Tag: marriage

Marriage isn’t a cake that you put in the oven and check on in 15 years. You need to be an active participant in cultivating, nurturing, and energizing your relationship with your partner. This is particularly important given that American Psychological Association has found that 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce and 60-70% of second marriages end in divorce. Having a strong, satisfying marriage over time will have an unparalleled impact on your day-to-day happiness and long-term feelings of well-being.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.” ~ Michel De Montaigne

Many relationships suffer from a lack of self-esteem. A relationship’s self-esteem is connected to that of the partner’s, but it also has a life of its own. Genuine esteem is founded in the courage to see oneself truly, both the positive and negative aspects of who we are and how we function and malfunction in the world.

You can change all of that. It’s simple. Maybe not easy, but simple.

Think about flying. When the oxygen masks come down, you’re supposed to put that mask on yourself before helping anyone else. There’s a reason for that. If you pass out from oxygen deprivation, you can’t help anyone.

Translate that into regular day-to-day life. If you’re exhausted, you can’t do everything that’s expected of you; forget anything you just want to do.

There’s no way to avoid feeling negative and sometimes resentful of others when we run ourselves ragged. That is a definite recipe for relationship disaster. No matter who the relationship is with—everyone suffers.

“Love and relationship is meant to be more than a safety net, that companion. A pet can provide that. A lover will give you more.”

How can we increase the possibility of developing more within a growing relationship and not just a casual approach to a marriage that leads no where? We visualize this false perception of being a couple after a few dates when our partner has a completely different idea of what dating means.

We all want transparency. Guessing games become filled with unnecessary anxieties about where we fit within the relationship.

If your spouse was a victim of childhood or teen sexual abuse, she may be unknowingly bringing some of the aftereffects of her abuse into the marriage bed. It can be confusing and frustrating for both of you, blaming yourselves or each other for a lack of connection and intimacy you can’t explain. However, there are ways in which you can support her in feeling safe and loved so that she can open up to deeper and richer experiences of sexual intimacy.

When you are part of a couple, it is best to know that conflict is inevitable and baked into the cake of relationship. The issue is not whether you have conflict, but rather how you deal with it when it arises.

Let’s first review some unhealthy ways of fighting that lead to a further divide: physical explosions and/or physical contact during anger, shutting down, avoiding, criticizing, blaming, yelling, using abusive name-calling or words, using past experiences as evidence to make a point, referring to other people’s opinions to support your argument, public demonstrations of anger, being dismissive and belittling, starting your statements with "You always..." or "You never..."

We have all heard this before "I just wish it was easier." A friend wishing their partner could just see their point of view more often, that their spouse didn’t travel so much, or that they just had a little more money to afford that house they wanted.

The truth is even in some of the most perfect relationships we could still say, "I wish it was a little easier" because sharing your life and your world with another person is never a piece of cake.

But the question is how do you know if you’re working hard enough? Or is it that you’re working too hard and it’s just not worth it anymore? How do you know if you and your partner are both working equally towards a common goal?