Deadhead Your Marriage
First of all, to spare potential disappointment, I want you to know from the get-go this has nothing to do with the Grateful Dead. So if you thought I was going to help you talk your spouse into taking a retro adventure, uh . . . sorry. Let’s talk about my backyard. I took a...
101 Things to Say to Make Your Mate Feel Great!
Do you want to make your mate feel great? Here are 101 things to say to do just that! 1. You make me feel special. 2. You still make my heart go pitter-patter! 3. You’re hot! 4. I know you have my back. 5. I continue to learn from you. 6. Your smile lights my...
Destruction That’s Good for Marriage
Competition between spouses can be fun, energizing and healthy for the marriage. Keeping score to determine who won at golf, racquetball, scrabble, or a favorite video game makes absolute sense. Keeping score in other areas of marriage does not. But isn’t that just what we do? I’ve taken out the trash the last three times!...
5 Links to Laughter
If you’re going to laugh your way to a longer, healthier marriage, you need to know how – and where – to get your laugh on. Here are five options that you might not have been aware of! 1. Laughing groups. Chances are your favorite hobby has a laughing group. I checked out the meetup...
Laugh Your Way to a Longer Marriage
Laugh, and the world laughs with you. More importantly, your spouse laughs with you. Just the words giggle, chuckle and chortle probably make you smile. Take it bigger with mirthful glee or bubbling laughter. Or over the top with a loud guffaw. Whether small, medium or large, laughter is good stuff! Making your spouse laugh...
Go Outside and Play
Is anybody else still mourning the loss of Jarts? Remember that yard ring-toss game that made mothers sound like an excerpt from A Christmas Story: Be careful with those or you’ll poke your eye out! Well, apparently not enough kids listened to their mothers and the game was taken off the market. I don’t get...
9 Kitchen Habits that Cook Up Trouble in Your Marriage
I have already warned you how what happens in the bathroom – those little annoying habits that crop up – can harm a marriage. But annoying your spouse in the kitchen could be even more dangerous – there’s knives there! It’s often the little things that cause the biggest spats. Here are nine of those...
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...
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...
10 Bathroom Habits That Can Harm Your Marriage
Do we live in Michigan or Rhode Island? Will we home school or send our kids to public or private school? Will we buy a house or rent a condo? Those are all big issues in marriage that could spark heated discussion if spouses have differing opinions. But when a decision is made, there’s a...