What do you think makes a marriage happy? The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in their most recent study of The State of Our Unions, found the following five factors are predictive of being “very happy” in marriages with children. 1) Sexual satisfaction with your partner The first thing to go once [...]

“For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship.” ~ Warren Beatty On our wedding day couples vow their relationship will be monogamous. And yet, studies show 40% of women and 60% of men break that promise. Though we are not living up to the ideal of monogamy, we continue to [...]

“Marriage is one long conversation checkered with disputes.”~ Robert Louis Stevenson Why is communication, the lifeblood of relationships, so difficult? A big part of the answer is we interpret messages through filters such as our gender, life experience, beliefs, mood, values, knowledge and culture. We make assumptions about what our partner is saying as their [...]

“The art of love… is largely the art of persistence.” ~ Albert Ellis On Valentine’s Day we celebrate our love and our relationships. We plan romantic dates, exchange thoughtful gifts, and write cards expressing sentiments of affection. We are reminded that acts of love are what create the feelings of love. To keep love alive [...]

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832 Will marriage become a thing of the past? Some frightening statistics were recently reported by the Pew Research Center. They found the rate of marriage in the United States is [...]