Today marks the anniversary of the day Ed and I married. With each year, our lives have been woven more tightly together. We've shared some incredible high points and held each other close through some very difficult moments. We've watched each other grow as individuals and ourselves grow as a couple.

It is this complexity, this richness, this history that I missed when my first marriage unaveled. Falling in love is grand, but it doesn't hold a candle to feeling love from and for a partner who is part of your life's fabric, someone who knows you.

It doesn't hurt that my Ed is a handsome, highly talented man with a deep and comforting voice and a vibrant love of life and living. But what makes our relationship so great, I think, is our shared willingness to see our many differences and disgreements as stepping stones to a fuller life, rather than a threat to life as we knew it before we met.

All we have to do is expect love and assume love, instead of always testing love.

Posted by patty at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Before the wedding, we say we don't know exactly what to expect from marriage. We lie. It's not even a year before most utter the words, "If you loved me..." or "If he loved me..." or "Why can't she..." We know what we expect, and it is a disappointment when it's not what we get.

Picture yourself planning a garden tour. You have seen your friends' photos of their garden tours. You love the large, single-color clusters of red, yellow, or pink tulips. The sparsely planted arrangements of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths delight you. And those azaleas! The variety is amazing. The colors are so perfect. You are really looking forward to your garden tour.

You look for tulips. You look for those translucent colors of the azaleas in the gardens they visited. But you have been robbed! In the gardens you visit, there are rust-colored chrysanthemums or orange and purple birds of paradise or spiky, purple hostas with more leaf than flower. This is not what you expected!

If you keep using your checklist of tulips and azaleas from observing your friends' garden trips through snapshots, your trip will be a huge disappointment. If you let go of this list of expectations and open your eyes, you will discover a wealth of nature's beauty. You can be disappointed, or you can crumple up your list of expectations, look for whatever delights your senses, and be in awe.

Your marriage is your garden trip. If you spend it looking for what you've seen in snapshots of your parents' or friends' marriages, you cheat yourself out of an incredible experience. Love comes in as many colors, shapes, fragrances, and seasons as flowers do. Live your marriage on the edge of your seat, always watching for the next, unexpected bit of love your spouse offers you, always savoring each one.

Posted by patty at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When you look for a Third Alternative instead of arguing over whatever you disagree about, two things happen.

1. You get what you want or something you like even more.


2. You give generously to your husband or wife.

It's a two-step process. (I do love the Two-Step.)

1. Type your name and email address at www.EnjoyBeingMarried.com and click on the Subscribe button.


2. Find the email from newsletter@enjoybeingmarried.com in your inbox a few minutes later and click on the link in it. (If you have spam filters, you might want to add the address to your list of approved senders.)

Posted by patty at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says her predecessor, Tony Snow, "was the inspiration for her 2008 New Year's resolution, which was always to take her husband's telephone calls, no matter how busy she was at work," according to tomorrow's New York Times.

Tony Snow died today of colon cancer, at age 53, leaving a wife and three children it's evident he cared for deeply, and some great advice for all of us.

Posted by patty at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I will be attending a bridal shower tomorrow for an arranged marriage between two Muslims, and I wish both of them the very best, lifelong marriage.

So I was thrilled to receive a Google alert this morning about an excellent article in Pakistan Daily about preparing for a Muslim marriage.

For those of us who are not Muslims, it may seem remarkable that Muslim Americans, many or most of whom marry people they've never dated and didn't fall in love with before the wedding, and who don't consider staying marriage a religious requirement, have a lower than average divorce rate of 33%.

Whether you practice Islam or not, the article makes some very good points about preparing for marriage and not just the wedding.

I learned the divorce rate is slightly lower for Muslim Americans, but still a discouraging 33%. The author offers some good advice about preparing to remain in the other two-thirds.

Posted by patty at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On a beautiful summer afternoon like this one, I recall the pleasures of boating. I want to get out on the water. My husband does not.

Am I being cheated? Is there something wrong with my marriage?

Not at all. We promised to love each other "in sickness and in health," not "by boat and by bicycle." Our marriage is just fine.

He's a handy companion, and I love spending time with him. He'll even get in a boat with me from time to time, just because he loves spending time with me. But I have other friends who share and even amplify my delight with boating, and my life is blessed when I remember to spend some time with them, too.

The first time around, I expected a lot of things besides love, and I often felt cheated. Now I Expect Love and find my life much fuller and happier.

Posted by patty at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Five years from now, you will be a different person. You will have different interests, different tastes, different challenges.

Date, live together, avoid commitment, and you'll be free to move on to a partner who shares your new interests, matches your new tastes, helps with your new challenges.

