Search Results for: blog when your relationship is not part of your marriage anymore

How Does Having Children Affect Friendships?

Sometimes, I worry about what having kids will do to my already nonexistent social life. I’m not whining about not being able to go out and have fun anymore. That’s just not my thing. I’m a stay-in, watch-movies, read-books, play-video-games kind-of-person. My closest friends are those who like to do the same thing. What I’m worried about is growing further apart from the friends that I do have. A lot has already been written about how important it is to preserve one’s friendships outside of our marriage. We may have (hopefully) married our best friend, or at least one of … Continue reading →

The Importance of Touch

My husband just returned to work after 3-4 days home sick with a fever. I doted on him for the duration. I didn’t do it because I thought it was the wife’s role, but because it’s what I’d expect anyone to do if a person they loved was ill. I expect similar dedication from Jon when I’m not feeling well. Copying many of the nursing habits my mom employed when my brother and I were sick growing up, I made him endless cups of tea: Echinacea, cold care, green tea with honey. I froze juice and made slushies for him. … Continue reading →

When Your Relationship Is Not Part of Your Marriage Anymore

Have you ever just stepped back and wondered what happened to the relationship with your spouse? You may be married but the relationship has ended. You go to work, come home, hardly speak and go to bed to do it all over again the next day. How much longer can you go on living without a relationship? Many married couples will say that their relationship has lost passion. That they just don’t feel the same they did when they were first dating their spouse. Of course they don’t, that initial phase of finding out all those exciting and crazy things … Continue reading →

Not My Idea of Romance

Not so much for me In my first two marriage posts I mentioned not really adhering to or enjoying “lovey-dovey” relationships. I realized if I’m going to keep using that as a contrast to what my marriage is like, I ought to define how I’m using the term. The simplest way, because otherwise the English major in me will extrapolate the phrase to death, is to do so with a story. My husband and I don’t give each other anniversary gifts, but that wasn’t always the case. When we were younger we did such things because we thought we should … Continue reading →

Marriage and Happiness – is it possible?

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While divorce is nothing new in this country, when I read about long-term marriages coming to an end, ala the Gore’s, the Schwarzenegger’s, and the Edward’s, I start to wonder if it is even possible to stay married forever anymore. I hear a lot about the “old days’, but I have a lot of grandparents due to multiple re-marriages. My great-grandparents remained together, but one spouse died long before the other. So maybe those that stay married forever over a real long time period are the anomalies. Maybe now that we live longer and more women are able to support … Continue reading →

Marriage and the New Year

I don’t know what makes me so popular today, but here it is, only nine thirty in the morning, and I’ve already received e-mails from two young people who are getting married, one next week and the other in March. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, my conversation with each had to do with goal setting and how to incorporate their new spouse in to their goals. I remember when I was contemplating marriage—how hard it was for me to get used to the idea that I wasn’t going to be an individual anymore, but part of a team—and how I had … Continue reading →

The Orphan Syndrome

A little known, but often experienced phenomenon, is the orphan syndrome. This common event is usually associated with a child who loses both of his or her parents at a young age. But what is less known is that this phenomenon occurs to all people who have outlived both their parents and whose relationship with those parents continued in some form for the duration of that adult child’s life. Hence even a 40 or 50 year old can go through the feelings associated with the orphan syndrome when their last parent dies, even though that parent may well have been … Continue reading →

In Sickness and in Health

I’ve had food poisoning this week. If there’s anything in this world I hate, it’s food poisoning. I’ve finally crawled out of my dark cave, but I’m still weak and miserable, and my husband has taken over the house and the kids. It puts me in mind of the traditional wedding vow, “in sickness and in health.” Even if those exact words weren’t spoken at your wedding ceremony, the pledge is implied. As husbands and wives, we promise to be there for each other in each of life’s trials, and very often, those trials include those we suffer with our … Continue reading →

Surviving Parenthood

If you follow all of the marriage experts and the relationship surveys, you would be terrified. All of this “good” advice tells us that having kids is a sure way to put your marriage in jeopardy and become unsatisfied as a couple. In fact, some of the conclusions that are released tell you that you might as well prepare for divorce when you are preparing the nursery. But I have news for some of the people behind these reports. parenthood can actually strengthen your marriage for all of the right reasons. Having children does change your relationship. It has to. … Continue reading →

Understanding How the Law of Attraction Attracts Love or Loneliness

A few weeks back Woman’s World had an article about an over forty woman who thought her hopes of ever getting married were about washed up. I wished I had saved the article because I don’t exactly remember the whole story about how she finally found love, but it had to do with changing her thinking and using the law of attraction. Love Charms and the Law of Attraction I want to say a friend had bought something like a cake topper and held on to it with the unshakeable faith that it would help guide her true love to … Continue reading →