Why do married people fight? Often they fight to protect what they believe their spouse might take from them. Married life will wear you out if you must constantly watch out for your own interests. What to do instead? Start practicing looking for Third Alternatives if you need relief from this exhausting job. They also fight to increase intimacy. A good fight makes you feel your lives are more...
What an awesome responsibility, to become the parent of a child. When you have taken care of feeding them and protecting them from harm, you still want to give them all the love they need and all the advantages you can offer. You teach them to walk, do homework with them, take them to soccer practice, pay for their SAT prep classes. You monitor their television time, show them how to hold a...
When my wonderful friend Gill Othen celebrated her 33rd wedding anniversary in August, she added this comment on Facebook: "It’s funny — very few of my ‘gang’ at Durham have divorced, yet there seem to be very few people my age who haven’t been otherwise." I asked her for a guest post, then I clumsily never noticed it slip into my inbox until now, almost 3...
There are days when expectations creep up and try to rob me of the great relationship I have with my husband. Then I remember what I figured out the day I got my comeuppance, my karmic payback. My first husband died a day after I listed my unmet expectations for him. I was left to meet them for myself. Only then did I take stock of what he was doing for me instead of the things on my list. I...
Colon cancer patients, male and female, have a 14% lower risk of death if they are fortunate enough to be married when they get this awful diagnosis. This finding, from Penn State University’s College of Medicine and Brigham Young University, compares patients at the same stage of the disease. Married patients also were likely to be diagnosed at an earlier stage. Download my free Why Be...
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.