That's the choice of many who were exposed to unhappy marriages or divorce while growing up or whose own first marriage ended up in divorce.

I think there's a better choice. Commit -- not to a person who shares all your current interests or tastes, but to someone who shares your most important values. Don't just promise to stay -- invest in the relationship. Build wealth together. Invest in each other's dreams. Make each other's family your own. Tend to each other's health and wellbeing. Set some joint goals.

What's the payoff? The excitement of new interests and tastes introduced into your life by someone who shares your values, cares about you, loves to see you happy, and sees the world just a bit differently from you. The grounded feeling that comes from being intertwined and rooted as you grow, instead of being blown this way and that by people coming and going in your life. The security of support through your rough patches from someone who knows they will be just a small part of your time together. The warmth of doing the same for a loved one. The extra time and money freed up by working together instead of independently and self-protectively.

This is big. It's not just worth the risk of divorce; it's the antidote protecting you from divorce. You'll never get even a glimpse of what's possible as long as you're focused on your current needs or on keeping your exit easy if your needs are not met.

You know how to Assume Love, Expect Love, and Find Third Alternatives now -- or you will as soon as you rummage through the archives here. You know how to take care of a marriage. You know how to avoid unmet needs, hurt feelings, and unnecessary anger or worry. You know you can't grow apart when you're growing together, when you're attuned to your spouse and your interests are changing in response to all of the wonderful new things this person brings into your life. You're all set to make the next five years fantastic ones.

And if kids enter your life, planned or unplanned, there's one more huge payoff. You get to offer them what you may never have had: a parent who loves and finds great happiness in the other most important person in their child's life.

Posted by patty at 4:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

You want to work, take a class, quit your job, stay in touch with your friends, get your exercise by dancing, offer a relative a place to stay for the night. Your husband or wife isn't happy about this. What do you do?

First, remember to Expect Love. It's what you're married for. You need it. But when you demand love come in a particular package, you chase it away. Don't demand that your spouse agree with you about what's best for you. Don't demand that your spouse be responsible for running your life or take any blame for your choice to do things his or her way. And please, please, please don't demand that your spouse be pleased with what you must do to be true to yourself.

You may need to watch really hard for other signs of love while the two of you are dealing with a difference of opinion. It's worth doing. We can love and disagree at the same time.

Continue reading "Doing What Your Spouse Doesn't Want You to Do" »

Posted by patty at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Long-term, stable marriages have at least five positive exchanges for each negative exchange. Drop below that, and you're in trouble. This comes from one of the best known marriage researchers, John Gottman. He has a remarkable track record of predicting the state of your marriage four years later based on watching only a 15-minute conversation about some problem the two of you face.

What does this say about where our attention is focused? It takes five smiles, agreements, shared laughs, head nods, or loving touches to make as big an impression as one critical remark, raised voice, or eye roll. We watch like hawks for the negative ones. The researchers watching the video replays watch for both.

Expect Love: Look harder for the positive ones, and it might take fewer to get you past the occasional negative. And when you notice a negative one, Assume Love and take a second look. You just might avoid sending the most important person in your life an unexpected and undeserved negative.

Posted by patty at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What's reasonable to expect from a husband? Or a wife? I had an interesting discussion recently with two single women. I told them I believe one of the keys to a great marriage is to expect only love.

Well, of course they both expect love. But only love? Shouldn't we expect fairness? If one cooks, the other cleans up? Unless there are kids at home to care for, both work? If she does the laundry, he mows the lawn -- before it's knee-deep?

Shouldn't we expect shared activities, shared hobbies, shared visits to the relatives, shared dinnertimes, a shared bedroom?

Shouldn't we expect date nights? Back rubs? Sex? Flowers? Jewelry? I love yous? Trust?

In my experience, the more expectations we can let go of, the more delightful marriage becomes. But they were skeptical. Is love enough?

Continue reading "Marriage: What Should You Expect?" »

Posted by patty at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In James Madison University's student newspaper, The Breeze, Katie King reported:

Though Valentine’s Day tends to be embraced more by those in relationships, freshman Nicole Carter is currently single and not sweating it.

“I think that there is someone out there for everyone, you just have to wait until you find that person or until they find you,” Carter said. “I know a lot of people who are in relationships and I also know a lot who are single. I don’t really think it’s a big issue though because college isn’t necessarily about finding your husband or significant other, it’s about having fun.”

I think it's great a freshman isn't yet looking for her life partner, but her expectations alarm me. I've heard them from lots of folks her age. I even shared them back when I was in college.

