My wife and I recently celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary. As I reflected on this I decided to share my list of the top ten things I have learned in 35 years, in no particular order.

1. We’ve had to grow-up together. We all bring our unfinished business with us into marriage and it is these developmental issues that create the most problems. In our case we got married young and that makes it even more obvious and important to grow up. When we have been honest with ourselves and worked on our own maturity, then our relationship has also grown.

2. We’ve had to change with life stages. Related to growing up is recognizing the need to adapt to different life stages. Each stage of life brings particular gifts and challenges to marriage. Being aware of this and making adjustments has been critical. Now as empty nesters we are rediscovering certain freedoms while also dealing with getting older. It never stops.

3. Things go in cycles. Marriage is like a rose bush. It contains both beautiful flowers and thorns. Sometimes the flowers bloom and it is fragrant and wonderful. Sometimes the blooms fall off and all you see is the thorns. If you nurture the plant and keep it healthy you can count on the blooms returning. Learn to accept it all with patience.

4. Trust follows behavior. Most people agree that trust is critical to a healthy relationship. The only way to earn or re-establish trust is through consistent loving and honorable behavior. Words become meaningless if not supported by your behavior.

5. Values hold us together. My wife and I are different in personalities, motivations, and interests. What has been a foundation for our marriage are shared values and priorities. It is vital to keep values in mind and talk about what is important to both of you at each stage of life.

6. It’s sometimes hard to speak the truth. Telling your partner the truth can be difficult, especially if you haven’t learned to be honest with yourself and in touch with your feelings and desires. We may be afraid of our partner’s reactions or of exposing something we prefer to hide. The trick is speaking the truth in a spirit of love and owning responsibility for your own thoughts and feelings.

7. Know and accept your partner. We all view life through our own perspective and assume it is the best or only way. Things that make my wife feel loved and cared about are not always the same as it is for me. What I am sensitive to is also different than what she is. How she likes to do certain things is different than my way. I have wasted too much energy trying to change rather than accept her, and this only makes the patterns of reactions stronger. People do not need to be fixed, only loved and affirmed.

8. The best gift is your presence. The primary question in every intimate relationship is “are you really there for me”. Being present, paying attention and enjoying time together sends the message that “you are most important to me and you can count on me to be here”. One ritual my wife and I have enjoyed over the years is taking a weekend away, just the two of us, at least a couple times per year. It’s a great way to re-connect.

9. Love stretches us. This is one of the purposes of marriage. Your partner will demand from you that which you are not yet capable of giving. For example, “I demand that you love me in spite of …” That something is usually in the area in which you are most vulnerable, such as anger, sex, security, or need for affirmation. This is generally not a conscious process but it helps to be aware of it and cooperate with it.

10. My spouse is usually right about me. This is one I hate to admit but it’s true. Even if it is feedback I don’t want to hear or I think it is exaggerated or distorted, there is always some truth I need to hear. Sometimes my wife has more confidence in me than I have in myself and I need to hear that too. Learn to appreciate your spouse as your mirror and see what you may need to adjust.

Every relationship is unique of course but I have noticed as a coach that these principles apply to all of us. Look in the mirror at yourself and your own marriage and see if some of these fit for you. Take the long view on your marriage and you will find your way!

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“I thought my marriage was OK”. This was the lament of a young man who came in with his wife to see me for coaching. A couple of months ago his wife informed him that she has been unhappy in their marriage for about five years and now is thinking about leaving. How could they have such drastically different perspectives on their marriage?

The simple answer is really bad communication. In reality, things are never quite so simple. The problems in this relationship stem from multiple issues, including how they have dealt with past experiences, differences in how they think, how they are motivated, and how they deal with emotions. They also have not learned how to understand and meet one another’s basic needs.

I remember feeling lost and confused in my marriage at different points in time. It is not easy to work through tough times. However, the rewards of pushing through and hanging in there can be great. For example, my wife and I recently had a great visit with our daughter and her husband and our wonderful granddaughter. Seeing the next generation living healthy and happy lives is sweet indeed. These are the good times.

For the young couple in my office there is hope. They have finally started to confront their problems and really talk to each other. Even though telling the truth hurts, it is a necessary part of recovery. If you are in a hard place in your marriage right now please don’t give up before you do everything you can to work it out. Imagine yourself happily married for 40 years and reaping the rewards of enduring love. Hold unto that thought and make it happen.

Here are a few tips:
1. Decide to be happy and make marriage your priority
2. Share your honest thoughts and feelings with your partner. Not “you make my life miserable”, but “this is what is going on with me right now”.
3. Find out what is most important to your partner today. If you listen to the feedback openly you will hear the themes. What is the underlying need, fear, or pain that is being communicated?
4. Once you know what is most important, sincerely try to respect and meet the need or concern with love as consistently as possible.

Give not in order to receive but to become capable of giving more. Love generates love.

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Are you at a loss about what to give your wife for Valentines Day? What can you give your man that will make a big impact on him? The answers lie in understanding what your spouse really wants and needs from you. Let me give you some ideas.

We all have common human needs but our priorities are different. What communicates “I love you” varies from person to person and is often different for each gender. The key is giving not as you would like to receive, but giving as the one you love likes to receive. That requires paying attention.

