Marriage Counseling

Break Free From The Affair Review

2011-01-13T01:26:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! For this post, I decided to talk about a guide I came across. It is called "Break Free From The Affair". One of my readers e-mailed me and asked if I recommend it or not. To be honest, I had never looked tried this guide. I decided though that I will go ahead and buy this guide and give a full review on it.

So first off, what is Break Free From The Affair? It is pretty self-explanatory. It is a guide offering information on how one can break free from an affair. Having a spouse or a mate cheat on you can be very difficult. So many thoughts and emotions run through your mind, and it's hard to break free from that vicious cycle. That is where a guide like Break Free From The Affair was created for.

So, is the guide any good? I spent a few hours tonight looking through it and I am highly impressed by this. There is a lot of good information and a lot of different topics are covered. For instance, will time heal things? Can the marriage be saved? Is it ok to spy on your partner? etc. It is quite a comprehensive set of information.

I should note, not only is there the e-book itself, but there is also a lot of other information that comes with this package including e-books covering some of the other topics related to Affairs and there are even audio coaching sessions. The coaching sessions itself total at least 5 hours. While I was able to look at the various guides, I wasn't able to listen to every single one of the coaching sessions. But from what I heard, they sounded really good.

I must say, looking at all of this information, I really wish I had this 3 years ago. As some of you may know, I was cheated on by the person that I thought was my soulmate. It took a long time to get over. I noticed a lot of what I saw in this guide I didn't learn for myself until months and months after the breakup. So like I said, it would have been nice to know about this guide back then.

In conclusion, I highly recommend all my readers check out Break Free From The Affair. If you have recently been cheated on, this guide is a must-have in my opinion. I should also note, there is a money-back guarantee. So if you find that it doesn't help, you will be able to get your money back. Anyway, good luck! Remember, you have the strength to get over this affair :)

Link:

Official Website of Break Free From The Affair

Marriage Counseling - Using The Waiter Rule

2010-01-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

Working my way through college, I waited tables and tended bar. Though I have several degrees with an emphasis on human behavior and psychology, I swear I learned more about people from slinging hash and pouring drinks. I can remember accidentally spilling a few drops of an ice cream drink on a lady’s skirt and being totally humiliated as she screamed at me in the restaurant. I also recall a very kind man who didn’t get upset even though there were repeated problems with his order.

Rudeness to service staff reveals information about a person’s character reported in a recent article in USA Today. Office Depot CEO Steve Odland, who also waited tables as a teenager, states, “You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats a waiter.” It seems that he is not the only CEO to discover the “Waiter Rule.”

The Waiter Rule has been identified by many executives, including Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. There is one rule that Swanson says never fails: “A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.” Swanson first identified this phenomenon when he was eating with a man who became irate to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.

“Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with,” Swanson writes. “Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.”

The Waiter Rule has also been noticed on the dating scene. A November survey of
2,500 by It’s Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette. Some waiters report that women will actually pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped to obtain insight into his use of money and other tendencies.

The Waiter Rule can also apply to how people treat those in other service roles like bellmen, hotel maids, clerks and secretaries according to USA Today. This can be more indicative of someone’s character than all the charm you experience in the relationship.

Using the Waiter Rule can be an accurate predictor of character because it isn’t easily learned or unlearned. It is more likely a person’s true colors and speaks to how they were raised and their value system. How a potential partner treats a waiter may be how they will treat you.

Some behaviors that indicate a problem:

*Playing the power card. Comments like “I could buy this place,” or “Do you know who I am?” reveal more about the diner’s character than his wealth or power. It is unlikely that he will be compassionate to you if he is consumed with power and control.

*Having a short fuse. This person may have an ego that is out of control. It is a way of saying that she is better than the wait staff; she is special. These people tend not to be collaborative in relationships.

*Demanding about every detail. You may be looking at a micro-manager who consistently sends the message that your efforts are not good enough. He may be critical and demeaning rather than supportive and encouraging.

*Speaking in a condescending manner. The message here is clear; she thinks she is better than those in subordinate positions. She may have a need to feel important by putting others down.

*Making a public scene. If he embarrasses you in the restaurant, he will embarrass you at home. At best he has poor manners, at worst, his judgment is faulty. Either way, he will not make a good partner.

*Easily turning on and off the charm. These folks have situational values, which may also indicate situational ethics. People with firm character adhere to their value system regardless of the circumstances. Avoid these people like the plague.

*Constantly looking around the room. Rather than being focused on the table conversation, he is distracted and not engaged. He may be looking to see who else is there or whether he is being noticed. Regardless, he will have the same behavior with you in other settings.

*Poor tipper. She may justify leaving a poor tip with various complaints about the service or the waiter. Anyone who has ever worked in a service industry knows that it is very hard work with a low base pay. If the service is adequate, a 15% tip is customary. A twenty percent or more gratitude is standard for exceptional service.

Try using the Waiter Rule whether you are evaluating a partner in a relationship. You may save yourself a lot of future problems by dining out.

Marriage Counseling, When To Save Your Marriage?

2010-01-07T02:12:00.000-08:00

Happiness and fulfillment are two great components of a successful marriage. The absence of which, along with other things, may eventually cause marital disasters.

The most basic principle that marriage counseling teaches is to save an existing relationship from total destruction and to lead both of the couple back to the path of marital bliss. Though marriage counseling may work for some, the truth remains to be the truth- there are marriages that may never be saved.

For both conditions, there are corresponding reasons and factors. Many of these will be discussed in the succeeding paragraphs. But the bottom line for both factors is that the willingness of both parties to restore the broken relationship is actually the ultimate driving factor.

There are several reasons why couples seek marriage counseling. This is but natural, for there are endless possibilities why how people create conflicts in their marriages. Though it is widely accepted that all marriages are bombarded with difficulties some time in their lives, it is sad to note that many don't seem to override them. And most drop into the pitfall of divorce.

The most natural conditions by which marriage counseling is often sought are when couples feel frustration, extreme sadness and severe hurt. These are frequently not new between the couples and had been growing around for years. Unfortunately, the only time that people enter marriage counseling is when the relationship is already on the edge of breaking down. This is reason enough why young couples or those that are yet starting to sense fraction in their relationship have the greater chance of fixing the marriage.

It is not wrong to aspire for happiness. But it is not often that way. To get rid of further troubles, it is wise to accept this reality and to work towards achieving happiness on a more sensible and realistic approach. Marriage demands hard work. It obliges the couple to commit themselves to the consequences of their relationship. They often need to suspend their egos and to drop down the claim for who is right to get around the issues that may send them shouting over dinners. Agreeing to drop the "who is right" thing is a crucial part of both the marriage and marriage counseling. Without this, everything may all be in vain.

It may have been observed that throughout this article, saving the marriage is only the central discussion. But how about for those couples who insist for divorce? Marriage counseling may also answer for that. However, it may be a much longer process, especially when children are at stake. If the marital relationship may not be saved, then the best solution to this is for the couples to transform into friends or willing co-parents towards the growth of their children. This way, pain may be lessened while contributing to a much constructive process.

During the stage of dissolution, extreme pain and other mixes of emotions may be felt. This state may be further aggravated by the obvious emotional and physical separation. For the majority of cases, this state may come to the level of mourning and distress. Marriage counseling may be of best help during this condition as it may help to bring out unexpressed emotions between the couples.

Once the signs of marriage destruction have made themselves transparent for the couples, it is best to seek marriage counseling in the earliest possible time. Or you might be too late to save the relationship.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Marriage Counseling - Urgency Addiction

2010-01-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

Lori Zimmermann of Santa Barbara, California, worked for a large international retail organization for eight years. She entered corporate America with the intent to stay and make a career. But after eight years, she called it quits and started freelancing to have more control over her work hours and her life.

“I never felt finished at work,” she explains. “While I could maintain the status quo, I really couldn’t make it better. We worked up to 60 hours a week just to get the job done. It wasn’t directly said you had to do it, but everyone else was working that hard, so you just felt it was expected.”

She walked away from a guaranteed salary, a benefit structure, and stock options to have flexibility and control over her time. “Although it has certainly made things tougher financially, I’ve never regretted my decision,” she states.

She is not alone. More and more workers are questioning their role in corporate American and it’s “ASAPs” climate. Today’s corporate culture is “hooked” on urgency where everything is a priority, needing to be done yesterday. This “urgency addiction” has become a way of life, a workaholic culture. Company routine revolves around a series of emergency “fires” that need extinguishing immediately. Employees run from project to project with caffeine energy and buckets of sand. Sprinkling a little sand here, a little there, they feel exhausted at the end of the day, yet cannot point to any specific accomplishment or finished project.

Urgency addiction permeates today’s organizations and affects all who work there. It produces an adrenaline rush of feeling important, but soon leads to exhaustion and burn out. Those who attempt to fight it by asking, “But, which one is the priority?” are told, “Everything is a priority.” Employees dance as fast as they can but fall increasingly behind.

Workers try to compensate by taking work home, coming in early, or sacrificing time on weekends to improve productivity with no interruptions. This additional effort is usually rewarded with yet another project, another area of responsibility, and more simmering fires to extinguish.

By accepting bonuses, promotions, stock options, and buy-outs, boomers are trapped with “golden handcuffs” that make it difficult to leave, hard to stay, and impossible to say “no.” Money becomes the goal rather than a means to an end. Workers find that each rung of the success ladder only takes them to a higher level of urgency addiction. As one executive explained, “I’m at the top, but I don’t like the view.”

Some techniques to fight urgency addiction in your life:

*Review your calendar at the beginning of the week. Highlight the priorities and goals for each day. This will help you to narrow your focus. While unexpected emergencies may occur, you will be much less likely to be in a reactive mode if you take time to plan.

*Avoid hop-scotching. Resist hopping from one project to another without finishing what you start. You know what I mean; you start cleaning up a pile on your desk and then decide to create a file system. When you go to look in the files, you realize they have to be thinned, and so on. Finish one thing before you move on to something else.

*Do big projects first. You may have a tendency to gravitate to the projects or work that is easy to do. These often tend to be small projects that are “no-brainers.” Possibly you kid yourself that if you just clean up these small projects, you can give your full attention to the big things. The problem is never getting around to the large projects. So start with the ones you really don’t want to do and the small ones will get done along the way.

*Have a sign over your desk that reads:
Lack of planning on your part…
is not necessarily an emergency for me.

Marriage Counseling - Seven Tips To Live Longer

2009-12-29T02:10:00.000-08:00

We have all heard the stories; the executive retires in Spring and dies before the first Winter snowfall. While some may conclude that the former exec just couldn’t adjust to retirement, it is more likely that they burned themselves out working. That is, years of shortchanging their own personal well-being finally caught up with them.

It is so easy to get trapped on the treadmill of demanding schedules and too many priorities using caffeinated energy to get things done. It is often self-care that gets put on the shelf first because there just isn’t time to exercise and eat right. Yet, there is increasing research that even small lifestyle changes can be a major factor in a long healthy life.

Some suggestions:

• Keep a long fuse. Scientists use to believe that “Type A’s,” those people driven by ambition, were most at risk for heart attacks. But recent research demonstrates that it is not striving for goals that have people dropping like flies; it is being hostile, angry and cynical. A hostile disposition is also dangerous once cardiovascular disease sets in. Dr. Murray Mittleman, a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, interviewed 1623 men and women who had heart attacks. He found that the risk of having an attack was twice as great in those that were angry in the two hours before the incident.

• Lighten up. There is increasing evidence linking depression to heart disease. Johns Hopkins researchers interviewed 1551 people in the early 1980’s who were free of heart disease. They followed up fourteen years later and found that those who reported a history of a major depression were four times as likely to have a heart attack as those not depressed.

• Get off the couch. Not only for weight control, better circulation, reduced risk of diabetes, but exercise actually works as an anti-depressant. In a recent study at Duke University, 60 % of clinically depressed people who took a brisk 30-minute walk at least three times per week were no longer depressed after 16 weeks. Increasingly psychiatrists are finding that exercise can often work as well as anti-depressants for the mildly depressed individual.

• Flatten the middle. It’s been more than 50 years since French scientist Jean Vague noted that people with a lot of upper-body fat (those that look like apples, rather than pears), often developed heart disease, diabetes and other ailments. Since the introduction of CT and MRI scans, Drs. have discovered that a visceral fat, located within the abdomen was strongly linked to these diseases. The good news is that this type of fat also burns off the fastest. This is why even a small reduction in weight can reverse the deadly factors of heart disease.

• Limit bad habits. Heavy drinking, smoking, overeating, and overcaffeinating are major factors in the development of heart disease and other problems. It has been found that both drinking and smoking tend to increase the abdominal fat that puts folks at risk for heart disease. Excessive caffeine increased blood pressure to dangerous levels for people experiencing job stress.

• Fire up your metabolism. New research shows that a healthy metabolic profile counts far more than cardiovascular fitness or weight alone. In a Japanese study, a group of men were put on a low-intensity exercise program for one year. Although they did not lose weight, nor improve their cardiovascular fitness, their metabolic health improved dramatically (measured by how well the body utilizes insulin). States Glenn A. Glaesser of the University of Virginia, “Metabolic fitness is one of the best safeguards against heart disease, stroke and diabetes.”

• Approach sleep like Goldilocks—Just right. In a recent study of 72,000 nurses published in the January Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers found that getting too little sleep—or too much—may raise the risk of developing heart disease. Women who averaged five hours or less of sleep a night were 39% more likely to develop heart disease than those that got eight hours. And nine or more hours of shuteye was associated with a 37% higher risk of heart disease.

Your best investment for the future is in your health today.

Marriage Counseling - How Is The Health Of Your Relationship?

2009-12-26T02:09:00.000-08:00

The best relationships are friendships that catch fire. How well do you know your partner and their view of the world? Answer the following questions to find out.

1. I understand my partner’s philosophies about life.
Yes No

2. I consider my partner to be my very best friend.
Yes No

3. We often touch and kiss for no particular reason.
Yes No

4. I call my partner several times a day.
Yes No

5. I understand my partner’s dreams for the future.
Yes No

6. We find our sex life is fun and satisfying.
Yes No

7. We touch base everyday about how our day is going.
Yes No

8. If I have a problem, I talk with my partner.
Yes No

9. We have scheduled activities that we look forward to.
Yes No

10. We have similar values and goals.
Yes No

11. I think that my partner has high integrity.
Yes No

12. I can’t wait to get home at the end of the day.
Yes No

13. We have favorite traditions for many of the holidays.
Yes No

14. I feel that my partner respects me.
Yes No

15. We enjoy many of the same activities.
Yes No

16. My partner understands my family.
Yes No

17. My partner makes me laugh.
Yes No

How many “Yes” answers did you have?

15 or more: You have a strong relationship built on friendship.

9-14: You have a good base but additional work will enhance your relationship. This is a good time to utilize additional tools.

8 or fewer: Get busy or you and your partner risk drifting apart.

If you scored an 8 or below, check out my recommendation on how to save your marriage. I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Marriage Counseling - Are You A Workaholic?

2009-12-23T02:08:00.000-08:00

Justin, a thirty-five year old executive at a high-pressure investment firm works 60-70 hours per week. Even on vacation, he often slips away from the rest of the family to go on-line, check messages and answer phone calls. Until recently, he saw nothing abnormal about his behavior; in fact, everyone at his job works like that.

In the United States, we value work. Americans labor longer hours than workers in any other industrialized nation. In fact, in Western Europe, Americans are viewed as a “nation of workaholics.”

According to a 1998 study by the Families and Work Institute in New York, the average American now works 44 hours of work per week, which represents an increase of 3.5 hours since 1977. This is far more than the workers in France (39 hours per week) and Germany (40). According to a new report from the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO), “Workers in the United States are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world.”

The ILO statistics show that in 2000, the average American worked almost one
more week of work than the year before; working an average of 1,978 hours – up from 1,942 hours in 1990. Americans now work longer hours than Canadian, Japanese, or Australian workers.

What are we working for? It’s not vacations. The typical American worker has an average of two weeks of vacation as compared to four - six weeks for their European counterparts.

For happiness? According to regular surveys by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, no more Americans report they are “very happy” now than in 1957, despite near doubling in personal consumption expenditures. Indeed, the world’s people have consumed as many goods and services since 1950 as all previous generations put together, yet report that they are not any happier.

There are many costs in working so hard. People tend to cut back on sleep and time with their families. A recent survey found that almost a third of people working more than 48 hours a week said that exhaustion was affecting married life. Nearly a third admitted that work-related tiredness was causing their sex life to suffer, and 14% reported a loss of or reduced sex drive. They also complained that long hours and overwork led to arguments and tensions at home. Two out of five people working more than 48 hours a week blamed long hours for disagreements and said they felt guilty at not pulling their weight with domestic chores.

So how do you know if your job has turned into workaholic habits? Here are some of the warning signs:

*Your home is organized just like another office.
*Colleagues describe you as hard working, needing to win, and overly committed.
*You keep “technology tethers” like cell phones, pagers and laptops with you all times, even on vacations.
*Friends either don’t call anymore, or you quickly get off the phone when they do call.
*Sleep seems like a waste of time.
*Work problems circle in your mind, even during time off.
*Work makes you happier than any other aspect of your life.
*People who love you complain about the hours you work and beg you to take some time off.

If you experience some of these warning signs on a regular basis, it may be time to
re-evaluate how you are handling work in your life. A healthy marriage takes time and commitment. Don't be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

How To Avoid Work Stress Hurting Your Marriage

2009-12-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

Work stress plays a very major role in hurting married life. Most of the men and women bring their stress home and play havoc with their married life. The stress spills over at home and creates further stress. Home should be used to dissolve the work stress. Home should be the place to relax and get comfort. Home should be the place where we get rid of the stress that we bring from outside. But opposite happens. Let us discuss how to avoid this and keep our home protected from any such stresses. Let us also discuss how home can help us fight these stresses.

The very first question should be - What is more important? Married life or work life? New work /job can be found, but getting another person to marry will be difficult. What about after retirement? Who will be with us- our spouse or our company? We never think about these issues. For us the stress at that moment is the center of our life. Our mind is occupied with that stress. Therefore when we reach home, we are ready to speak harshly, blame family members, showing irritation and express our frustration in many other ways.

Ideally, when we reach home, we should tell our spouse about the stress and ask help to get over it. He/she will find ways to comfort us. Prepare a comforting hot bath, putting on light music or your favorite television show. We should make our family a partner in our stress and not blame them for contributing to our work woes, because that is generally not the truth. A marriage can be a great cure for stressed life. It is not the place where you go and put all your blames. Bringing balance in life is most important. Make your marriage work for you. Don’t let your work damage your marriage.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Marriage, Caring For Each Other

2009-12-17T02:07:00.000-08:00

If you thought that a marriage could succeed on love alone, please rethink. Love is transitory. The mutual attraction or the infatuation that comes in the initial phase of love disappears soon. After that what is left is the feeling that he/she is mine and I am his/hers. We have to journey together.

How a marriage changes in character after love disappears? This can occur in many ways. For example, the couple may begin regretting the marriage after the finishing of initial love phase. Or the couple may continue together as a sense of duty with each other and begin making a life together without passionate love. That needs caring for each other.