Continue reading "Having Fun" »

Posted by patty at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On February 17th, I was interviewed on Barbara Sher's Live the Life You Love web radio show. Barbara is a wonderful interviewer, and the hour turned out to be great fun for me.

The interview is all about how to Assume Love, Expect Love, and Find Third Alternatives and why these help us Enjoy Being Married.

To listen, click on the link above and look for the 2/17/2008 show. You can play it over the internet or download it to your MP3 player or iTunes. You may also want to subscribe to the entire series. Barbara and Matthew Pearl interview all sorts of interesting people.

Posted by patty at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Valentine's Day is a magnificent day to expect love. Especially if you've had marriage problems recently, avoid the trap of expecting chocolates or dinner or jewelry or something romantic. Your chances of expecting the right thing are tiny. Your chances of missing out on love when you expect some particular sign of it are great.

The best gift you can give your husband on Valentine's day is to expect love and welcome it with open arms, no matter what form it might take. Genuine appreciation and acceptance means more than just about anything you could buy or make on February 14th.

Posted by patty at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What an honor it is to walk into someone's life at just the right moment. I had a chance recently to talk about assuming love, expecting love, and looking for the third alternative with a woman ready to toss in the towel on her marriage.

Recent life events had created a lot of tension between her and her husband of twenty-plus years. Like me when I was 34 years old and frantic, she'd already written her version of the list. Thank goodness she hadn't presented it to him yet.

What's the list, you ask? It's all the things you ruminate about when life grows unpleasant and you desperately want your spouse to love you enough, respect you enough, cherish you enough, take care of you enough to make it all better. It's powered by a desperation to regain closeness, but it comes out like a laundry list of holes in your life you insist your husband or wife or life partner must fill. And it always ends with "or else."

Or, as she put it, "It's my way or the highway, buddy."

When she tried on the idea that he loves her fiercely and hasn't lost any of his best qualities, then tried to explain the upsetting incidents as if those things were not in question, she got it. Right away. She had known enough all along to find the path back to a close relationship, but her fears had shut out that knowledge. That's the power of assuming love.

Continue reading "When Marriage Crumbles" »

Posted by patty at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How to feel more loved every single day:

1 - Assume love.

When your spouse's or life partner's behavior upsets you, stop, assume for the moment he or she is still the same wonderful person and still loves you very much. Now try to explain how he or she might have done this if this is true. You'll stop your knee-jerk reactions long enough to see the situation a lot more clearly. It's too easy to overlook love when we go with our first impressions.

2 - Expect love.

Expect your mate to show you love in many different ways, but not necessarily in the particular ways you imagined you'd be loved. If you're watching for one way, you'll miss all the others.

3 - Seek the Third Alternative.

When one of you wants one thing and the other wants something else, don't argue about which to choose. Look for the third alternative. It's one that makes both of you at least as happy as you'd be with your first choice. Make it clear you want your spouse to have all that and more, just not at the expense of your own needs.

To find it, you'll need to know what you hope to get from your first choice and what you hope to avoid from his (or hers). Then you'll need to ask for the same guidance from your spouse. Once you know what you're looking for, start brainstorming. Don't waste any time arguing for your first choice, because it won't make both of you happy, and that's the goal for a lifelong marriage.

Posted by patty at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The easiest way to feel unloved is to expect the wrong things. You live in a time and place when you can marry for love. You don't need a helpmeet to survive. You don't need to bolster your family's political position or status through marriage. You can choose to marry or not, and you can choose the person you marry.

So what should you expect when you marry for love? Love.

Continue reading "Feeling Loved When You're Expecting" »

Posted by patty at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you, your spouse, and your kids are the only ones who care if your marriage is a happy one, count your blessings. Over a third (35%) of women in a September 2007 Ladies Home Journal survey said their vote for president in 2008 would be influenced at least somewhat by how happy they thought the candidate's marriage was.

Coming in second in perceived marital happiness, right behind John Edwards, whose wife supports his candidacy despite her own grave medical problems, was Barack Obama.

That happiness comes both from how much each loves the other and from how much love each is capable of receiving. Michelle Obama gets it. In 2000, she was furious about getting stuck with all the parenting responsibilities while he ran for Congress. And then she wasn't. From the November issue of O, the Oprah Magazine:
"'The big thing I figured out,' she says, 'was that I was pushing to make Barack be something I wanted him to be for me. I believed that if only he were around more often, everything would be better. So I was depending on him to make me happy. Except it didn't have anything to do with him. I needed support. I didn't necessarily need it from Barack.'"

Like the rest of us, when she quit being angry about what she wasn't getting, she got more. She started going to the gym before dawn. When she came home, he would have the girls up and fed before he started his day on the campaign trail. Looks like the 43% who believe theirs is a happy marriage are right.

