We all appreciate it when someone looks upon us with approval. We feel special and accepted, and we open ourselves to those kinds of people. If you will learn the art of focused attention toward your spouse, you will heal old wounds and make him or her feel important and valuable. When you make your spouse feel that way, you foster a new openness

If you want to communicate about something important, find out if now is okay before you start talking. If he or she seems distracted, ask if talking later would work better. This shows respect and honor for your spouse, and it will be appreciated. The Bible says there is a time to plant and a time not to plant.4 Just as a farmer waits for the

Don’t let everything bother you. Foster a realistic appreciation for each other. Flooding each other with criticism in the name of “honesty” and “openness” is guaranteed to put enormous strain on your relationship. The thinking among many marriage therapists for years has been that “being honest” with your feelings is the key to a healthy

Whether we realize it or not, this consumerist expectation gets attached to just about everything we get involved in, including marriage. When you view marriage as a product or commodity, you are trying to make it define you in some way. You are saying, “I expect marriage to make me look better, to make me feel better, to make me happier, right

We need to rethink how we respond to differences. We need to get smarter, to become more gracious, to learn how to value the unique way our spouse is different from us, even though that is pretty hard to do.

Wrong thinking always produces bad results; and whenever your expectations are one place and your experience is somewhere else, you start to experience an emotional meltdown.

In most cases, it is women who are upset with the whole marriage enterprise. Eighty percent of all divorces are filed by women. It is usually the woman who seeks out marriage counseling. Women of our day are the ones frustrated to the hilt. It is the woman who always seems to have her heart broken. It is the woman who is the most disappointed. I

Testosterone levels are the why behind the disparity in sexual drive between men and women. Testosterone in teenage boys is fifteen to twenty times higher than in teenage girls. It isn’t until a woman hits her late thirties that she is for her gender what a nineteen-year-old boy is for his. If you compare the sex drives of men and women, you find

MEN and women want different things. No surprises here. Those who take the time to find out what their spouse wants or needs, and do something to see those needs are met, have the stuff of a happy marriage. This is a little tricky, because it’s easy to assume that the wants and needs you feel are the same as those of your spouse. It is the