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?
Let’s say you are the owner of a small shop somewhere where most of the people still know each other personally. A valued, long-time customer steps in.
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What do you do?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Have you ever listened to the instructions that airlines give you just before the airplane takes off? That is, to put on your own oxygen mask first before putting them on your kids.
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Why would the airline want you do that? Isn’t your duty as a parent to take care of your kids first? Actually, no. The reason is simple. Should you become faint from lack of oxygen, you won’t be much good to your kids at all! Many couples fail to see the same logic when it comes to their own relationship.
Imagine you meet a friend from your youth whom you’ve lost touch with. It’s been years since you saw each other. Sure, it’s a nice surprise and you’re both pleased to meet.
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But it feels a bit awkward, after so much time. It’s not the same anymore. There’s little to say aside from the usual “Do you have any kids?” or “Where do you work?”
The same thing happens to so many married couples. One day, they wake up and realize that the person lying next to them is a complete stranger.
What happened?
A romantic relationships study by the Huffington Post and Reader’s Digest (“The Normal Bar,” 2011) looked at more than 100,000 people. It found that boredom was the leading reason couples gave for infidelity.
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A full 71 percent of men and 49 percent of women who had affairs said they did so because they were bored. Boredom also leads spouses to try to escape dreary marriages in other dangerous ways, such as excessive drinking of alcohol, overeating, and pursuing hobbies outside the home (at the expense of family), to name just a few.
So, what can you do to avoid boredom in marriage?