It happens to all of us: Sometimes marriage starts to feel a little stale, a little frustrating. Dealing with your spouse can feel like just one more stress in your busy, stressful life.
There’s something you can do about this, though. And it’s not some complicated, multi-step plan to improve your relationship. It will take a few minutes. And it’s all about you.
Ready? Here it is: Set a timer for two minutes and make a list of things that bring you joy. Don’t overthink this. Just quickly write down what comes to mind, whether it’s a big joy, like a dream vacation, or small, everyday joys, like an uninterrupted cup of coffee or catching up with an old friend.
After you finish your list, take a look at your calendar. How many of the things on your joy list did you do in the past week? The past month?
I’m betting you’ll discover that the things that bring you joy didn’t make it onto your schedule very often. Our days are busy, and unless we make a conscious effort to add our joyful activities to them, they can fill up fast with less-gratifying things.
Make Time for Joy
Here’s what I want you to do now: Schedule some time in the next week for a few of the things that bring you joy, or find ways to nudge yourself to do them. Maybe that means setting aside a lunch break to walk around outside instead of staying tethered to your desk. Or maybe it means putting a Post-it note in your car reminding you to listen to music you love instead of that stress-inducing news channel on the way home.
So what does all this have to do with your relationship? Regularly doing the things you love inevitably changes how you show up in the marriage. When you give to yourself and inject more joy into your life, it makes you happier and less stressed — and that takes pressure off your relationship. Including yourself in the circle of people you give to regularly usually lowers the resentment most people feel when they are giving, and giving, and giving. When you put energy into allowing yourself to be more you, don’t be surprised if that kind of vibrance makes you more irresistible to your husband!
If you do not value yourself enough to keep yourself in the picture, there are tremendous limits to how much love you can truly give or receive. Holding onto your marriage and holding onto yourself go hand in hand.
Adding joy to your life is a gift to yourself — and to your marriage. Try this relationship tip and tell me about how it goes!!
June is wedding season. At ceremonies this month, couples will be speaking vows from the traditional to the deeply personal.
If there’s one promise I could have every couple place in their wedding vows (and honor over time), though, it would be this: Don’t just say “I love you.” Show it.
Saying “I love you” doesn’t guarantee that the other person feels loved. What carries a stronger message: the rushed “I love you” that you mumble as the two of you leave for work, or the fact that in the preceding conversation you weren’t listening or you rolled your eyes at something your husband said?
To feel loved, we need to feel safe and cherished. We need to believe that our spouse sees who we actually are — in all of our strengths, weaknesses and quirks — and accepts us. If we say all the right words but don’t back those words up with actions, the message doesn’t come through.
Cultivate Your Personal Power. Identify your needs and take responsibility for getting them met. This means taking care of yourself and making time for your own friends, hobbies, and interests. Encourage your partner to do the same. You both need to nurture yourselves so that you can be strong partners in the relationship.
Eliminate any Poisonous Patterns that make the climate of your relationship negative. Stop hurting each other by doing things like criticizing, shaming, or casting blame. Even withholding affection, micromanaging your spouse, or getting overly wrapped up in your own world can cause emotional pain. Remember that if your hurt your partner, you are also hurting the relationship.
Inspire a Passionate Partnership by creating an atmosphere that strengthens friendship and romance. This doesn’t mean you must have candlelit dinners every night. Lots of little actions can keep passion alive: Make eye contact. Show affection. Do something to grow together, like taking a class on a subject that interests you both. Be curious about each other. Always start with the assumption that your husband loves you, needs you, and wants the marriage to work as much as you do.
Resist the Persistent Pressures that place all marriages at risk. All of us are under more stress than ever. What actions can you take to reduce stress in your lives — to ease up the pressure on yourself, and on your partner? When stress levels are high, fear gets triggered, leading most people to (1) assume the worst about their partner and (2) miss what’s positive about him–a double whammy! You are also much more likely to overreact to anything your partner does. Dialing down the level of stress is one of the most effective ways to move from a state of fear to a state of love.
Protect Your Principal Priorities. One of the most powerful things you can do to show love is acting in ways that show you value your marriage. That means working together to create a life that prioritizes your relationship. You may consider moving into less demanding jobs, directing your energy toward your shared hopes and dreams, or turning down yet another volunteer obligation so you can carve out some more couple time.
Above all, the most loving action is to consistently choose loving your partner over submitting to your worst fears about him or your relationship. The strongest marriages emerge from each person repeatedly choosing to believe in their relationship. Whatever you said in your original marriage vows, and however long you’ve been married, it’s never too late to be more loving!
