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Posts tagged with “marriage”

5 Unexpected Ways to Find the Right Mate

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“Your new life is going to cost you your old one. It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. It’s going to cost you relationships and friends. It’s going to cost you being liked and understood. It doesn’t matter. The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. You’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward. Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead of being understood, you’re going to be seen. All you’re going to lose is …

Love Isn’t About Being Chosen

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“Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different kind of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.” ~Vanessa Klas

The first time I said, “I love you” to a romantic partner, I was met with silence.

Nine months into what I believed was a deep, mutual relationship, I felt certain we were on the same page. But when the words left my mouth, he froze. No words back. No reassurance. Just silence. The next thing I knew, he disappeared for weeks, leaving me sitting in the wreckage of my own vulnerability. I was left questioning everything—why …

Embracing Rejection Helped Me Love Dating and Meet My Husband

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“Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better.” ~Steve Maraboli

I think most single people these days dream of meeting someone “in real life.”

The fantasy is that in “the real world” it’ll be easier.

I dated BA and AA. Before apps and after apps.

The sad truth is that technology changed the game whether you’re on apps or not.

The life skill of walking up to someone in a bar and starting a conversation out of thin air has vanished. The ability to be the receiver of that …

How Highly Sensitive People Can Feel More Fulfilled in Their Relationships

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“Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.” ~Swami Vivekananda

Highly sensitive people naturally bring some really beautiful, love-promoting qualities to their romantic partnerships. But these same qualities can sometimes end up undermining the strength of their relationships. This was true for me in my first marriage and led, in part, to it ending in divorce.

We HSPs are known for our caring, conscientious, and considerate natures. It matters deeply to us that we do our best to be loyal and caring in our relationships.

And because we tend to have high …

How My Divorce Was the Portal to My Greatest Dreams

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“The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they are given wings.” ~Rumi

You can create your dream life from devastation.

I speak from first-hand experience.

On Thanksgiving Day, my husband knelt before me and said he didn’t think he loved me anymore and didn’t think he wanted to have children. He had flown in that day from our  home in NYC to see me perform in a Christmas musical in Salt Lake City. Both being working actors, …

Before You Get Married

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What Marriage Is and Isn’t

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All the Wrong Reasons I Slept with Men Before and Why I’m Changing Now

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“We think we want sex, but it’s not always about sex. It’s intimacy we want. To be touched. Looked at. Admired. Smiled at. Laugh with someone. Feel safe. Feel like someone’s really got you. That’s what we crave.” ~Anonymous

I have not had sex in years. I was meditating one day, and my mind was silent (an extremely rare event), then I heard “Do not have sex until you are married.” Something I heard often growing up as a southern Baptist.

I started breathing fast, and my thoughts immediately started racing. I am pretty sure I cried, if not in …

If You’re Hoping They’ll Change, They’re Not Right for You

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“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.” ~Wayne Dyer

When I married my ex, he had the potential to be a fantastic husband.

If I’m to be honest with you, that’s why I married him—I thought he could eventually be everything I wanted in a partner. I’m not proud of it.

To be fair, he had a lot going for him. He was handsome and creative. He was generous and romantic. My ex was a true gentleman. He dressed …

When Your Partner Isn’t Sure They Want a Future with You

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“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much and forgetting that you are special too.” ~Ernest Hemingway

At Eagle Point Elementary, where I went for third grade, there was one very cute boy. Jason was the object of affection for seemingly every third-grade girl. He would make a list each day of the five girls he thought were the cutest. The list changed every day. Whoever took the top spot for the day was the girl Jason decided he was “going with.” (Was “going with” a thing in everyone’s elementary school or …

Do You Accept Your Partner’s Attempts to Repair?

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“I am not fully healed, I am not fully wise, I am still on my way. What matters is that I am moving forward.” ~Yung Pueblo

According to Dr. John Gottman, PhD, successful repair attempts are a “happy couple’s secret weapon.”

An attempt to repair is when our partner makes a mistake and then makes an attempt to fix it in their own way.