If you look back and think of marriages few decades back, most of the couples cared for each other. They called it love. It was essentially caring. A mother cares for her children because they are her responsibility and they belong to her. Similarly, partners care for each other because they got married. This kind of thought process can take the marriage last forever. The different thought processes of I want my freedom. I made a mistake. I am not happy with you. I must search for somebody better and so on leads to break-up. This thought process is I centered, where as the earlier one I described was care centered. You are mine and I must care for you.

We have to learn to respect human beings. We have to set aside our selfish desires for some time. We have to think about destruction that takes place by frequent marriage and divorce. Developing the thought of care for each other can surely help in making a marriage last longer.

Are You Facing Emotional Abuse In Your Marriage?

2009-12-14T02:06:00.000-08:00

Those who have control and power can inflict emotional abuse. It is as bad as physical abuse. Some people call emotional abuse as worse than physical abuse. Let us discuss about emotional abuse.

Emotional abuse may leave deep scars on the psyche. In emotional abuse the perpetrator withholds all the emotional satisfaction from the victim. The self-dignity of the victim is bruised repeatedly and he/she is shown as a lesser person. Emotional abuse can take many forms. Devaluing the person is one such abuse. Giving no value to a person's intelligence and opinion, and repeatedly questioning his/her intelligence is one such abuse.

Public humiliation of a person is another kind of this abuse. To make someone feel inferior and laugh at him/her and make others join the fun is another form of emotional abuse. Feeling of safety is our emotional need. to make a person feel unsafe is another way of victimization. Threatening to leave that person alone without any help and terrorizing him/her is one such form.

Taking away financial freedom, making the person totally dependent on the abuser is another common abuse. Lack of money can stop the victim from enjoying some pleasures. Some abusers even withdraw the use of communication instruments such as telephone etc from the victim.

Emotional abuse can take many other such forms. these abusers are sadists who enjoy degrading a human being and destroying their emotional freedom. This is a crime against humanity. If you are undergoing the slightest emotional; abuse, please protest and protect yourself.

Making Marriage Work - Part 5

2009-12-11T02:05:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of this series, I described the fears of rejection and engulfment that underlie relationship problems.

In Part 2 of this 5-part series, I offered a simplified version of the Six Step healing process of Inner Bonding:
1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

Part 2 described what it means to be in Step One – what it means to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling behavior.

Part 3 described what it means to be in Step Two - choosing the intent to learn - using Joan’s and Justin’s marriage as an example.

Part 4 described how Joan used Steps 3 and 4 of Inner Bonding to deal with the issues in her marriage, discovering her beliefs and behavior that were causing her pain, and discovering the truth and loving action.

Now Joan moves into Step 5 – taking the loving action. She stops nagging Justin and starts taking care of her self. Instead of always waiting for Justin to come home, she makes plans to have dinner with a few of her girlfriends. When she comes back from dinner, she is happy to see Justin and he is happy to see her. He is especially happy to see that she is happy rather than angry with him.

Joan signs up for a dance class and gets back in practicing the piano. On those evenings when she has nothing planned, she gets into reading her mystery novels, which she loves. She stops telling herself that Justin doesn’t love her when he works a lot.

As Joan takes these loving actions in her own behalf, she moves into Step 6 of Inner Bonding - tuning in to how she is feeling. She notices that she is no longer feeling anxious, alone, and resentful. Instead, she is feeling happy and peaceful – regardless of whether or not Justin is there!

Much to Joan’s surprise, she finds that Justin is no longer working such long hours. She sees that what her Guidance told her is true – that Justin does love her and wants to be with her, but not when she is needy and resentful. By taking care of herself, Joan has completely changed the relationship dynamic between her and Justin – without ever even speaking with Justin about it! By taking care of herself instead of making Justin responsible for her happiness and sense of worth, her fear of rejection is well on the road to being healed. As long as she was rejecting herself, she would be reactive to Justin not being there. In no longer abandoning herself, she no longer feels abandoned by Justin.

While Justin has not done the inner work to heal his fears of rejection and engulfment – which he may or may not do – his fears have lessoned due to Joan’s loving behavior toward herself and toward him. Because his fears are no longer getting triggered by Joan, he wants to spend more time with her. In order for his fears to be healed, he would need to learn how to take loving care of himself in the face of another’s anger and criticism. If he learned to practice the Inner Bonding process, he could learn how to do this, but Joan has no control over whether or not he chooses to do his inner work. As long as Joan continues to take loving care of herself, she can create her own happiness within her marriage, and not be invested in whether or not Justin opens to learning about himself.

If Justin had continued to work long hours and showed no interest in having a closer relationship with Joan, then at some point Joan might have decided to leave the relationship. But most people leave far too soon. The time to leave is after doing the inner work necessary to develop a strong inner adult capable of taking loving care of your self. If, after doing this for a good period of time, your partner is still angry, distant and unavailable, you might consider leaving.

Often, it takes just one partner to change a dysfunctional relationship system. Before deciding that your marriage can never be what you want it to be, try practicing the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. You might be amazed at the results!

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Making Marriage Work - Part 4

2009-12-08T02:04:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of this series, I described the fears of rejection and engulfment that underlie relationship problems.

In Part 2 of this 5-part series, I offered a simplified version of the Six Step healing process of Inner Bonding:

1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

Part 2 described what it means to be in Step One – what it means to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling behavior.

Part 3 described what it means to be in Step Two - choosing the intent to learn - using Joan’s and Justin’s marriage as an example.

Part 4 continues with Joan and Justin, describing how Joan uses Steps 3 and 4 of Inner Bonding to deal with the issues in her marriage.

In Step 3 of Inner Bonding, Joan investigates her beliefs and behavior that is causing her pain. From a place within of compassion and curiosity, Joan dialogues with her feelings of anger, aloneness, fear and resentment. Imagining that she is a loving parent speaking with a hurting child, Joan asks her Inner Child questions:

Loving Adult Joan: Little Joanie, what am I thinking or doing that is causing you so much pain?

Inner Child Joanie: You keep telling me that Justin doesn’t love me anymore. You are scaring me so much. Whenever Justin works a lot, you tell me that he is working because he doesn’t love me anymore - that if he loved me, he would spend more time with me. You just keep telling me that there must be something wrong with me because Justin works a lot.

Now Joan moves into Step 4 – Dialoguing with her Higher Power/Higher Self. Joan imagines her personal concept of Spirit – God, Goddess, her own Higher Self, an inner mentor or teacher, or a spiritual guide.

Joan asks her Guidance: What is the truth about the belief that if Justin works late, he doesn’t love me?

Joan relaxes and opens, moving out of her thinking mind and allowing the information to come through her from her Guidance. This Guidance is always here for us and we can access the information when we are open to learning about the truth and about loving action toward ourselves. It takes some time, but eventually Joan receives the following information:

Higher Guidance: Sometimes Justin works late because he has a lot of work to do and it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes he works late because he is afraid of your blaming and nagging. He loves you, but he doesn’t always feel loved by you, and his way of dealing with feeling unloved by you is to stay away.

One way we know what is true and what is a lie is how it makes us feel. When Joan tells herself that Justin doesn’t love her, she feels alone and afraid. When she tells herself the above truth, she feels clear and peaceful.

Joan asks her Guidance: What are the loving actions toward myself? What actions would be in my highest good?

Higher Guidance: Instead of focusing on what Justin is doing and how much time he is spending with you, focus on what would be fun for you to do when he is late. His being late gives you a chance to catch up with your friends, to read, and to do the creative things you enjoy doing. You can also take the dance class you have wanted to take. You will feel much better when you just take care of yourself instead of making Justin responsible for you. He will want to spend more time with you when he sees you happy than when you are always unhappy and complaining.

In the final section of this series, we will see what happens with Joan as she moves through Steps 5 and 6 of Inner Bonding.

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Making Marriage Work - Part 3

2009-12-05T02:04:00.000-08:00

In Part 2 of this 5-part series, I offered a simplified version of the Six Step healing process of Inner Bonding:

1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

Part 2 described what it means to be in Step One – what it means to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling behavior.

We will now move on to Step Two: Choosing the intent to learn.

In Step Two, you open to learning about the your thoughts, beliefs and behavior that are causing your pain. You let go of believing that it is your partner who is causing your pain and you are willing to take full, 100% responsibility for your feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, hurt, rejection, abandonment, numbness, guilt, shame, aloneness or depression. In Step Two, you open to your Higher Self so that you can compassionately embrace your painful feelings and learn about what you may be doing to cause them.

For example, Joan feels angry, alone, rejected and abandoned because Justin spends a lot of time at work. Joan has been nagging Justin, judging him for his long hours and blaming him for her feelings. The result of this is that Justin has gotten even busier. He is obviously going into resistance, not wanting to be controlled by Joan.

Joan is using her anger and blame to avoid feeling her pain. She is addicted to having her eyes on Justin and making him responsible for her feelings. When he spends time with her, she feels happy and worthy, and when he doesn’t she feels anxious and insecure.

If Joan were to practice the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, she would start with Step One - welcoming and compassionately embracing her anger, aloneness, fear and resentment. She would be with these feelings just as a loving parent would be with a hurting child – with deep kindness and compassion toward herself.

Then, instead of going into her usual protective, controlling behavior of blaming Justin for her feelings with her anger, nagging and complaining, she would move to Step Two, opening her heart to learning about what she might be telling herself and how she might be treating herself that is actually causing her own pain. She would open to her older, wiser inner self, her Higher Self, to help her stay open to learning. She would choose to be curious about her own beliefs and behavior, rather than judgmental toward Justin or herself.

When Joan moves into Step Two, she is moving out of being a victim and into personal responsibility. This intent shift will immediately begin to change the interactions between Joan and Justin. When Joan shifts her intention from trying to control Justin with her anger, blame and complaints to learning about herself, her energy will completely shift. Justin will actually feel this energy shift, even if he is not in the same room as Joan. Energy is not local. We all unconsciously pick up when others are angry with us and when they are accepting and loving.

This intention shift is vital for healing a troubled relationship. As long as your eyes are on your partner and you are trying to get your partner to change to make you feel better, you will continue to have a dysfunctional relationship. At those times when you are willing to feeling your feelings and open to learning about how you are causing them, you will notice that your relationship quickly improves.

The shift out of trying to control your partner and into learning about loving yourself is one of the most major shifts you can make in your relationship.

In Parts 4 and 5, I will continue through the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, showing you how Joan uses these powerful Steps to heal her relationship with Justin.

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Making Marriage Work - Part 2

2009-12-02T02:03:00.000-08:00

(This is part 2 of a 5-part series on making marriage work)

Are you in a long-term relationship where you are either fighting a lot of the time or feeling distant, disconnected, and without passion? Or, do you find yourselves going along fine until a conflict arises, and then you can’t seem to find way to resolve it? Do you either try to win by getting angry and defensive, or give in to avoid the other’s anger and defensiveness? Do you find yourself shut down, numbed out, or resistant much of the time? Do you and your partner love each other, but resentment is building because of all the unresolved conflicts and communication problems?

Relationship issues occur when the dual fears of loss of another’s love (rejection) and loss of self (engulfment) have been triggered. Each of us has learned protective ways of trying to have control over getting the love we need and avoiding the pain we believe we can’t handle. As soon as one of these fears is triggered, we automatically go into our learned ways of protecting against pain and trying to control the other person into being the way we want them to be. When we get angry, give in, withdraw or resist, this protective, controlling behavior often activates our partner’s protective controlling behavior. The interactions that follow may be filled with anger, blame, judgment, defensiveness, explaining, denying, withdrawal and resistance. Love does not flourish in the face of these difficult interactions.

In this series, I will show you how the 6-Step process of Inner Bonding can be used to completely change your relationship.

A simplified version of The Six Steps are:

1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

We will start with Step One of Inner Bonding: Willingness. In Step One, you choose to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling, addictive behavior.

You cannot change your automatic reactive behaviors until you become aware of the feelings of fear that trigger them.

What do you feel in your body when someone gets angry, blaming, or judgmental toward you?

What do you feel in your body when someone shuts down, withdraws, or becomes resistant toward you?

Take a moment to tune into your body and see what it feels like when your fears of rejection or engulfment become triggered. What happens in your stomach, your throat, your heart, your arms and legs? Does your body fill with adrenaline and go into the fight or flight reaction – the stress response?

You cannot begin to react differently when your fears of rejection or engulfment are triggered until you know that fear is being activated. You will unconsciously continue to respond with your learned protections until you become conscious of what you are protecting against.

We have all learned many ways of avoiding feeling and being conscious of our feelings. All addictive behavior – substance abuse, process addictions, reactive behavior toward others, and judgmental thoughts toward ourselves – are ways of avoiding feeling the deep loneliness, as well as helplessness over the other person’s behavior and feelings, that is at the core of all addictive behaviors. When your partner behaves in some rejecting or controlling way toward you, this deep loneliness and helplessness is activated. But these are such difficult feelings to feel that most of us will turn to our learned addictive behaviors to avoid them. We will either try to have control over the other person by getting angry, judgmental or giving in, or we will try to control the pain of the loneliness with substance and process addictions.

The only way out of this is to be willing to feel the very challenging feelings of loneliness and helplessness over others and learn to manage these feelings rather than avoid them. If you were to learn to accept and manage these feelings rather than turn to your learned protective controlling behaviors, you would begin to change the dysfunctional relationship system that may be eroding your marriage.

The Six-Step Inner Bonding process is a process for moving out of your automatic reactive behavior and into kindness and compassion toward yourself and your partner. The remaining articles in this series will show you how to do this.

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Making Marriage Work - Part 1

2009-11-29T02:02:00.000-08:00

(This is part 1 of a 5-part series on making marriage work)

It was Joan’s first counseling session with me, but it didn’t take long before the tears began to stream down her cheeks. “I’m married to the man of my dreams, but I’m miserable,” she said, reaching a hand up to wipe away her tears. “We were so in love and now things are falling apart. We are fighting and distant much of the time. I love Justin and I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why this is happening. I seem to be getting angrier and angrier and he is getting more and more distant.”

“What are you angry about?” I inquired.

“Justin keeps pulling away from me. He’s working longer and longer hours. But even on the weekends when he is home, he just seems to be distant. He’s either watching TV, playing computer games, or in the garage working in his workshop. When I try to talk with him about it, he shuts down even more. We can’t talk at all anymore.”

Like Joan and Justin, many couples are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship system, wondering what happened to the love and passion they had at the beginning of their relationship.

Two major fears may be undermining your relationship with your partner:

Fear of rejection: the loss of another’s love through anger, judgment, emotional withdrawal, physical withdrawal, or death.

Fear of engulfment: the loss of self through being controlled, consumed, invaded, suffocated, dominated, and swallowed up by another’s demands.

Until these fears are healed, you will likely react defensively whenever they are triggered. Joan reacted by getting angry when her fears of rejection were activated, while Justin withdrew when his fears of engulfment were triggered. You might react in different defensive ways, but the result will be the same - your reactive behavior coming from your fears of rejection or engulfment will trigger your partner’s fears of rejection or engulfment. Now both of you are acting out of fear. Together you have created an unsafe space where love and intimacy will gradually erode.

Most of us have not learned to stay open when our fears of being rejected, abandoned, engulfed, or controlled are triggered. If, when these fears are activated, you focus on who is at fault or who started it, you perpetuate the problems. Blaming your partner for your fears, as well as for your own reactive, unloving behavior, makes the relationship feel unsafe.

You both end up feeling badly, each believing that your pain is the result of your partner’s behavior. You feel victimized, helpless, stuck, and disconnected from your partner. You desperately want your partner to see what he or she is doing that (you think) is causing your pain. You think that if your partner only understands this, he or she will change - and you exhaust yourself trying to figure out how to MAKE your partner understand.

Over time, passion dries up. Superficiality, boredom, fighting, and apathy take its place.

The dual fears of LOSING THE OTHER through rejection and LOSING YOURSELF through being swallowed up by the other are the underlying cause of unloving, reactive behavior. These fears are deeply rooted. They cannot be healed or overcome by GETTING someone else’s love. On the contrary, you must heal these fears before you can SHARE love - give and receive love - with your partner.

The key to doing this is learning how to create a safe inner space where you can work with and overcome your fears of rejection and engulfment. In this series, I will show you a powerful six-step process you can use to create and maintain the inner safety you need to become strong enough to love.

Only when you have achieved inner safety and inner strength can you create a safe relationship space. Joan gradually learned to stop attacking Justin and take loving care of herself whenever her fears of rejection surfaced. She learned to create inner safety when she felt threatened rather than trying to get Justin to make her feel safe from her fears.

