Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage: Unlocking the Secrets to Life, Love and Marriage

At the conclusion of my seminars I have the couples stand and apologize to each other. It is the ultimate reset button. Without forgiveness, Jesus taught, your very connection to God is doomed. And I can assure you that without forgiveness, your marriage is doomed.

Rather than hurt ourselves with bitterness, the best course of action is to simply forgive. Forgiveness is the ultimate reset button. Sadly, millions of people struggle with forgiveness, but it is because they don’t understand how to forgive.

Despite all the advice I can offer in this book, nobody does marriage perfectly. We all mess up. We all make mistakes. We all create poo that has to be dealt with. Forgiveness keeps you from defining your future based on the mistakes of the past. Forgiveness is that critical reset button essential for any marriage to succeed. You want to give your

Marriage is not a sprint; it is a marathon. It is not the start that leads to a failed marriage, but the unwillingness to endure the race.

You don’t do marathons quickly. You have to spread out your energy over time. Endurance is what empowers a couple over the long haul. It will enable you to push through old familiar conflict zones for the ten-thousandth time without quitting; you just keep going and going…Scripture

We are typically drawn to a person who thinks differently than we do; who loves and needs love differently; who has different strengths and weaknesses and talents than we do; who may be more logical, while we are emotional; and so on. The upside is, opposites create a great opportunity for balance.

It may look as if you will gain ground by eliminating some stresses of a bad marriage, but divorce creates more stresses than people bargain for: the ugliness of a breakup between partners; the reactions of children; potential disappointments and aggravation about custody issues, child support, and visitation orders; new financial or health stresse

If you are expecting marriage to be nothing but bliss, you will be sorely disappointed. It’s not that there is not bliss to be had—there is; it’s that bliss comes only after blisters. Marital bliss is the result of marital blisters—lots of hard work, where you work till it hurts, sometimes till you bleed. Marriages get happy not because partners ge

Don’t go to bed mad. It was the apostle Paul who wrote, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”8 Decide in advance (a secret to being disciplined) that whenever you get into a spat, you will at least quash the negative emotions associated with the argument. And do it before you fall asleep (this will make for some long nights). You