Men are really not complicated creatures. They are pretty easy to figure out.
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So why is then that so many women don’t get them?
Categories
Men Are Stupid
Tag: Focus on the good stuff
Why is it only when we are about to lose something that we begin to appreciate what we have?
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How is it that things that once used to be extremely important to us slowly become irrelevant—until they are threatened?
If you are bickering with your spouse a lot, odds are that you get on edge fairly frequently.
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Traffic is horrible, and you’re yelling in your car at the jerk who pulled right in front of you. You hate your f#$&%@$ job, and your boss is such a jerk. Then you get home, hoping to find some peace and rest. Not today. Here we go again and the fight starts, usually for some utterly unimportant reason.
Then your son comes with a request.
But the poor kid isn’t aware what’s going on. So he feels your wrath too as you snap at him.
So what do you do?
The Gottman Institute did a study that shows that many marriages end due to a loss of intimacy and connection, especially 10 to 12 years into the relationship. Well, that’s not surprising.
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But what’s interesting is that a “silent drift apart” typically starts much earlier.
If you’re rolling your eyes at your partner, and you do that regularly, we already know you’re going to divorce. What?!?
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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.
Even the most die-hard lovers eventually discover that their loved one is not “perfect” after all. For some, this represents major frustration.
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For others, this is a reason to start contemplating a way out. Here’s the thing. You can look for the perfect person your whole life, but this will only make you permanently unhappy.
Here’s why.
When relationship troubles start, we tend to point a finger in another direction, mainly at our spouse. “I’ve tried everything…” (I’ve tried to change him/her, but it doesn’t work.)
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We know to the last detail what they would have to do (and then, everything would be fine). We know exactly how they need to change so then we can get our relationship back on track again. The problem is, changing other people is a hard job. Changing your spouse is even harder. And it almost never works. Here’s what you can do instead.
When my wife and I were in our deepest trouble, one of the “themes” was our relentless focus on the things that didn’t work.
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I know all too well how horrible it feels when your life mate starts to see only things they don’t like. Things you screwed up (again). Sometimes it seems they are on a mission to prove that they are right (and you are wrong).
[callout]Sometimes it feels like your spouse is deliberately overlooking the overwhelming number of things that do work. The scary part is that even the most loving couples can get hung up on negative beliefs about each other pretty easily, without even noticing.[/callout]
Have you ever been on a diet? Has it ever happened that while you were going toward the fridge, you were telling yourself, “I shouldn’t eat that cake, I really shouldn’t.”
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Then your hand somehow got into the fridge. You actually saw it going in there! You grabbed the plate with the cake, took it out, and ate it. What happened?
It’s no small feat, spending 18,000 days with another human being. And be able to do so happily? Marriage isn’t the honeymoon on a remote beach—it’s day five of vacation #19 that you take together.
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Marriage is not a celebration for buying your first house—it’s having dinner in that house for the 3,285th time. And it’s certainly not Valentine’s Day or a barbecue party for your birthday.
Marriage is Forgettable Tuesday. Together.
So I’ll leave the butterflies, the roses, your heartbeat chanting your loved one’s name, the kisses in the rain, and the three-times-a-day sex to you—you’ll work that part out, I’m sure.
This post is about the best way to make Forgettable Tuesday (and all others that follow) happy ones.