How to Get His Ex to Hate You
Being the second wife can sometimes be a challenge. Especially when the new husband comes with children. As a Family Law Attorney, I’ve seen this handled two different ways. The easiest path, and the one that causes the least harm to the children, is if the adults act in a mature fashion and are...
Random Acts of Toilet Paper
Having recently established that certain bathroom habits can be harmful to marriage, I left some people feeling that the bathroom was downright hazardous. But it’s not the bathroom itself, it’s the bathroom behavior we need to look at (not literally). Toilet seat left up? Bad behavior. Cracking your spouse up with your artistic toilet paper...
Getting Reel About Marriage
Watch a movie, save a marriage? Maybe. According to the results of a recent study from the University of Rochester, watching and discussing movies about relationships with your spouse is as effective in lowering divorce rates as more intensive marriage counseling programs. While the study was done with couples married 1-3 years – one of...
5 More Ways to Get His Ex to Hate You
Being a stepparent can be a complicated, challenging, and sometimes daunting relationship to navigate. And many of you are doing incredible jobs – prioritizing the children and providing good support for both your spouse and your spouse’s ex in the parenting department. Others out there? Not so much. When I posted How to Get His...
Should Children go to Jail for Refusing to Visit a Parent?
Should children go to jail for refusing to have a relationship with one of their divorced parents? That’s close to what happened recently in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Oakland County Circuit Judge Lisa Gorcyca, seeming to be at her wit’s end with three children, ages 14, 10 and 9, who refused to comply with her order to...
5 Ways to Make Your Mate Feel Great
Raisins are so gross I have to put on gloves to touch them. That’s why, when my husband spots freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies that I have made with my own little (gloved) hands, he knows it’s all about him. Not because I had a hankering for cookies, not because I wanted a spoonful of...
5 Myths About Divorce
I spend a lot of time debunking myths about divorce from callers who have gotten bad information from a myriad of sources. Sometimes it’s a poorly written article or folklore. Often it’s from a well-meaning friend/relative/acquaintance who had a bad experience or dealt with a different fact pattern in their own divorce. Here are...
10 Ways Couples Can Put the THANKS in Thanksgiving
With Thanksgiving as its finale, November is a great month to focus on the many people and things there are to be thankful for in our lives. The great food is just a bonus! If you and your spouse want to put the “Thanks” in Thanksgiving this year, here are 10 suggestions to get you...
Happy New Year, Spouse!
The best thing you can do for your spouse and your marriage in the New Year takes less than one minute a day. And it costs nothing. It’s such a little thing, that you won’t believe what a huge impact it will have – until it does! Are you ready to hear what it is?...
Is Your Marriage Like the Tree of 40 Fruits?
“Absolutely beautiful!” was the first thought I had when I saw the Tree of 40 Fruits. Then I read the behind-the-scenes story of how it came to be and listened to artist and professor Sam Van Aken, from Syracuse University, sum up his art-to-reality project. An actual tree that bears 40 fruits. How can that...