Let’s say you intended to stay home with your babies, but now your full-time job is the only way to pay the rent and buy the groceries. Or perhaps you have a burning passion to launch a business, but it is not practical right now, because you want to be available to get your mate to dialysis appointments. Or you are this close to a college degree, but you cannot register for courses next...
Lots of folks seem convinced the biggest cause of unhappy marriages is poor communication. They may be right, except that they try to solve the problem by saying more or demanding their mate answer their accusations. Say you start off with the wrong assumption. For example, you mistake grumpiness for criticism because, like so many of us, you’re expecting someone who promised to love you...
“I’m not happy.” How awful to realize this, awful enough to make you want to make a big change, like leaving the person you imagined could make you happy for the rest of your life. “I’m scared silly” would be different. So would “I’m really angry, and I’m not going to take it any more.” “Not happy” carries no danger, no...
From a disturbing report on All Things Considered, right before the start of this year’s Smart Marriages Conference: “Many of these parents are children of divorce — born in the early ’80s when divorce rates peaked. Today, these parents say they’d rather raise a child alone or with multiple partners than risk putting that child through a divorce.” I want to...
Almost all of us feel stuck at times, stuck with responsibilities, routines, and chores, stuck heading in whatever direction we set off in for our lives, stuck living the way we have been living. All of us do. Married folks do, dating folks do, single folks completely on their own do. But when you’re married, it looks for all the world like your spouse is holding up the barricade keeping...
