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World's highest divorce rates
Every year the United Nations produces a Demographic Yearbook, featuring a collection of world statistics looking at everything from life expectancy to, well, divorce.
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Russia has the world's highest divorce rate.
Below is a round up of the top 10 countries with the highest divorce rates. The United States falls in the middle. Interestingly, Eastern Europe and a few tropical islands seem to dominate this list.
1) Russia: 5 divorces per 1,000 people
2) Belarus: 3.8 per 1,000
3) Ukraine: 3.6 per 1,000
4) Moldova: 3.5 per 1,000
5) Cayman Islands: 3.4 per 1,000
6) United States: 3.4 per 1,000
7) Bermuda: 3.3 per 1,000
8) Cuba: 3.2 per 1,000
9) Lithuania: 3.1 per 1,000
10) Czech Republic: 3.0 per 1,000
By contrast the rate in Denmark is 2.7, Switzerland 2.6, Spain 2.4, Australia 2.2, Japan 2.0, and Mongolia 0.7. Some countries such as China, Brazil, Chile, France, Italy, and Monaco didn't provide data.
Read more: 15 ways to predict your marriage's success.
| December 23 2010 at 10:56 AM
When do most marriages go stale? Later than you might think
Forget the seven-year itch. A new study finds that most marriages die around 10 years, more precisely at 10 years, 11 months.
At what point do men and women tire of one another?
Married couples have long joked about the "seven year itch," an urge to become unfaithful after seven years of being hitched.
Turns out there's no scientific evidence behind this condition. The term actually comes from a 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell.
Ewell works for a company publishing a book suggesting that men tend to have extra-marital affairs after seven years of marriage.
A British dating site wanted to find out when the flame really begins to die and so they surveyed 3,000 couples. The number they came up with is 10 years, 11 months, according to a new study by a British dating site.
The Daily Mail reports that after 10 years:
- 25 percent of married people no longer make romantic gestures toward their spouse
- 25 percent no longer went on date nights
- 20 percent tired of sex with one another
- 12 percent couldn't remember the last time their partner gave them a compliment
- 60 percent feel they often need to be reminded of why they married their spouse in the first place
Actually, these numbers don't seem staggering. If 80 percent of married couples are still enjoying sex after 10 years that seems pretty good.
Read more: 15 ways to predict your marriage's success and What keeps your marriage together
| October 27 2010 at 10:52 AM
15 ways to predict your marriage's success
Religion, finances, kids, where you live--these are all factors that contribute to whether you and your partner will stay together forever, according to the Daily Beast.
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If you both smoke, your marriage is golden. But if only one of you smoke, then you're likely headed for rocky ground.
"Will we last?" It's the big question looming over every marriage.
A writer at the Daily Beast has put together a clever list of 15 factors, all backed up by studies, to help you determine whether you and your partner are headed for Splitsville or for a long, happy life together.
You're more likely to divorce if...
1) You're both American. Our country's divorce rate peaked in the 1980s at 50 percent and has since dropped to about 40 percent. But according to the Daily Beast most Americans still have the 50 percent figure in their minds and this creates uncertainty about marriage.
2) Live in a red state.
You're 27 percent more likely to split if you live in red states such as Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma where couples get hitched younger.3) You argue about finances once a week.
Those who fight constantly over the heating bill are 30 percent more likely to break up than those who squabble only occasionally about money.4) Your parents divorced.
You're 40 percent more likely to call it quits if your parents did the same thing. If both of your parents remarried that number goes up to 91 percent.5) Only one person in your marriage is a smoker.
Your odds are better if both of you have the habit.6) You have a daughter.
Studies have found that sons are easier on marriages--and dads are more invested in the family when there's a boy. With each girl, your odds for divorce increases by 5 percent.7) You're a non-Christian.
Keep in mind that the study backing up this factor was funded by a Christian-affiliated group.8) Live in Wayne County, Indiana, and are over 15 years old.