Infidelity is the ultimate betrayal. But does it have to be? Relationship therapist Esther Perel examines why people cheat, and unpacks why affairs are so traumatic: because they threaten our emotional security. In infidelity, she sees something unexpected — an expression of longing and loss. A must-watch for anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on, or who simply wants a new framework for understanding relationships.
I admit it: Those dog-shaming posts do crack me up. But otherwise this trend toward shaming is a cruel one that’s dangerous to our relationships.
It doesn’t take a viral social media post to hurt someone with shame, either. Have you ever criticized your husband while the two of you were with your kids, with friends and family or out in public?
Why Shame Hurts
Shame erodes the very things that are essential to the health of your marriage. Relationships need respect to thrive. Dr. John Gottman has done extensive research on what leads marriages to fail. He identified what he calls “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in marriage. Shaming summons two of the Horsemen: criticism and contempt. Contempt, which is at the heart of shaming, is Gottman’s No. 1 predictor of divorce.
When you shame your spouse, you are robbing him of his dignity and taking away his sense of safety in the marriage. A shamed person feels rejected, which is profoundly painful to us as humans — it even activates the same parts of our brains that get triggered when we feel physical pain.
Make it a priority to preserve dignity and respect in your relationship. Distinguish private conversations from public ones. As you keep shaming out of your marriage, I also want to encourage you not to share or like social media posts that shame others. If you haven’t already, watch the powerful TED Talk by Monica Lewinsky (someone who knows firsthand the pain of shaming) about our “culture of humiliation.” Is that really the kind of culture we want to participate in creating? Take a stand against it by communicating with empathy and respect, both in your marriage and online.
Have you noticed the kind of pressure new parents face these days? Magazines, advertising, blogs and even friends’ social media pages abound with images of blissful couples and their infants in picture-perfect nurseries. Both parents look enraptured with their new baby and each other, making it all seem so easy.
That sets up some unrealistic expectations about the transition to parenthood. Now don’t get me wrong: Adding a child to your family is a time of great joy and can deepen the bond you have with your partner. But it can also be a time of great stress, messiness and strain on your marriage. We know from the research that marital satisfaction often takes the biggest nosedive after the addition of the first child.
Becoming parents means changes in practically every area of your life. And for most people, change equals stress. You may go on leave from your familiar world at your job. You can’t just dash out for an errand or meetup with friends so easily anymore. Going for a quick walk or even getting a hair cut can be hard to do when you’re responsible for a little one 24/7. All that can leave you feeling isolated and trapped.
The stress doesn’t stop there. Kids can also strain our wallets (hospital or adoption bills, daycare and on and on …) and our schedules. There’s simply less time for everything else, from work to self-care (especially sleep!) to couple time to housework.
And speaking of housework: Not only do you have less time to do it, you have more to do when you add a child to the family. Keeping up with it can seem overwhelming. And if your husband doesn’t have the same threshold for noticing that things need to be done, you could find yourself in a pattern where you complain and accuse and he gets defensive.
If the upcoming Mother’s Day is your first as a mom or expectant mom, I want to give you some down-to-earth advice that will help you navigate the transition to parenthood while also caring for your marriage.
Tips for New (or Soon-to-be) Parents
If you don’t have kids yet, build up goodwill. Use this time to practice being the best partner you can be. Be especially thoughtful, appreciative, and kind. Have fun together, and build up good memories. Perhaps go off on a spontaneous trip, or try something new together. Take advantage of the time you have to hang out with dear friends and loved ones. Strengthening your bond now will pay off in those intense early days of parenthood.
Get the stress level down! If you have the financial or family resources, get some outside help, such as housekeeping, meal delivery, or child care. Children are very physically dependent for the first few years and need constant supervision. This can be absolutely exhausting! Hand the baby off to your spouse or someone else for a while, and take a break. Otherwise, you’ll be likely to get upset with your husband just because you’re stressed.
Prioritize sleep and rest. Try to go to bed early, shift your schedule, or nap when the baby does to minimize fatigue. Taking turns being the one responsible for the baby at night can give each of you the unbroken sleep you need to refuel. Some people benefit from having a relative help out or hiring a night nanny for a while.
Work together. If your goal is to fully share in parenthood with your husband, be very intentional about giving him time and space to also bond and take care of the baby. Believe that both you can be equally competent as parents, and don’t make the mistake of micromanaging your spouse. Each one of you will have you own unique way of caring for baby. So, play to each of your strengths and divide responsibilities in a way that lifts the stress off both of you.
