Why does it happen, and is anyone safe from this frightening condition called marriage?

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how life changes just a bit after marriage. Maybe you’re spending more time cuddling on the couch eating ice cream with your honey than you used to. Maybe the time you devote to family and housekeeping has robbed you of the hours you used to spend at the gym. Maybe you are not as concerned about a few extra pounds, now that you are a comfortable, happily married woman (or man).  Or maybe the added stress of marriage (the first year can be particularly challenging for some) is driving you to seek solace in the pantry.

Oh ya, one more thing: Guys, as a general rule, eat a lot more than girls, so when you’re cooking for him and eating meals together, you are probably consuming a lot more than you used to!

But whatever the reason, there’s no need to let the “love chub” take over.

I”m afraid I have no magic formula for keeping the pounds away. It’s the same answer you’ll find any time the question is asked: How do I loose weight? Eat right, and exercise. There are no shortcuts, but if your spouse is willing to partner with you, staying fit might be more fun than it used to be!

Want to hear how other couples decided to get back into pre-wedding shape? Read ???Will Marriage Make You Fat? How to Avoid the “Love Chub” Trap.

Feature image credit

Many people wrongly believe that in a good marriage, you can “relax” and do not have to monitor everything you say and do. Nothing could be farther from the truth!  In a good marriage, you must always watch what you say and how you react. This is the key to building a strong relationship and trust.

Part of building trust in your marriage is learning to fight fair! Remember that trust is something that takes a long time to build and a very short time to destroy.

Just in case you didn’t know, fighting is a part of any good marriage, Heller reminds us. Some people live with the naïve notion that in “good marriages” couples never argue or disagree. However, the real problem is not whether or not couples fight, but how they fight.

If you fight unfairly, then you destroy trust. If you fight fairly, you build trust. Here are a few important pointers to make sure that when you fight, you fight fair:

1. Never resort to name calling or put-downs.
2. Keep to the issue at hand. Never bring up old stuff that may be unresolved. The present fight is not a license to dump all your old garbage.
3. Never use phrases that are absolutes such as, “you never” or “you always.”
4. Never bring the other person’s family into the issue to support your case or to attack your spouse’s.
5. Agree beforehand on a method how to take a time out if one of you feels that the fight is getting out of hand.
6. Don’t start a fight later in the night, when you’re both tired and therefore more likely to have less control over your emotions.
7. And again, do your best to use “I” statements rather than “you” statements, which feel like attacks.

If you found these tips helpful, please read the complete article, How To Build Trust in Marriage, or visit Dov Heller’s website, Clarity Talk.

feature image from winewriter

Although everyone yearns for a strong, healthy marriage, sometimes couples feel torn. It’s impossible to please everybody all the time, so when there’s a conflict between the needs of a spouse and the needs of a parent, you need to know who is top priority.

“Focus on making your spouse your first priority,” says Barry at Hitched, “Even if it upsets your mom and dad. If your parents have healthy behavior, they will gracefully step aside and encourage you to make your spouse a top priority. They will value your needs as a couple and be respectful about their phone calls, visits, etc. If, however, your parents have destructive behavior, they will manipulate you with guilt to keep you in the role of an obedient child instead of allowing you to be a loyal spouse. They will feel entitled to call or visit whenever they want, and they will act offended whenever you try to draw healthy boundaries with them.”

Being committed to building your marriage is all about mindset. Learning to think the right way will help you make the right decisions.

4 harmful things to say (or imply) to your spouse:
* “I don’t have the courage to say ‘no’ to my parents, so I’m saying ‘no’ to you.”
* “My parents’ behavior is perfectly fine; your behavior is the problem.”
* “Let’s not do anything to upset my folks.”
* “My parents’ needs are more important than yours.”

4 great things to say to your spouse:
* “You are my first priority. Your needs are important to me.”
* “I want to support you, but I’m not sure how to do that. Please tell me.”
* “Let’s try to figure out a compromise we can both live with.”
* “Can you help me figure out a tactful way to tell my parents what we’ve decided?”

Choosing to be a loyal husband or wife is the first step toward a stronger marriage and a more adult relationship with your parents. Your behavior will have multiple benefits. For example, when your mom knows that your wife comes first, you will have eliminated the need for them to compete over you, and mom may give you more privacy. Your spouse, who knows that you value your marriage over your relationship with your parents, will likely try harder to please you by becoming more reasonable about issues involving your parents.

Becoming truly independent from our parents is one of the best gifts we can give our spouse. That doesn’t mean we should cut off contact with our parents or start being hateful toward them. It just means that pleasing our spouse should take priority over pleasing our parents.

Info from Hitched. Image from the daily mail and rexburg counseling

I thought Sherry Amatenstein’s advice was sensible, and if you can’t seem to find true love, her commentary might give you the help you need to make a change.  “If one or two sound familiar,” she says, “Don’t beat yourself up.  Just recognize that you deserve better and commit to making a change for good.”

