Transforming Common Family Dilemmas

Parents with children who have developmental and medical disabilities have in common a number of family dilemmas that they deal with on a day-to-day basis. Many parents are comforted when they find out they are not alone in their experience and they gain strength in coping with their unique circumstances when they understand that many […]

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 […]

Supporting Growth and Development

One of the ideals in a partnership marriage is that both individuals can fulfill their commitment to self-expression, personal growth and life goals inside of marriage today. Most couples recognize that they must continually grow and develop throughout their life together or their marriage will stagnate. That, however, requires a commitment from both partners to […]

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 […]

Keeping All Four Feet “in the Ring”

In marriage, couples encounter many problems, including difficulties in communication, misalignment around parenting, conflict about money, inequality in sharing power, problems in intimacy and loss of trust. When such difficulties remain unresolved for periods of time, it is sometimes easy to get discouraged and start questioning your commitment to your marriage. It can be attractive […]

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 […]