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...
Sometimes, it seems it must be awfully difficult to keep a marriage going for very long. After all, for every two couples marrying in the U.S. each year, another couple gets divorced. But it’s really not true caring for each other as long as we vow rests on anything as random as a coin toss. Saturday, in London’s Westminster Cathedral, 700 couples married for ten years or more renewed...
You want to work, take a class, quit your job, stay in touch with your friends, get your exercise by dancing, offer a relative a place to stay for the night. Your husband or wife isn’t happy about this. What do you do? First, remember to Expect Love. It’s what you’re married for. You need it. But when you demand love come in a particular package, you chase it away. Don’t...
Michael Buday and Diana Bijon wanted to share a last name: hers. On Monday, he finally got his new driver’s license with the name Michael Bijon. He sued the State of California–and got a change in the law–when they told him it would cost $350 and require court appearances to get a name change women can make for free. According to Reuters, only nine other states include this...
Long-term, stable marriages have at least five positive exchanges for each negative exchange. Drop below that, and you’re in trouble. This comes from one of the best known marriage researchers, John Gottman. He has a remarkable track record of predicting the state of your marriage four years later based on watching only a 15-minute conversation about some problem the two of you face. What...
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.
