Most people have never been asked to contemplate the question “What do you hope to achieve in your life, and what kind of person do you want to be?”
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We are used to thinking hard and planning our education, career, and perhaps buying our first home. Heck, we are able to spend countless hours on planning our next summer vacation! But I have met very few people in my life who have a plan for their life.
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?
Personally, I agree with Mauricio Abadi, author of the book Reality and/or Realities, and his definition of being in love:
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“When we fall in love, we don’t see our partner as he or she really is. Instead, the person of our desire serves as a screen onto which we project an idealized image of our perfect partner.”
Did you know that the determining factor in whether couples feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is 70% determined by the quality of their friendship with each other?
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But how do you know if your spouse is actually your friend?
What do you think when you see a senior couple walking and holding hands? I think about love, connection, that invisible force that’s still holding them together. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have that too, even when my wife and I are sitting in our rocking chairs together.
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In this post, we’re going to talk about an often overlooked kind of physical affection. Many couples have almost dropped it out of their repertoire even though it’s one of the easiest ways to increase intimacy and help you feel safe, accepted, and appreciated.
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.
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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.
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Serotonin controls sleep, memory, learning, temperature and—you guessed it—mood and behavior.
Here comes a simple truth.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.