I was asked recently about withholding hugs and kisses to encourage a husband to be more loving. I don’t think it works, and I sure don’t think it would be much fun. Why sculpt the marriage you want by manipulating the person you love? Or by avoiding what makes your marriage enjoyable to you? What should we withhold? That which we will later regret, like knee-jerk responses to words...
Tomorrow, the Mayan calendar ends. Does the world? A number of Christian friends see what they believe to be signs of the End Times for this world, too. More worrisome to me, the news media, keen on helping gun control along and ratings up, remind us now that there are 24 gun murders daily in the US and more than ten times this number of people shot daily. We can see all this as reason to worry...
Looking for a different idea for Date Night with your husband or wife? How about a visit to Old Town? Lots of places have one. Lompoc, California’s Old Town includes a one-room school house, a building made of diatomaceous earth, and Sissy’s Cafe, where you can stop for a wine tasting if you make it a midday date night. Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Old Town offers a special End of...
CJ, half of the husband-wife team who write The Great Jolly Hoombah blog (2017 update: sadly no longer online, so I have removed all links to it), hit me with an intriguing comment recently. He said the idea of owning your own needs in a marriage is “counter-intuitive.” He wrote, “Owning our own needs in a culture so thoroughly enabled to do the very opposite is a tall order...
What would you miss most about your partner in life if he or she were in a coma? Her income? His cooking? The gentle touch of a hand on your cheek? The “I love you” every morning? The orgasms? The wise advice when you don’t know what to do? The playfulness when you take yourself too seriously? If you were keeping a journal in hope of someday soon sharing your thoughts during...
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.
