When you’re facing a big, hairy problem, you can curl up in a little ball and beg your spouse to solve it for you. Or you can come up with a possible solution and try to talk your spouse into joining you in implementing it. Most of the time, both of these will just leave you with a big, hairy problem and an unhappy relationship. Since, of course, you deserve better, these will probably also...
When you’re upset about any other part of life with your husband, wife, or life partner, it’s likely you will start noticing your differences, too. How compatible do you need to be to keep the relationship going? Compatibility has two sides: propriety and enthusiasms. Marry someone whose ideas of what’s proper and what’s not differ wildly from yours and you’ll...
It’s January. Time for all those post-holiday arguments. You two have different goals for the new year. You have different hurts left over from last year. You have different fears, different challenges ahead. You have different ideas of how important those threats or challenges will be. You have different ideas how to deal with them. Break out the arguments. And crank up the stakes. Your...
After tonight’s teleclass on Divers (people with one interest they keep going deeper into) and Scanners (people with so many interests they can’t choose one) and how they can get along, someone sent me this question. Diver and Scanner couple. My husband does not understand all my piles. He calls them my “droppings.” I think of them as my “stations.” I...
Need some marriage advice to help you through a disagreement? Mine would include this: Stay away from www.sidetaker.com! What in the world are the anonymous folks behind this new website thinking? It’s the “Isn’t My Spouse Awful?” game taken to a revolting new level: invite everyone on the web to take sides in your dispute. Instead of resolving your differences and...