Be polite and respectful. Remember the basic gestures that show respect and acknowledge each other’s humanity, like greeting each other warmly or saying “please” and “thank you.” Little things like this go a long way toward maintaining respect in your marriage, and, as I’ve written before, mutual respect can sustain your relationship until you have time to rekindle romance and passion.
Love your baby, but keep your bond alive too. The parent-child bond can be very intense, and that’s a good thing. But it’s important to remember that you need to spend time together as a couple, not just as parents. Don’t lose yourself to motherhood. When you have a newborn, time may be limited to a short conversation with your husband or cuddling together while you’re exhausted. Brief moments of connection can be good enough during the very busy first few weeks of parenthood, but make sure you work toward reengaging each other more deeply and regularly over the long run.
And check out this wonderful, down-to-earth advice from seasoned parents:
If you’re about to begin, or just beginning, the journey of parenthood, realize that change and stress are inevitable, but that a weakening of your marriage is not. You’ll find more advice about keeping a thriving relationship even as you balance family, work and other demands in my book Strong Women, Strong Love.
In the 26 years she was married to her husband, Mike Nichols, Diane Sawyer learned plenty of lessons about love, relationships and marriage — but there’s only one she calls “genius.” Before Nichols passed away from a heart attack late last year, Sawyer appeared on “Oprah’s Master Class” and opened up about some of the best marriage advice she’d ever heard.
Sawyer doesn’t like to make sweeping statements about the sole recipe for a good marriage — because “every marriage is a foreign land,” she says — but the veteran journalist does believe that the marriage advice she learned on the job years ago can truly bolster even the strongest relationships.
“I learned something great on one of the stories I did,” she says. “Someone said to me… ‘A criticism is just a really bad way of making a request. So why don’t you just make the request? Why don’t you just say, Could we work out this thing that makes me feel this way?‘”
This simple statement had quite the impact on Sawyer. “I thought, ‘That’s genius!'” she says.
You would never (I hope!) physically abuse your partner. But have you ever felt self-righteous about giving your husband “the silent treatment?” Or pushed off his arms and looked at him like he’s crazy for trying to hug you while you were stirring a pot on the stove?
We need to take behavior like this in our marriages more seriously. Researchers are starting to find that our brains experience physical and emotional pain much the same way.
Now consider all the ways that rejection can creep into a relationship. Of course, emotional or physical infidelity is one of the most painful forms of rejection, but smaller slights hurt too:
Shutting out your partner by not sharing or not bringing your true self into the relationship.
Rejecting physical affection from your partner or not giving affection yourself.
Criticizing or even showing contempt for your partner.
Retreating into your work or your kids’ lives to avoid your partner.
Micro-managing or making your partner feel incompetent.
You might think of these as petty misbehaviors in a marriage: Not great, certainly, but not at the level of abandoning or cheating on a partner. What I want you to take away from this post is that these behaviors aren’t as benign as you might think. They cause real hurt on a level we hadn’t realized before.
Let this knowledge give you extra motivation to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and kindness in your marriage. My book Strong Women, Strong Love can help you change hurtful habits that are eroding your marriage. Remember that harming each other emotionally is no more acceptable than causing each other physical pain.
Being your strongest and best self will give your relationship the best chance of succeeding.
Having a clear and courageous voice is NOT a recipe for divorce, unless your partner truly has no commitment to you, or can only tolerate an overly-accommodating partner.
I’m going to give you some marriage advice that seems counterintuitive, but I promise it’s not an April Fool’s Day prank.
Here it is: If there’s something you want or want more of in your marriage, don’t chase after it intensely. The things that we tend to do instinctively when we’re trying to get something from our partners are often what keep us from getting what we want. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
Love me like you used to. Let’s say you feel like intimacy in your marriage is going downhill. You decide to deal with this head on and have numerous discussions with your husband about how you feel like he doesn’t love you as much anymore. You disclose how lonely you feel in the relationship and give him numerous examples of ways he’s becoming more distant. You push him to change and hope that having this detailed conversation will motivate him to come emotionally closer. Instead, he gets defensive and shuts down.
Do your fair share. Or, perhaps you’re overwhelmed and exhausted managing all the responsibilities at home. You repeatedly let your husband know that he really needs to help more around the house. It’s unfair that he doesn’t do his part. He never unloads the dishwasher. He won’t pick up after himself. He rarely takes the baby to daycare and doesn’t stay up with her if she wakes up at night. You really need him to start pulling his own weight, so you give him feedback about the changes that need to take place. Instead of jumping in to do his fair share, your husband storms off, mad that you think he’s such a “loser.”