Excuse me for cutting and pasting… Here we go!

1. If you think love will never find you, it won’t. I receive many posts on the Dating Doyenne board from women whose romantic disappointments have left them convinced there is something inherently unlovable about them. They say things like: “Who would want me anyway? I’m sure I’m going to wind up alone.”

Obviously these women are as worthy of love as you and I. (Yes, we’re worthy!) But they’ve come down with something so awful it can keep them solo for years to come: self-fulfilling prophecy, or SFP. SFP isn’t contagious but it will make potential dates run the opposite way. It’s an insidious disease. Physically, it leaves the sufferer untouched. But the more one walks around saying, “I will never find love,” the higher the odds that expectation will come true. Contrarily, the sunnier one’s thoughts

— “I’m such a cool, happy person that I’m bound to find love” — the sunnier the forecast for her romantic future.

If you’re among those throwing one too many pity parties for herself, get busy: Start a journal. Each day write down something lovable about yourself. It will get easier with time. You can even consider calling or emailing a few close friends or relatives, so they can share reasons they think a man would be lucky to have you. Level with them about why you’re making this request, and they’ll probably be happy to help. Whenever a negative thought threatens to invade your mind, replace it with a positive one.

Uncover the other love mistakes that might be keeping you single right here:

2. Kick the bad-boy habit. News flash: Good guys have not gone the way of the 8-track. They exist in bulk. The trick is learning to both recognize and want a man of worth. “For years I was attracted to guys whose mission was to hurt me,” says reformed bad-boy lover Adelle Harris, a 32-year-old Chicago Web designer. “It would be obvious from the get-go. They’d never call when they said they would, were constantly caught in stupid lies, said they loved me, then ran around with other women. One even tried to seduce my best friend.” During these years, Adelle kept railing that her dates were the best of a bad lot: No man could be kind or faithful. Then she attended a cousin’s wedding. “Naomi’s bridegroom Rick was the sweetest man in the world. He obviously adored my cousin and lived to please her,” says Adelle. “Seeing the sweet, loving light in his eyes, I vowed that one day I’d meet a man who would look at me like I was a treasure.”

Adelle took a dating hiatus and did some much-needed thinking about the root of her obsession with bad boys. “My dad was a life-of-the-party type, but as a husband and father he was cold and uncaring,” she admits. “He left for good when I was 10. After that, the few times I’d see him I’d practically do cartwheels to win his attention. When I was old enough to have a boyfriend, I began metaphorically dating my dad. Once I realized what I’d been doing, I started seeing the appeal of guys who weren’t as flashy or unreliable, guys who were capable of caring.”

Today Adelle is engaged — to a Rick type. “I can’t believe I wasted all that time on men who treated me like dirt,” she says. “But it was worth it, I guess because it eventually taught me to truly appreciate a good man.”

3. Repeat after me: Love is not a synonym for leash. When Gina Thomas, a 29-year-old Manhattan magazine art director, got engaged, it seemed like a dream come true. In her fantasies she and her fiancé Bill would do everything together. Bill had a different definition. “Once we moved in together I assumed Bill would cut out the biweekly poker games with the guys and the occasional nights out after work,” says Gina. “Our jobs left us little free time as it was. We shouldn’t have wasted it on other people.”

Wanting your partner to be with you 24/7 is not realistic or fair, yet like Gina many women feel abandoned or unloved if their other half has needs (say, for male camaraderie or occasional solitude) that can’t be fulfilled by the relationship.
Gina’s insecurity and neediness led her to make Bill feel like he was under house arrest. And no matter how plush the jail, eventually a prisoner wants to be set free. The two split.

The happiest couples allow each other breathing room to grow. The more dynamic their lives apart (in terms of jobs, hobbies, friends), the more they’ll have to share with each other when they get together.

4. Don’t commit emotional infidelity. It is vital that your partner be someone you treat with courtesy and kindness. If you tell all of your favorite jokes and “bad day” stories to a friend or male coworker, what will you have left when you get home to your honey? It may sound crazy, but there is a premium on a person’s time and energy — there is only so much of it to go around — and if you spend yours with someone else, you’re potentially hurting your relationship. Even worse is betraying your partner’s confidences with a male friend or coworker. Just ask Dorinne Badenstadt, a 34-year-old chef from Santa Fe, New Mexico. “After six years of marriage my husband Ed and I started growing apart. Nothing drastic, but he was no longer the first person I’d tell when something good or bad happened,” she says. “That honor belonged to my neighbor Don.”

Dorinne never slept with Don, but she did begin sharing intimacies, such as the fact that her husband wore a toupee, a fact Don joked about at a neighborhood barbecue. Ed was shocked and felt betrayed at hearing his business discussed over hot dogs and beer. He accused his wife of disloyalty, precipitating the biggest fight the pair had ever had. The couple patched things up, but Dorinne was reminded the hard way that her marriage needed to be the number one relationship in her life.

