While one of the fun things about the new year is reflecting on the one just passed and creating goals to improve the one in front of us, it is unfortunate how many resolutions end up not only unrealized by the next year but even forgotten by the next month. Here is a plan to […]

While the media may often depict fairy tale images of perfect couples and happy households, the truth is that you can not bring two people together without there being friction. Eventually, both people will find themselves in a place where they are too angry at the other to even express themselves. Just because our real

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