Marriage – Page 8

Getting Married? 6 Reasons Why You Need Pre-Marriage Counseling

Most couples spend more time planning their weddings than their marriages! With divorce rates at an all time high, it seems that couples are facing more challenges than ever in preserving their relationship stability.

In my relationship counseling work as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve seen countless couples who come into my office at the “end of their ropes.”

Many have very shaky relationship foundations, diminished emotional safety and little ability to deflect internal conflict within their relationship, let alone the stressful external events that life sometimes can dish out.

If you think about the amount of financial and emotional investment that goes into preparing for the wedding itself, doesn’t it make sense to invest a little in strengthening the relationship at the onset?

Many couples preparing for marriage honestly believe they are strong going into the union – and they probably are in a lot of ways. Being caught up with all the loving feelings and other feel-good stuff going on ahead of nuptials, couples often don’t consider the potential pitfalls. Those “pitfalls” are often times what leads them into a therapist’s office some time down the line.

I strongly encourage couples to give their marriages the best possible start – to do all they can ahead of time to avoid marriage counseling later. Based on my experience with couples who see me for marriage counseling and the issues they bring in, there are a number of things that would have been helpful for them to have known about or worked on previously.

Here are six great reasons to get pre marriage counseling:

Strengthen Communication Skills

Being able to effectively listen, truly hear and validate the other’s position is a skill that isn’t necessarily a “given” for many people. Couples that really communicate effectively can discuss and resolve issues when they arise more effectively.

You can tune up your talking and listening skills. This is one of the most important aspects of emotional safety between couples.

Discuss Role Expectations

It’s incredibly common for married couples to never really have discussed who will be doing what in the marriage. This can apply to job, finances, chores, sexual intimacy and more.

Having an open and honest discussion about what each of you expect from the other in a variety of areas leads to fewer surprises and upsets down the line.

Learn Conflict Resolution Skills

Nobody wants to think that they’ll have conflict in their marriage. The reality is that “conflict” can range from disagreements about who will take out the trash to emotionally charged arguments about serious issues – and this will probably be part of a couple’s story at one time or another.

There are ways to effectively de-escalate conflict that are highly effective and can decrease the time spent engaged in the argument. John Gottman’s research (www.gottman.com) has shown that couples who can do this well are less likely to divorce in the end.

Explore Spiritual Beliefs

For some this is not a big issue – but for others a serious one. Differing spiritual beliefs are not a problem as long as it’s been discussed and there is an understanding of how they will function in the marriage with regards to practice, beliefs, children, etc.

Identify any Problematic Family of Origin Issues

We learn so much of how to “be” from our parents, primary caregivers and other early influences. If one of the partners experienced a high conflict or unloving household, it can be helpful to explore that in regards to how it might play out in the marriage.

Couples who have an understanding of the existence of any problematic conditioning around how relationships work are usually better at disrupting repetition of these learned behaviors.

Develop Personal, Couple and Family Goals

It amazes me how many married couples have never discussed their relationship goals – let alone personal or family. I honestly think it just doesn’t cross their minds! This is a long term investment together – why not put your heads together and look at how you’d like the future to look?

Where do you want to be in five years? Approximately when would you like to have children? How many children? There are many areas that can be explored and it can be a fun exercise to do together.

Pre marriage counseling doesn’t need to be a long process, especially if you feel you’re starting out with a very solid foundation and only need some clarifications and goal-setting. For some people who are poised to start out the marriage as a “higher conflict” couple or have deeper issues to contend with, the process could take a bit longer.

Regardless, be sure to take the time to invest in your marriage as you might in the event itself. The return on your marriage investment has the potential to be life long!

Why You’d Be Crazy To Get Married Before You’re 30

By david

Marriage in your twenties is for the birds!

Marriage and Me

I never talk about marriage… Not that I’m against marriage, nor am I commitment phobic . I’ve been married. It lasted three years and one day. It was basically like a lease. At the end she still had low mileage, that “new wife smell,” and she still looked great when I returned her to the dealership. She was like a certified pre-owned Lexus.

Now this is not the part that will offend you – it’s this next part that will get under your skin.

Twenty is Too Young!

For those of you who got married in your twenties, I think all of you got married too young. Yeah I know: “I want to be a young mommy,” or “I want to be a young dad.” But a young mom and a young dad still have no idea who they are as a person.

Get to Know You

If you’re a woman, you really don’t know who you are until you’re thirty. And, sorry guys, but if you’re a man you really don’t know who you are until you’re at least thirty-five to forty. This would make all of you old dads and older moms – not exactly Warren Beatty old but older and, may I add, wiser. Now I could go online and grab you a bunch of statistics about divorce rates and everything else, but why bore you with statistics that you can research on your own.