Their attempt may look very different than what we may want, and we may be tempted to react negatively, but we have a choice to catch ourselves and consciously choose a different response.

That’s part of …

From the Spouse of a Narcissist: Here’s What You Need to Know

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“You can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is so very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren’t alone.” ~Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children 

When I first met my husband, when he had just started medical school at a large university, I thought he was just insecure. I believed that he would grow out of his need to be the center of attention, receive constant validation, and appear correct and knowledgeable about everything.

I believed he would become surer of himself and would …

It’s Not “Failing” to Leave a Toxic, Abusive Marriage

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“Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching

I have always been an extremely glass-half-full kind of person. I always see the best in everyone, and not only the best, but also the unlimited beauty and potential. And my god, it is glorious!!

I met and fell in love with a charming man. I was on a trip to Alaska to …

How Mindfulness Is Saving My Relationship

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“Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

I started meditating and practicing mindfulness more seriously several years ago incorporating it in to my daily routine, initially to help with my anxiety. My practice certainly helped me by leaps and bounds in overcoming my anxiety, but an unexpected side effect has been the impact it’s having on my marriage.

We’ve not been married long, and as many couples before us have experienced, getting accustomed to this new …

Happily Single: Why Marriage Wasn’t a Good Fit for Me

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“I’m not sad about any of my life. It’s so unconventional. It doesn’t look anything like I thought it would.” ~Edie Falco

I knew what was coming. My co-worker Rose was midway through her second chocolate martini and feeling loose enough at our after-work get-together to stop talking about her marriage and instead, start talking about my non-marriage.

“I don’t get it. Why haven’t you ever been married?” she asked, in a disbelieving tone.

I sighed. “You know, this is the third time you’ve asked me that. Remember? We had that whole conversation about it at the office Christmas …

Easing a Broken Heart: 5 Ways to Reframe Rejection

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“When the wrong people leave your life, the right things start to happen.” ~Zig Ziglar

The end of a relationship triggers many grief emotions, but when a couple breaks up because one person decides that it’s over, there is a very distinct pain: the sting of rejection. It doesn’t matter whether things had been difficult for some time or if the split came out of the blue; either way, rejection feels cruel.

At the end of my marriage eight years ago, I had no idea that the breakup was coming. On top of the shock that the relationship was …

He Left, But I Will Not Give Up On Myself

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“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do. “ ~Brené Brown

He just left our home.

After eighteen years together, fifteen of them being married, he left as we had planned, as we had gently and lovingly discussed.

We are on a break, a trial separation. What you hear about separation and divorce is all so achingly true. It feels like a death, a chasm where all the worst feelings imaginable pile in on you, where you can’t quite breathe right.

The pain is visceral—like someone …

Having Doubts Doesn’t Mean Your Relationship Is Doomed

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“When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.” ~Fred Rogers

There aren’t many clichés I resent more than this old chestnut about finding true love: “When you know, you know.”

As a late bloomer and skeptic who took her sweet time to get into a relationship, after decades of singleness and observation, nothing made me feel more like an outsider than the idea that love is an unexplainable phenomenon reserved for people who “know.”

In my early years of singledom, I believed I “knew” things. I had unwavering faith in a …

Healing After an Affair: How to Get Through the Pain of Infidelity

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“I will breathe. I will think of solutions, I will not let my worry control me. I will not let my stress level break me. I will simply breathe. And it will be okay. Because I don’t quit.” ~Shayne McClendon

It was a Wednesday afternoon in late July, and I felt like my entire world was coming to an end. My husband of almost eleven years had become distant, and during a phone call on my lunch break he told me he couldn’t do this anymore. That evening he told me he no longer loved me and wanted a divorce…

7 Vital Choices for Happy Relationships

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“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~Lao Tzu

A little over a decade ago I thought I was going to marry my college sweetheart and become a young bride, which made it all the more devastating when happily ever after didn’t pan out. When we broke up, I felt literally like I lost a limb, complete with phantom sensations of his hand in mine.

It didn’t take long for a dark guilt to bubble up—a constant festering reminder of all the mistakes I’d made. I was highly unstable and insecure back …