Posted by patty at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots of folks say a good marriage requires a lot of hard work. I disagree.

The hard work comes in when we struggle to provide a spouse with more love by stretching our
abilitiies at loving and going beyond what we feel like giving. I applaud the effort, and it's saved lots of marriages, but I think there's an easier route.

Those newly in love also stretch to do more, learn new ways to love, find a few extra hours a week to outdo themselves at loving, but they never describe it as hard work. What's the difference?

Continue reading "The Hard Work of Marriage?" »

Posted by patty at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's my reply to another question posed by my friend Tammy from Creating Success Stories.

Do adults who practice assumed love live separate lives (since they are meeting all of their own needs, bar one : -}), other than in the bedroom?

Continue reading "Meeting Your Own Needs" »

Posted by patty at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don Imus says he's "apologized enough" for his sexist, racist comment about the Rutgers Womens Basketball team. How many husbands and wives have you heard say the same thing?

Imus will have apologized enough when the state of his relationship is acceptable to him. And he hasn't yet tried the step most likely to rebuild it.

A husband or wife is fortunate to have just one relationship to repair after a particularly hurtful act. Don Imus has many. Here's how he might go about mending those relationships instead of bitterly accepting their end.

Continue reading "I've Apologized Enough" »

Posted by patty at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

My friend Tammy from Creating Success Stories sent me some questions this week about my advice to Assume Love. I'm going to answer one at a time.

What do you suggest for a couple where only one partner is willing to "assume love"?

This is the marvelous thing about assuming love -- it doesn't take two. One person can change the marriage. And this approach most benefits the one who assumes love.

Let me explain why this is true, because so many approaches to a better marriage really do require both partners to make it work.

Continue reading "When Only One Partner Assumes Love" »

Posted by patty at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Most relationship research, therapy, and coaching focuses on how to give love. It assumes if we give more love, more respect, more kind words, more of our undivided attention, more help, more nurturing, we will receive more in return. For most couples, this is true.

However, giving more to get more can feel like work, hence the common wisdom that a good marriage requires hard work. Giving more because you've already received more feels joyful.

Is it possible to receive more before you give more? In most marriages, yes.

Continue reading "Receiving Love" »

Posted by patty at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Many men and women report that they miss the spontaneity of their dating years and even the early years of their marriages. But when they look for an explanation, they often come to the conclusion their spouse has changed or perhaps was faking an interest in spontaneity back then. When they assume love, they can see another possibility.

Continue reading "Scheduling Spontaneity" »

Posted by patty at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Folks often advise us to assume nothing. Take nothing for granted. Keep your mind open. Prepare for every possibility. Don't be disappointed when things don't go the way you think they should go.

Good advice. Except that life would be darn difficult without any assumptions. We'd need to be constantly on guard against danger if we couldn't assume what looks like a chair really is a chair and what nourished us yesterday will nourish us today. And we couldn't assume love.

Continue reading "Assume Nothing?" »

Posted by patty at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If your wife treats you like part of the furniture or can't stop telling you how to earn more money, if your husband drives you nuts with his insensitive comments or misplaced laundry, it's time to round up the usual suspects.

Continue reading "Round Up the Usual Suspects" »

Posted by patty at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So you Assume Love, and you realize that your beloved life partner objects to what you're asking for only because it conflicts with what he or she wants. Now what? You look together for what Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, calls The Third Alternative.

1. Commit to getting what you want and let go of the way you first thought of getting it.
2. Ask questions and pay careful attention to the answers, until you know for sure what your mate likes about his or her proposed use of the money, space, time, or resources and what your mate dislikes about your proposal.
3. Share the same information regarding what you like about your proposal and dislike about your mate's proposal.
4. Stop the tennis match and jump the net. Agree to work together to get everything on both of your likes lists and avoid everything on both of your dislikes lists.
5. Brainstorm! How can you get all of the things you each seek and none of the things either of you dislikes?

Here's an example from my first marriage.

Continue reading "The Third Alternative" »

Posted by patty at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I started assuming love, I engaged in the very popular "Isn't my spouse awful?" game, as both instigator and player. To get it started, you ask your sister or people at work, or maybe even the stranger seated next to you on the bus, to confirm that there's something terribly wrong with your spouse. You plead with them to agree that you've married someone who's just plain wrong. Wrong about angels. Wrong about blue-green algae. Wrong about whether the right color ribbon is worth a two-hour drive. Wrong about evolution. Wrong about who ought to be elected. Wrong about what does and doesn't belong in a living room. Wrong about the value of television. Wrong about how to when to ask for a raise. Wrong about teal blue. Wrong about who's right and who's wrong.

