• Exclusive insights and suggestions gained by surveying happy couples
• Practical advice from a range of experts synthesized into learnable lessons
• Tips for identifying problems and what to do about them
• A 3-step process you've never heard before for surviving affairs
• The power of moving beyond "tolerating" differences to truly appreciating them
• How to meet your partner's needs and your own at the same time

• Recognition and acceptance of the differences between you and your partner
• Better communication between you and your partner
• A better sex life and more intimacy
• More trust and respect
• Happiness and satisfaction in all your relationships

Surprise your partner with a special treat. It does not need to involve money. A massage, a library book by a favorite author, a walk to see some flowers that are just blooming or taping a special TV program can count as much as an expensive gift.

This is a great antidote to feeling taken for granted. It breaks the routine and lets your partner know that you care. It’s especially useful when either of you has been involved in some intense activity.

Your weekly assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Do it today.

This is an excerpt from Being Happy Together: How to Have a Fabulous Relationship With Your Life Partner in Less Than an Hour a Week, by Laurie Weiss, Ph.D.

PS Please remember to leave a comment here about what I’ve been sharing.

Being fed is the original experience of being nurtured. For most people, it helps reduce tension and provides a sense of well-being. It’s a simple but powerful action you can take to bring you closer together.

Your weekly assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Each of you list five different ways in which your partner can nurture you by feeding you. Review each other’s lists and choose at least one thing to do immediately. Then make plans about what you will do to feed each other in the future.
 

If you enjoyed this article, Being Happy Together: How to Have a Fabulous Relationship With Your Life Partner in Less Than an Hour a Week will provide you with much more information that I believe will be useful to you.

TRUE LOVE

I’m not sure I can always tell love from passion. One father said of his teenaged son, “I don’t know if he’s in love or in heat!” What teenager would know? Besides, feelings of attraction can change more quickly than a pouty expression.

But love, in its truest form, is greater than feelings. It is as much a decision as it is a feeling.

Love is what Mr. and Mrs. Strauss shared. Mrs. Isadore Strauss was one of the few first class women passengers to go down with the Titanic in 1912, and she drowned because she could not bear to leave her husband.

They remained calm throughout the excitement of the sinking vessel. They both aided frightened women and children to find places aboard lifeboats. Finally, Mr. Strauss, who had repeatedly urged his wife to claim a spot safely aboard a lifeboat, forced her to enter one.

She was seated but a moment, however, when she sprang up and climbed back on deck before he could stop her. There, she caught his arm, snuggling it familiarly against her side, and exclaimed, “We have been long together for a great many years. We are old now. Where you go, I will go.”

Where you go, I will go. It is a decision to be together, come what may. I suspect she said something like that to him many times before. Maybe the words she used were different, but the meaning was the same. I want to be with you. Let’s do this together.

Where you go, I will go. It’s a decision to love. It is deciding to be there, wherever “there” may be. It is a decision to sacrifice, if sacrifice is needed. And it is choosing to re-decide it all over again tomorrow and the next day and the next.

As the ship sank beneath icy water on that cold and dark, April night, the Strausses merely re-made a decision they had made many times before throughout their life together. They decided on each other.

Where you go, I will go. At the heart of true love is often a decision, made again and again, to face the next day together … hand in hand.

– Steve Goodier

Now you can add your own comments to Life
Support.
http://stevegoodier.blogspot.com/

Visit our Personal Development Blog
[tags]Togetherness, Relationships, Care of Your Partner[/tags]

It was a spontaneous statement of why couples should come to us for counseling. It didn’t quite fit into the webpage we were designing, but I think it’s a wonderful restatement of our lives together.

“…we want to share what we’ve learned with you!

Why us?

There are hundreds of people offering relationship advice on the Internet, and thousands more offline. How are you going to know who to listen to, who to trust with the most important part of your life?

All these adviser have credentials; so do we. They have all probably talked to lots of different people; so have we.

So what’s different?

Very simple: we have been there AND we have applied our training, knowledge, theories, understandings, etc., to our own personal and business lives, and have lived to tell the tale.

We have been married (TO EACH OTHER) for over 48 years, and we have experienced, survived, and grown from almost everything that two people together will ever run into:

• Major and minor moves, career changes, failures and successes;
• Stagnation, new directions, changing roles;
• Separations, distance, infidelity;
• A stillborn child — our first;
• Births;
• Children growing, grown, moving out, succeeding, failing;
• Teenage runaways, drug abuse, and impressive achievements;
• The deaths of all four parents — long illnesses, nursing homes, suicide;
• Investment successes and miserable failures;
• Giving advice, getting advice, using advice, ignoring advice, regretting advice;
• Laughing, yelling, grieving, plodding, creating, committing, sharing;
• Getting older, loving it and hating it.

Sometimes we think that the only important experience we have missed is the rich learning of a divorce, but we have worked with plenty of people before, during, after, instead of, preventing it or encouraging it,
that we think we have some wisdom anyway.”

