So let’s move on to marriage problems and money issues.

Let’s begin with an important point. There are issues that you can’t help in life. There are other issues you can have under your control. You can’t control a bad economy but you can control to some degree the economics of your home. Money stresses, in a marriage are as big or bigger than sex issues. You need to handle those to avoid marriage problems.

In dealing with money issues and marriage problems I like to draw from the saying, “If all you have is lemons, make lemonade”. If your family’s economics aren’t the best, a way to improve your marriage rather than have marriage problems is to find ways to not use your credit card that can bring you and your spouse together. The first suggestion, here, is Continue reading Marriage Problems, When the Team Breaks Down, Part 3

So, since I’m assuming you all chose to turn left, lets continue.

The first point here is that what you just did in this simple model was to decide to have a happy marriage as opposed to an unhappy one. Simple as it may sound, the first step to not having marriage problems is making decisions that benefit the marriage.

How often do decisions come up about benefiting or hurting your marriage? I will give you the answer. Every single day of your life, they will come up. Let’s continue on with this idea of how they come up so often.

Can you accept that most marriage problems are based on sex and money? It is to your benefit to do so. Let’s go on like you believe it.

We will first talk about sex. When you first met, what made you desire you spouse? What made them desire you? Did they dress well for you or you for them? Were you keeping yourself in shape? We are all getting older, but we don’t have to get old. By this I mean, if we take care of ourselves physically and mentally we will stay more attractive to our spouse longer.

Conversely, if you decide that fast food is more fulfilling than having sex with your spouse, you will Continue reading Marriage Problems, When the Team Breaks Down, Part 2

Today, I was thinking about my life and marriage. Could the economy be any worse? Could the daily news be any worse? How is your marriage surviving through all this?

The saying goes “the only two things you can count on are death and taxes”. But there is one other thing you can count on if you don’t keep your eye on the ball, and that is marriage problems.

Are you having a great marriage or are you having marriage problems? When each of us got married, barring getting married due to a surprise pregnancy, we went into it with hopes and dreams of a bright future, or a feeling of security, or at least a feeling of connection. For those of you who honestly feel you have a great marriage, or at least a good one, those same feelings to some degree are still there. To those of you who are having marriage problems, something happened along the way that changed those feelings.

Let’s take a look at what happens that leads to a happy marriage or marriage problems and then give some useable suggestions. We are going to start the talk with a premise that most marriage problems begin with one of two problems. Those problems are Continue reading Marriage Problems, When the Team Breaks Down

In a time of huge marriage problems,(i.e. 60% divorce rate), clearly something is askew in our vision of how to have a successful marriage.

In this article, I am going to talk about two points. The first being sexual attraction. Let’s start by mentioning a few things. For those of you who have never been married I want to say you have no idea what “for ever and ever” means. I’ll give you a hint. It is a very long time. By taking marital vows, you are bonding to someone with the intention that it will be the last intimate bond you will ever make to another person. Think about it. You are committing to Continue reading Marriage Problems, Sexual Attraction and Knowing What You Want in Life

I can’t tell you how many times I have said and heard others my age say if I knew back then what I know now, wow life could have been so much better. This isn’t that life isn’t good now. It’s just that so much pain and time wasted could have been avoided. This point applies doubly to marriage problems.

So what have I learned regarding marriage problems and marriage success.

By the time I met my wife I had already decided I was going to sell my practice, my house and move to a less complicated beach life. Its not that decision was brilliant… it turned out to not be…but it was what I determined my path was going to be. When examining the mistakes that lead to the marriage problems of my first marriage, it would have been easy to place blame and less easy to accept blame, but both of these actions wouldn’t have lead to solutions as to how to have a great future with a new person.

I decided to tell any woman, who I dated, where I was going and see where it would lead. What I found was that this was the path to Continue reading Marriage Problems and What Questions to Ask Before Getting Married

Being a veteran of marriage problems and also a veteran of, what I would consider, a very successful marriage, I want to share a few points to people who are thinking about getting married.

