Finally Ann said in a dry, quiet voice, “I don’t think I’ve ever really liked him. I like what he likes. But I don’t like him.” It was sad. It’s always sad

Ambitious/pleasure bent. One wants to accomplish things; the other just wants to enjoy life. Thrifty/spendthrifty. One of you hates spending

You can always trust that you feel what you feel, but you have to be extremely careful to check out what’s really making you feel the way you do. To understand what it really means to trust your feelings, you have to understand how feelings work. Here’s a quick way of understanding this that I’ve found most helpful, not just professionally but

You can’t negotiate if you’re afraid of being attacked. You have to feel safe putting your needs out there.

We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone, not liking them at first, getting to know them better, and then finding we like them a lot. That’s what happened to me with my husband. The first hour or so after we met, he seemed so opinionated that I didn’t like him. But then the more I learned about him, the more I liked him. There are studies to

partly because on some level it doesn’t really touch you. You’ve developed a sense of who you are and what you care about over the years that’s sturdily impervious to your partner’s disrespect.

You’ve got to watch out for one of the slipperiest ways people refuse to acknowledge their problems: they get hurt.

For a particular need you have, and without blaming or attacking or labeling your partner, explain to your partner how it’s simply not fair that things are the way they are now. For example, you might say, “It’s not fair, is it, that we always watch what you want to watch on TV and never watch what I want to watch?” Do they respond to your appeal

But the precise degree of bearability of those problems could be measured by the fact that it felt worthwhile for this woman to leave when she thought she had someplace great to go to and it didn’t feel worthwhile to leave when she had nowhere to go to. Years later she and her husband are still