You can do this too. In fact, any two people who are willing to learn to create their own inner sense of safety can also learn to create a safe relationship space where their intimacy and passion will flourish and their love will endure. The rest of the articles in this series will lead you through this six-step healing process.

~~~~~
For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Making A Business Plan For Your Marriage

2009-11-26T02:01:00.000-08:00

In working with companies to create business plans, I always start with a conversation about goal setting. How could you possibly create a business plan without a goal to achieve by working the plan? Clients are taught to create milestones to measure success along the way and they are held accountable for doing tasks to achieve each milestone. Tracking activities to reach the goals is critical. But before any of that can occur they have to dream.

Step One: Dream

When given the task of “goal setting” people typically start with an amount of money they’d like to earn. Sometimes they’ll have a clear idea of what they will do with that money, sometimes they just choose a dollar amount because they think they are supposed to do that.

In business there is an old story that’s been recycled for years about a graduating class from Harvard. On graduation day when the class was asked “do you have clearly written goals?” only 3% responded “yes”. Ten years later, the same group of people were assessed. The 3% that had clearly written goals were worth more than the other 97% of the class combined. Humm… I can’t think of any reasons not to set goals, just in case that story is accurate!

The key to goal setting is to be as specific as possible and create milestones to measure along the way to make sure you are on the right path working toward a longer term achievement. For example, if your goal is to earn more money, you first have to be more specific. How much money will you earn, by when will you earn it? What do you have to do to get there? Look for a new job? Ask for a raise? Sell a new account? Go back to school and finish your degree? What steps do you need to take to get to the earnings goal? Create a plan to move through each step with a timeline attached.

Step Two: Set Goals Together

Two things are important regarding goal setting as a couple. Number one, it’s fine to set individual goals, but you must share them with your spouse and make sure they fit with their goals. You both might want to earn a lot of money, but if one of you is working to earn money to send kids to college and the other is working to earn money to travel first class all over the world without kids, you both have nice dreams, but you may be out of whack as a couple.

My recommendation is to dream on your own first. It’s important that you discover what is important to you and share that with your partner. If you skip that part and go directly to step two, the more vocal or determined of the partnership will dominate the conversation and the other will go along with their goals, simply because they don’t have any other dreams to include in the master plan.

Setting goals together is an on-going activity. Check in with your partner on a consistent basis to see if their ideal dream today is the same as the plan they shared years (or months) ago.

Step Three: Create Your Dream in Pictures

It’s important to dream together in pictures. Most people on the planet are highly “visual” meaning, they think in pictures. When you are dreaming, dream big and allow your subconscious mind the opportunity to play along by creating a visual display of pictures of your dreams. The mind thinks and processes information in pictures. If you want to train your mind to deliver what you want, do it in pictures.

Why this isn’t a “no brainer” in a marital partnership I will never know. Why people are surprised to learn after years of marriage that one spouse wants to travel the world and the other dreams of spending free time visiting with family doesn’t make any sense. Dream together. Dream in pictures. Discuss your goals and plans together. If you are not on the same page, decide if it’s worth fighting for or if you want it because you think you should based on what we’ve been taught by society and the media.

Save some old magazines for an evening of cutting & pasting to create your dream in pictures. As you cut out a photo, describe to your partner why you chose that for your visual display. When you agree together on all the photos for your joint picture board you are ready to paste them onto a piece of cardboard to make a collage of dreams.

The most important part of creating the picture board of your dreams together is taping it to your refrigerator to remind each other everyday that you are working together toward a common dream. Keeping your dreams present makes it easier to stay connected to what’s important to you as a couple. Companies create business plans and hang mission statements in their lobby area to keep them focused, couples create picture boards for the fridge.

Is Your Partner Worth Saving A Marriage?

2009-11-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

Anyone that has said marriage was easy had to be single! There is nothing easy about merging your life with another person. Several decades ago, people did not divorce because they were in circumstances in which it was simply not an option – women could not support themselves and society did not accept it, among many others. Now, however, marriages are ending left and right. If you are in a marriage that is on the rocks, it may be a good time to consider whether your partner and the life you have is worth saving a marriage. As difficult as it is to make a marriage work, it is even harder to save one that is already damaged.

In looking at saving a marriage, you should not only look at current circumstances, but also the history the two of you share together. How did you meet? What was it that made you fall in love? Were you ever really in love? At some point, you should consider the good times instead of only dwelling on the bad. If you and your spouse are experiencing a bad time, it is easy to block out that good times ever existed. However, you should be fair to yourself and your partner.

Then, it is time to look at the bad times. Did either of you cheat? Are there other major issues that have occurred between you that one of you has a hard time dealing with? Sometimes these major issues get buried over time, but the resentment remains and it eats away at the relationship. Do you find yourself being mad at your spouse over little things or for no reason at all? If this is the case, you should really look at the underlying issues you have.

At some point, you should close your eyes and picture what the perfect spouse would be. Not Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, but the real characteristics you would like to have in your spouse. Then you should step back and see how your spouse measures up. You should be very careful to be realistic in this exercise. If you have unrealistic expectations, you will never be happy with anyone. However, if the essential core of your spouse is deficient, you may be selling yourself short by staying.

Although saving a marriage is difficult, you should not rush off and get a divorce. You should, however, try to be fair to you and your spouse and choose to both try wholeheartedly or to let go completely.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Marriage Was A Business?

2009-11-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

If your marriage were a business, would your spouse be looking for another job?

Our most important and intimate relationships often don’t receive the attention, time and training that we give our business relationships. Here are two secrets from the business world to apply to your personal relationships.

1. Know Your Customer

To grow a business, it is critical to understand your customers and prospects.

People communicate in different ways. Some people are highly visual and the way they process information and express themselves is in visual ways. For example, a visual person would describe their spouse using descriptive words like: 6 feet tall, brown hair, blue eyes, handsome, etc.

Auditory people take in their world by evaluating what they hear. They would describe their spouse in this way: “She compliments me and says the sweetest things”, “He has a deep voice and sings out loud.”

Kinesthetic people typically rely on how they feel and they learn by experience. They would describe their spouse in this way: “I get butterflies when she’s around”, “She holds my hand”, “He’s cuddly & warm”, “I feel safe and comfortable in his arms.”

Each of us has all three of these traits in us, though one tends to dominate. To discover which one your partner is, listen to the words they choose, then you can “speak” their language.

Before my husband discovered I was visual, he would get frustrated with me because he would explain things over and over and I just didn’t get it. I kept saying, “I don’t SEE it. I can’t PICTURE it.” Now, when he wants me to understand something, like our finances, he gets out a sheet of paper and draws a graph. Ahhh…

Your life partner is your biggest customer. Don’t risk losing your biggest account by taking your communication for granted. Save yourself hassle and heartache by paying attention to how your partner communicates… and make an effort to communicate in a way that is most natural to your partner.

2. Ask for the order. Ask the tough questions.

In business, once you’ve determined that your prospect is qualified to buy from you (and that your solution will solve their problem), it’s time to ask for the order.

In relationships we don’t always ask for the order. We often don’t ask the really important questions that will make the biggest difference. We ask her if she’d like Chinese or Italian food for dinner. We ask him if we should stay home or go out. But do we ask our partner how they would know they are loved?

Remember the Neil Diamond/ Barbara Streisand song, “You don’t bring me flowers; you don’t sing me love songs”? They sang about two people with two different strategies for knowing the other loved them. One person used to bring flowers and the other used to sing love songs. They both stopped, when life got busy with responsibilities. Now what they notice is that the other person doesn’t do what they used to do to show their partner love.

When my husband and I were dating and he’d go on a trip, I would slip love notes in his luggage. After a few years, the travel notes stopped. I didn’t stop writing them because I stopped loving him; I stopped writing them because I didn’t know it was important to him.

One day I asked him, “How do you know I love you?” and he said, “When you write me little love notes.” So, I made a note in my planner to “write love notes to Dave” every few days. I created structure to support my overall strategy to make sure my husband knows he is loved every single day.

How would you know you’re loved? How would your partner know? When you find out their strategy, do it! Ask the tough questions, ask for the order.

There are many business rules that apply to our personal relationships. Knowing your customer and asking for the order are critical if a business is to be successful. If your relationship was a company, and your partner was your biggest account, would you be confident that you know how to speak their language in order to be able to ask for the order?

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course.

Would Your Mentor Help You Through It?

2009-11-17T01:57:00.000-08:00

In sports the most successful athletes have coaches and mentors. Coaches know how and when to motivate, train, inspire and bring out the best in others. Mentors have been there and done that. While both are important, let’s focus our attention on mentors because they are widely available and most often free of charge and anxious to be of service.

Everybody feels good when someone asks them for advice. Older & wiser people have a wealth of information to share. Business leaders are anxious to share the lessons they’ve learned with people on their way to the top. Sure you can read a book about a person’s success story, but imagine having dinner every month or so with someone able and willing to share their expertise and wisdom. How could a business improve with that practice in place? How could your marriage?

Those who have made it through tough times with a strong successful marriage have something to say about how it can be accomplished. Seek these couples out in your families, neighborhoods, places of worship & work. Examples of unsuccessful partnerships are all over daytime TV. For examples of healthy, fulfilling and long lasting relationships, take a look at the people in your real life.

When you meet people who’ve been married to each other many years how they have made it work for so long. Not only is the question a great conversation starter, but you’ll learn something that you may be able to quickly incorporate into your own relationship that could make a difference and you will make them feel good about themselves at the same time!

At a dinner party thrown by my husband’s business partner, we found ourselves at a table with four couples; all were our parent’s age. Conversation was somewhat ordinary until I asked the question, “What’s your secret to being married more than 25 years?” We talked all night. They each went around the table with their special blend of advice for us “young folks”. Then they went around again with more marriage tips! We all left the party feeling great. They got to be experts on the topic of marriage. They got to feel acknowledged for their successful relationship. They got to appreciate each other all over again by sharing their personal stories. They got to pass along their advice to interested people. They got to feel good by having something to say about an important topic. Everyone was engaged in the conversation. We got to learn from their wisdom and experience.

The evening was a win-win for everyone. You are welcome to go through the experience of marriage on your own, without the wisdom of those who have done it well, but just as I wouldn’t advise a young person to make a career choice without talking to someone in the field, I don’t recommend trying to create a marriage without advise from those who are “in the field”. Successful people who have something to share on the topic of business or marriage will want to save you from the hassle and heartache of learning what they had to learn the hard way. You can do it yourself or take their advice and perhaps save your marriage.

One warning I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here… choose your mentors carefully. Any advisor, paid or volunteer, is only valuable to you if their expertise has integrity. By that I mean that I wouldn’t want a nutritionist who was 100 pounds overweight- that would lack integrity. If, at any point, you believe your mentor relationship is not supporting your goal of a happy, life-long marriage, end your mentor partnership and shop for a new one.

Creating mentors may mean seeking out specific couples and asking them formally to be your “marriage mentors”. You may meet regularly as a couple for a meal with your marriage mentors, or you may meet or talk occasionally as a need arises. There are no rules to mentor relationships, though the best plan is to structure time to connect with marriage mentors to keep that relationship strong.

Disclosure

2009-11-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

This policy is valid from 30 November 2009

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does not accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. However, we will and do accept and keep free products, services, travel, event tickets, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations.

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How To Improve Your Marriage

2009-11-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

Keeping a marriage together is a task that should not be out of obligation, but should be done because of the love and respect each partner has for each other. While courtship, marriage then divorce seem to be a regular stage in a person's life, this could be totally eradicated. Being married for 3 decades or more should not be seen as triumph but a necessity. Even avoiding marriage counseling would be great!

The decision of getting married should be given multiple thinking over. Although you love a person and has deep devotion and loyalty, a lot of changes happen while inside a marriage that can change the way a person feels for one another.

The key is to keep the marriage exciting at all times. Every relationship has space for improvement. Improving your marriage is something each and every married person should strive for. If you keep your marriage from becoming predictable and monotonous you give a reason for you and your partner something to look forward to and get excited about.

Each partner should be open to changes. Learn to experiment and accept those changes. Being adventurous both in your daily activities and in the bed room will keep the relationship young. Learn to accept your partner even through his or her changes. The person you married is not the same one that he or she is now or next year and the years after. People change, and if those changes do not affect your vows try to be accepting and flexible.

Role playing can be a great idea to keep the relationship fresh. This could not be counted as cheating so do not be jealous. Although you may play games wherein you imagine the person is a different one, you still both know deep inside that it is your partner. Having an open mind can improve your marriage a whole lot.

Inter-Faith Marriages

2009-11-11T01:55:00.000-08:00

You’ll know long before you start the wedding plans if your faiths are different from one another—so this shouldn’t be a shock. And you may have already begun how you want to deal with this. It doesn’t have to be a problem; rather, it can be a great way to create a new ceremony for the both of you.

Deciding to convert

Before deciding to convert to one religion or another, you want to take your time to discover why you’re doing it. Do you truly want to convert to another religion or do you just want to make your spouse’s family happy? This is a very honest discussion to have with your self and there aren’t any good answers, except for the ones that are true.

If you feel that converting is a good decision for you, then by all means, go ahead and take the steps needed. Many times, you’ll have to take classes and speak with the religious head well in advance of any wedding plans.

The trick is not to feel pressured into converting. And with all of the emotions attached with a wedding, some families may have trouble accepting someone of a different faith. If you believe that you want to remain the faith that you are, you should do so.

And if your spouse is trying to coax you into converting, you may want to hold off on the wedding as well. This is a very personal choice, and it needs to be made by the individual, not everyone else.

A dual faith wedding

It’s actually very easy to have a wedding that incorporates two different faiths. Sit down and see what each faith requires at the wedding and then talk about how you can compromise to make sure all is proper.

You may want to have the wedding in a non-denominational setting so that you don’t have the ‘home court advantage’ for one faith or another. You may also decide to have two different ceremonies weaving in and out of one another, combing elements of both faiths. This really shows the commitment to each other and to the separate faiths.

You may also want to have two different ministers or one denominational. That’s up to you, but if you’re a part of a temple or a church, you may need to be married by one of the parish’s priests or synagogue’s rabbis.

Finding Good Marriage Counseling

2009-11-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Have you ever stayed awake all nightlong thinking about whether your marriage will last or not?

Troubled marriage represents different kind of emotions. Hurt feelings are the most common but it can lead to depression, panic, paranoia, and anger. These emotions can be distracting to your goal of creating romantic love and finally bringing it all in ruins. For this part, it can take you to painful experiences you can never accept at all.

This kind of situation can make your mind go nuts thinking how can you possibly save it in due time. Marriage in trouble is very depressing thinking what went wrong. It makes you realize what is happening, although you are expecting that all is well despite some differences.

Likewise, in marriage you just knew that it’s not going to be a perfect one. You just do what you think is right but still some are not quite enough. But then you think it’s not a problem at all, because you expect in marriage that it’s a process of accepting, learning and most of all loving despite of weaknesses.

FINDING A GOOD MARRIAGE COUNSELOR

In dealing troubled marriage, you can approach marriage counselors although you better find a good one. A good marriage counselor helps couple to guide through emotional distresses, motivating the feelings and discussing some sort of tips to excite the couple. Counselors guide couples in understanding the enormous stress in facing one of their greatest crises to date. For instance, when one or both spouses become emotionally upset, a counselor must have the skill in treating emotional reactions effectively.

A good counselor must know how to calm down the couple and assuring them that it’s not a sign of hopeless incompatibility. Counselors sometimes obtain special training for many common marital problems, such as sexual differences in which this is one of the reasons why couples disintegrate- like having an affair. Also, financial conflicts can be a deciding factor in which one of the couple is not financially stable.

By finding your preferred marriage counselor, there are many ways of discovering them. You can ask from your friends but its better if some of them have been seen a counselor that has successfully guided them. Also, you can find counselors in your phone directory or yellow pages where some of their offices and contact numbers are stated.

Regardless of your source of referral, you should be certain in choosing someone who can really help you. Always remember that a counselor is who can help your relationship for you and your partner. If possible, it’s much better if your partner is an active participant in treatment sessions.

By calling counselors at their offices, you can call one clinic at a time. Ask their respective assistants to speak to the counselor you are considering by phone. When you are about to speak some questions after your introductions and purpose, you can ask these following questions:

• How many years have you been a counselor?
• What are your credentials (e.g. academic and master’s degree)?
• Do you help clients in overcoming and avoiding emotional letdowns?
• Do you help in motivating the clients to finish the program successfully?
• Do you suggest different approach in dealing solutions in any kind of marital situations?
• How much does it cost for every session or for the whole duration of the program?

You can add other relevant questions as long as the marriage counselor knows what type of marital problem you have. Finally, for choosing your preferred marriage counselor you should let him/her know that you come for help in restoring and saving love to your marriage. Because in marriage, it’s the most beautiful thing ever to happen in your life.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage without marriage counseling, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

How To Affair Proof Your Marriage

2009-11-05T01:53:00.000-08:00

Marriage is very rarely a match made in heaven, and often requires much more work than many people realize they are getting themselves into. Along with the journey of parenting, marriage is truly one of the bigger challenges in our lives.

Affairs are, unfortunately, one of the biggest reasons for separation and divorce these days. That is why it is a good idea to understand what you can do today to help affair-proof your marriage in the years to come. Sometimes, an affair might have already come between you and your spouse. This does not mean that you cannot take steps to keep it from happening again.

Growth is one vital element of marriage that many people take for granted. A constant sense of growth needs to be present in any marriage. If it’s not, one partner may feel like they are moving forward and their spouse is not, which often creates a wall between them. They feel as if they are worlds apart, or not on the same track as far as growth. Be sure to take time each day for growth within your relationship. Make a commitment to do one thing each day that will benefit your marriage, no matter how small it may be. Make a plan together to renegotiate your relationship if you feel you’ve gotten off track.

Communication is a key in any successful relationship. If you are having problems, turn towards your partner, not away. You absolutely cannot fix a problem inside a relationship by turning outward. Your relationship must be based on a solid, underlying friendship. Friends talk, laugh, share, and do things they’re interested in together. Don’t stop being friends just because you’re each other’s spouse.

Certain things in your marriage should be guarded like a hawk. There are things that should be held in high value in a marriage, and kept sacred.

• Time – The way you spend your time should be guarded in respect toward your marriage and family. Where are you spending your time? Ask your partner if they need more time with you. Time with your partner should be set aside and kept in high regards. Respect the time you spend with your partner.

• Mind – What occupies your mind? Is your spouse often present in your mind? Do you think good thoughts about them? Evaluate what is on your mind, and put your marriage in there if it’s not already.

• Energy – Where you are putting your energy, especially everyday, is important to your marriage. Where are you putting your energy? Is your energy invested in your marriage, your family, or in less important events in life? Evaluate your energy, and make sure that there is a reasonable balance between activity, work, marriage, and family.

Finally, set a Formula for Success. Your relationship has to meet the needs of the two people involved. Understand what your partner’s needs are so that you can meet them. Figure out what your own needs are and communicate them. If your needs are not being met, communicate and negotiate them. Don’t let resentment build.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

How Dependent Are You On The Marriage?

2009-11-02T01:52:00.000-08:00