I would like to begin with sharing something about myself as to where my marriage problems began. I am the offspring of a divorced marriage. My parents got married at 20 years old, when my father was just beginning grad school and my mother was finishing college. I always thought their marriage problems were caused because they were too young to know any better.

That point was true enough but that was only part of the truth. Continue reading Marriage Problems and Asking Questions Before Marrying

We have now discussed the practical side and emotional side of term limits in marriage problems. Let’s look at the big picture.

The big picture in marriage problems revolves around the complexity of feelings and how we use them in an increasingly busy world. It revolves around coming to terms with no matter how hard we try to rationalize and “practicalize” our emotions we never will be able to make matters of the heart a math problem.

I believe, even though the statistics are against us, we need to enter into marriages with a forever model. I believe the solution to marriage problems, isn’t in having a great exit strategy, like in the stock market, like in proposed term limits. I believe the solution, Continue reading Term Limits in Marriage Problems: Part 3

Now that we have gone through the practical side of term limits to marriage problems, few as they may be, let’s get into the more human side of marriage problems…the emotional side.

While watching the show on CNN, except for the clinical psychologist, the entire panel was amazingly open to the idea of term limits. I felt like I was watching a show discussing the pros and cons of jelly vs. butter on your bread. What I mean is there was a sense of “yeah marriage problems are real so let’s find an easy solution to prepare for the inevitable end”.

I have written and spoken many times on what I call the “fast food mentality” of modern America. We want our food fast, our health care fast, our wars fast. Basically we have become a society of wanting and demanding, in many cases, instantaneous solutions to huge problems regardless of whether the solutions make any sense or not. The bailouts are a classic “today” example.

Well, after watching this show, I realized Continue reading Term Limits in Marriage Problems: Part 2

I was watching CNN the other day and was seeing something that was incredibly interesting to me. In Australia, someone came up with what they thought was a great solution to marriage problems in their country. It was term limits. The basis of their idea was so many people get divorced, and the expense of divorce so great, why not just have marriage contracts that last 2years, 5 years, or 10 years. At the end of the contract if there are marriage problems you just separate. I don’t know how the details work but it is something worth discussing.

Please don’t quit reading until you get to the end because you are disgusted with the arguments put forth. Marriage problems are rampant and it is important to discuss how to work through them.

First, we’ll discuss the practical side of term limits to marriage problems.

Second, we’ll discuss the emotional side of term limits to marriage problems.

Third, we’ll discuss the big picture in marriage problems.

The practical side of term limits is very compelling. If you’ve ever gone through a divorce, (I have), you know you may have extended your working career 10 years with all the expenses figured out. You know only the lawyers win. So with term limits, Continue reading Term Limits in Marriage Problems

This last month I have been living in a different city than my wife because of business. It got me thinking about my marriage. I was reading a statistic that said couples, in which one spouse is out of the home one week per month, have a 25% chance of getting a divorce. Couples, who have one spouse gone two weeks per month have a 50% chance of divorce. I was looking at all these marriage problems and getting scared for my own marriage. You read on my blog regarding the sexless marriage how important it is to keep intimacy going in order to avoid marriage problems.

I discussed these issues with my wife, who turned out to be equally scared. Being away has been tough on both of us. I told her we cannot let ourselves become part of the statistics. I told her we need to step up our game in expressing our commitment to each other. I shared with her, we couldn’t avoid having a sexless marriage at this point but we could be very intimate. We took a vow to call each other a least 3 times a day. I was determined to avoid any major marriage problems.

I thought, ok, this should keep things under control. But what happened was we started talking about all the boring stuff like bills and chores and soon were fighting on the phone a lot. We were getting miserable. The calls were becoming a whining session. For a minute I thought, maybe it was good to be away if this is what our marriage was.

Then, like a lightning bolt, it hit me. Continue reading Revisiting the Sexless Marriage