Men; what your wife wants from you is not so much about presents as it is about your PRESENCE. There is no substitute for time spent together, giving her your full attention. When you listen, try to reach down inside and hear her deepest needs. She wants you to be strong enough to stand and receive whatever she is expressing. If it is pain or anger, refuse to get defensive or shut down. If it is tenderness and love, drink it in and let her know how good it is. When she feels safe, honored, and treasured then you will capture her heart all over again. She wants to be vulnerable and open to you. Help her by creating the conditions for love. I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy roses or jewelry, but those will mean much more if you make her feel like a queen.

Women; what your husband wants from you is your RADIENCE. He needs to know that he is a success at making you happy. If he believes he is failing at making you happy he will soon get discouraged and quit trying. There is nothing better to the man that loves you than seeing that he makes you glow. He needs you to show him directly, not leave clues and expect him to get it, because he likely won’t. When he comes home, greet him with a smile. Tell him when you appreciate what he does for you. Show him your love by giving yourself and your admiration to him. Make him your hero and you will own his heart.

Of course the romance will be lost if you only think about it once a year. Communicating love and respect in your marriage needs to be consistent if you want your partner to feel it and believe it. Don’t wait for your partner to change or until you get what you want. Love calls for you to love. Now is the perfect time.

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The road of recovery is not the same as the path of despair. Many, perhaps most people fear allowing themselves to feel their darker feelings because they remember times of being overwhelmed or crushed by them. Consequently most of us find creative, elaborate, or self-destructive ways to avoid being in touch with our painful memories and feelings.

When you walked the path of despair you did so not knowing why you felt so bad and you felt completely alone. You felt no one understood or could possibly know what you were going through. The roots of your despair were yet unconscious. You feared being swallowed up by the grief and the darkness.

The road to recovery is a different road. On this road you must face your fears and also walk into your darkness. However, this is a path that promises hope, not despair, healing, not death. On this road you intentionally and consciously allow yourself to feel what you feel, to remember and to mourn. But you don’t walk this road alone. You will have helpers who walk beside you, hold your hand, or shine a light on the path. You find new ways of knowing yourself and become intimate with your history and emotional memories. As you venture in with open mind and open heart you discover that Divine Love is there, waiting for your invitation, leading you back to your core and your source.

So do not be afraid. Venture forth, ask for help and guidance, and trust that there is light waiting to be found. The road may be rough and scary at first but you will not regret taking this road less traveled. Live your life!

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It’s Time to Fight for Your Marriage

“I don’t know if I even want to confront the loneliness in my marriage, if I have the energy or if I really care”. Ruth has cooperated with a pattern of allowing her spouse to be in their marriage without being a partner. He goes to work and helps take care of the kids, but spends his evenings and nights drinking, falls asleep on the couch and is not present to respond to the emotional needs to his wife – for things like love, security, support, etc. She feels herself slowly dying inside but has a hard time imagining a different kind of marriage.

So many people are existing in relationships that feel dead in one way or another and don’t know what to do. Most, like Ruth are repeating patterns of how they learned to survive in their family of origin. These patterns are deeply ingrained and often invisible to those stuck in them. The sad truth is these patterns will go on indefinitely until some kind of crisis shatters their world, like an earthquake that shifts the earth beneath one’s feet. Are you passively waiting for your earthquake to happen?

Maybe it’s time for you to fight for your marriage. That means different things to different people, but it always involves confronting your own fears and taking action. For Ruth, that action is raising the bar and demanding more from her marriage. It is time for her to begin speaking the truth to her husband about what she needs, wants, feels, and thinks about her marriage. She is at the point of feeling she has nothing to lose by telling the truth.

Marriage is designed to be a relationship that supports the growth and wholeness of each partner. Many of us don’t have experience or role models that support that vision and consequently we expect and accept too little from our marriages. I encourage you to imagine more for yourself, because you want it, and your kids and community need more from you and your marriage as well. Begin to speak the truth from your heart to your partner, not in anger but in love. If things don’t change immediately, don’t retreat to the old patterns but keep speaking; louder, clearer, and more lovingly. Marriage can and should be wonderful. You deserve that too.

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Intimacy is created through sharing all of yourself with one you love. There are many expressions of intimacy and we all have different levels of awareness and willingness to share who we are. Some, maybe most of us have lost sight of the light and the beauty within and it feels as if we never really knew ourselves at all. How can we reveal what we do not know?

I do not think, as one often hears, that we cannot love someone until we fully love ourselves or that we cannot create intimacy without fully knowing ourselves. It is in honestly coming together with another admitting we don’t fully know and love ourselves that helps to reveal our essence. Saying “I don’t know” is a position of honesty, humility, and vulnerability that allows learning and connection to take place. Evolutionary growth is an interactive process between an organism and its environment. We can help one another grow and mature. We shape and influence one another for better or worse.

Yet we still must take full responsibility for our own development. I have observed that women learn to hide their light and beauty from others and from themselves in particular ways. Beauty is hidden because of fears, beliefs, and assumptions. You are taught to believe that it is not OK to shine too brightly for fear of what others might think of you. You have come to believe that you need to compete with others and so you compare and judge and often find yourself lacking. So you hide your beauty in various ways; through negative emotions, through behaviors that keep you too busy, through excess focus on appearance, or through neglect of your bodies, minds, and souls. Men, of course have the same struggles but it plays out in somewhat different ways, such as the quest for power, and accumulation of possessions that you hope will earn you respect and admiration.

Please spend some time reflecting on the following poem by Derek Walcott. When you cultivate ways to feast on your life you will become full and find you have much greater depth to share with the one you love.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes;
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

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