Marriage is the best form of companionship designed by mankind. After marriage a person is assured of at least one friend for life. Marriage gives some assurance that one will have a companion through thick and thin till the end. We cannot call our other friendships and relations so dependable. That is why marriage is important. All this was certainly true, few decades ago. Is it so even now? How far are you dependent on your marriage to derive satisfaction and peace in life?

Now let us examine some personalities. For my first example I will take a man/woman who is career oriented. For whom nothing matters other than the career and achievements in the work place. What kind of married life will such a person have? One can assume that such a person will not be very dependent upon married relationship. Such a person will not undergo an unbearable shock if marriage breaks.

Take another example of a person who has a large group of friends and socially networks very well. Attends all the functions, parties and celebrations thrown by friends. If someone is a typical social animal that thrives in a group of friends and invents reasons for gatherings, will he/she depend on the married life for happiness? Such people are not highly dependent on their married life for happiness. Their attitude is different.

On the other hand, let us take an example of a person who is introvert and likes to remain with and shares more time with family. Such a person is a devoted family person and may get devastated if separated or after the death of spouse.

All of us derive different pleasures with different relationships. Our priorities vary. Our value system varies. Because of these differences in our personalities, marriage may or may not play a very important role in every ones life.

Husbands Friends

2009-10-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

Ask the Marriage Maven: Help! My Husband's Buddies are Butting into My Marriage

Q. My husband always wants to hang out with his “boys”. He used to hang out with them a lot before we got married, and I thought that after we got married things would change and that he’d want to spend more time with me. Wrong!

It would be different if they did something productive, but all they do is sit around watching TV, playing video games, and listening to music. None of them have wives or serious girlfriends, except my husband— so I know they talk about other women, too.

We’ve only been married a year, and I already feel like we’re slipping into an old married couple relationship. A lot of fussing--and not much good communication. I’m afraid we won’t make it past year two. What can I do to make him want to spend more time with me?

J. N.

A. It is important that you and your husband spend a good amount of time together, especially as you guys are still learning what marriage is all about. But breaking up the boys club could be disastrous to your marriage. So I would not recommend telling your husband to cut his friends off completely, unless they are encouraging him to be unfaithful to you or contributing to addictive behaviors.

I know it can be annoying if your husband seems like he’d rather spend time with his buddies instead of you, but you’ll need to give him some rope. Whatever you do, don’t nag him about his time with his friends and let it be a constant source of bickering. Be clear that you want to spend more time with him, but let your actions be positive.

Here are three positive actions you can take:

1. Encourage the boys to meet in your house. Make his friends feel welcome in your home, make snacks (if you like to cook), and give them room to do their thing.

2. Suggest regular dates with your husband. Fill his social calendar at least once or twice a week with a planned activity that you two can share together. These dates don’t have to be expensive or overly involved. They can be as simple as a walk in the park or coffee at you local coffee shop. You can initiate until he feels the need to do more of the planning.

3. Another solution would be to set his friends up. I know that it’s a little sneaky and risky, but it can work. If they’re just two or three of them, have monthly mixers (or get-togethers) in your home with them and some of your single girlfriends. Who knows, they may hit it off, thereby freeing up some of your husband’s time.

A combination of these three suggestions, will probably work best. They’ll broaden your social life and deepen your relationship with each other. I hope these ideas have been helpful. I’m wishing you all the best in your marriage!

Gods Blueprint For Saving A Marriage

2009-10-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

"All things were created by Him and for Him...and in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16b-17a). Having a successful marriage first requires you to understand what God had in mind for marriage. After all, If you want to understand the purpose behind an invention, you consult the One who invented it, right!

Since marriage is God's creation, He is in the saving marriages business. God created marriage for three very specific reasons, just like He created you, for very specific reasons. Our lives are more satisfying when we cooperate with God in fulfilling our purposes. Marriage is no exception...

First, you've probably learned that men and women were made in God's image (Gen. 1:26-27). But, did you know that within the marriage relationship husbands and wives also bear the image of God? They do this by demonstrating love and faithfulness to each other...like God does with us. You see, God covenants with His people, husbands and wives covenant to each other and God. So marriage was created to reflect God's faithfulness in the world.

The second reason God created marriage was to meet human needs. Needs for food, shelter and clothing as well as needs for love, acceptance, intimacy, and faithfulness. In that way marriage is a picture to the world of how God provides for His people.

Marriage is God's conduit for love. It was designed to be a safe harbor where a man and a woman could be totally naked and unashamed. A place where they could experience the unconditional love and acceptance of God through each other.

Third, marriage is one of the ways God expands His Kingdom and accomplishes His work in the earth. He commanded men and women to go forth and multiply, be fruitful and take dominion over the earth(Genesis 1:28).
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to do as God commanded when you are at odds with your spouse. Conflict drains our emotional and creative energies. Sadly, many husbands and wives feel like they are sleeping with the enemy instead of with their comrade in arms.

Marriage was designed with unity in mind. When a husband and wife are on the same page, so to speak, they are reflecting the unity of the Godhead. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). Unity is so important that Jesus told us it would be a great sign to the world testifying that He truly is the Son of God (John 17:23).

Okay, now you have the general idea God had in mind when He designed marriage, but saving marriage requires a plan.

First, you need to decide, once and for all, are you going to commit to honoring God through your marriage. Are you going to do it God's way? Are you going to trust His word, His plan and His design? If you answered yes, let's move on...

If you're making a plan to improve or save your marriage you need to start out on the right foot. That means getting right with God and your spouse first! To get right requires humility. It requires taking responsibility for the negative, sinful things you have contributed to your marriage without justifying yourself or blaming your spouse.

Confession of sin can be a turning point in our lives. It means we are in agreement with God about our sin and we are choosing to turn away from it. When we do this, God's word promises to give us the power to accomplish that. Some of the things you may want to consider confessing are: the ways in which you have not trusted and honored God, the ways you have not obeyed His word, the consequences of your choices to you, your spouse and your marriage.

Exercising humility is a crucial part of any saving marriages plan. Making confession of sin a regular part of your marriage will keep you humble and help to maintain emotional intimacy. Apologies go a long way in keeping our hearts pliable and loving towards our spouse and God.

The next step in the saving marriages blueprint is making a plan for knowing your spouse's most important needs. You also must become intentional about meeting those needs. Your spouse will feel more connected and in love with you when you are meeting his/her most important emotional needs.

Regular prayer is necessary for a successful marriage. Pray that God would show His love and faithfulness to your spouse through you. Prayer is how we experience the personal relationship we have with God through Christ. It is also where we avail ourselves to the grace of God. Therefore, your plan for saving marriage must include daily prayer for your spouse and your ability to love them.

A marriage that reflects God's image is a safe marriage. God is our refuge, therefore your marriage should be a refuge for both you and your spouse. A safe relationship is one where both husband and wife feel accepted even if there are disagreements. A plan for saving marriages needs to include a plan for safety. Neither spouse should ever have to worry about the proverbial nuclear bomb being dropped on them!

That's why a plan for saving marriages must address conflict. Your marriage can be free from condemnation, contempt, critical attitudes and defensiveness. It's your choice! It can be a place where you are quick to take responsibility for your own actions and slow to point your finger of blame. It is not, however, a marriage that is free from conflict. But, yours can be a marriage where both parties fight fair.

Finally, your saving marriages plan needs to include specific goals, goals that are written down. After all, God wrote down His plan...we call it the Bible! Isn't that a good enough reason for you to write down your plan for your marriage. Written goals are powerful. They help move a plan into motion.

Keep in mind, your goals need to be consistent with God's purpose for your marriage. Your goals will help you stay on track and give more purpose, meaning and direction to your marriage and family life. You may want to have goals in the following areas: Spiritual (we will study and pray together regularly), parenting (we will always be unified when disciplining the children), finances ( we will decide on a budget and stick to it), health (we will exercise regularly and eat right), communication (we will speak lovingly and respectfully to one another).

Well, that should be enough to get you started developing your own personal saving marriages plan. Remember, the Creator of marriage is in the business of saving marriages. Put your hope in the Lord for with Him is unfailing love and full redemption (Psalm 130:7).

Also, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Online Dating

2009-10-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

Want to get hitched? Try online dating

So, you have finally opened up to the idea of dating online and prospect for a relationship that will blossom into something fruitful, like marriage!

What we have explored up to now is the most important information you need to know. Now, lets dig a little deeper.

Here are some tips for a successful online dating experience.

Use utter special information. Of course, you should be practical in generous out special contact information. But otherwise, give out your likes and dislikes, your interests, and preferred books honestly. Members on the online service may look at your site and disappear uninterested if they see that your profile is just full of Ask Me descriptions and statements.

Okay, you might want to disappear additional information to those interested, but you have to give information on your profile that would show your best attributes.

You might want to add photographs to your profile. Some online sites have audio and videotape features where you can upload your clips. Instead of a dull profile with no movies or videotape or audio clips, why not try these features? It makes your profile personalized and interesting.

When surfing and chatting in an online singles site, you must not be rude or aggressive in your profile. duck also with swear or curse words. People are bowed off by insulting remarks.

Honesty is the best policy. Highlight the best characteristics that you have, but don't lie.

If you are actually passionate about something, say so. Do not veil the gear that you are very passionate about. If you actually like partying, say so. Pretending to be somebody you are not, won't help you get a time you like.

If it is available, try the site's voicemail services. inquiry the speech of a prospective partner is wonderful. You could sense the person's background by the way they communicate with you.

When somebody sends you an unsigned message, try to answer as quickly as you can. If you are decided in having online dates with the prospect of having fruitful relationships (and hopefully marriage), then you should be decided in replying to messages.

Be patient. You should take your time in decision the great partner, and not only in online services. It takes time for people to enlarge and have decided commitment to each other.

Always think optimistically. Keep thinking the best will happen.

If you are looking for a long-term relationship or marriage through online dating services, memorize that you should be unwearied and honest.

The next time you have questions regarding this subject, you can refer back to this article as a handy guide.

Save My Marriage Today Review

2009-10-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

If you are considering Marriage Counseling, you first might want to look at a course called Save My Marriage Today. I recently came across this course. I decided I would do a Save My Marriage Today Review.

First thing I notice, The Save My Marriage Today course has a lot of information on how to improve the relationship between you and your spouse. There are great step-by-step exercises, discussions on how to deal with anger, five things you must pay attention too, etc. It's a really in-depth course.

Also, something else I noticed. The Save My Marriage Today course is a downloadable product. It's not like marriage counseling where you see someone in person. You order the book online, download it, and read it. In addition, if you order now, the company that put this product out said they will include 6 bonuses with it which I thought was really nice of them. For a limited time, they will also include free e-mail consultation.

So once more, if you are considering Marriage Counseling, first take a look at this Save My Marriage Today course. Because after all, The Save My Marriage Today course is a lot cheaper and who knows, it may just be what you need. I should note, this also comes with a full 6-day money back guarantee. So you don't have to worry about not being satisfied with this product.

Anyway, good luck!

Once more, you can download the course here.

Emotional Affairs

2009-10-21T01:49:00.000-07:00

Hearing that your cheating spouse is “in love” with someone else is devastating. I hear often, “I can handle her having sex with someone else. I think I can live with that. But, for her to give herself emotionally and “love” someone else…man, that is hard.” (Feel free to substitute the word he for she in this article.)

What can you specifically do to increase the odds of saving the marriage?

So often the offended spouse reacts with intense feelings and pulls out all stops to “win her back.”

He applies pressure. Begs. Cajoles. Makes promises. Gets in her face. Sends flowers. Arranges for dates. Talks to her family and friends. Calls her on the phone. Asks questions… daily, sometimes hourly. He is on her like a fly on doo-doo.

It doesn’t work.Why? Well, for one reason she has found all the stimulation and excitement she supposedly needs in her new found “love.”

At a deeper level this is confusing enough for the cheating husband or cheating wife. Any additional input will be overwhelming and she is liable to close the door on the marriage even further. Plus, she is really looking for some stability, some solid centered core that will hold her firm when the wind of drama entices her and blows around her.

If you bombard her with your neediness, you are certainly not the person who can help her in ways she really seeks.

She also is liable to create a polarity and begin comparing you to him. With your neediness dripping all over you, you don’t stand a very good chance of coming out on top. Sorry!

Here’s a tactic that helps solve the dilemma and gives you a greater chance of saving the marriage.It’s called “back off!”

Stop pressing. Slow down the pace. Be silent – most of the time. Stop making requests. Stop asking questions. Stop trying to wiggle out some assurance. Stop being a pain!

Remember, this “in love” state will fade. You need to have the confidence that it will. You need patience. The relationship will run its course.

She needs the space. She needs some quiet moments to truly hear herself and face the emptiness within. There will be a voice within her that says, “This will not last. Is this what I really want? At some time I must live in the real world. Where is this taking me? Is this where I really want to go? Why am I so dependent on him? Why do I feel this empty pit in my stomach when I’m not with him? What does this say about me?”

This is her opportunity to learn about TRUE love. Don’t get in her way.

I know. I know. This is easier said than done. But, you must do it. It is vitally important that you learn to quiet yourself, control yourself and keep on the straight and narrow path.

At this point with those I coach, I teach them a skill called "charging neutral" to help "back off." Use that skill.This will take some effort. It might take some coaching or therapy. It most likely will demand that you get to know yourself better, that you gain more confidence in you – apart from what she does with him – that you build a strong foundation under yourself that can weather any storm.

This is your opportunity to grow to another level.

Oh, by the way. She will notice! And….she might like it.

Backing off does not mean that you don’t have anything to do with her. Quite the contrary. You want to maintain your contact with her, but it will be QUALITY contact. It will be contact that does honor to you, confronts her with the reality of her decisions and works toward resolution for the marriage.

Summary: Less often means more when facing emotional infidelity. Learning a specific skill such as "backing off" enhances one's chance to save the marriage.

Some Ways To Save Your Marriage

2009-10-18T01:48:00.000-07:00

They say that marriage is the most important decision you have to make in your whole life. Although this has been a reminder from the elders, some people do not look at it that way especially the young. Sometimes, what turns out to be the smartest decision becomes the opposite.

When a couple realizes that their marriage is going down, there’s nothing more important than saving marriage. You should talk about things that will be helpful to save your marriage. It is important for a couple to remain the same as how it used to be.

There are a lot of factors affecting marriage and it hinders having a happy, fun and enjoying life for the couples.

If a married couple is having problems, they need to do everything to save marriage especially if they have kids. This article will give you tips on how to save marriage.

First is to acknowledge the reasons for your problems. This means that both of you should accept the problem and find out how it all started. If you do not talk it over, problems will get bigger and bigger. When the problem becomes bigger, it will be hard to pull it down and talk over.

If the partners are rational, calm and reasonable, chances are they can talk it out easily. As much as possible, stay away from high temper and avoid getting into an argument when you are both not in the mood because it will just be a cat and dog fight. Sometimes, when in too much anger, people tend to say things that they don’t really have and mean to especially if both of them are emotional.

You should find a middle ground so that both of you can understand each other very well. This will set you in the mood to talk about the problem and what needs to be done and undone. The couple should agree to their decision and each one should make a promise to know better in dealing some unwanted circumstances which often leads to a serious fight.

Work as a team. Talk to each other and ask what you both need to enlighten yourself out of stress and other problems. one should support the other by means of understanding everything he or she is going through.

Each one should be open about their feelings and emotions. It is not proper to hide anger, envy and jealousy for a longer time but pour it all out one day. This often leads to misunderstandings. Try talking to each other and find out what one likes or dislikes about their behavior whether for themselves or other people.

You need to take it slowly. Do not run into conclusions which you are not sure of. Avoid the words that you want to say that you think might hurt him or her. When you take it down, you will both find it later that its not really a big problem to tackle and fight about. This will save marriage effectively.

Try to find other ways on how to enjoy and relax. When you think of saving marriage you need to take it with all your heart or else, it will not work at all. Try to find something which you have both never done before. Following these tips will help you save your marriage and last until the end.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Does Marriage Counseling Work?

2009-10-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

When considering marriage counseling, it's difficult not to wonder whether seeing a marriage counselor will actually work. This article provides some objective information based on data obtained from a national survey of marriage and family counselors and their clients. Also presented are several interesting opinions provided by individuals who have actually been through marriage counseling and were asked to comment on whether or not seeing a marriage counselor proved effective in helping their relationship.

An honest marriage counselor would agree that the motivation of a couple may be the single most important factor in determining the success of marriage counseling. It's unlikely that even a brilliant counselor would be able to save a marriage where one spouse has already decided upon a divorce, and a mediocre marriage counselor can probably help a couple who are utterly committed towards making their marriage work. With this in mind, research has been made in an effort to determine, on a more scientific level, the effectiveness of couples counseling.

In an article published by Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, clients of marriage and family counselors from 15 different states reported on their experience with counseling. The findings indicated that marriage and family counselors treated a wide range of issues in relatively short-term fashion, couple and family therapy are briefer than individual therapy, and that client satisfaction and functional improvement are quite high.

[*] Specifically, of clients from 526 marriage and family counselors in 15 different states:

98.1% rated services good or excellent
97.1% got the kind of help they desired
91.2% were satisfied with the amount of help they received
93% said they were helped in dealing more effectively with problems
94.3% would return to the same therapist in the future
96.9% would recommend their therapist to a friend
97.4% were generally satisfied with the service they received
63.4% reported improved physical health
54.8% reported improvement in functioning at work
73.7% indicated improvement in children’s behavior
58.7% showed improvement in children’s school performance
[*] Excerpted from "Clinical Practice Patterns of Marriage and Family Therapists: A National Survey of Therapists and Their Clients", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy--Volume 22, No. 1

While the above study provides raw data that supports the effectiveness of marriage and family counseling, a very interesting discussion on the question "Does Couples Counseling Work" from a public forum devoted to this topic offers a less clinical, but still positive view. Based on what seems to be a very honest and frank discussion among couples "who've been there," the answer to the question of whether or not marriage counseling is effective is a positive one. Read these posts on the Berkley Parents Network.

Regardless of the studies and opinions which seem to support the effectiveness of marriage / couples counseling, there are those who question it's effectiveness. An article on the about.com portal, had this to say:

The science of marital counseling is being studied in great detail these days. Research is showing that it is not as effective as people think, that women seem to get more from it than men, and that it might not have a lasting effect on the couple's marriage.

What type of couple gets the most from couple therapy? The answer is young, non-sexist, still in love, open couples.

Which couples receive the least from therapy? Some factors that can make couple therapy unsuccessful include couples who wait too long before seeking help, and often one or the other is set on getting a divorce and is closed to any suggestions that may save the marriage.

Excerpted from the marriage.about.com portal

Unfortunately, the data supporting the above-mentioned research is not specifically cited in the article. The article seems to imply that couples who seek counseling because they want their relationship to work are more likely to succeed with marriage counseling than are those who enter into counseling with the (perhaps hidden) truth that they already want out.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Less Anger In Your Marriage

2009-10-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

Jose and Juanita have been married for 17 years, and basically love each other, yet have been fighting over the same issue almost every night of those years: She likes it cold at night and he likes it warm in their house and bedroom. She had just opened their bedroom windows for the night. When she left to visit the bathroom, she heard Jose follow her and close all the windows.

Let’s eavesdrop to see what we can learn about this fight and what to do about it.

—(curtain up)—
Juanita: (to Jose) "I can’t sleep unless the windows are wide open. You know that, but insist on closing them every night, just so I’ll be miserable. You are selfish and inconsiderate."

Jose: (to Juanita):"This is my house too. Why should I have to freeze? You always get your way. It is so cold in here you could hang meat! Are you trying to get me sick? No NORMAL person would want it this cold!"