What it All Means

This would also mean that families would be smaller and the worlds population would slow down to something more manageable. This is not an Al Gore thumping blog post but we are running out of key resources in the world and a few less kids would really help the issue.

From all my years of coaching, I have just found that women don’t really know who they are until they’re thirty. Your twenties are all about finding yourself. And as for men, we’re just way too immature until we’re at least thirty-five to forty.

I’ve recently emailed all the women I’ve dated in my twenties . . . all 700 of them 🙂 I sent them an email that said:

Thanks for the Experience!

“Thanks for the experience. You were great. I was a self-centered asshole. You met me during my player years and, yes, you were just a notch on the belt. But now that those years are over [my real age you readers will never find out!], I’ve matured into a really good man. Let me know if you’d like to reconnect as a friend or on a deeper level. David”

Now this isn’t some Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen song, nor did I really write this email. And I really don’t think I dated 700 women…I might have, but who knows, and who remembers? The important thing is toembrace what you did and grow from the experiences you had.

The Bottom Line

But the bottom line here is this: To make a marriage successful, you have to know who you are first. None of this Jerry Maguire ‘you complete me’ crap. Enjoy your twenties. If you’re in your twenties right now, enjoy dating but enjoy the time getting to know yourself more. Also, don’t rush a family and the condominium on wheels (for those of you who don’t know what that is, that’s the overly obnoxious SUV – Yes, I live in California and yes I hate Hummers . . . though I do enjoy an occasional hummer).

So, take the time to get to know yourself before you get in that minivan. Because to have true love, you have to find true love with yourself first. For those of you over thirty who are in a marriage, you know exactly what I’m talking about here.

Last But Not Least

Just one last thing … I’m all about the biological clock, but can you at least wait until your late twenties to pound out the puppies and get married? Give yourself a few years to get to know who you are as a person. You’ll make a better wife and you’ll make a better lover. Because I’ve got to tell you that there is nothing more fun in bed than a woman over the age of thirty. I tell all my friends that they can have all the women in their twenties. I’m all about the hot sexy cougars.

3 Reasons Why Married People Have Better Sex

By speaksexy

It’s true, people who are married or in long term relationships continually report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than people who are single or dating.

The old belief that committing yourself to one person dooms you to a life of sexual monotony is wrong.

Rather than placing limits on your sexuality, the emotional environment created by long term relationships (LTRs) actually fosters a more varied, creative, and explorative sex life.

3 Reasons Why Sex is Better in a LTR

1. Greater Sexual Frequency

The most obvious reason why sex is potentially better in a committed relationship is the general availability of a sex partner. Unlike the dating phase, most people in LTRs end up living together, which means sharing their nightly beds as well as their daily lives. This closeness often gives rise to more opportunities for sexual contact.

Instead of having to make a date to get together, and then trying to seduce your date into your bed, he or she is already there!

To counter this point some argue that sex happens most frequently in the beginning stages of a relationship, so “serial daters” have more sex than those in LTRs. But this isn’t actually true.

On average married couples have sex once or twice a week, which may not seem like very much to someone who is in a “hot” new relationship and having sex three times a day. But remember, married couples have sex once or twice a week every week, all year long, for years!

And some LTR couples have much more sex than that. Of course the frequency of sex also depends on lifestyle changes such as children, stress levels, etc. But even after all of these things are accounted for, the average person in an LTR still has more sex in a given year than the average single person.

2. Easier Communication Means More Satisfying Sex

Couples who have lovingly and willingly committed themselves to each other share an emotional bond that is deepened by constant communication. They talk openly about everything – including their sexual likes and dislikes.

Once people are at the point in their relationships where they feel secure with their partners (knowing that ‘saying the wrong thing‘ won‘t jeopardize the relationship itself), they are much more willing to be upfront about what pleases them – and what doesn’t.

For example, it’s a lot easier to tell someone, “You know, I really don’t like it when you squeeze my thighs so hard during oral sex. It’s too distracting…” when you’ve been with them for a long time than when you’ve just started having sex together.

Said to someone in a stable relationship, the above admission will probably be received in a “Good to know, thanks for telling me” kind of way. But said to someone in the early stages of a relationship, the admission could be received offensively because the underlying emotional foundations of security that are needed to support sexual technique criticisms just aren’t there yet.

The open and consequence-free conversations that characterize LTRs usually lead to a very intimate understanding of what both partners sexually enjoy, making each sexual episode an opportunity for improvement.

3. Trust Allows for Experimentation

Once all the talking is over, it’s much easier to put those communicated desires into action if both partners trust each other completely. Most sexual experimentation – from trying new positions to living out one’s wildest fetish fantasies – happen inside of LTRs.

Yes, there are instances when one partner refuses to do or try something the other partner would like, but usually couples are able to find compromises or alternatives. And once an activity is found that thrills them both, they can continue exploring it, and all its variations, to the fullest.

