The Wisdom of Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash wrote: “To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.” Everyone has a valid point of view. And each person’s point of view has a particular “rightness” to it, given that it is the only point of view a person can […]

Investing in your Marriage

There is a good deal of research that suggests that couples who are successful in marriage benefit greatly. These couples are happier, are healthier, have longer lives, are wealthier and have better sex lives than couples who divorce or individuals who remain single (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). Investing in your marriage is one of the […]

The Head of the Household

My brother-in-law sent me a book on marriage last week called “Make Yours a Happy Marriage” by O.A. Geiseman. It was written in 1946 just two years after my parents were married. Dr. Geiseman was the pastor at a Lutheran Church in Illinois and was a well known speaker at the time in practical religious […]

Connecting to Us Couples Retreat

I am happy to announce that a colleague of mine, Joanie Yanusas, and I are facilitating a couples retreat on the second weekend in October at a peaceful and beautiful venue in Elmira, New York.  Joanie is a certified professional coach and Retreat Leader whom I met at a leadership course several years ago. She […]

Keeping Intimacy Alive

As years go by, many couples discover that the intimacy they experienced in the first several years of their marriage doesn’t last forever. Chapman (2004) suggests that the “falling in love” kind of love is not real love at all. He says that “real love” recognizes the need for growth, takes effort and discipline and […]

The Power of a Promise

“I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made […]

Radical Conversations that Have Shaped Marriage

In the last two hundred and fifty years, societal conversations in the United States, all considered radical at an earlier time, have transformed the institution of marriage. Briefly, here are a few: Individual choice. The Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries influenced relations between men and women in radical ways. Reason trumped […]

Living a Valued Life

Whitworth, Kimsey-House, & Sandahl (1998) wrote that a valued life is a fulfilling life and living such a life is a “radical act.” When one thinks of the word “radical,” one thinks of going to an extreme, but this is not what is meant in this context. The dictionary definition of radical, as an adjective, […]

Happiness in Partnership

In their new book, The Normal Bar, Northrup, Schwartz, and Witte (2012) developed an interactive, on-line relationship survey that asked people hundreds of questions about their primary love relationships. They collected data on romance, sex, dating, money, household tasks, compatibility, etc., from over 70,000 people in many different countries worldwide. They were interested in a […]

How Much Play Do You Have in Your Marriage?

Many couples today are challenged with balancing work and life. When Martha and I are feeling out of balance, the first casualty is our playfulness. When the demands of our work and the commitments we’ve made put us into overwhelm, often what gets crowded out is play. When we step back, get a little perspective […]