(curtain down)

IS THIS A SOLVABLE PROBLEM?
Depends on the specific marriage. For some couples, the solution would be a simple compromise of some sort; for instance, buy a room thermometer and agree to always keep the room at an agreed upon temperature both could live with.

In many marriages, however, a problem like this is not easily solved—it becomes “perpetual”—and trying to “solve” it only creates anger and tension. For Jose and Juanita, this unfortunately was the case.

Why is a simple problem like this not solvable for our couple and in many other marriages? Could be many reasons, but the usual culprits are:

(1) The couple is engaged in a “power” or “control” struggle. This means the fight isn’t about the issue anymore—it is about who will win or lose.

(2) The temperature issue goes deeper and is emotionally tied into other personal or marital issues. If this is the case, the more pressure put on the person to “change,” the more the person resists.

For instance, turns out that Juanita literally panics if in a room without air flow due to issues in her childhood. Depriving her of fresh air flow literally makes her want to fight for her life.

CONFIDING MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
Let’s now listen in on what Jose and Juanita could have said that may have made a HUGE difference in their communication.
This is because now they are speaking from their hearts —combining empathy (seeing things from the viewpoint of the other) with assertive communication (honestly speaking your feelings and thoughts in a forthright manner)

Juanita (should have said something like):"I feel that I don’t have to put up with this, although I also feel bad that you have to suffer. I tell myself that if you really loved me, you would want me to be comfortable at night.
I also ask myself why should I always give in? I work hard all day too and deserve some consideration. All I’m asking for is a decent night’s sleep, but then, I wonder if I am being too selfish."

Jose (should have said something like):"I do really love you and I want you to be comfortable too, but it gets so cold in here at night for me that I can’t sleep.
We both want a good night’s sleep and want to be able to continue sleeping together in the same room. Let’s find a way to discuss it so it doesn’t make us so angry at each other."

Granted, it is not easy to confide when in the heat of marital battle. Consequently, it is often better to first take a time out, calm down and then communicate what is in your heart. The following communication tips will help:

FOUR COMMUNICATION TIPS

Tip 1- Don’t only focus on the issue. Also discuss your feelings, thoughts, and inner conflicts surrounding the issue. Confide what is going on in both your heart and your mind.

Tip 2- Look at how you communicate with each other ABOUT the issue. Focus on the process of communication.

Tip 3- Give up needing to be right all the time. Wise and successful married people have discovered that often it is preferable to be happy than to be right!

Tip 4- Convey to your partner that you love them enough to want to join them so together you can find a way to deal with the issue or problem.

Neglect In A Marriage

2009-10-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

It is so easy to work your life away, forget about your family, your partner and your relationship. People putting work before family is such a common marriage problem that seems to pop up time and time again.

It’s ok for a while, your partner will understand that you need to put some time and effort into your career especially if it generates a good income but as time goes on and the ‘W’ word pops up again and again, even if your partner enjoys the benefits of your efforts, all patience fades and the realisation sets in that work is more important!!

I used to know a couple who spent most of their life apart. He worked nights and she worked days. She enjoyed spending the money that night shifts generated, loved new clothes, new cars and all the little luxuries a comfortable life style brings but hated her partner being tired when he was at home. They were between a rock and a hard place with him knowing that if he gave up nights bang went the luxuries and more than likely bye bye wife but if he carried on working nights and striving for promotion he was dead in the water anyway. What a choice. Needless to say they never reached a compromise, she wasn’t willing to wait for the promotion and a return to day shifts, so they are no longer married.

Working excessively long hours, travelling a lot and constantly leading separate lives is bound to put a strain on your relationship and it has proven to be a real relationship killer, a common marriage problem that is prolific in the ‘career’ society. Just look at the number people that are addicted to long unsociable working hours and then see how many of them are still married.

I’ve only ever met a handful of couples who are truly comfortable with, at best, a weekend relationship and these are couples that have learned and are happy to live independent lives. The problem in their relationships will come when the long hours and travelling comes to an end and they have to learn to live with each other 24/7.

How many partners spend their whole life at work, rarely seeing their children and having little time for their spouse? Their partners so often feel neglected, crave adult company, and as time goes on, the neglected partner’s cries go on ignored the relationship begins to wither and fade and the couple tend to grow apart.

When children are involved it is even more difficult with just one partner having to make sure they are around. That they are the ones there in the mornings and there in the evenings and that they alone have to revolve their whole lives around children and school. Again this pressure on one partner is all too common, a marriage problem that seems to be ignored by spouses who tend to avoid their responsibilities under the misguided understanding that their partners can and are happy to cope.

Those early years, when your children are growing up are very special and are years that can never be recaptured. They aren’t years that should just pass you by at your desk under the false impression that next time your child wants you it will be different, you just need to clear this project and then the next and then the next….. It’s never any different.

Children struggle with the concept of work being more important than them and what is going on in their lives. They are too young to understand the concept that their parent is just short sighted, perhaps confused as to what should take priority in their lives. Money doesn’t mean much to a child.

When work takes over your life, no matter what you best intentions are, if your vision isn’t understand and accepted by your family and they aren’t 100% behind you all of the way they will learn to resent the time you spend at your desk rather than with them. They will feel abandoned, unwanted and unloved.

If you want to revolve your life around a work driven environment you must make sure that that your partner has the same all consuming driving ambition. If either one in a relationship feels that work has taken over the family life it is time to sit down and discuss what is important in to you both. Consider the issues, understand the feelings on both sides, think about the children and work out what is best for the individuals, the relationship and the family as a whole.

Catch this common marriage problem before it develops into something more serious don’t loose your family over something you probably will learn to regret, save your marriage before it’s too late.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not nearly as expensive. Check it out!

Jealousy In A Marriage

2009-10-06T01:44:00.000-07:00

Jealousy in marriage is destructive, a real relationship killer and one of those common marriage problems that needs to be resolved.

In you let feelings of jealousy develop and escalate the mind will run wild, imagine the enemy around every corner, question everything your partner thinks, says and does. In worst case scenario’s unresolved and unchecked jealousy has developed beyond the end of a relationship, into a long-term vendetta and in extreme cases extended to the loss of life.

As much as we would like to deny it, most people struggle with jealous emotions at some point in their lives and, in marriage, it is a one of those common marriage problems that can develop from feelings of insecurity or neglect.

We now live in a society where marriages are often as a result of a second, a fifth or any number of relationships and are, in many cases, second or subsequent marriages. This is just society as we now know it but it can leave spouses insecure, especially when a previous partner is still around, and particularly in the case when children are involved.

People can enter into marriages with so much previous baggage that it often hard to settle into a secure, trusting environment full of self worth and self-belief.

Marital jealousy develops from numerous situations and no matter how much you try and tell yourself there is no need for concern your mind just doesn’t listen and all the while your partner continues with the behaviour that is instilling the feeling of insecurity throughout your very soul.

• Some people are natural flirts who draw the opposite sex like magnets, which, once the ring is on the finger, leaves partners totally insecure and just waiting for the moment when they are dumped for the next person that comes along. The partner who flirts often has no idea what impact their actions have on their relationship. They don’t actually believe that they are doing anything wrongs but perceive their actions to be friendly and not harmful.

• No one could ever be accused of being unnecessarily jealous in the case of infidelity beyond which, if the marriage survives (and in many instances they do), strong measures need to be put in place to enable the cheated partner come to trust their partner again and control the feeling of jealousy.

• Following the break up of a marriage children need to feel that the split isn’t as a result of anything that they have done. This leaves parents over protective, desperate to make amends for one parent environment and often at the expense of new relationships.

• Another of the common marriage problems is that husbands feel neglected when a new baby arrives no matter how much they wanted the child in the first place. A baby’s mere existence is totally life changing with more attention towards the child and a complete ‘nose dive’ in marital relations. With the bond between mother and child being that much closer it can leave fathers feeling neglected, unwanted and a total spare part.

With friends of mine the jealousy actually worked the other way with the wife feeling totally trapped after the birth of their first child and her husband spending all his time looking after the baby. She just yearned for the life they had prior to children when they enjoyed a good social life and spent all their free time together.

• Too much time at work can leave your partner feeling very insecure, especially when your hours at work increase and you spend less and less time at home for the sake of your family but if we think about it is it really for the sake of the family…..

People get fixated on their goals and have no concept on how this is perceived or how it impacts on their relationship and their family life.

Without the 100% backing of both parties, long hours and continuous travel can prove to be a real relationship killer and, if left unchecked, one of those common marriage problems from which there is no return.

The list is endless and jealousy in and of itself is not a bad thing, it’s strong indication that you really care. The main thing we need to remember is not to let the jealousy consume, arouse fury and become destructive.

If you are suffering from feelings of jealousy look at the cause, question your feelings and determine whether they have any foundation. Is your partner actually doing anything wrong, have they really done anything to drive your jealous emotions or have you just let your emotions spiral out of control.

If the fault is on your side, learning to recognise the fact is the first step towards controlling such an emotional and destructive thought process. It allows you to discuss your fears with your partner, explain how you feel and seek there help in enabling you to over come your jealous emotions, strengthen your marriage and build a more solid foundation for the future.

Communication is the foundation to marital success. If you can learn to communicate then you can express your emotions in a non-confrontational, non-accusatory, understanding and supportive environment.

Don’t just blurt your fears out such as ‘I think you are having an affair’ it might not be true and it will just add fuel to the fire. Explain that something seems to have changed in your relationship, explain what has changed and what makes you think your marriage is different, don’t blame, don’t get emotional just explain to your spouse what is going through your head and seek their help in trying to sort it out.

One of the most common marriage problems is expecting our partners to always know what we want and how we feel. But even with a ring on our finger we aren’t always mind readers, if we haven’t communicated our feelings and our partner doesn’t know they have, in our eyes, done something wrong, how do we expect them to do anything about it!

Tell them now, save your marriage before its too late. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Even if the answer isn’t what you want to hear knowledge is power and with knowledge comes the ability to turn your life around.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Can You Save Your Marriage?

2009-10-03T01:43:00.000-07:00

How to save your marriage is not exactly the same for one person as it is the next. It's true that in most cases a marriage can be improved with a few simple steps, but the amount of improvement varies from marriage to marriage-check out these tips to help get your back on track...

How To Save Your Marriage 1
You need to get the communication back. Communication is usually one of the first things that dries up in a problematic marriage, and that in itself leads to a lot of other problems. To help you both communicate more effectively set aside a certain amount of time each day to share with each other. During that time, talk over your days and ask questions of each other. Find out what it is that made you want to communicate with each other to begin with. After a few days of doing this you should find your communication skills are beginning to come back for each other.

How To Save Your Marriage 2
Spend some quality time together. It's a little bit of a cliché, but a nice trip or a few days spent outside your usual relationship area can do wonders for you both. Even better, if you can make trips or activities like this a habit, as it will help you learn how to interact with each other in a fun and loving fashion again. These days it's all too easy to let our communications boil down to the bear minimum, so try not to let this happen.

How To Save Your Marriage 3
Brush up on your listening skills. Sometimes when you get to know someone so well, it's almost as if you feel you no longer need to engage them or listen to them in conversation. If you can become a better listener you can prove to your partner that you are engaged in their life and that you respect their opinions. Is there anyone that doesn't want that? Simply by starting and actively participating in conversations with them you will be strengthening your bond, and you'll notice your partner is more interested in you too.

How To Save Your Marriage 4
Don't let the finance ruin the romance. Life can be very tough when money is an issue in a marriage. Financial problems are often ongoing and unlikely to be solved in short order, so it's a great idea to develop a set of rules for you both. If you both abide to a pre-conceived idea about how you will take care of the finances, the problems and arguments should be minimized.

How To Save Your Marriage 5
Make it fun. A marriage should be in place due to the amount of fun you have had with each other at some point. If you've removed the fun and replaced it with the mundanity of everyday life, how can you possibly expect the marriage to survive? It's an excellent idea to have some activities or hobbies to get involved with together-these can very easily become “your” way to spend time and have fun with each other.

As you've seen, the answer to the question “how to save a marriage?” varies widely from relationship to relationship, but hopefully you will find something of use in this article. Check out the link below for some great marriage advice. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Save my marriage

Finding Marriage Help Online

2009-09-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

Many people who need marriage help take their search for answers to their problems where they take their searches for everything else – online. But is it possible to find marriage help through an Internet search engine the way you search for Persian rugs, hip boots or camping equipment?

The answer is simple: sure!

Use your favorite search engine and type in the words “marriage help.” You’ll find a plethora of sites offering information, articles, and other resources. Using the Internet as an initial search for marriage help may bring some matters to your attention that you had not thought of previously. Maybe you are married to an alcoholic and did not know there were Al-anon and Al-ateen meetings in your area until you found them listed online.

While the Internet can be a good source of information, make sure you research your problem and verify the abilities and credentials of anyone who offers marriage advice. It’s like any other business you might do online. You just need to be a smart, well informed consumer.

Be cautious of paying anyone who poses as an online counselor. Before spending any money on products or services “guaranteed” to help your marriage, do the necessary research into the company who is making the promises. For instance, if a person says he or she is a counselor in a particular state, make the extra step and investigate his or her qualifications and verify whether the counselor is currently licenses. If you are having marriage problems, the last thing you want is to take advice from someone not licensed to give you advice.

If you can identify specific problems you are having in your marriage, do a search for those online. You will find specific information related to your specific problem. The Internet is a great place to learn about assistance available to victims of domestic abuse, alcohol and drug abuse and many other situations that can be helpful as you search for marriage help.

Just remember to be a smart consumer. Read all you can about your particular issues and marriage problems. Knowledge is power and you must be strong to work through the relationship issues you are having with your spouse.

For my recommendation on how to save your marriage, I recommend the save my marriage course. It's like marriage counseling, but not as expensive.

Can A Marriage Survive Cheating?

2009-09-27T01:39:00.000-07:00

There are marriages and there are marriages. You can expect/demand the sun, moon and the stars or almost nothing. It's a question of personality and perspective. But there is no doubt that the most important thing in a marriage, as in any other relationship, is honesty and real understanding.

In a marriage of the kind we all yearn to have, fidelity is vital. It implies a commitment that's total and complete. You seek the closest intimacy possible from no one else, so sufficient is the love you receive. What could be more reassuring, more meaningful? But a relationship that intense, comes with a price tag.

And infidelity in a relationship based on such love can be shattering. Nothing can fix that first fine careless rupture. Trust is ruptured forever. It's a betrayal that leaves you feeling painfully inadequate.

You look back through the prism of time and realise how wonderfully didactic you were in your youth! At 25, black and white could never co-exist. But then, life happens. And you realise that grey exists, and it is often a zone that needs far more maturity and understanding to inhabit than you ever dreamt.

When you've been married nearly 27 years, the first lesson you learn is that marriage is a relationship which, like human beings themselves, is constantly morphing and evolving. It's an equation where the variables change the answers constantly. People sometimes lead married lives together with infidelity between them. Children, autumn love, companionship allow such relationships to survive.

But at the end of the day, it's really what you want from your marriage and partner. You can survive infidelity (don't we survive everything?), but that's the right word, isn't it? Survive. If you want more, you have to sacrifice something. That my friend, is the nature of the beast.

I recommend checking out the save my marriage course. This may help you to save your marriage.

A Marriage Made In Heaven

2009-09-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

Looking for a paradise wedding, or have friends that are looking for the perfect place to get married? We have lots of romantic ideas for a heavenly Maui wedding.

At the beach, near a waterfall or in a chapel, with the fragrance of tropical flowers borne on gentle trade winds caressing your face -- a Maui sun bids ‘Aloha’ to another day in Paradise. It is quite simply, the perfect place to celebrate your wedding vows.

Here are a few of the ingredients that will imprint your wedding day on your minds for years to come.

Maui, Hawaii is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago in both size and population, located some 1,800 miles off the south western seaboard of the United States.

Hawaii is one of the top tourist destinations for the majority of Americans and hence a Maui wedding is highly desirable, taking place in one of the world’s foremost wedding and honeymoon destinations.

The weather in Maui is also most attractive as it is year round tropical; however it is most consistently pleasant outside the months of January and February (dead of winter).

Maui offers several fascinating attractions, including the unforgettable sight of a surfacing whale, biking through wine country, snorkeling the tiny atoll of Molokini, or enjoying a stage production at the Historic 'Iao Theater.

A reasonable stay of seven days, or more is recommended if you want to explore more than one Hawaiian Island.

Maui, Hawaii offers the enamored an ideal place to declare their love. Several professional services for Maui Weddings are in great demand, and wedding providers such as ParadiseMaui.com are at hand to assist in every way, from classic beach weddings to larger formal affairs.

A beautiful wedding of land and sea, the island of Maui offers newlyweds any number of romantic options.
An authentic Maui wedding might require the services of a ‘kahu’, which is a Hawaiian minister.

A Maui wedding may also include an elaborate ‘luau’ (pronounced loo-ow) celebration. A luau is a Hawaiian gathering of family and friends to enjoy good food, company and times.

In addition to the Hawaiian tradition of the ceremony, many couples decide to incorporate the exchanging of the lei, where each person gives their betrothed a lei. (A lei is a flower necklace.) For the bride, the pikake lei seems to be one of the most popular varieties because of its sweet fragrance and delicate appearance.

Pikake is a seasonal flower and has limited availability, but there are many other fragrant flowers to choose from. Grooms usually receive a maile lei, which is quite masculine and drapes loosely around the neck. The maile lei has beautiful green leaves which have a sweet smell and little fragrance. It also dries quickly and can be retained as a cherished keepsake for many years to come.

Another tradition that is sometimes performed is the conch shell announcement of the ceremony. Here a conch shell blower introduces the nuptials, and a Hawaiian chanter often follows in precession. A hula dance usually adds the perfect touch of Hawaii and can portray a beautiful message of love. Some brides have even taken it upon themselves to learn a hula dance and perform it as a surprise to their grooms. (The hiring of a professional hula dancer can be easily arranged.)

Hawaiian music can easily be adapted for any wedding. A soulful ukulele and guitar accompaniment can evoke the most melodic sounds. The “Hawaiian Wedding Song” is a popular request for many wedding couples here in Maui.

Giving Marriage Another Shot

2009-09-21T01:38:00.000-07:00

Before making another step in marrying again, are you ready to experience again the consequences of living again with someone?

First, you must review the performance you made in your first marriage. You will ask to yourself, how could I be a better spouse? How come our union ended in divorce? What really went wrong? What weaknesses do I still need to work on? There are many questions remained in your first marriage. So you must able to answer first all unending questions before thinking to marry again.

Second, know what you’re really looking for in a partner. Be sure of the character traits you want. Don’t force yourself to settle down just because you’re lonely and in dire need of a companion. Finally, let time answer your questions. Enjoy your freedom, at least for a moment and give yourself much time in finding your potential mate before you say “I do” again.

In entering another chapter in your life, second marriage is a very challenging obligation for you. Many different things will about to change in your everyday life when you finally decided in remarrying again. Freedom of you will be lost again. You must be prepared of the new responsibility you will take and how you take it with readiness.

For marrying the second time around, there are lots of things to consider for making it a successful one. There are many situations you must able to fully understand in order to avoid again differences to your new spouse. These are the following:

•EXPECTATIONS FOR A HEALTHY MARRIAGE
In the beginning of the second marriage, problems will not occur instantly. As to a new couple, you are savouring your new found love. However, too many expectations may arise when one is to demanding to the other. This can be fixed if you can tell what your limitations are and what you can only do.

•REALISTIC APPROACH OF LOVE
This can be the best thing ever happened to the second marriage. Love must blossom unconditionally with respect. Give and take-this is for the equal releasing of feelings.

•POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND OUTLOOK IN LIFE
It may not be perfect at all, but happy in what you have. Do not force yourself in giving just to ensure the happiness on your spouse. You must be contended of the abilities and capabilities of your partner. Encourage your partner in giving his/her best in any other way.

