Sublime

But it also helps create the three stages that love relationships tend to go through, often called “romance,” “power struggle,” and “co-creation.”

marriage is not the result of two empty souls finding each other in an attempt to “complete” each other. Two empty, unfulfilled souls who get married will just be a marriage of two empty, unfulfilled souls. A successful marriage is possible only when two complete and happy people get together for the purpose of building a life together. They do not

Hank put up an inner barrier that allowed him to not seem to experience the feelings his partner’s putdowns must have been stimulating in him. And because he couldn’t imagine that the person he wanted to love him would feel so little respect toward him, he was able to deny that the disrespect was happening at all. These are the four things that

“there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of value

We usually give our spouses the responsibility of making us happy rather than living to make them happy. In the process, neither one ends up happy. But you can change that! If you want your marriage or any other relationship to improve, just start doing more of the right thing yourself.

Based on their long experiences both in and out of love relationships, their first lesson is this: you are much more likely to have a satisfying marriage for a lifetime when you and your mate are fundamentally similar.

Virtually all the couples I see in extremis, like Stan and Lucy, lack a mechanism of correction.