Vulnerable Listening In my last article, I talked about the importance of being vulnerable in your communication. Being vulnerable is a willingness to own and communicate your thoughts, feelings, needs and wants in a clear and yet non-dogmatic or blaming way. It’s communicating in a way that allows you to assert yourself while also showing […]

In my last post, I talked about four different styles of communication: dominating, accommodating, avoiding, and collaborating. Collaborating means that you’re honest about your own thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. You’re also willing to show empathy for your partner’s thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. This is the healthiest of the communication styles and becomes particularly […]

  A big strategy that gets at the heart of building positive feelings and friendship in your relationship with your partner is play and recreation. By this I mean doing activities that are fun and which you can do together. Number One Factor in Marital Happiness Marriage researchers at the University of Denver did a […]

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash In my last article I talked about how we respond to one another’s bids. Do we turn toward, away, or against? As we learn to turn towards our partners, we’re putting deposits into their love accounts. Closely related is an idea called “Caring Days” which is a way to […]

In the past, I’ve talked about the Gottman labs where couples come and stay for a weekend. Marriage researchers record all of their interactions and then play them back for them and coach them in how to improve their marriages.  Well, you would think that these researchers would get a lot of boring communication. But […]

In recent weeks I’ve been talking about ways to develop friendship so that positive feelings override the inevitable ups and downs of your marital relationship. In this article I want to move on to another strategy—that of strengthening your relationship by nurturing admiration. The reason this is so important is that a happy marriage is […]

Happy vs. Unhappy Couples The purpose of this article is to talk about friendship in marriage. But first, I need to tell you about the research of John Gottman at the University of Washington in Seattle. Gottman may be the most respected researcher on marriage in the world. For four decades now, John and his […]

Two Ways of Being A philosopher by the name of Martin Buber said that we can come from one of two orientations or ways of being in our relationships with others. He called them I-It vs. I-Thou. Whichever orientation we adopt has huge implications in marriage as well as any and all of our relationships. […]

I’ve talked a lot about self-responsibility. In truth, it’s hard to show up in a loving way for another person if you don’t take responsibility for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll be passive and dependent or blaming and controlling, in either case believing that your wellbeing is up to someone else more than you. This mindset will […]

In a recent blog post, I talked about the differences between owning versus disowning responsibility for yourself in your relationship with your partner. I shared a story in which I made myself a victim of Judy until I stopped to think about it and was able to alter my reaction. I went from feeling like […]