•COMMUNICATING ABOUT FEELINGS
You must be open to what you really feel. Have the time to talk. This can help in keeping the flame alive. Listen to your partner. In listening you get what he/she wants to relate.

•UNDERSTANDING AND ACCEPTING DIFFERENCES
You may not be able to do everything, it’s doesn’t cost you to any problem. Understanding and accepting weaknesses are part of marriage. Humans are not perfect, so they intend to make wrong actions. You must respect the little things he/she made.

•MAKING DECISIONS AND SETTLING ARGUMENTS
These kinds of situations are very crucial. It can make or brake. In making decisions you must tell what you’re thinking. Possibly, accept your partner’s opinion. Settle your arguments in due time. Arguments are really mind busters. This may create gaps in the relationship.

•COMMON SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION AND GOAL
It may be good if both of you believe in the same religion doctrine. It can avoid debates on what are the right beliefs. A dream of a perfect family is one common goal. This can be done if both are very cooperative and serious. It can be a good foundation in the years to come. This can be the guiding force of making a successful relationship.

•COMBINING A FAMILY
What if your new spouse has a child or children in his/her previous marriage? You must know at least step-parenting skills. You are dealing emotions of their new environment. Be a good at them as they are also important to your spouse’s life. Accept them as you accepted your partner. Make them also one of your main priorities.

In committing your life again to someone, make it sure that you are really serious and prepared. Sacrifice and true love must be your agenda as for marriage it’s not taken for granted. So to speak, may your second marriage be a successful and fruitful one.

Best wishes and good luck.

More Advice For Keeping Your Marriage Healthy

2009-09-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

Advice for a good marriage can in some cases seem a little obvious, but in a lot of cases it can seem like just the advice you need. When you are involved in a long term relationship, sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees, and it takes only the most basic advice for us to see what is wrong. Check this article out for more information.

Advice for a good marriage 1
The best piece of advice is to be honest with yourself about when it is and isn't working. If you kid yourself that everything is fine when it isn't, things are hardly likely to get better-in fact you will usually notice things getting steadily worse. The sooner you spot and admit to problems, the sooner you can move past them. Half the work is done as soon as you admit something is wrong, so don't be afraid.

Advice for a good marriage 2
Learn to communicate effectively. Too often relationships degenerate into accusations and fighting as the default method of interaction. Can you honestly hope for things to last if that's how you both behave? If you have something under your skin, sit down and talk it out. Talking about things sensibly rarely makes things worse-unlike accusations and arguing!

Advice for a good marriage 3
Understand that you can't fix the problems in your marriage solely fixing your partner's behaviour. A marriage is exactly that-the joining of two people-so it's not healthy to make one person do all the changing and adapting. This will not lead to a healthy relationship. It's much better to sit and talk it out and then work out how you can both make things better for each other. It's also a lot easier this way, as each of you will usually only need to make small adjustments to keep the other happy.

Advice for a good marriage 4
Learn the difference between being in love and falling in love. When you fall in love, the person can do no wrong and people are able to behave in ways that their partner may not necessarily agree with in a normal state of mind. That's why it can take work to stay in love-the love is still there, but you can't expect to act however you please and for it to still be there. Love is like a fire, it sometimes needs to be tended to make sure it still burns.

Advice for a good marriage 5
Understand the principles of marriage karma-you get what you give, so if you go the extra yard for your partner and prove yourself to be kind, caring and considerate, the chances are they will act a lot more like that toward you too. Think about when you see couples that are really in love-it's rarely just one of them doing the kind things is it?

Hopefully this advice for a good marriage will help you out. Check out the links below for some great information on fixing your marriage for good.

Save My Marriage Course

Marriage Counseling - Advice For A Happy Marriage

2009-09-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

Some people may think that advice for a happy marriage can be a bit obvious, but if that's the case why are there so many unhappy marriages? It can be very hard to focus on the big picture when you are on the inside of a long term relationship, so hopefully these tips can rejuvenate your marriage.

Advice for a happy marriage 1-
Communicate. A marriage is nothing without communication-and that doesn't mean arguing and snapping at each other all the time-that's not real communication. Communication means switching the TV off for once and sitting down and talking over your day, or letting your partner know in a direct way when there is a problem. A marriage is rarely harmed by some good direct communication.

Advice for a happy marriage 2-
Admit when things are wrong. During a serious relationship it can be very easy to let yourself gloss over things and make believe that everything will be okay. In truth though, if you do this you aren't being true to yourself, your partner, or your marriage. Problems in marriages are like snowballs rolling down a hill-it's easier to stop them early. Again, the easiest way to do this when a problem does arise is by simple communication between you both.

Advice for a happy marriage 3-
Know the difference between falling in love and maintaining a loving relationship. Falling in love can often be like being intoxicated, the subject of your love can do no wrong and all different areas of your brain are impaired due to your preoccupation with them. Unfortunately, this state rarely lasts past the first few years of marriage, so in many cases it's necessary to work together at maintaining a healthy and loving relationship.

Advice for a happy marriage 4-
Put a little karmic theory into your marriage-you get what you give, so if you do everything you can to make your partner happy, the chances are they will step up their efforts to make you happy. The more effort you expend making your partner understand how much they mean to you, the more likely it is for them to reciprocate.

Advice for a happy marriage 5-
Learn that mending a relationship doesn't mean mending your partner. A marriage includes you both, and so any issues or situations always include both of you. You can't fix things by modifying the behaviour of one person, it has to be a team effort. People aren't like animals, and you shouldn't have to “marriage train” your partner into making you happy. It's not fair on them, and it's not fair on you.

This advice for a good marriage can really help in the tough times, so I hope it helps you if you need it. If you are looking for information on how to save your marriage though, I recommend you check out the save my marriage course.

The Truth About Marriage And Divorce

2009-09-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

When two people are in love, all that seems to occupy their thoughts is the desire to share the rest of their lives together. This romantic notions often lead to the altar, and eventually to having children. Marriage is traditionally considered a bond bound in heaven, a contract between two people who commit to stay together “...through thick and thin, through sickness and in health.”

Having their own family becomes the next greatest blessing that may even be seen as more joyous than the actual wedding. As a family, they share life together, with all it joys, sorrows, and everything in between. The enjoyment of each other's company becomes the hallmark of their family.

But due to unfortunate events, some marriages do not last forever. Some fairy tales do not end with “happily ever after.” It is a fact that many couples do have differences that later turn out to be irreconcilable. Rather than endlessly be stuck in marital discord, some feuding couples see separation, annulment, or divorce as the only solution to end their fractured relationship.

Many marriages end up in divorce because when two people get married, they do so without thinking of the enormous responsibilities and challenges that come with the marital contract. The sheer number of drive-in marriage booths in Las Vegas clearly point out the rather low regard people place in the institution of marriage. How would you like an Elvis impersonator officiate in exchanging your vows? Many people actually got married that way in Vegas. Britney Spears married her old friend from school, and after less than forty eight hours, she got divorced. Other reasons for the high number of separation and divorce include cases of adultery or concubinage.

Naturally, separation and divorce brings untold anxiety not only upon the marriage partners, but often, more so on the children. Having a divorce can be both unpredictable and scary, for completing this whole process means the destruction of the whole foundation of the family ---not to mention the staggering costs of alimony and child support. Anxiety is present in divorce discussions, since the couple are not in good terms. A marital crisis is a family tragedy that would require years of emotional healing, if only to regain the self-esteem and stability of every person in the family.

Perhaps even more that the two involved in the marriage, the ones who need emotional healing the most are the children. Children are the least prepared to face serious emotional and psychological trauma. Parents with divorced parents are almost stricken with anxiety. The stress is often seen in their poor performance in school and melancholic behavior at home. With low self-esteem, many teenagers from broken homes resort to drugs and join gangs to find a “substitute” home or family. In any case, emotional healing is crucial if children are to be prepared or rehabilitated from the emotional scars that were brought about by their parents' failed marriage. While keeping the marriage partnership intact may be the ideal, sometimes the avenue of divorce is taken by couples to prevent their children from becoming “collateral damage” in a situation where parents are constantly fighting.

So if you are looking to try and save your marriage, consider checking out the Save My Marriage course.

Good luck!

Marriage Counseling - Self Help And Marriage

2009-09-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

Love is the royal road to salvation. It doesn’t matter what race, religion or gender you are, love is available to everyone as a way of getting yourself up out of the problems in your life and finding the road to happiness. One thing that many people fail to realize, however, is that marriage does not equal love. You can get married as many times as you like but love doesn’t come out of marriage no matter what religion, church or spiritual organization you come from. In order for marriage to work, love has to be there first and it has to be something you can nourish and help to grow or it will surely dry up and fade away. Marriage needs love the way a flower needs water. Without love, you have nothing.

When we talk about love, what is it we are talking about exactly? What can we do to get this love and keep it? Self help in marriage is all about finding the way to feed your love and make it grow. Love isn’t something that just anyone can maintain although it is available as an option to everyone. Maintaining love is something that only a few select people are capable of and the percentage is surprisingly quite low. It is estimated by some of the greatest psychiatrists in the self help field that love is really an energy that can only be maintained by something close to two percent of the population! Do these numbers sound low to you? They sound low to a lot of people and yet, statistics often show that the feelings people identify as love often turn to discouragement and resentment after only a few short months and breakups are a dime a dozen in the game of love. If the numbers sound low, there is no need to feel discouraged. Although love may only be possible for a small percentage of the population, it doesn’t have to be you who loses out. Seeing the pitfalls ahead of time and developing a sober attitude toward the difficult challenges of love can be the very thing that saves you from the overwhelming statistics. This is especially true if you discover this valuable information early. Most people don’t learn this until after their first marriage is over. Even divorce doesn’t have to mean discouragement as people’s second marriages often tend to be more successful than their first. This is because some sobering lessons are learned the first time around that were just to difficult for most people to swallow in the beginning.

One of the most sobering truths about successful marriages that most people don’t want to admit is that money plays a much bigger role in the outcome of the marriage than was ever expected by newlyweds. The number one topic of argument among married couples is money. Money plays a role in everything we do, from our self esteem in our careers to the much needed vacations we take when the stress becomes too much. If the money is short, the tensions tend to rise and then the arguments begin. Married couples who have no money ordinarily need to be exceptional individuals with great inner strength and determination to make things work. This is already a great truth for those who already have a lot of money so it is even more true for those who don’t.

Another extremely sobering truth for married couples is that partnerships often survive because of a common project of goal that each partner has with the other. Oftentimes, couples bond for life because of their children who, after the initial joy of the marriage begins to fade, the children come along to bring a renewed sense of purpose into their lives and keep them together no matter what the problems are that they face. Couples who share a business together or similar careers can also find mutual respect and joy for each other. Even these commonalities, however, are often not enough to sustain the marriage in many cases. Many marriages have failed even though the two are from similar careers start with children early on.

All is not lost! The most common factor which is identified in successful marriages is an importance which is placed on spiritual growth and self help between two people. This spirituality that exists between two people is hard to define and may even come in the form of two people being driven in their careers. Underneath all of this, however, is a commitment to better themselves and the belief that love is a great power which is deserving of respect and reverence. The mystery of love and marriage may never be solved but it certainly benefits a person early on to know the stakes and to be aware of the many pitfalls. Only in this way can you make your chances much better for finding and fulfilling love in your life.

Astrology And Marriage

2009-09-06T01:23:00.000-07:00

Astrology is the study of the positions and aspects of celestial bodies in the belief that they have an influence on the course of natural earthly occurrences and human affairs. Astrological predictions can be effectively used to predict many aspects of our lives such as business, romance, money, jobs etc. It can also be used to enhance overall success of individuals. The impact of the planetary motions on our day to day lives cannot be entirely ruled out. Millions of successful users of astrology will vouch for that.

For most normal human beings, marriage is a sacred institution. It means the union of two hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. It is often said that “marriages are made in heaven”. Well, could be very much true. But for all practical purposes, it is essential to find the right match for a man or a woman. Astrology can help do just that. Astrology plays a big part in finding the right matrimonial alliance. With the help of astrological predictions, the compatibility of a couple can be ascertained. This practice of matching horoscopes of would be brides and grooms are quite common among the Hindus in India. Marriages almost never happen here without horoscope matching. Astrologers also determine the ideal time and date of the marriage. Horoscopes of the prospective brides and grooms tell a lot about the past, present and future. Horoscope matching also guides the astrologer on the dates to be avoided. There are some periods in which influence of some planets like Saturn is quite strong. These periods may not be ideal for solemnization of a marriage. Marriages solemnized in these “bad patches” may not last long, or may be shaky. So, we can say astrology can be used to avoid future “break-ups” or divorces. Matrimonial matching by horoscopes requires a few important documents. First of all, the horoscopes of both the bride and the bridegroom are analyzed. Then some crucial information such as the date of birth, time of birth and place of birth, of both the man and the woman are collected. There are various permutations and combinations to be done to match the horoscopes. The influences of the motions of the planets at the time of birth are analyzed. This gives a rough idea to the astrologer whether the couple is compatible or not. It is not mandatory that the horoscopes of the bride and the groom need to match perfectly. Sometimes marriages are possible in the case minor differences between the boy and the girl. But in such cases, some corrective measures, as suggested by the astrologers have to be taken before the solemnization of the marriage.

It has been observed that the success rates of marriages are higher in cases where horoscope matching is done. Critics may have a different opinion regarding this. But they too cannot totally disprove the fact that Astrology is effective when it comes to marriages. The scientists may say that Astrology has no scientific basis. But that does not take the credit away from the practice of horoscope matching that is prevalent in India.

Using Games In Marriage Counseling

2009-09-03T01:19:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article that discusses how you can use games with marriage counseling.

Marriage is one of the most enjoyable but also one of the most painful experiences that people undergo. It carries with it the whiff of romance and eternal bliss, but sometimes you get a pack of thorns instead.

How Do You Ensure Your Marriage Is a Bed of Roses and not Thorns?
One of the major ingredients that a happy marriage needs is a willingness to compromise. But that is much more difficult than it seems. Everyone will agree that they need to compromise, but what happens when the issue is not a simple and tiny one? What then? Who Compromises first? I am sure you must have said to yourself at one point or another that enough is enough. You will no longer be the patsy. You are an independent person and your partner has crossed the line. Maybe.

Maybe your relationship has died and you are just beginning to realize it. Maybe your sentiments are more passionate than romantic. Maybe you no longer love her.

Stop being a fool!
What if I told you that the solution to your marital strife is not divorce. Am I mad?

Look around. How many divorces do you know? Plenty. Me too. But are they really happier off?

What is the first thing that a divorced person does? He or she goes out and starts looking for partners.

Isn't that strange? No. You say that everybody needs somebody to love. Maybe. I say that they had that somebody and they just let them go. So please stop being foolish.

Why not tackle your problems with a simple suggestion? A Game.

Games as a Peace Maker:
Playing brings out the child in us and causes us to express more than we normally would. We also release bottled up frustration and let go of mental thorns in our outbursts of joy and anguish as we win or lose. Games unite people together and therefore I suggest playing together but if you wish one can play against the other. The game turns into a battle but only this time, after its over, you will both feel refreshed from losing all that bottled up pain and anger.

Games to Pick From:
Try picking games that both of you like or at least somewhat active ones. You could even play hide and seek in the house or something else. If you do prefer playing cards, pick a game which does not go on for long and which requires some thinking like hearts, poker, bridge or rummy. Keep score and determine before hand that the loser has to do something for the winner. Chores is not a prize for the winner! If you lose you have to do something that that the other person wants for themselves like give them their favorite massage or cook them their favorite meal.

Conclusion:
Games are a welcome ambrosia to love and will excite you as a couple to disregard all your frustrations and anger and deal only with the good in marriage counseling. The anger and frustrations will not magically disappear, but now you can deal with them together calmly and in a good mood.

Regaining Self-Esteem After An Abusive Relationship

2009-08-31T03:52:00.000-07:00

Abuse relationships have the capability to inflict tremendous physical and psychological distress on the individual in the relationship. This goes beyond something that simply going to marriage counseling would fix. In addition to emotional and literal scars that are caused by abusive relationships, an individual’s self esteem can be completely demolished. Many individuals in an abusive relationship have been consistently told and shown they are not of value, nor of worth. After constant reminders, both men and women who are victims of abusive relationships begin to think these derogatory remarks are true. Instead of the inner feeling of self worth and confidence, these individuals have little or no self esteem left after the destructive effects of an abusive relationship.

If you find yourself in an abusive relationship, you should immediately remove yourself from the situation. Quite often, this is easier said than done as abusive relationships are initiated and maintained under the pretense of love and affection. If an individual has your well being in mind and truly cares about you, he or she will not verbally or physically abuse you. Even though this abusive individual apologizes or begs your forgiveness, abuse is cyclic and this behavior is part of its final cycle. Usually, individuals in abusive relationships say their partner is loving and supportive, then violent and abusive, then apologetic and loving. This cycle continues until either party decides enough is enough and ends the cycle.

Individuals in abusive relationships often find themselves trapped and feel their options are extremely limited or nonexistent. If you are in an abusive relationship and feel there is no way out, reevaluate your situation. Turn to friends or family members who will support you in your decision to break ties and end the relationship. Individuals who are truly your loved ones will want whatever is best for you and support you in any decisions you may make. If you have no one to turn to, seek help from shelters or different organizations that are in existence to help people in your specific situation. With the help of these individuals, you can begin rebuilding your life and renewing your self esteem.

Once you have made the decision to break free from your abusive relationship, begin the process of rebuilding your life. This rebuilding process may take some time, so be prepared to invest a great deal of time and effort into rebuilding your life. You may need to make serious choices regarding your future, including changing locations to another city and changing your choice of career. Leaving an abusive relationship will most likely mean moving into a new home. You may need temporary housing, so consider staying with friends or family members or staying at a shelter that specializes in abusive relationships. This is an incredibly difficult decision, but the best boost to your self esteem will come after you have made the decision and begin to piece your life back together.

After you have begun the rebuilding process, you may need to seek professional help regarding your mental or physical state. Speaking with a psychologist or counselor may be the initiation necessary to continue rebuilding your self esteem. Seek out a professional that will assist you in that specific area using a variety of different exercises and techniques. Furthermore, you may wish to join a support group so that you can speak with other individuals who have suffered similar abuse. If you do not have access to a support group or feel attending a support group is not for you at his point in time, consider accessing the World Wide Web and finding a chat room that will serve as support. Once you start on your road to recovery, stay strong and remember you are an individual of worth and value. This will continue to build your self esteem and rebuild your life. Good luck!

Self Determination

2009-08-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

The best rules for any type of relationship whether you are dealing with kids, mates, friends, or relatives are posted below:

Never expect more from you than you can manage: Expecting more than you can manage makes you an over determined person. You need balance to stay strong.

Do never expect more of your partner or child than you would expect of you: Follow this golden rule will help you develop in a relationship and keep the relationship growing strong.

Accept realization: each of you is adapting to the new changes – work on developing self-actualization to ensure that you can adapt to changes as you progress in self-determination and self-development.

Take advantage of time you can share with your mate and baby – do not forget to spend time with you as well. Spending time with you allows you to assess your inner strengths and weaknesses in order to move through the processes of self-development.

Express your emotions and feelings maturely – expressing your emotions enable you to clear up doubts, confusion, hate, or other negative thoughts that form in the mind. You can work through maturity by adapting to this rule.

Talk with your mate and let him express his feelings also about the new baby, breastfeeding, experiences, sex interests, body changes, and what the two of you feel about being new parents – discussions are healthy. Make sure that you learn and get in the habit of discussion your interests, while listening to the interest of others as well.

