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One of the reasons marriage counseling can be helpful is its ability to help us to understand negative emotions ranging from annoyance all the way to fury. Many people don’t understand these emotions and so don’t understand that the frustrations and fights that they cause are based in normal human responses. Unchecked, fury can end […]

Some people may have a hard time recovering from the holiday season as it passes with disappointment and ushers in the bills of the new year. Dr. Mary Seger, of Gaylord, Michigan, has suggestions on how to reduce not only holiday stress, but general stress as well. The plan begins with reflection, both on the

Having an affair can seem like a good idea to a lot of people involved in long-term relationships. To a lot of them, it also begins to seem like a very bad idea once all the guilt and the complications it brings begin to settle in. Considering that most affairs last less than three years,

American society is infatuated by the idea of the “soul mate.” The idea is celebrated across the media, all propelling the idea that every person has a single perfect match designated by fate into the American consciousness. The idea of a soul mate, however, is not something that can be objectively measured. It is based

Some psychologists try to quantify the health of a relationship by looking at the quantity of positive interactions while others look at the satisfaction of the relationship and still others investigate how the partners are meeting each others’ needs. Dr. Will Meek writes that the latter, the partners meeting each others’ needs, is centrally important

Traits of an emotional caretaker include being overly emphathetic, self-sacrificing, generous, perfectionistic, deferential, willing to put other’s needs before your own, and uncomfortable with conflict. As admirable as some of the qualities may sound, being an emotional caretaker is not a positive thing, according to Dr. Margalis Fjelstad in her new book, Stop Caretaking the

Suppressing feelings may be both the most normal and also the least helpful response that people have when dealing with fear and emotional pain, especially when it comes to marriage. Emotional injuries that are not processed, especially ones from childhood, become a filter that affects how people look at the world for the rest of

British epidemiologist William Farr studied the mortality rates of three different types of French people back in 1858: single, married, and widowed. What he found was that people who are unwed die from disease in what he called “undue proportion” when compared to those who are married. The evidence for this observation has only increased

Most couples who have been married for an extended period of time can talk about “rough spots” in their marriage, when there was a lot of stress between the couple that they had to work through. A lot of these rough times are caused by what psychologists refer to as marital stressors, which are external

Nearly every family is going to have a couple of people who fight, criticize, or are standoffish in some way that makes it difficult to get along with them and can provide increased levels of stress during the holidays. A few good tips on how to handle these difficult family members can keep family time