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Wedding-rings

One of the main themes of my happiness project is marriage. For me, as with many people, my marriage is one of the most central elements in my life, my home, and my happiness.

When I started my happiness project, and I reflected about the changes I wanted to make, I realized I had five particular problem areas in my marriage. Here they are, along with the strategies I try to use to address them, though they remain challenging:

1. Demanding gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn’t very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated.

In response, I now think more about doing things for myself. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him – “He’ll be so happy to see that I put all the books away,” “He’ll be so pleased that I finally got the trunk packed for camp” etc. – then I’d be mad when he wasn’t appreciative. Now I tell myself that I’m doing these things because I want to do them. “Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!” “I’m so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!” Because I do things for myself, I don’t expect him to respond in any particular way.

2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily – but my husband really doesn’t like it when I snap at him (big surprise). I’ve done a lot to try to keep my temper in check. I don’t let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; when he tries to make a joke out of my temper, I try to laugh along; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I’ve worked on this issue relentlessly for years, and still have a really tough time with it. For instance, I spoke in a snappish tone just last night.

3. Not showing enough consideration. . Studies show that married people treat each other with less civility than they show to other people — and I do this with my husband, I know. I’m working hard on basic consideration, such as giving him warm greetings and farewells, not reading my emails while talking to him on the phone, etc. Very basic, I know.

Entire Story:

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/sex/5-mistakes-i-continue-to-make-in-my-marriage-2563655/

by Gretchen Rubin, on Thu Sep 22, 2011 5:40am PDT

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Shine.yahoo.com