I had a great Mother’s Day weekend. Mom came for four days. My son and daughter-in-law came for an evening. Five friends joined us for brunch on Sunday, before we headed off to an outdoor festival. But it was my husband Ed that I noticed most. We have a small, efficient kitchen for one, and we seldom try to cook together. But that’s what we did for Sunday brunch. We know what sets...
My advice to Assume Love applies only in a marriage or another relationship in which both partners have made a commitment to the longevity of the relationship. Until then, it might be wise to Assume the Worst. When you assume love, you deliberately seek out evidence of your mate’s love for you. Any actions with an ambiguous cause you can safely attribute to love because you have a partner...
I’ve just finished reading You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore: Turn Your Resentful, Angry, or Emotionally Abusive Relationship into a Compassionate, Loving One by Steven Stosny, PhD. What a great resource for anyone in a marriage where they are walking on eggshells! Stosny, a psychologist who runs programs for abusive men, credits his abused mother for suggesting the core of his...
Before I started assuming love, I engaged in the very popular “Isn’t my spouse awful?” game, as both instigator and player. To get it started, you ask your sister or people at work, or maybe even the stranger seated next to you on the bus, to confirm that there’s something terribly wrong with your spouse. You plead with them to agree that you’ve married someone...
Dr. Norval Glenn, sociologist at The University of Texas at Austin, with Elizabeth Marquardt, recently surveyed 1,500 18 to 35 year olds and interviewed another 70 in depth. Half were children of divorce, half were not. No more than a third had their lives improved by their parents’ divorce. Norval reports, “if there is violence or extreme conflict, or if the marriage is so bad it...
