Month: June 2018

Shame Vs Guilt (and how knowing the difference will make for a better marriage)

Shame vs Guilt and how knowing the difference will greatly improve your relationship. #marriage #marriageimprovement

This one time, I made a mistake. I said something really thoughtless and stupid to a friend and made them feel really bad about themselves. After apologizing, what to do? How to make this better? How to fix it? Former Celeste knew the answer and the answer was to feel really, really bad about herself for a really long time. This surely would be the only penance for my wrong-doing. The only way to lasting change. My feelings of shame must go so deep to ensure my friend will forgive me completely and to ensure that I will change. Present-day… Read More

15 Crucial Questions to Regularly Ask Yourself If You Want a Better Marriage

Questions to ask yourself if you want a better relationship. Click through to take a self-inventory of how good a partner you are.

What is difficult about living with me? Well. Deep breath. I’m prone to taking the moral high road. I read so much that I use “experts” to guilt Rich into doing what I want him to do instead of just asserting my desires out right. I often have specific expectations of how I want a day to look, an outing to look, or our parenting to look, and when those expectations aren’t met, I have been known to act like my 4 year old- pouty, full of blame, prone to eating cookies for dinner and so forth. Also, I can… Read More

6 Practical Ways to Develop the Skill of Self-Love (even when you feel unlovable)

“How do you make your partner’s life difficult? What is hard about living with you?” This is a question that Jennifer Finlayson-Fife asked in her marriage course, which I took. She asked us all to really sit with this and come up with some answers. I’ll be honest. I didn’t love my time sitting with this question. I felt uncomfortable. My faults are not my favorite company to sit with. However, these are necessary questions to ask if we want to improve our marriages (which we do . . . just in case you forgot and ran away when I… Read More

Self-Confronting: Do I REALLY Have To?

Self Confronting is so necessary for the success of any relationship, but it can be so hard. Click through for some great tips.

Alright, in our year of the SELF theme, this month’s posts are all about self-confronting with love. Which brings us to our topic today: self-confronting: do I REALLY have to? Guess what my answer is . . . Go on, guess. WRONG! The answer is YES! Self-confronting is SO crucial in a marriage. How crucial? So glad you asked. Guess what marriage therapist Dr. Jennifer Finlayson Fife advises those who are dating that the NUMBER ONE characteristic to look for in a potential spouse is? Charisma? Kindness? Compassion? Rock hard abs? Nope nope and nope. She says the NUMBER ONE… Read More