In probably the most reliable survey ever done on divorce, by Joan Kelly, Ph.D. and Lynn Gigy, Ph.D from the Divorce Mediation project in Corte Madera, California, only 20% to 27% of couples said an extramarital affair was even partially to blame for their divorce.
In contrast, 73% to 80% of divorced men and women said their marriage broke up because they gradually grew apart and lost a sense of closeness, because they didn’t feel loved and appreciated.
The facial muscles that make you smile when you laugh are coincidentally (or not!) neighboring the very part of the brain that is also responsible for the production of serotonin.
Serotonin controls sleep, memory, learning, temperature and—you guessed it—mood and behavior.
Here comes a simple truth.
If you’re rolling your eyes at your partner, and you do that regularly, we already know you’re going to divorce. What?!?
Dr. John Gottman and University of California, Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson found that this single behavior is so powerful that they can use it—along with other negative behaviors such as repetitive criticism, sarcasm, and stonewalling—to predict divorce with 93% accuracy.
Trust is like love. Both parties have to feel it before it really exists. While trusting and being trustworthy are related, they are not the same thing.
In this post you’re going to discover the Trust Formula and the most important elements of trustworthiness. It will show you which areas you should focus on in order to fix shaken trust or to avoid breaking it in the first place.
I was a really bad listener for a very long time, and truth be told, so was my wife. We sucked at just listening. We often became irritated, or even angry at each other before we got a chance to get to the point.
Looking back, I realize there was a simple, yet not immediately obvious, reason.
When you’re in love with someone you’re going to organize your schedule to make them a priority. Then you get married and you kind of get accustomed to having each other around.
Gradually, everything else seems more important, and the relationship drifts to the bottom. Then one or the other partner (or both!) get dissatisfied, and they start looking for excitement and adventure elsewhere.
You might remember the Lieutenant Columbo TV series, with Columbo played by Peter Falk? For the uninitiated, Lt. Columbo was that trenchcoat-wearing, cigar-smoking television detective of the Los Angeles Police Homicide Bureau. The show ran off and on from 1971 to 2003.
Columbo was an exceptionally successful detective. He used his humble ways and ingenuous demeanor to put people at ease, allowing them to open up and tell him things they otherwise wouldn’t. Here’s how this relates to your conversations with your spouse.
You’d probably laugh and call me crazy if I told you I’m expecting to see the sunset in the east. You and I both know this won’t happen.
You may find this example to be silly, and yet I see many couples living in misery because in their relationship they are expecting to see the sunset while looking to the east.
By doing so, they are setting themselves up for perpetual disappointment and frustration. This post covers the 9 most damaging expectations that can break up any relationship and keep you miserable and unhappy for a very long time.
This post is about proven ways and “best practices” that will split your relationship right down the middle. These methods work flawlessly, no matter what stage—or state—your relationship is in right now.
As a special bonus, you’re going to learn how to become a jerk in your loved one’s eyes (or how to become a greater one).
You become what you think about. You’ve heard this saying before, right? Similarly, a happy or an unhappy marriage always starts with a thought.
How couples think and what partners believe to be true about each other matters much more than lack of communication. If negative beliefs prevail they can kill any relationship, including yours. This post is about how you can prevent this from happening and directly influence how you and your mate think about and perceive each other.
