reactions long enough to see the situation a lot more...
If your wife treats you like part of the furniture or can’t stop telling you how to earn more money, if your husband drives you nuts with his insensitive comments or misplaced laundry, it’s time to round up the usual suspects.
So you Assume Love, and you realize that your beloved life partner objects to what you’re asking for only because it conflicts with what he or she wants. Now what? You look together for what Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, calls The Third Alternative. Commit to getting what you want and let go of the way you first thought of getting it. Ask questions and pay...
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.
