The Power of Alignment

Webster’s dictionary defines alignment as “the act of bringing into close cooperation, to ally with, to associate with, or to side with.” Couples who see themselves as partners in life together tend to be aligned on their values, in their lifestyle, and in their vision for their relationship and their future. When something in their […]

Calling a ‘Do Over’

You know those times in your marriage when everything is hunky dory and one of you starts a simple little conversation about something that is a little prickly. You are about to do something together like go out to dinner or go play tennis or visit friends and one of you says, “Our checking account […]

Negotiating Roles and Responsibilities

One of the unrelenting, day-to-day realities for many couples today is getting all of the household responsibilities done to the satisfaction of both parties. How a couple works out their household roles and responsibilities can be the source of frustration and conflict or it can be the expression of effective teamwork. It could be said […]

Three Forms of Marriage Partnership

There is no one set of values that a couple can adopt that will form the basis of an enduring, fulfilling marriage partnership. Each couple co-creates the values that are important to their relationship.  John Gottman (1994), a marriage researcher and expert, studied 2000 different couples and found that there were three stable forms of […]

Creating an Intentional Marriage

Coontz (2005) writes that married couples today “need to be more intentional about their lives and about the reasons and the rituals that help them stay together.”  Doherty (2001) suggests that there are two kinds of marital commitment: The tentative commitment and the permanent commitment.  When couples make a tentative commitment, they are committed to […]

Challenging Assumptions in your Marriage

If you and your partner have an area of life in which you are having difficulty expressing partnership, you very likely have assumptions that are limiting your view of yourself, your partner and your partnership.  The purpose of the exercise below is for you, as a couple, to identify some of your limiting assumptions that […]

Exploring Your Unique Friendship

At the core of a successful marriage and/or partnership is friendship.  Fowers (2000) writes that the best marriages are “partnerships in which spouses are devoted to creating a shared life that is larger than the emotional payoff of the marriage.”  He suggests that one of the important virtues in a partnership marriage is friendship where […]

Recent Trends in Marriage Today

According to the Pew Research Center, just over half of the adults in the United States are marrying today (Cohn, et. al., 2011). Fifty years ago, 72% to 80 % of adults got married. It is expected that the current marital rate may drop below 50% in the next few years. Compared to previous generations […]

Co-creating A Life Together

Getting married and sharing life with a loving partner remains one of the most important and compelling dreams for young people today. Harrar and DeMaria (2007) found in their survey of attitudes about marriage that 96% of those people who were polled say that they want to get married someday despite the fact that so […]

Suspending Blame and Fault

One of the patterns that couples can get into in their relationship when things are not working is to make each other wrong and then start blaming each other. Ultimately, there is no real responsibility in blaming another person. Blaming your partner is not being responsible for either what happened or for the way that […]