One place where everything comes together
Reading Time: 2 minutes Don’t put your happiness or your satisfaction on hold waiting for someone else to change. Don’t make your spouse responsible for your passion. Don’t let your love get stale, or altogether rotten while you’re too disconnected to do anything about it. Doing something, anything, do everything you can. Why? Because trust me, it’s easier than divorce. Breaking up is very, hard to do. Harder than you probably think it would be.
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Reading Time: 3 minutes “In the time we’ve spent together I’ve really come to appreciate what a great person you are. This is the very reason I feel you deserve more than I am really able to put into this. I just don’t feel my head or heart is in this relationship the way it should be. Because of that I know as hard as this is, it’s time for me to end this. At some point maybe we can reconnect as friends, but for now, I think we really need some time completely apart to adjust to this. It’s going to be hard for both of us.”
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Nothing will rock the world of a nice girl faster than an asshole. A nice girl just can’t wrap her mind around the behavior of an asshole. The things that make a nice girl so vulnerable to an asshole are two of the things that make a nice girl nice – she’s understanding and patient.
But let’s tell the truth about the nice girl. When being nice is an honor badge for being a pushover you can’t blame the asshole. There is a big difference between a nice girl and a grown-up woman who loves hard.
And let me tell you from experience, there is no point trying to love or even like an asshole. So, here is your guide for managing yourself with an asshole – and for the record, this is not a guide to managing an asshole, because you can’t.
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Reading Time: 5 minutes Carrie wasn’t going to cheat. But she didn’t like the way her marriage felt. What she wanted was a quick fix and while a marriage that’s starving needs more than a quick fix mentality when two people truly love each other sometimes some easy steps in the right direction can take you miles back to where you want to be.
Carrie was clear. They didn’t have a lot of money for romantic weekend trips or even date nights. The first thing she said to me was, “If one more person tells me we need a date night, I’ll scream.” While I thought they did need a regular date night, they also needed a way to be different in their relationship every single day.
So, we came up with a list of ten things she could do every day that would take less than a minute each. I was hopeful, but not super optimistic about massive changes. This turned out to be one instance where I’m thrilled to admit I was wrong.
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Reading Time: 2 minutes REGRETS ARE THE WORST, SO YOU WANT TO KNOW FOR SURE.
One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “How do I know if I should file for divorce?” There is no one right answer to that. However, if you’re asking the question chances are your marriage may already be terminal. There are generally four litmus tests that demonstrate the viability of a marriage. If you’re facing one of the most difficult decisions you might ever make, ask yourself these three questions.
Reading Time: 2 minutes I hear people complain frequently that their partner never apologizes. Two of the most powerful words in the English language are I’m sorry. However, the problem I see with those words, more often than not using them enough, is where people actually say “I’m sorry” more than they should, in situations they shouldn’t.
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Reading Time: 3 minutes This is an inescapable truth. You get out of life, all of it, exactly what you are willing to settle for. No more, no less. Which is why understanding your settling point is so important. It’s not hard to figure out what it is because when you look around your life, you will see evidence of it in every area.
When it comes to relationships it’s particularly easy to spot, because other people reflect it for you. Your settling point will determine how rich and fulfilling your relationships are. They will determine how other people treat you. They will determine how much joy you experience or abuse you endure.
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Reading Time: 2 minutes When a man doesn’t call you back for a date a second, third, or fourth date, that means something. It either means something has come up and he doesn’t have time, or he’s not interested. Not having time is not an excuse, it’s a fact. If either one of those two things is going on, it’s not happening. Let that be ok because you can’t control it anyway.
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Reading Time: 2 minutes I hear it all the time, “how did I miss the signs?” at the end of a relationship hindsight is 20/20. It’s not because you were stupid. It’s because falling in love causes temporary insanity, literally. So how’s a girl to know?
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Reading Time: 3 minutes In a recent interview, I was asked what the warning signs of a marriage on the brink were. I’m sure the interviewer was expecting to hear, abuse, infidelity, dishonesty, loss of intimacy, addiction, or any number of other big-ticket relationship deal breakers. When I answered the question by saying it was declining marital satisfaction, he was tongue-tied. He characterized that answer as elementary.
I think it’s anything but elementary. Not being happy in a relationship is the number one leading cause of all kinds of other bad things. In most cases, those other big-ticket deal breakers are symptoms of just not being happy enough. Typically a couple won’t seek help for “not being as happy as they used to be” and that’s too bad. At the “I’m just not happy” stage of trouble, there is still a lot of hope for getting a relationship back on track. At the “I’ve had an affair and want a divorce” stage of trouble, not so much.
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