Continue reading "The "Isn't My Spouse Awful" Game?" »

Posted by patty at 8:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When KT married Ben last year, she loved to get a call from him during her workday. She'd look forward to 5:30, when she'd arrive home to a big hug and a huge smile. With her new job, she can't count on leaving as early. She's often rushing to get out of the office, then racing through traffic only to get home closer to 6:00, when she gets only Ben's icy greeting from the sofa.

Today, she returned from lunch to an urgent request from her boss. She's offered to take KT to lunch tomorrow if she completes the task by the close of business, a first in her two months here. KT's in a mad rush to finish in time when Ben calls.

As she reaches for the phone and sees his number, KT's asking herself, "Is he checking up on me again? Why can't he see that it's the job that makes me late? Why does this matter so much to him? Why is he so insecure and childish? Why can't he be happy to see me whenever I come home? I feel like he's got me on a short leash, and so does my job. He's wrecking my career chances!" No matter what Ben says now, KT will not hear any love in it.

Continue reading "When Will You Be Home?" »

Posted by patty at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, love isn't all you need to get through life. But when talking about your marriage, this song title serves as excellent advice. All you need from your husband or wife is love.

If you've got kids and a house and a job and a love of quiet walks in the woods, you probably have a lot more needs, but you don't need them from your spouse. You need them whether or not you've got a spouse. I discovered that the day after my husband suddenly died.

I seriously considered divorcing the man I loved because I didn't get what I thought I needed from him. I even convinced myself that he must not love me if he didn't provide all of those things. I believed that he owed me all of the things I needed, that as my husband only he could provide them. I was so wrong.

When his death handed me back my list of needs, I could see clearly how much he'd loved me. I could also see way too clearly that while I might find other people to help me with my list of needs, I still needed love.

Continue reading "All You Need Is Love" »

Posted by patty at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Almost all of us crave love. A few seem to get by without it, and a few more claim unconvincingly to do without, but most of us will twist ourselves into knots to be loved. Married folks who don't feel loved enough can really feel deprived.

I've noticed that when we crave more love from a spouse, we have only three choices. The first one many of us try is what I'd call foot-tapping, waiting for your unloving mate to get with the program. You drop hints that you're not getting enough, that your beloved doesn't measure up, you nag, you beg. You tap your foot and wait. Maybe you even drag your spouse off to a relationship therapist or marriage workshop, hoping that a professional will make it clear that you deserve better than this.

If you're more action-oriented (or reading most relationship advice), you listen better, write poems for your beloved, cook your mate's favorite meals, go to that unbearable opera or rugby match together, stop criticizing, offer spontaneous back rubs, buy that sexy new bedtime outfit, show up with flowers between Valentine's Days. Surely, if you shower your spouse with love, more will flow back to you. You "fill your emotional bank account" so that you can start making some big withdrawals. But it's no more fun than making your IRA deposits. You're not giving love; you're investing it.

Maybe you've even swung back and forth between these two approaches--doing, doing, doing, then tapping, tapping, tapping. Perhaps it's even gone so far that you've begun threatening to leave if you don't start feeling more loved real soon. Threats, of course, produce more resentment than love.

Assume Love offers another approach. Before you ask for more love, you can try to receive more of the love your spouse already gives. Maybe there's already enough there to make offering more love in return a joy instead of hard work.

Posted by patty at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here's how you Assume Love. Consider doing it every time your spouse does something or fails to do something and you feel anger, resentment, hurt, fear, shame, frustration, or superiority taking hold of your emotions:

1. Assume you are completely loved by a wonderful person.


2. Attempt to explain how such a person might come to do what just happened.


3. If you can think of one or more explanations that might possibly apply to your real life situation, too, decide whether you choose to react to the negative explanation or to one of these positive possibilities.


4. If you choose one of the positive ones, check whether it teaches you something new about how your spouse loves you.

Here's an example...

Continue reading "Four Steps to Assume Love" »

Posted by patty at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You Assume Love when you take a second look at what your spouse or life partner does as if you are well-loved.

You Pretend Love when you act as if you're loved even though you don't believe it.

When you Assume Love, you give yourself the chance to receive more love by looking beyond your instantaneous, gut-level reactions to events. You pay attention to what you know to be true. You stop yourself from jumping to conclusions. You do this for you, so that you don't miss any love being offered to you.

There's a good chance you'll notice love where you didn't see it before and want to show your spouse more appreciation as a result. That's great! But it's not required, and it probably won't happen every time. When it doesn't, pretending it did is not the solution.

Posted by patty at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)