We have also made our CD of our talk with marriage counselors about relationship development available as an online audio. You can listen to it right now I’m your computer, or download it to listen later. You can get it at this link: http://tinyurl.com/53wvyh

(Jonathan’s words again) “Listen to some REAL experts talk about what REALLY  happens in relationships, and how you can use the information to make a difference in yours.”
More about Laurie Weiss
[tags]Relationship Advice,About Relationships,Togetherness,Relationships[/tags]

She includes the suggestion that you ask yourself “What would be one or two small things that my partner and I could do this week that would make us both feel that we are on track to accomplishing our goal?” There are many suggestions of activities you can use posted throughout this blog.

I wish you a New Year filled with joy and connection with the people who are important to you!

More about Laurie Weiss

Disclaimer: No, I’m not a financial adviser, but you need to read this before you get any numbers.

The first thing you need to do is to tell the truth about how you feel. You’re probably scared. We’re all scared about what this means. I’m certainly scared, and I’ve been through a number of recessions.

Partly I’m scared about giving up the fantasy of safety. I’m also sort of angry about giving up the fantasy that I’m entitled to live the kind of life I have been enjoying.

The truth is we’ve all been participating in an illusion, and when we face the fact that it just isn’t going to be the way it was or the way we wanted to be, we may feel sad and angry as well as scared.

For lots of us, feeling angry isn’t OK. People do various things when they feel angry. It’s best to use it for energy to solve problems, but the problems of a recession are hard to pin down. So you might block the anger out altogether and get depressed instead — or you might let it out in destructive ways.

You could do lots of different things with angry feelings and most of them aren’t good for your marriage.

You could actually get angry at yourself or your spouse for overspending or under-earning. It’s always easier to say, “If it weren’t for you I/we wouldn’t be in this fix.” It feels relieving for a short time — and it may even be true — but it won’t do anything for your marriage if you stay stuck there.

Of course, being angry at yourself won’t help your marriage either. It will just give you an excuse to go and hide and feel like a victim. You might decide to do more for others because you don’t deserve any thing yourself. And then you’ll feel even worse. That won’t make you very attractive or supportive for your spouse.

You could try getting angry at “them” — the Wall Street ripoff artists or the politicians who are bailing them out. Maybe you can even get your spouse to agree it’s their fault. Of course if you just blame them, that might give you an excuse to do nothing about your own financial situation. What will that do to your marriage? Help it? I don’t think so.

So what can you do?

Stop keeping secrets or trying to manage things by yourself. You can start by telling your spouse about how you feel. For example, “I’m so angry about this mess I want to blame somebody — anybody.” Or, “I’m so scared. I am afraid we’ll go through depression like my grandparents did and we’ll lose everything.”

You can ask your spouse, if he or she feels the same way. Often in couples one partner is much more sensitive than the other. Once I had a man say to his wife in a workshop. “I’d be glad to tell you how I feel, but sometimes it takes me a week or so to figure it out.” All the other men in the room nodded in agreement.

If you spouse feels calmer that you do, great. Let him (or her) help you get more centered. Your spouse may believe he or she should make your feelings disappear. That won’t work. Just ask to be heard. You can both share your sadness about lost or delayed dreams.

Your spouse can’t fix how you feel, but by sharing how you feel can begin to fix it yourself. Many feelings don’t need fixing at all, once they get shared.

You’ve heard about “feel the fear and do it anyway.” There may or may not be something you could do.

Now comes the recession-proofing your marriage part in this. After you finish talking about how you feel, it’s time to see if you are in any real danger. This part is really difficult for many of us to face.

Now is the time to look at whether you are overreaching yourself. A talk about money — a really truthful talk — is in order!

Do you know what’s going on in your financial life right now? Do you know how much you have? How much you owe? How much is coming in? How much you’re spending? Is one or both of you in danger of losing your job? Are you safe in your house or are you at risk of losing at? Is someone spending more than he or she should? Do you own extra vehicles? Do you need to repair something important?

Discovering and sharing this information is critical before taking any action at all about financial matters. The situation might be better that you imagined it to be or it might be worse. But you need to know the truth before you can start.

Now, together, you can begin to figure out what you need to do. In lots of relationships both people are in agreement that only one is competent about money — this is rarely the case.

It’s usually more that that one wants to control the situation and the other is willing to let him or her to do so. In rocky financial times two heads are better than one. Maybe even more than two heads are better — if you have teenage children. They can be included in some parts of this discussion. They need to know that you are taking steps to manage the situation. And you may be surprised at what they can contribute to this kind of discussion.

Then check to see how much any or all of you have been infected by the “entitlement germ”. I know I have. I feel like I should be able to have what I want to have. Why? I’m not sure, but I think it’s a lot about the general atmosphere we’ve been living in. “Get it now pay later. You really deserve it.” I haven’t really succumbed to that. I’ve actually been a pay as you go gal — we’ve been a pay-as-you-go family pretty much forever, but I’m infected anyway.