5. You’re wrong if you need to be right. When Anne Ryan, a 29-year-old from Chicago, met her boyfriend Sam, she was delighted that the two had so much in common. Both were lawyers and loved to tango, downhill ski and play chess. Both were also stubbornly prideful. “Sam was perfect except for one horrible flaw,” says Anne. “He always needed to be right — whether it was about which restaurant served better burgers or which of us had apologized first after our last fight. What I didn’t realize until it was too late was that I was just as bad. I couldn’t admit that I’d forgotten to give him an important phone message or that his desire to move to L.A. was something I should seriously consider. I wanted to stay in Chicago and that was all that mattered. It was my way or the highway.”

Sam eventually took the highway — heading due west. If you and/or your partner can never admit to being wrong, you’ll win a few TKOs but you’ll never win much satisfaction. Apologizing isn’t a sign of weakness. Correction, Ali McGraw: Love does mean occasionally having to say you’re sorry

Dr. Saltz defines loneliness as a feeling of emptiness, abandonment and rejection. Courtship is often a time of emotional intimacy and pleasure in being together. But sometimes married couples get into a rut, taking the other for granted and being consumed by other cares such as work, children, finances, etc. Couples grow apart if there’s an inability to share feelings and be understood. A relationship can become purely functional, like two players on the same team – you do the shopping and I’ll drive carpool – instead of the deep, soul mate connection you probably envisioned.

“Even when a woman does sit down with her husband it’s to zone out in front of the TV. She often wants to talk, but he wants to watch the game. The distance grows and soon she feels like she’s alone while she’s sitting next to him.”

It’s no newsflash that women communicate differently then men. Girlfriends tend to bond by talking, sharing their experiences and feelings. Men tend to bond over shared activities, like watching a ball game. Many women wish (and even expect that) their husbands would talk to them like their girlfriends. When that doesn’t happen they feel disappointed, rejected and lonely. They feel like even if they tried to share their deeper feelings, he won’t really get it.

“This is not the same as the man who either doesn’t notice when something is really up with you or worse yet, doesn’t care,” Dr. Saltz points out. “The above reasons women feel lonely are really… normal bumps in the road that you need to and can contend with.” (Obviously, a relationship where he criticizes often, belittles you, threatens to leave or hurt you, constitutes emotional abuse. If he tries to isolate you from friends and family in order to maintain control, this is a relationship you need to get out of.)

What can you do about it? Here are some of Dr. Saltz’s suggestions:

• Give attention to get attention. Don’t wait for him to make the first move. If your husband isn’t holding your hand, then take his. Tell him you really like to snuggle up in bed and talk. Ask him what is on his mind. Give him the same kind of attention and interaction you’d like to receive. Be a model of the change. Then ask him to do the same for you. Guys can be pretty clueless, but the more specific you are about your needs, the more likely it is that he’ll catch on.

• Seek satisfaction on your own. Learning to enjoy your own company is the first step to diminishing loneliness. Allow some separate time for each of you to explore your interests. By nurturing some independence, you build your own confidence and will feel less needy. This “self-possession” will create a person that the other one wants to know more about and have fun with. Make a list of things you might like to do alone like reading, gardening, painting, listening to music…then go through each and give it a try.

• Don’t neglect your social life. Nurturing your women friends can be stimulating and gratifying. This is not instead of your spouse; it’s simply in addition and will leave you feeling less alone.

Something Essential: If he’s in the military, chances are he’d appreciate some toilet paper that doesn’t feel like sandpaper, or snacks that won’t spoil, like beef jerky.

Something fun: If he’s traveling a lot, try burning a CD of stand-up comedy or some of his favorite music. On impulse, one woman even sent her boyfriend a yo-yo, which the whole troop loved. “I hear they passed that thing around until someone dropped it and it broke… he still has it in his drawer as a reminder that love can be shown in many ways.”

Something yummy: “Cookies! Two dozen fit right inside two Gladware containers. I make his favorite kind and let cool. Then, I line the inside of each container with Saran Wrap, leaving enough to cover the cookies. I pack them inside (carefully), then cover with the excess Saran Wrap. They will stay fresh for days and days that way. I’ve even sent them overseas! Trust me, every man appreciates cookies.”

Something cuddly: “Once, I sent my oldest teddy bear with a note saying ‘It’s for the lonely times. Big boys need stuffed toys too!’”

Something personal: One woman wrote out memories of their time together, stories, and private jokes on index cards, so he could look at them whenever he needed a pick-up. Another one would include little mementos, like the ticket stubs from their last movie together. And one romantic girl puts her perfume on the letters she sends, because “he gets excited over anything that smells or looks like home.”

Something for every day of the week: “I include letters in separate envelopes. Each envelope has a certain theme to help him along: sad, lonely, sick and always a funny one– the ‘angry at me’ stack.” Another girlfriend sends notes with different dates to read t hem…. “in case the mail is slow I know he’ll have something new from me every day!”