Search Results for: blog 3 rs in marriage

Ancestry Provides Free Resources to Educators

Ancestry, a leading genealogy company, is providing free resources to educators and parents. The purpose of providing these tools is to make this school year a little easier. For the first time, Ancestry will provide K-12 teachers across the US a free 6-month World Explorer subscription to access billions of historical records, providing support in lesson development and project creation for the school year ahead. The subscription includes: Unlimited access to most records on Ancestry, including more than 3 billion international birth, marriage, death, census, military, church and other records Access to all public family trees on Ancestry Access to … Continue reading →

Debt and Marriage: How It is Tough to Love When You Owe

Many couples enter into a marriage with debt already in hand. Others accumulate debt together. Either way, nurturing a loving relationship can be hard when debt is hanging over your head. In fact, according to a study by Jeffrey Dew at Utah State University, couples who reported disagreeing about finance once a week were over 30 percent more likely to get divorced than couples who reported disagreeing about finances only a few times a month. Another inference can be made from this study: there is a whole lot of disagreement about money out there. Debt is a source of contention. … Continue reading →

Lowering Expectations in a Marriage

There is a fine line between learning to lower your expectations in a marriage and when to fight for what’s “right.”  Keep in mind that what’s considered right is all about perspective. Your right might not be my right…just as your spouse’s right might not be your right. One of the ways I try to gauge my “rights” is by how critical the issue really is; not how important it should be or I would like it to be.  But looking at it in a realistic and selfless manner. That isn’t easy, believe me.  It requires stepping back from the … Continue reading →

Living with Engineers: It’s All in the Timing

Another engineer’s wife and I were having a discussion about household chores yesterday.  We were bemoaning the fact that if we want our husbands to do something for us, we either need to tell them right away, or it won’t happen at all. The engineer’s mind is a constant one-way track of processing information.  It’s what makes them so brilliant and efficient: they zero in on a task, giving it their complete focus until it’s done.  I’m almost always thinking about other things while I’m working on something, which is why it can take me longer to achieve something with … Continue reading →

Jim Nabors Marries in Seattle

As you know, same-sex marriage has been in the news – A LOT!  Gays are still fighting to be like regular couples while many heterosexuals feel that marriage should be reserved for males and females. Some oppose homosexuality because they say that lifestyle is more promiscuous than heterosexuality.  I beg to differ and here is a prime example. On January 15th, actor/singer Jim Nabors, best known for played the television character “Gomer Pyle,” left his home in Hawaii to travel to Seattle, but he didn’t travel alone.  No, Nabors took Stan Cadwallader with him.  Cadwallader has been Nabor’s partner for … Continue reading →

Hearing versus Listening

I always thought I was a good listener when it comes to my husband.  In fact, I would even say that I offer some pretty great advice.  But listening and hearing are two completely different things. For months and months I was hearing my husband complain about the medical bills.  We, like many others, don’t have the best health insurance.  It seems every time we’ve finally started to make a dent, something else comes up and a trip to the doctor sets us back. Then my husband started to get depressed about the medical bills.  I felt bad for him … Continue reading →

New Jersey Genealogy

The state of New Jersey has the nickname “The Garden State”. Are you looking for more information about ancestors who once lived in New Jersey. If so, then there are plenty of New Jersey genealogy resources that can help genealogists to do more research on ancestors from “The Garden State”. Cyndi’s List is one of the most comprehensive lists of links to genealogy resources online. If it exists on the internet, Cyndi’s List probably has a link to it. They have a page called “United States – New Jersey”. Start by selecting a category from the index. Categories include: “Birth, … Continue reading →

The Difference Between Friendship and Marriage

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between friendship and marriage.  Not casual friendship, or even good friendship, but really-close, best-friends, rely-on-each-other-for-everything friendship.  If we look to the media for answers, it seems to imply that the only difference is physical desire.  In movies and television, the only or at least primary distinguishable change in the relationship between two characters that are best friends, and then become something more, is that their relationship adds a sexual element. Those are usually my favorite types of stories (as opposed to ones where the characters aren’t friends but jump right to dating), only … Continue reading →

Building a Marriage on Dependency and Independence

I was recently reading an article that stated the key to a happy marriage was living separate lives.  That this is how you feel validated as an individual. What’s interesting about this is that in order to feel validated, you need to feel important and acknowledged.  That generally doesn’t come from within.  Sure, it should be a part of feeling validated as a person.  But since we are humans, we crave receiving this from others. Isn’t that where a spouse comes in? Don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that you need to be so dependent on your mate … Continue reading →

Commonsense Ways to a Happier Marriage

You will often hear about “secrets” to a happy marriage.  Personally, I don’t believe there is anything secret about having a happy marriage. Most of what it takes is well known.  In other words, we know what to do to have a happier marriage.  The key is choosing to do those things. So instead, let’s look at some old-fashioned commonsense ways to keep the marriage happy.  We start with the understanding that your spouse will never be perfect. Now most of us probably don’t really think that our spouse should be perfect.  Yet we place expectations that are oftentimes unrealistic.  … Continue reading →