GPS to a Joyful Marriage

Not too long ago, when I was just a teenager, (okay, maybe it was a while ago) people that lived together without the blessing of marriage were frowned upon – unaccepted by society.   Not many couples did it.  Now, it has become the norm.   Today, 70 – 90 % of young people will live with someone of the opposite sex (in a relationship) before they marry.  It is understandable that the younger generation fears marriage when 50% (almost 60% in Florida) of them come from broken homes.  Even baby boomers, that have experienced divorce, are now moving in with their partners to live out of wedlock.  Many of them have no intentions of marrying.  There is also a trend among people over seventy, who have lost spouses to death, to forego marriage and “live in sin”.  They can’t afford to give up their departed spouses’ retirement and social security benefits to marry. At one time, it was believed that living together, first, would dama...

Marriage is hard – maybe the most difficult part of our lives we’ll ever have to deal with.  Although parenting, at times, may run a close second, we would never think of divorcing our children out of our lives.  We love them unconditionally, much like God loves us. So why don’t we go into marriage with the same attitude?  Our spouses should mean more to us than our own children – according to the Bible.  Matthew 19:4-6 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” NOTHING should come between a husband and wife; man should not separate them.  God never mentions that about our relationships with our children.  We’re only given them for a season, and then they are expected to move on and become their own person – the person God created, not us.  Our spouse shoul...

                                                    Please join me this Friday, July 17th at On Point Executive Center, for this exciting event!  I will be there with both of my books, "GPS to a Joyful Marriage", and "When Superheroes Fall".  Bring a copy of this blogpost and I will give you a 20% discount on your purchase. Admission is free to the public so please join us to meet local authors.  There will be door prizes, delightful snacks and a fun evening! The fair showcases over 40 local writers published in a variety of both fiction and non-fiction genres including science fiction, satire, drama, action and adventure, self-help, children's religious, cookbooks, and autobiographies. All guests are asked to bring a nonperishable food item(s) in support of the Tampa chapter of End 68 Hours of Hunger   http://end68hoursofhun...

Mark Gungor (Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage) talks about the difference in keeping score between men and women.  Just for getting out of bed in the morning to go to work, a man may believe he earns 100 brownie points.  Giving his wife a dozen roses should easily earn him 500 points and hold him over for a few months without any other attempts to make points. (So he thinks.) Points equal doing your job as a husband. The more points accumulated account for a happier wife. From a woman’s perspective, though, a dozen roses will earn him one point as would a single rose or even a new car.  Men can make their wives the happiest by taking the time to figure out exactly what makes her feel the most intimate towards him.  (Sorry guys.  It’s probably not anything from Frederick’s of Hollywood.  That’s your idea of intimacy.) It’s usually the simple acts, not the fancy cars or vacations, that will make us feel the closest to our man.  And by the w...

My fluffy little alarm clocks (Teddy and Stewie, my Yorkies) went off at 7:00 am, their usual time to start their demands for the day.  Usually, I say "No!" to them, "Go to sleep!", and they'll curl back into position with one eye carefully watching for the slightest movement from me. Today was different, though. I had to get up.  I love to lie in bed for an extra 30 minutes before I face the day.  I had an appointment at 9:00 that was 45 minutes away, so I had to get moving. I woke up agitated from a comment my husband made to me the night before.  (I had tried to ignore it and not respond.)  As I prepared breakfast for the boys (how I refer to the dogs), Stewie stayed on the couch and refused to eat.  Great.  He always eats.  Now I would worry about him while I was gone.  He had been very whiny the day before, so I wondered what was wrong.  No time to deal with it right now.  I had an appointment to keep. I got in my car a...

Hot… cold …hot… cold ...hot… cold.    I’m not just referring to the nasty menopausal temperature swings I experience at night, but also to the extreme changes that can unexpectedly occur in my emotional psyche at the drop of a wrong word or wrong look from someone else. I have tried to explain our emotional essence as women, but it’s often too deep to comprehend and even more difficult to control.  So what do we do??  We pray - and pray.  God certainly has the capability to free us from this “curse”, but then we wouldn’t have to depend on Him in our marriage, would we?  He will help, but I believe He allows a certain amount of our emotional handicap in order to keep us humbled and seeking Him. Besides, He has quite the sense of humor to put men and women in the same household, together, to become one as man and wife. He knew we would need His help.  That’s also why He tells us,  “It is good not to marry.”   Marriage i...

Women are usually led by their emotions while men run on logic.  (Again, there are always exceptions to this rule.)  That’s why we frequently hear a husband say his wife is crazy, and a woman say that her husband is an idiot. We emote from different ends of the spectrum.   The emotional dialogue of women (which is part of our normal communication) often sounds like complete absurdity to men because the male brain doesn’t journey as deep into the complexity of emotions as a female brain does. Therefore, our words can sound like senseless babble (craziness) to men because of their limited capability to digest them with their logical minds. Who wants to listen to babble?   And so, we often find a great communication gap between men and women in marriage relationships. The good news is that we can each learn to adjust our communication differences.  We need to, as women, first understand the importance of controlling our emotions. As hum...