Respect is just as important as love for a healthy marriage, and maybe even more important. Contempt (the opposite of respect, reflected in eye-rolling, a wrinkled nose, or a “yeah, right”) is a clear sign your marriage is in trouble, according to John Gottman, one of the best-known relationship researchers. When Jennifer R. Frei and Philip R. Shaver at the University of California...
At first read, a lot of folks think I must be daft to encourage anyone to Assume Love. It sounds like it would let a spouse just walk all over you. I am not the sort of person who lets anyone walk all over me. But I was, for my first 34 years, the sort who unknowingly walked around assuming a few things that robbed me of the great marriage I could have had. When my husband rather abruptly dropped...
Want more respect from the woman you married? These should help. Be you, at your best. Find more ways to use your greatest strengths (creativity, humility, generosity, gratitude, perseverance, curiosity, social intelligence, integrity, leadership, perspective, bravery, etc.) when you are with her. Show more affection. Without affection, women have a hard time paying attention to anything else...
Ken Solin, a 50+ guy looking for love, decided to try something new. He wrote about it in the Huffington Post last Wednesday. I think you might find what he said interesting for your own marriage. I had noticed that in great relationships the partners were also best friends. Alternatively, I had never seen a bad relationship that embraced friendship. He set out to find a female best friend. And...
I just read this quote about marriage in the Times of Malta: Marriage does not end with divorce but the moment a couple stops loving and respecting each other, Michael and Juliet Mifsud believe. They are a happily married couple, married for 16 years. They are both Catholics, but they favor a divorce law, the subject of a referendum in Malta yesterday. I do not disagree with the Mifsuds about the...
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.