Learn to solve problems as a family unit – this will ensure that you have room to grow. When you have a happy family unit, it gives you the room you need to take time out for you and move through the stages of self-determination and self-development.
Discuss changes and your dislikes and likes during your childhood – this is another part of maturity. This rule is a healthy rule that will bring you many benefits. Not only will you feel happy and content, you will also feel in control of your life – and you will stay determined to meet your goals.

Discuss your parent’s upbringing and which mistakes you can learn from them to avoid making the mistake in your relationship and parenthood – it is always healthy to spill out your guts and discuss differences in points of views to create a healthy environment for everyone, including you.

Use nap time to converse and share activities with your mate – conversation is the main skill we have that helps us to build relationships, open our minds up for discoveries, learn something new and more. With good conversation you can exchange ideas, which will help you learn. You make room for discussions, which creates a healthy environment for everyone, including you. This is only part of building the self-determination you will need to live a healthy, productive life.

More tips:
Accept unorganized house care, since it occurs when you have a new baby – spend quality time and try to clean up together – do not spend your time or burn energy nagging or complaining over simple things. Instead keep your self-determination strong by overlooking the things that do not matter.

Work as a team – working, as a team is the only way that each member in your unit will keep the unit growing strong. Take some unity time to discuss self-growth and self-determination, as well as related topics so that all of you can grow together.

Put your priorities in focus as a team – create a list to help you work together – priorities are essential elements we need in life. Priorities keep us focused, determined, and prepared.
Maintain a sense of humor --- life is too difficult not to add a little humor into your life. Do mistake humor as watching a funny program on television; rather open your mind to all aspects before you open your mouth to speak. Think about the positive instead of the negative at all times.

Marriage Counseling - Save Your Relationship After Cheating

2009-08-27T03:50:00.000-07:00

Cheating of one or both partners can strongly affect your martial relationship. This is one scenario where even marriage counseling just may not work. An extra-marital affair is a heart-breaking and embarrassing situation for both the partners and indicates the failure of companionship and married life. The most important base of any marriage is trust and faith which may get weakened due to the extra-marital affair.

It may give rise to the marital problems like conflicts and bitterness which when crosses the limits can result in separation. However, separation is a very painful and stressful situation for both the partners; you should try to save your relationships after cheating.

It may be very painful and hurting for you if you come to know that your partner is cheating you. But, don’t get frustrated or panic at such situations, remain calm and try to control the situation. Think about how you can handle this situation and find out the ways to save your relationships after cheating.

It is quite obvious that you get angry with your partner, but cool down and try to know why your partner is cheating you. In most cases, the reason of cheating is not that the partner who is cheating has no emotional feelings, but it may be due to his/her physical need. In such situation, you can grab the attention of your partner with your intense love.

Whatever may be the reason of cheating, ‘forgive and forget’ is an important key factor to save your relationships after cheating. When you realize that you have been cheated by your partner, talk to him/her about it openly and find out about his/her willing to save the marriage and try to understand your partner’s approach about it. Express your love for your partner and make him/her realize how much you need him/her. If you get the positive response from your partner, then forgive him/her and say ‘Let’s make a new start’.

If you are successful in developing a deep love for each other, then this problem can be easily solved. The important step you should take to save your relationships after cheating is to find out your drawbacks and mistakes. Take efforts to improve your personality and behavior and avoid doing the things by which your partner gets hurt.

Plan to spend the vacation with your partner and go for outings. Give time for each other, improve the communication between you, try to find out the differences between you and overcome them.

If you are your partner who is cheating, then you should equally contribute and take efforts to save the marriage. You should promise to end your affair and be loyal with your partner. Your body language is significant when you are saying ‘sorry’ to your partner.

If your partner is ready to forgive you and forget the bitterness, you should respond him/her in a positive way. You should also express deep love for your partner and make him/her know how much you need your partner and how incomplete you are without him/her. This will surely work and you will be able to reignite love in your partner’s mind.

When both of you take the efforts to save your relationships after cheating is not difficult, you will be successful to improve your relationships and live happily together. But remember, there is nothing wrong with marriage counseling!

Relationship Romance

2009-08-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

The best thing about romance in a relationship is that it is shared. While one partner may initiate it, both end up enjoying any romantic effort. Romance is a relationship activity and cannot work if both partners aren’t participants. When you decide that romance is the way you want to go in order to improve your marriage or even work towards having an outstanding marriage, start planning your romance in advance with both you and your partner in mind. Even if you are giving a gift to your partner, keep in mind how it will affect you when you present it to him or her. Some gifts are actually meant for both of you although it is presented to only one partner (ex. Massage oil). Both of you must enjoy the romance in order for it to be effective in your relationship.

While being romantic often draws to mind gifts and planning outings together, you don’t have to spend money in order to be romantic! You can plan a day where you are completely at your spouse’s disposal. Devote yourself entirely to your spouse for an entire day. He or she can ask you to do chores, rub their feet, give them a massage, watch a movie you normally wouldn’t watch together or try an interest of his or hers that you haven’t tried. Your spouse may also decide that you are best put to use in the bedroom!

When you want to do something extra special, take your spouse on a local ‘honeymoon’ trip! Find a local hotel that has a honeymoon suite and book it for one night. Do it up right and make sure it is stocked with champagne, strawberries and whipped cream. Have flowers and your song available to play in your room. For her, have new lingerie laid out on the bed. For him, have new lingerie laid out on the bed. For an extra special twist, pack a bag for your spouse, hire a sitter if necessary and tell him or her that you’re going out for the evening. Blindfold your spouse and lead him or her to your honeymoon suite.

Find an affordable card shop or see if your local greeting card store offers any type of multiple card purchase discounts. Buy as many cards for your spouse as you can. Store the cards and send them to your spouse intermittently. You can choose to send them every few months, every month, every week, each day or every waking hour!

Take the time to create your own loving edible baked goods for your spouse! Make heart shaped cookies, a heart shaped cake or make your own heart shaped chocolates. Find a heart shaped bowl, pop popcorn to serve in the bowl and spend the entire day watching romantic movies together.

You can take any or all of these ideas and use them for special occasions or throughout the year. It doesn’t really matter when or how you do something romantic as long as you do it together.

Rationalizations In A Relationship

2009-08-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

So many relationships come in second, third or even worse to the many distractions in our daily lives. Unfortunately, these distractions are allowing too many marriages to end in divorce or a couple simply co-exists for years longing for happiness and fulfillment. It simply doesn’t have to be this way. To start, consider marriage counseling. But also, It’s time to take a look at what is really important and what will matter in the long run. Once your job or other commitments are gone, all you’ll have left is an empty marriage or an empty home to face every day. It’s time to stop making excuses and find the time to romance your spouse starting today.

Some women truly believe that some men aren’t genetically capable of being romantic. No matter how masculine a guy is, he is capable of romance! It is just another excuse for people to let their relationship slide. Romance leads to happy relationships while relationships without romance lead to loneliness or even worse. All men are and can show that they are romantic. So can all women.

When you envision romance, you probably think about a great deal of materialistic exchanging happening between you and your spouse. Romance isn’t about what is tangible or how much you spent. Romance is about the thought and intention behind every gesture you make. As long as the thought is behind your efforts, you will have romance. Improving your relationship with better companionship, sex and attention is very romantic alone!

If you’ve decided to be romantic, you have one chance to forget about your commitment. Just one chance and then that’s it. From then on it’s an excuse- a bad one at that- and you will do more damage to your relationship than you thought possible from neglecting your spouse. If you are constantly forgetting, you are displaying behavior that can only be interpreted as your spouse simply isn’t that important to you.

Procrastination is the archenemy of romance. While your career is and should be important, your spouse should be more important. Imagine sitting on your front porch in your golden years while looking back at everything you’ve accomplished as well as any regrets you might have. Do you really thing you’ll be wishing you had spent more time working?

For the belligerent spouses out there, its most likely crossed you mind that you don’t have to be romantic because you shouldn’t have to prove your love to your spouse. Being married and bringing romance into your relationship isn’t about proving anything. Romance with your spouse is about showing how much you appreciate and love him or her.

Don’t drag your heels when it comes to being romantic. Putting it off can become just as bad as never ever doing it at all and the habit is quite easy to fall into. Consider the fact that you don’t know how long you and your spouse will be lucky enough to have each other. Whether he or she will become deceased or they leave your procrastinating butt, you simply don’t have the time to put off making your marriage and incredibly loving and romantic partnership. So consider marriage counseling or at least some of these tips. Good luck!

Having Fun In Your Relationship

2009-08-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to be successful in any relationship is to have fun! Sometimes it might feel a little bit awkward, but once you remember how good it feels to act like a kid, sweet, silly and just plain carefree, you will find you prefer it to your adult life! Make sure you revisit and care for your ‘inner child’. This is the part of you that can unlock all of your creativity, spontaneity, feeling of wonder and happiness. Take this part of you and make it a part of your relationship. While there are always times when you have to be an adult, there are also times when it is absolutely fine to be wonderfully carefree and joyful!

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy an Oreo cookie. Take an Oreo (or generic version of one), scratch the top of the cookie until smooth and then scratch a heart and your initials into the smooth surface. You can also make your own cookies and create personal messages. Another version is to make your own cupcakes and frost them with special messages in red icing. You can also give your spouse a true treat and track down a box of his or her favorite Girl Scout cookie.

Candy bars are always a special treat and you can use them as creative ways to send your spouse special messages. Hershey’s Kisses are a favorite and many people already give them with their own special messages. You can also use other suggestive candy names like “Life Saver”, “Mounds”, “Fire Balls” and more. Instead of candy, you can fill the candy jar with love messages. On the other hand, you can fill the mailbox with candy.

Once you’ve satisfied your sweet tooth, take your spouse out to a large field, lie down and watch the clouds form different shapes. Not only are you out doing something fun together, but you are also far away from any distractions you might have at home. By the way if you didn’t turn off your cell phone, you didn’t have a truly romantic experience.

Did you know that over seventy five percent of women like stuffed animals and even more men enjoy electronic gadgets or power tools? These make perfectly fun gifts for both of you to be able to give to each other. An even better way to go about being a ‘kid’ with him or her is to find out what their favorite childhood item was and find it for them. It might mean a call to his or her parents or a visit to Ebay, but find it and let him or her know that every part of their life is important to you.

Comics are another wonderfully creative way to share your funny sense of humor and playful side with your spouse. Start combing the newspaper for funny comic strips and start to collect them. Tape them to the rearview mirror, the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator and even the back of the toilet seat. After you replace each comic strip, you can place the older ones in a scrapbook or photo album so that you enjoy them over and over again.

Favorites In A Relationship

2009-08-19T03:45:00.000-07:00

When it comes to your relationship with your spouse and attempting to improve your marriage, you will most likely begin learning more and more about each other. This is a great way to get ideas for romantic planning as well as gifts for your spouse. Begin having conversations about your likes and dislikes with each other. Not only will taking about these things bring you closer together, but they can also help you express your love in an effective manner and buy gifts that he or she is sure to enjoy. If you want to do this in another, yet obvious way, you can make a specific checklist for both of you to complete. It is likely to cause all kinds of laughter and jokes at each other’s expense, but this way you will have a concrete list on hand.

When you consider the number of likes and dislikes a person can have for just about everything in the world, it can seem a bit overwhelming. Start with simple things like his or her favorite color, lucky number(s), favorite music, favorite flower, favorite child’s book, favorite current author, favorite singer, favorite song, favorite poet and favorite poem. You can then move on to their favorite food, favorite fruit, favorite vegetable, favorite type of chocolate, favorite cookie, favorite ice cream flavor, favorite snack food, favorite fast food and favorite restaurant.

Next, find out what your partner’s favorite movie is (you might want to make this a ‘top five’ question- most people can’t choose just one movie.) Then move on to find out who his or her favorite actress and actor are, their favorite romantic movie, comedy movie, musical, action movie and erotic movie. If you and or your spouse enjoy theater, now is the time to find out the specific of what they like about it. You can find out what their favorite play is, what their favorite show tune is and even who their favorite Broadway actor is.

Favorites can span all types of categories including sports and arts. Find out about their favorite artist, favorite style of artwork, favorite sculpture and favorite painting. Ask about his or her favorite sport to watch as well as their favorite sport to play. Take it further and find out about his or her favorite Olympic sport, favorite teams and even their favorite board game.

You can find out about more personal things like his or her favorite foreplay activity (both giving and receiving), their favorite position for making love, their favorite love making location, favorite sexy outfit (both his and hers), favorite place to be touched, favorite place to be kissed, favorite time of day to make love and their favorite fantasy. Find out their favorite place to shop for lingerie, their favorite color of lingerie and favorite style of lingerie.

Make note of what most might consider to be small things like your spouse’s favorite way to relax, his or her favorite television show, their favorite scent, favorite perfume or cologne, favorite beverage, favorite joke, favorite holiday, favorite day of the week and so much more. Take all of this information and treat it as the valuable resource that it is. Use it, update it and tweak it as often as necessary.

Is Marriage Counseling Needed? Evaluate Your Relationship

2009-08-17T03:43:00.000-07:00

Everyone dreaded report card day in school and if you are dreading making your own relationship report card, then you need to buckle down and study! When you rank all of the aspects of your relationship between you and your spouse, you need to score in the high nineties to achieve an A+. Consider creating a ‘relationship report card’ with your spouse and watch the awakening you will both experience. When you try to complete your relationship report card, it should not turn into a ‘blame game’. It should open the lines of communication and offer some invaluable insight into your relationship as to where you need changes and improvements. That way, you will have an idea if you should seek marriage counseling.

When you consider how you want to grade your partner and yourself, it is a good idea to have some pre-set guidelines as to what each grade means. For example, an ‘A’ might mean that your partner isn’t perfect, but obviously excelling. It could also mean that your partner is loving, attentive, enthusiastic and satisfying. A ‘B’ could stand for a partner who is always trying, better than most and consistently works on improvement. A ‘C’ might mean average or acceptable. ‘C’s’ always indicate plenty of room for improvement. ‘D’s’ and ‘F’s’ should be reserved for unhappy situations or even hopeless ones. ‘D’s’ indicate never hopeless while ‘F’s’ require more than just a relationship evaluation. If you find that you and your spouse have areas with a ‘D’ or an ‘F’, you need to focus on why you are giving or receiving those grades and commit to some kind of action in order to change and improve that grade such as marriage counseling. It might involve a commitment on both spouses, but if both are willing to work at it the grade is already moving higher.

When you begin working on your relationship report card, it should be graded the same way your school papers were graded with a number grade (ex. 80%, 50%, 95% and so on). Grade both your partner and yourself in areas like affection, ability to resolve conflict, attitude, commitment, communication skills, consideration level, thinking as a ‘couple’, creativity, sensitivity, flexibility, generosity, friendship and gift giving skills. Once you’ve completed that list, continue to evaluate your honesty levels, listening skills, household management skills, patience, love making, romance abilities and practice, playfulness, self-esteem, self-awareness, sense of humor, empathy, tolerance and spontaneity. If you feel that there are any other areas relevant to your particular relationship, feel free to add and evaluate at your discretion.

When you and your spouse are grading each other, be sure to both participate in grading. You can work out your own particulars, but make sure you both have a say in both of your grades. Compare and talk about your grades and why your partner believes you deserve a particular grade (this includes the good grades, too!). You’ll be surprised at how your partner sees your relationship and you’ll have invaluable insight into how he or she sees your role in the relationship. Just because you may not have earned an A+ in one area doesn’t mean that you can’t celebrate. Pat yourself (and your partner) on the back for anything over a ‘B’ and talk about ways you can improve on any ‘C’s’ and ‘D’s’ or consider marriage counseling.

Good luck!

Getting A Good Score On Your Relationship

2009-08-15T03:41:00.000-07:00

You probably have a good idea of where you and your spouse are in your relationship or if you don’t, it’s time to find out. Consider thinking about your relationship, write down where you believe your relationship could use some improvement and talk to your spouse about what you have been thinking and feeling. Consider Marriage Counseling, it may help! Achieving an exceptional relationship is not easy, but it is an attainable goal. People who have wonderfully rewarding relationships are loving and giving people. This is a lifestyle that is available to every couple that is willing to work towards such a goal.

When you are looking to have an outstanding relationship with your spouse, you will benefit in more ways than you can imagine. You will be more able to understand you loving relationship in ways that you never thought possible and it helps you to act in ways that satisfy both you and your partner as well as nurture both of you as a couple. An exceptional relationship is one where you and your partner have the best intimate relationship possible, where you are both faithful, passionate, committed to growth, romantic and fascinating, you both consistently work at making your love grow and although not perfect, your relationship is one that you wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world.

So, how do you arrive at such an existence with your spouse? You must dedicate yourself to achieving excellence while you work hard, play hard and you both work on your relationship skills together. As simple as it sounds, you both have to live how you love each other each and every day. Great relationships don’t just happen. They arise as the result of work, work, and work! You need to be creative and work together at creating the relationship into one life you can both share together.

Your relationship with your spouse is very individual and only you both know what you want as far as a life together. You are in charge of making your rules and expectations for your individual relationship. This type of direction you can make for your marriage is a wonderful concept in the way people view relationships. You are able to make your relationship into exactly what you want it to be. You are in charge of your goals and in meeting your own standards.

You have the unique knowledge that allows you to create a relationship out of the values you treasure the most like honesty, faith, commitment, creativity, flexibility and equality. With this knowledge as well as the desire to create such a wonderfully romantic and loving desire, you can create a relationship that is not only fulfilling and rewarding but enviable as well.

When you can center your attention on the behaviors in your marriage and not on the personalities, you can focus you attention on setting goals instead of placing blame. This method helps you to set, reach and maintain your goals in order to have the marriage most couples only dream of. Remember, there is nothing wrong with marriage counseling!

Gifts That Can Build A Relationship

2009-08-13T03:42:00.000-07:00

Every marriage experiences spouses buying gifts for one another. Most of the time the gifts are for what are considered to be ‘mandatory’ gift giving days like birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas and so on. Sometimes spouses use gifts as gestures to say that they are sorry or to earn forgiveness. These aren’t gifts at all- they are bribes and they don’t serve any purpose other than to be a Band Aid to wounds that require proper attention to heal.

The best gifts given in any relationship are gifts that have only one intention and that intention is to let your spouse know that you are thinking of them, appreciate them and love them. These gifts are given without ulterior motives or expectations. These gifts only work when they are chosen with a great deal of thought, care and without anticipating anything in return.

Begin by shopping all of the time. This doesn’t mean that you should just load up your shopping basket each time you head out. This doesn’t require much effort and you will most likely go broke doing this! Instead, each time you are in a store with or without your spouse, keep an eye out for items you think he or she would love to have or find touching. Pay attention when you are together either window shopping or looking for specific items. If he or she finds something that they have an interest in, either purchase it when they aren’t close by or come back later and buy it for them.

You can find all kinds of wonderful treasures in a variety of shops. Try browsing shops you don’t enter on a regular basis for ideas and many times, rare finds. Some of these types of shops include antique stores, new and used bookstores, second-hand shops, toy stores, video stores, sporting goods stores, nostalgia shops, natural health food stores, card shops and more.

When you go shopping, head out without any preconceived ideas. Use your intuition to shop for your partner. In other words, don’t find your gift- let your gift find you! If your spouse has a favorite store that he or she loves, get to know the manager and other employees. Stop in on a regular basis to see if he or she has been in and shown any interest in a particular item. Buy it!

Always be ready to buy something while you are out. Keep a ‘gift buying’ fund tucked safely in the back of your wallet so that you are never without funds. Try to pay cash, as your partner shouldn’t be able to find out what you spend through credit card receipts or statements. Because you will most likely be accumulating gifts faster than you are giving them, make sure you have a safe hiding spot in which you can store your gifts.

