Are you the sort of person who takes good care of your mate? Brings a fresh box of tissues bedside during the flu? Gets up to make breakfast every morning? Washes, matches, and lovingly folds socks? Shows up for a goodbye kiss at the door? Fusses over the kids to make sure they feel securely cared for? How much nurturing do you feel you deserve in return? Great kindness is a character strength...
Whenever I declare that there are things worth learning about how to succeed at marriage, I risk offending good friends and even relatives who have divorced. Divorce is often painful, almost always life-disrupting. How cruel to even suggest it wasn’t necessary and the result of a bad match-up of partners. I was thinking about this earlier today and how similar it is to a business failure...
When you’re facing a big, hairy problem, you can curl up in a little ball and beg your spouse to solve it for you. Or you can come up with a possible solution and try to talk your spouse into joining you in implementing it. Most of the time, both of these will just leave you with a big, hairy problem and an unhappy relationship. Since, of course, you deserve better, these will probably also...
Having trouble communicating about the issues in your marriage? You may not be speaking the same language. “We need to stop spending so much money.” It’s a simple statement of an opinion, yet an utterly uninviting, unencouraging one. We could use some alternatives. “I’m looking forward to doing a lot of things together after the kids are grown and we’re...
Thanks to the always informative Smart Marriages newsletter, I have a great link to share with you today, a downloadable version of the cover story in January’s Scientific American Mind.
Research shows some simple exercises can make you feel closer to just about anyone. I recommend you stick to trying them with your spouse.