Do it this way. One final example. Let’s assume you’re very responsible and always pay the bills as soon as they arrive. Your husband just makes sure they are in by the due date. You always end up paying the bills because you think it’s important to take care of them before you forget. After a while, you start to feel resentful and tell your husband it’s not fair that you’re stuck handling the bills every month. You insist he take over this job and try to show him a foolproof system you’ve developed to track all bills. You even offer to work together the first month so he can understand how you do things. He tells you to stop controlling him and refuses to even look at the bills.
In each of these scenarios, there is a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed. The woman’s approach is to be open, direct, and persistent with her husband, making sure he clearly knows her feelings. You should let your husband know when something is bothering you, even if he doesn’t want to hear it, right?
Yes, but not necessarily in the way you think.
Dealing with problems that cause resentment is absolutely critical to the long-term health of your marriage, but your approach matters tremendously too. If you’re trying to motivate your husband with an intense, “you’re not going to ignore this anymore” approach, it may backfire, especially if there’s a tone of blame. Make sure you’re not unintentionally communicating that he’s not good enough, otherwise he’ll feel attacked. If you don’t anticipate how your message will be received, communication may shut down rather than open up. Instead of getting closer, the two of you may drift further apart. Don’t sweep real problems under the rug, but be aware of how your husband may react to what you say.
Rather than chasing your husband down with complaints and demands, increase the odds of getting what you need by using these strategies instead:
Change yourself. Relationships are a dance and it does take two to tango. If you change your steps, your partner will have to change his as well. So, take a look at how you may be contributing to the problems that exist. Are you taking on too much responsibility? Maybe you should back off and give your husband a real chance to step up more than he currently does. Do you insist on things being done your way? Perhaps you need to practice letting things go. What can you do to get things moving in a healthier direction?
Be constructive. Rather than criticizing or blaming him, tell your husband how you’re feeling and what you need from him. Try something like: “I’m so overwhelmed by work and all the things that have to get done around the house. I feel on edge all the time and I hate feeling this way. Could we please work together to get the level of stress down? For example, I’m thinking it would be helpful if we could take turns being responsible for dinner.”
Value him. If your husband does not feel valued while being given feedback, he will resist any efforts at change. All of us are much more likely to be cooperative when we feel respected and affirmed.
Backing off on chasing is of greater importance than you may realize. In technical terms, the pattern in which one spouse wants to confront the issue and the other withdraws from such a discussion is the pursuer/distancer pattern. E. Mavis Hetherington’s landmark study of 1,400 divorced individuals found that couples who routinely related this way had the highest risk of ending up divorced. For the sake of your marriage, it’s really important to change this pattern if it’s showing up in your marriage repeatedly.
Any time it feels like you are intensely chasing something in your relationship, it’s a sign that something is out of whack — and that you’re not on the right path to fix it. Try doing the opposite of what comes naturally, and you’ll often find yourself closer to where you need to be. When you feel like telling him off, calm down and approach him gently. If you’re frustrated that he can’t see what you need, ask him for help. If you find yourself wanting to convince him that your way is best, back off and leave room for his way. Although stopping your knee-jerk response can feel unnatural, it is how you make real changes in a relationship.
If you think you fall into the pursuer/distancer pattern and want to learn more, I recommend the book The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner. You can also learn more effective strategies for getting what you want in your relationship in my own book Strong Women, Strong Love. Just remember that chasing is always a fool’s game.
Don’t forget to subscribe to receive new blog posts HERE and get a free report, “10 Easy Ways to Get Him to Listen.”
Great article by Thomas G. Fiffer, Executive Editor of GoodMenProject.com, an awesome website for strong men. Pay close attention to his warnings about the dangers of working on your relationship without a clear road map.
Most of us try hard in our intimate relationships. We work at them. We want our partners to be happy and the benefits that come with that. And when we’ve found something—and someone—good, we don’t want to lose it and have to start over. So we soldier on. We struggle on the uphills, hoping to rest on the next plateau. We muddle through the dark periods until, often inexplicably, the light shines again. And we pat ourselves on the back for trying so hard, while often silently resenting our partner for not trying hard enough, for not meeting us at least halfway. “If only he or she would … ” At least, that’s the way we see it; that’s the narrative we convince ourselves is truth. But what’s really happening is something different. What’s really happening is we’re the ones fucking up. Consider this:
Most relationships don’t suffer and break down from lack of effort; they suffer and break down from misdirected effort.
Most relationships don’t disintegrate from either partner’s bad intentions; they disintegrate from good intentions that bring bad outcomes.
And most relationships don’t end because the partners have grown apart; they end because one or both partners perceives the distance between them as insurmountable.