I’m not sure how I figured out that I’m entitled to be so privileged, but I did. My parents certainly didn’t think that way. My childhood life was about working for what you want and waiting until you had earned it.

You can recession-proof your marriage by having a conversation about waiting. I mean a real conversation, not one person trying to make the other behave differently or feel scared. I’m talking about having a realistic conversation about what you need now. And what you can wait for.

Take a look at the difference between what you need and what you want! It’s very easy to get that confused and for most families it’s pretty screwed up. Maybe it would help to think about what kind of damage would actually occur if you didn’t get something you think you’ve got to have right now.

I can’t tell you how to run your finances. That’s not my area of expertise. That’s up to you and your financial advisors. What I can tell you is that your marriage can come through this — come through it strong and vibrant — when you start communicating with each other about all the stress you’re both experiencing.

When you face things together and tell the truth, wonderful things start to happen. You free your energy to solve problems intelligently realistically and most importantly of all, together.
Is this you? “I don’t need therapy, but I could use some advice about…”
[tags]Togetherness, Relationships, Communication, Difficult Communication, Money, Relationship Advice[/tags]

Eileen refused to come to counseling with him because “If he couldn’t figure it out for himself, it proved he was hopeless.” As we talked, it was clear that Jeff knew what he liked to do and how he felt about lots of things, but he had very little information about his spouse. He was puzzled about her seemingly odd priorities.

Why would she want to redecorate the living room? It seemed fine to him. Nevertheless, he let her repaint the room and put in a new floor by herself. He was a little annoyed by the mess and by her being too tired for much lovemaking, but he managed.

He also admitted he was a little annoyed when Eileen attended meetings several nights a week, but he never said anything to her about it. He usually got involved in online computer exchanges with others when she was away; in fact, he got so engrossed that he would not even notice when she would come home and go to bed. He had no idea what her meetings were about.

Jeff was surprised when I suggested that he ask her, but he agreed to experiment by doing his best to ask and to really listen to her answer. To demonstrate to her that he was listening, he was to try to restate what she said.

Jeff admitted that he wasn’t particularly happy in his marriage either, but thought that was normal. Growing up with his divorced mother, who did whatever she could to make his life easier, he had never really had the opportunity to see a couple discuss differences or solve problems together.

Eileen felt encouraged enough to attend the next meeting. She was understandably furious at Jeff for ignoring her for so many years. She had made many attempts to tell him about what she needed, but he had never even noticed. Finally she had started attending a support group and a study group which had helped her decide to leave her joyless marriage. However his recent attempts to listen to her made her hopeful that he could change. She was surprised to discover that Jeff had never learned the basic emotional skills that he needed to create a more satisfying relationship.

Learning life skills takes time; Eileen decided to wait six months before making a decision about whether to stay together. Jeff participated in a treatment group, and they had couples’ sessions at least once a month. Their marriage did become more satisfying, and they decided to stay together. They stayed in counseling until they mastered the art of supporting each other’s growth.

Is this you? “I don’t need therapy, but I could use some advice about…”
[tags]Togetherness, Relationships,Communication,Relationship Advice[/tags]

We always eat breakfast together (that never happened for the first 18 years of our marriage), we usually eat lunch together, and we almost always eat dinner together. Sometimes now when we walk, we find that neither of us can think of anything to talk about — partially because we know each other so well, partially because we’ve spent the day together, so there is no news to share.

Dennis Hooper

Dear Dennis,

Years ago I asked a similar question of a spiritual teacher who happens to be a friend and is also in a wonderful, solid, long-term marriage. She told me that she and her husband often rode in the car in silence and felt that there was nothing wrong with doing so. Her reply made me feel a little more comfortable when my husband and I have nothing to say to each other.

However, I think there’s more to it than that. One of the dangers of being in a mature, connected relationship is focusing too much on one another and not enough on the outside world. It’s an easy trap to fall into. I know because I’ve been there.

Full disclosure: we have been married for 47 years. We too sometimes go through periods where we forget to talk to each other.

We’ve managed the problem in several different ways.

· Instead of talking about problem solving we talk about what we’re seeing, feeling and doing at the moment. One definition of true intimacy is “I and Thou in the here and now.”
· We deliberately do things in the world outside of our own relationship. We take different classes, belong to different groups, read different books and talk to each other about them.
· We find projects to do together. Sometimes the projects are related to our work and sometimes they’re related to our home. In either case they give us lots to talk about.

Many mature couples have told me that doing the activities in the Being Happy Together: How to Create a Fabulous Relationship With Your Life Partner in Less Than an Hour a Week Program, helps keep their relationships fresh You and your wife might enjoy these too.

Do let me know how these suggestions work for you.

Warmly,

Laurie

[tags]Togetherness, Relationships, Communication, Relationship Advice[/tags]