As with any romantic gesture, don’t overdo the gift giving. If he or she receives gifts all of the time, it isn’t special. Pace yourself, put thought into everything you do and always consider your spouse before taking any action.

Celebrate Your Relationship!

2009-08-11T03:38:00.000-07:00

If you are spending time looking for ways in which you can improve your relationship, you obviously love and care for your partner and what you want to have together. Start your changes by celebrating your relationship! Celebrate the joy of having met that one very special person, find joy in the wonderful things that ‘click’ about you and your spouse and celebrate what you are committed to building together. You can celebrate any day at any time and you can also celebrate by surprising your spouse.

On your next birthday, celebrate your spouse and how he or she makes your existence better by presenting him or her with a gift. He or she will be so surprised that you might see a tear or two of joy fall.

Start paying attention to what he or she likes. Really listen to what your spouse says, pay attention to the items he or she says he would like to try someday and get it for them. Don’t give it to your spouse immediately and put the item away for a period of time. The period of time is up to you- it could be a week or it could be a month. When you think that he or she will no longer remember discussing the item with you, present it to them as a gift.

Take over a chore or daily task for your spouse without letting them know about your intentions. Mow the lawn, washing the car, cook and clean up from meals or clean the house- do something substantial for him or her. If you find that he or she loved having the break from a particular task, do it over and over again as often as you can.

One of the most recognizable symbols of a celebration is a balloon! Fill your car with balloons and take them home to him or her. Fill the living room before he or she gets home from work. Make sure you have some balloons marked with your names in hearts on them and some should have personal messages written as well. Begin the celebration of your love today.

Start celebrating each major and minor holiday with your spouse. Begin with New Year’s Eve and do it big. Go to New York City and go to Times Square if that’s as big as you can think! Valentine’s Day should be done as lavishly as possible. On the Fourth of July, plan to attend the most extravagant fireworks display you can find or plan on making fireworks of your own at home. Always celebrate each other’s birthdays and do it with flair. Your Anniversary should be a special day and celebrated with an expensive bottle of your favorite drink. Get dressed up on Halloween as your favorite fantasy characters and role-play for the entire evening. Celebrate any and every day you want by staying home from work and playing in bed. Celebrate as often of infrequently as you want to, but make sure you take the time to play, surprise each other and celebrate your relationship.

Dealing With The Failure Of A Relationship

2009-08-09T03:31:00.000-07:00

Relationships are going to change over time no matter what. It is something that we cannot stop. However we are going to need to figure out a way to take on challenges and use the things that we learn from others to deal with failure. If marriage counseling doesn't work, there are ways to get over relationships that fail and to move on past the hard times that we all deal with.

Dealing with a failed relationship can be something very stressful if we let it. There are ways to make sure that we are positive about what we are doing and how well we handle things. Getting along with others is always an important part of behavior. There are ways that we can work at this type of effort and be the better person when it comes to making things work in a relationship.

When you find that you are having a hard time dealing with a certain relationship you should think about the things that you need to change. What is not working for you? Are you both the problem or is there one thing that is making it hard to concentrate on fixing the problem. Dealing with failure can be a difficult part of life. It is not easy to realize that you are not perfect and that you have made mistakes.

The one thing that we can be sure of is that we can learn from the mistakes in relationships that we have made. This is a good lesson to learn and something that we can use in other ways. When we find out that we are not doing something the way that we should and using our best judgments for certain things we will want to try and figure out a plan to take.

Take things in stride. Do not get upset and worried about every little thing. We have to be sincere and think of ideas to use in many certain circumstances. There is always advice that we can take to help us with the problems that we may face in a relationship. Making choices is not always something that is so easy. We have to learn from the mistakes that we make and try and come up with other ideas to make things easier and better.

It is also important to not dwell on something that has gone wrong in a relationship. If we have failed at something with someone then we must move on. There is no reason to use this one example as an excuse to be afraid to try it again with someone else. There are different approaches to different people and if we think about what the best way is then we will be better able to make things right with our relationships.

Put it this way, failure is going to happen no matter what. There are going to be times when you just want to throw in the towel and move on. However the one thing that is most important to know is that we have to work hard and not be afraid to move on. When we fail at one thing move onto another. There are so many things waiting for us out there and if we try and make them happen then we will be better able to achieve our goals and be the person that we most want to be.

Never be afraid to take on a challenge in a relationship. If you think that it is worth fixing then you need to work at it and consider marriage counseling if you are in a marriage. Putting the effort and the hard work at it will help to overcome failure in any type of relationship.

Is an online relationship considered cheating?

2009-08-07T03:23:00.000-07:00

Does your husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend spend way too much time on the computer? If they do and if you do not know what they are doing, you may be wondering if your significant other is having an online relationship. Unfortunately, online relationships are often viewed differently, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be considered cheating.

When it comes to relationships that develop online, there are typically two sides to the story. The first side is that of the cheater or the individual carrying on the affair. If you ever catch your significant other having an online relationship, they may claim that it isn’t really cheating. This is because sometimes a physical meeting never takes place. So, essentially, your partner has never kissed or had physical sex with the person at the other end of the computer.

The second side of the story, where online relationships are concerned, is the side of the husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend who catches their partner acting inappropriately online. For starters, it is important to know that many individuals nowadays don’t just talk online. There are social networking websites, dating websites, and other similar websites that make it easier for internet users to meet up with each other. Just because you are told that a physical meeting did not occur, it does not mean that you are getting the truth. In fact, a meeting may have been planned right around the corner.

In keeping with viewing emotional affairs from the viewpoint of those who are being “cheated,” on, it is important to examine the harm caused. Phone sex is a popular activity for couples in long distance relationships. This may be occurring or it may be done online. Despite the fact that physical contact has still not been made, inappropriate actions are still being performed. Plus, even if sexy or seductive emails are the only thing exchanged, it can still hurt. For many men and women, emotional affairs can be just as painful and as heart breaking.

So, do you suspect that your husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend is having an inappropriate relationship online. If you do, there are a number of steps that you can take to get answers. For starters, try to enter the computer room. If it is locked, there is a good sign that something inappropriate is going on. Next, when you enter the room, place all of your focus on the computer screen. Does your partner quickly change what is appearing on the screen? Next, approach them, as if you intend to give them a hug or a kiss. Towards the bottom of the screen should be a task bar. This bar will give you information on programs that are open, including pornographic websites, video players, and so forth.

If you suspect that your partner is having inappropriate relationships online, it is a good idea to first think about your actions. Unfortunately, many men and women are so surprised when they do catch what is happening that they don’t know how to act. Be prepared. Do you want to limit computer use, get rid of the computer altogether, take a break, or completely cut ties? There are a number of benefits to having a set plan in place before you confront your cheating spouse.

Remember that online relationships can often develop into more than just a few flirty emails here and there. Good luck! And remember, if you suspect something may be going on, consider marriage counseling!

Mistakes That A Cheater May Make

2009-08-05T03:17:00.000-07:00

Do you suspect that your spouse or your romantic partner is cheating on you? This may be an indication of a low trust level between you two. This is one of many reasons that you may want to consider marriage counseling. However, you may also be looking for ways to catch him or her in action. Fortunately for you, this may be easier to do than you originally thought. Why? Because many cheaters make simple, yet costly mistakes in their relationships.

As stated above, many cheaters make mistakes. These mistakes can actually make it much easier for you to catch your cheating spouse or romantic partner. A few of the common mistakes that cheaters, both men and women, make are outlined below.

Mistake # 1 – Believing They Won’t Get Caught

The biggest mistake that cheaters make is believing that they won’t get caught. This often leads cheaters to become bolder, braver, as well as display reckless behavior. Yes, it is true that some men and women are able to carry on affairs for years without their spouses or romantic partners knowing, but this is actually quite rare. Due to the other mistakes that are listed below, most cheaters end up getting caught at one time or another.

Mistake # 2 – Believing Their Partner Will Forgive Them

If you are unfortunate enough to learn that your spouse or romantic partner is cheating on you, you may be surprised with their actions. Many cheaters, regardless of gender, appear shocked when their significant other is upset. This is because many cheaters expect their partners to automatically forgive them, like by writing off the cheating as a simple mistake.

Mistake # 3 – Believing They Did or Are Doing Nothing Wrong

As previously stated, many cheaters expect not to get caught and those who do get caught expect to be forgiven right away. These same individuals likely believe that they aren’t doing anything wrong. The good news for you though is that men and women who assume they aren’t doing anything wrong by cheating, don’t always cover their tracks. This means that it should be easier for you to catch a cheating spouse or romantic partner and take the appropriate action.

Mistake # 4 – Changing Their Appearance

When men and women have affairs, they often feel revived. This often results in them wanting to take better care of themselves and improve their physical appearance. Of course, it is important to remember that there may be a good reason for your significant other to get a makeover or change their wardrobe, but it is often a sign of cheating. In fact, it is such a common and well-known sign that you have to wonder what your significant other is thinking when openly making these changes.

Mistake # 5 – Making Themselves Unavailable

When a husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend suspects that their partner is cheating on them, they often try and contact their significant other whey they don’t know where they are. This contact is often made by phone. One mistake that cheaters make is not picking up the phone. Yes, they are probably “busy,” but cheaters who answer the phone and come up with a plausible excuse for not being home or being out of reach, are likely to get away with cheating longer.

Mistake # 6 – Talking Too Much or Flaunting Affair

In keeping with the mistake of believing that they will get away with it, many cheaters make the mistake of talking about their affair or getting braver. This may involve going out in public, as opposed to meeting in secret. What many cheaters do not realize is that people talk, even the people who they believe they can trust and those closest to them. In fact, this is how many people become aware of a cheating spouse or romantic partner; they hear the rumors that are flying.

The above mentioned mistakes are just a few of the many, but common mistakes that cheaters make. Be on the lookout for a few of these mistakes, as they may be a good sign that you significant other is cheating on you. Even if it turns out the significant other isn't cheating, remember, if there are problems in the relationship, go to marriage counseling!

Even Famous People Get Marriage Counseling

2009-08-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here is proof that even more famous people get marriage counseling.

If Marriage Counseling Doesn't Work and You Are A Parent, What Should You Know?

2009-08-02T01:09:00.000-07:00

What parents need to avoid when getting a divorce

If marriage counseling didn't work and you are getting a divorce and there are children involved, it is important to be careful how you react in front of the children. After you tell them what is going on and explaining to them that they are still loved by both parents, you do not want to upset them in any way. You need to make sure that the children are feeling safe and secure knowing that both parents love them.

You should never have a fight in front of the children with the other parent. This will be very disturbing to the children and may cause them to be fearful of what may happen in the future. You should not speak in a bad way about the other parent as well. You have to be very careful not to call the other parent names or talk bad about any thing that they have done.

Never keep the children away from the other parent unless they are in danger of anything. You should let the children see the parent when they feel the need to. Let them know that they can call them anytime and you will be happy to drive them to see you’re soon to ex spouse’s residence any time that they want.

You never want to distance yourself from your children. You have to keep up your responsibly of being a parent. You need to communicate with your child and be a good parent. It is a hard time and can be very depressing for a lot of adults. It is important to keep up your strength both physically and emotionally for the children’s sake.

Do not try and buy the child’s affection with gifts and money. You need to spend time with them and let them know that they are the most important things right now. You need to keep all of your promises to them and do not abandon them for any reason. If you say that you are going to be there is a certain time, you need to be there.

If you think that the child needs to have therapy, you should make the necessary arrangements. Do you feel your child needs to talk to someone, if they need to talk to a professional let them, as this is going to help a child in the long run. It is crucial to the children to be able to discuss their feeling and to be reassured that they have nothing to worry about concerning the divorce. It is nothing to be ashamed of and the child should be made to feel comfortable about all that is going on around them.

What is a divorce?

2009-08-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

What is a divorce?

Sometimes married couples do not get along and find that they are never going to make the marriage work. If marriage counseling doesn't work then a divorce comes into mind. A divorce is a legal action between married people to terminate their marriage relationship. It is a hard time for all that is involved.

There is something that is called a no fault divorce. This means that the court does not get in to why the couple wants to be divorced. It used to be that the person starting the divorce had to prove certain reasons for getting divorced. Some of these reasons included adultery or abuse. This time was often difficult for the couple and even a little embarrassing. The questions of what parties had been doing are private and these topics come out in the courtroom.

Now the law is different and it allows one of the parties to get a divorce if he or she states in court that the marriage is irretrievably broken. Usually the judge will not ask any other questions about the marriage and allow the divorce to move on.

In some divorces, however, they can get messy and there are many emotions brought out in court. This is a hard time to deal with and many people go through very depressing times. In some of the instances, one party does not want the divorce and they will fight it with all that they have. This will make the situation harder on both parties.

Some court systems will want to make sure that the couple is doing the right thing. They will in some cases order the couple to seek counseling. This is usually only for the couples that there is hope for. This is not for everyone and it is important to do only if one or both of the parties involved thinks that there is a chance for reconciliation.

People often times give up on their marriage too quickly. Seriously, if you have the money, try marriage counseling first! Or... if you want to save a lot of money, consider trying the save my marriage course. It's a downloadable course that you can download today. However, another problem is, in some cases, they never really give the other person or the marriage a chance. There are hard times in all marriages and some people decide to try and work it out, while others tend to just want to give it all up as fast as they can.

It is always best to do what makes both parties happy and able to move on and get back to living the rest of their life. Going through a divorce will be one of the toughest things a person can live through. But if you've been through marriage counseling and nothing else worked, a divorce is probably for the best!

Marriage Counseling Didn't Work, Need A Divorce?

2009-08-01T01:06:00.000-07:00

Should you have an attorney for a divorce?

If marriage counseling failed and you are thinking about a divorce or your spouse has already filed for a divorce, it is a good idea to get an attorney. This is something that you should do to protect yourself. You will have a lot of questions and you will defiantly need to have answers. You need to be made aware of all the possible outcomes and do what you need to in order to protect your future.

There is always the option of representing yourself in a divorce proceeding. However, like marriage counseling,this is not always the recommendation and won't always work. If there are serious questions involved like children or assets, it is better to have the assistance of an attorney. The attorney can represent only one of the parities involved. If you are not able to afford an attorney, the judge may seek assistance for you from your spouse.

One reason to get an attorney for a divorce proceeding is because there may be spousal support involved. This is called alimony. Depending on the length of time you were married, the age and health of the parties involved, and the ability for one of the parties to earn income and maintain the marital standard of living, the court may order support paid by one spouse to another. This is different question from child support.

Spousal support can be for a limited time period or for an indefinite period depending on the circumstances. It can be reviewed if there is a significant change in the circumstances of either the former spouse. If the spousal support question is waived, then the party giving up the support may not ever come back to ask the court to award it again.

You may also want to have an attorney to protect pensions and retirement accounts. Pensions and retirement are marital property and it can be divided in a divorce. They can be given a present value based on the kind of pension and the parties’ rights to receive an income from that pension. Usually the court system is fair in this decision, but an attorney will fight for your rights and make sure that your side of the fight is heard.

If you are not happy with the attorney that you have hired, you should defiantly talk to them about it. Explain your case and make them understand that you attending marriage counseling and explain why you are not happy with thei attorneys work. If you cannot work out the situation with your attorney, you do have the right to find another attorney at any point in the game.

Marriage Counseling, Can It Work?

2009-07-31T01:03:00.001-07:00

Can one spouse prevent a divorce from happening if marriage counseling is included?

If one person does not want to get a divorce, but one party in the relationship does and it is a no fault divorce, then the spouse cannot stop the divorce. This is called an irreconcilable difference and is a justification for divorce.

However, if one spouse takes the other to marriage counseling, it is possible things might work out. The downside though is that marriage counseling costs a lot of money.

So if there is a chance that you can turn things around, what should you do if you don't have the money for marriage counseling? My advice is to consider trying the Save My Marriage Course.

The Save My Marriage course is a downloadable course that you can buy online to attempt to save your marriage. A lot of great things have been said about it, and I highly recommend you check it out. You can go to the website here.

However, if marriage counseling didn't work, a spouse can prevent a fault divorce by convincing the court that he or she is not at fault. This is something that they would have to prove and it is up to the judge to decide. There are other additional ways to defend a divorce from happening may also be a choice for some situations.

If a person who condones that a spouse is having an affair files for a divorce, the spouse may contest the fault divorce by arguing that the spouse knew of the affair and condoned the action. This is one way for a person to defend himself or herself in court.

Connivance is the setting up of a situation so that the other person commits something to jeopardize the marriage. One type of situation to explain is if a women sets up her husband in situation where he is alone with his mistress. This is known as a set up and it is an argument that one can make in court to defend their actions.

Provocation is the inciting of a spouse to do a certain act. If a spouse is suing for divorce and claims that the other spouse abandoned them, the other spouse might defend their suit because they were provoked by the abandonment. Collusion is if a couple lives in a state where no fault divorce requires that the couple separate for a time and the couple doe not want to prolong the situation. This may lead the couple to mislead the court and pretend that one of them was at fault just to get out of the marriage.

These above defenses are not usually used for a few different reasons. Proving a defense may require witnesses and involve a lot of time and expense. Your efforts will usually bring nothing to the situation. Chances are that a court will eventually grant the divorce. A person should not have to stay married if they do not wish too. The law is designed to give people the opportunity to get out of the marriage if that is what he or she really wants to do. If you are involved in a marriage that you don’t want to be in any longer, the process can be hard to get through, but you can make a divorce really happen, and put an end to the marriage. Don't go through marriage counseling if you really just want a divorce!

Marriage Counseling Failed

2009-07-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

If marriage counseling doesn't work and you learn that you are going to be getting divorced, it may be have been coming for a long time or it may come as a complete surprise. Either way, there are certain things that you can do for yourself, your children, and your finances. This does not mean that you have to take all of your bank accounts and all that you have and wipe them out.

You have to take the responsible interests throughout the marriage so that you can protect yourself and all that you before and after if marriage counseling doesn't work and the marriage ever dissolves. There are ways that you can act reasonably while you are protecting your interests. These are only precautions that you will need to take care of if the divorce is not being ended amicably.

It's possbile marriage counseling might have helped your relationship a little even if it's leading to divorce. Depending on how well you and your spouse can get along at the time of the divorce, you may choose not to act on some of the suggestions that are given. You may decide that you and your spouse can work arrangements for everything without arguing. Whenever possible, try and make everything go as well and as easy as you can.

You should always get an attorney when you are heading towards divorce. They will make sure that you are taking the necessary precautions so that you can protect what you have and all the assets you have accumulated during the marriage.

Try and protect all of your own personal property that you have accumulated over the years. You need to move papers and documents so that you are the only one that knows where they are. If you must present them at a court hearing then you must do so. However, you need to make sure that you can keep all of your valuables safe so that you have a better chance at keeping them throughout the divorce.

Once of the best things that you can do before you decide to get married, is make sure that you know the person. Get to know them for a long period before you decide to take the big step into marriage. You have to be able trust so that you can feel good about marrying them. Have a long engagement so that you can see if the person changes any. If so, you may want to get out of the relationship before you decide to marry. Otherwise, you may have to spend a lot of money with marriage counseling.

Good luck!