So the next time someone tries to convince you that marriage or commitment will ruin your sex life, remember all the reasons why this simply isn’t true. Healthy relationships are the best places to develop, explore, and deepen your own understanding of all the wonderful emotional and physical experiences sexuality has to offer.

Featured Author, Rose Rivera has a Masters degree in Family and Sexuality Studies and is the founder of SpeakSexy.org, a website dedicated to keeping readers abreast of the latest sexuality trends in an intelligent, provocative, and erotic way. For more great sex tips be sure to sign up to Speak Sexy’s feed today!

Why There’s Still Hope for Marriage

By loveandsex

Why do we cry at weddings?

I think its because we are all hopeless romantics. We all want the dream of a lasting connection that keeps us engaged and invested. We want to feel hot about our lover 30 years into the marriage and we want that for others. We cry because we want it for ourselves and because we don’t really know if it’s possible.

My daughter cried at my wedding. She was, afraid, perhaps. Afraid that while it seemed so good at the point of the wedding that it might not end up the fairy tale. I’ve been married three times now and she knew how it could turn out. She has seen my two previous marriages fail and got a really clear picture of how bad a bad marriage can be. But even at that third attempt, she cried. She wanted, at 16 to have a father who cared about her, and a husband for her lonely mom. Her hopes brought tears.

As she walked down the isle herself, a couple of weeks ago, I cried. My husband asked me what I was feeling and I told him, “Sad, glad, wonderful.”

What was amazing me was that in spite of seeing me go through two disastrous marriages, she still had hope. She believes in her ability to love, and she believes in her husband.

When I hear the debate about whether you should stay together for the kids or show them that it’s okay to find happiness, I am amused. Ideally, we should all be able to make it work out. But watching miserable parents suffer for their sake does not make for well-adjusted children.

What I like to think my daughter saw, which gave her continued hope, is that when you are determined enough, anything is possible.

Ending two marriages in divorce was not what I wanted for my kids, or in the least, myself. I was ill equipped to manage a lasting connection. My mother also went through two divorces, one when I was a toddler, and another long after I was grown. So I saw both divorce, and “staying together for the kids”. Neither provided me a model for intimacy.

But I was determined to have what my mother did not, a lasting, intimate connection with my husband. What I did, and what my daughter witnessed, is to find out what it took to have what I dreamed of having.

I hoped therapy would help me find it. And undoubtedly, the work I did and the things I learned did pave the way. But it wasn’t until I discovered the Cycles of the Heart model that I fully understood why it is so horribly difficult for most of us to have that romantic dream. And it wasn’t until I understood the way out that I was able to do it differently.

Discovering that the way our minds are wired and… how our culture has indoctrinated us into believing that we have to view every problem as a question of “who is to blame” transformed my life and my relationships.

I also believe that it is why my daughter was able to confidently take her vows with a kind, loving man with whom I have no doubt she will have a marvelous life. She learned, along with me, that there is a different way to live than we have been led by biology and culture to believe.

So I cried at her wedding. I cried from a depth of understanding of the possibilities before her, at 27, which were not there for me. My joy overflows, because she is starting out her life with wisdom that eluded me.

She cried at her wedding, too. My husband lifted his glass in toast to her. He said, with tears in his eyes, (as best I can recall) “You two have everything you need to make a marriage work. Because I know that you (my daughter) have realized that you can’t forget who your husband is when you are in conflict. No matter how angry he is, or you are, you don’t forget who he is in spite of whatever might be happening. This is how I know you have what it takes.” She burst into tears because she knew what he said is true, and that she had won an incredible prize by having this gift.

This wisdom doesn’t come easily or naturally. It’s something we have to learn, and continue to practice. But it makes all the difference in the world in our relationships, whether with our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends or our neighbors.

Marriage – Just a Legal Contract or a Real Commitment?

By loveandsex

What is the meaning of marriage today?

We believe that marriage today is little more than a piece of paper these days – BUT not for the reasons that you may think.

Our frustration lies in the fact that many people seem to treat the contract of marriage like the contract on their car. They lock in the interest rate, buy the car, and then rarely even bother to change the oil or wash the car…

Corporations give certain privileges to people who hold this piece of paper (only the one sanctioned by the government) while refusing to acknowledge or accept other definitions, perfectly valid definitions, of marriage.

Getting married shouldn’t be like petitioning to get a local building permit, getting a government inspector to sign off that your plans are up to his specific codes.

The separation of church and state no longer seems to exist – making marriage more of a political statement than a real commitment!

Here’s a great article that we found on Netscape today that explains the subtle yet very important differences between a contract and true commitment:

"Till death do us part, contract or covenant?"

And on the topic of separation of church and state (or rather the sad lack thereof), check out these recent articles:

Then leave a comment below and tell us where YOU stand on this very controversial issue!