Category Archives: 5 Love Languages

Three Ways to Make Gratitude a Regular Practice in Your Marriage

“It is not joy that makes us grateful. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.” - David Steindl-Rast I fully believe that quote. We often think that we have to WAIT to be grateful until life is good, but it’s actually gratitude that makes life good. Time and time again researchers have found that people who report consistent happiness and life satisfaction are the most grateful. I really think its the same in marriage. I think the happiest marriages are the most grateful. One study asked married couples to keep a daily gratitude journal for each other and at the… Read More

26 Ways to Make Your Spouse Happy

This month is all about service here at Marriage Laboratory and last week I wrote about perhaps the best tip I have for how to serve your spouse and get your marriage out of a rut- focusing all your energy, conversations and interactions with your spouse on making them HAPPY for one week. I call it happy week and it has pulled my marriage and my heart out of many ruts through the years. If you are in need of some more specific ideas, today I wanted to provide you with some dear reader. I’ve done something similar in this… Read More

The Best Way to Get Your Marriage Out of a Rut

When our marriage is in a rut, we’re often blind to any part we may play in said rut. I propose dedicating one week to the task of making your spouse happy. When I first started the blog, I thought, “Ok, I have two good pieces of marriage advice- that’s it . . . This could be a problem.” The first was companionship inventory- or the weekly marriage check in, which became my first real post. And the second, something I call happy week, I haven’t even written about yet! Three years I’ve been sitting on this! That ends today.… Read More

Service Love Language Challenge!

Introducing our love experiment for the month- asking your spouse what you can do for them every week and doing every favor asked of you. Alright, it is November and that means its time to introduce our Marriage Laboratory Experiment of the Month (MLEM if you like- you can remember it because it sounds like phlem)! This year all our experiments are based on Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages book and November will be all about . .. . . . SERVICE! Guys, this is our last love language experiment! Our fifth one. Can you believe it? I think this… Read More

YOUR Sex Questions Answered (by a sex therapist) Part II

In preparation for this post, I asked you what you, my readers, are struggling with regarding sex, and passed those struggles along to Aimee Heffernan. Read Part I of her answers here. Aimee, who is a licensed couples therapist and sex therapist who lives and works in Washington, was kind enough to answer a number of your questions last year (Part One and Part Two). In preparation for our interview, I sent her a list of your concerns to review. Right away we noticed some themes and will be talking about those themes instead of answering question by question. How… Read More