In this little town, you'll find our country's highest divorce rate.9) Both you and your partner have been previously married.
You're 90 percent more likely to split up than if it were the first marriage for both of you.10) If there's a wide age gap.
The odds are best when the male is only one to three years older than the woman.11) If you're of "below average" intelligence.
You're 50 percent more likely to break up than those with an "above average" IQ.12) If you've been diagnosed with cervical cancer.
This can hurt sex life.13) If you have twins or triplets.
Multiple birth are known to cause stress on a marriage.14) If you're a female serial cohabiter.
A woman who has lived with several partners before her first marriage is 40 percent more likely to untie the knot than women who have never lived with another man.15) If you're in a same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than a heterosexual marriage.Find complete details and study references on each predicting factor at the Daily Beast.
| October 06 2010 at 10:33 AM
10 tips for becoming a happier parent
Word on the street is that today's parents are unhappy. At least that's what journalist Jennifer Senior boldly reveals in her recent "New York Magazine" cover story titled "I love my children. I hate my life."
Senior reports on several academic studies indicating that parents are less happy than their childless peers. She also writes that marital satisfaction decreases with children, mothers are less happy than fathers, and parents with multiple children are less happy than those with only one. What's more, every successive generation has been "more put out by having children than the last--our current one most of all."
In a nutshell, this story makes the case that we all love our kids but we're downright sad and depressed. Why? Too many reasons to list but a few include busier lives, more pressure and guilt, and the trend of waiting longer to have kids.
While I don't entirely agree with the sweeping generalizations presented in this article because god forbid I'm a parent and actually quite happy, I will agree that I see flashes of unhappiness in my friends, and myself at times.
I see it in my friends who applied to nine San Francisco preschools and were rejected by all. I see it in friends whose homes are worth a lot less now than they were five years ago. I see it in friends whose husbands travel during the week for work. And I see it in myself who is juggling four jobs, two kids, and a husband in a new job.
But I hate to dwell on the negative and so instead I'm spinning this topic around and offering 10 simple, probably overly preachy tips on becoming a happier parent. Please feel free to share yours in the comments.
1) Talk about something besides kids with your friends. Friends are key to survival when you're a parent. They listen, provide support, make you laugh, give your family a place to go on Friday nights, and help you get into preschool.
They also cause a lot of unnecessary angst because when you're a parent it's nearly impossible to not compare your parenting with that of your friends' and conclude that you're doing something wrong.
One of the best ways to combat these feelings of hurt is to lighten up on the conversations about sleep schedules, preschool admissions, and chemical toxins that are causing autism, cancer, ADHD. Do you really need to know all the details of how your friend puts her kid to bed at 6 p.m. on the dot every night? It'll just make you feel crappy about your own child's erratic bedtime.
That said, conversations about kids among friends are crucial and make you feel like you're not alone--but it's healthy for your relationship if you can talk about other things: books, celebrities, politics, raising chickens. Whatever it takes to move on from a conversation about which plastic toys contain BPA.
I recently got my hair cut and the stylist asked, "What books are you reading right now?" It was such a refreshing question...I can't remember when someone last asked me that. The sad thing is that I had to reply, "Nurture Shock."
2) Put down that parenting book. These days there's a right and a wrong way to parent. There's a right way to tell your child there's an error in his homework. There's a right way to teach your child to share. There's a right way to potty train, sleep train, discipline...and the list goes on. And there are books filled with advice on how to these things the right way--and if you read all of these books you will drive yourself crazy. You will question every move you make and fret over every mistake. I know...I have read a lot these books.
Of course, these books serve a purpose and come in handy at times, but you also need to trust your instincts. You know more than you think and the key to parenting isn't in a book (or in a blog)--it's in your heart.
3) Skip birthday parties. If you're going to three birthday parties and crossing more than one bridge in one day, you have a problem. I don't care how popular your kid is and how many friends he has, but you should never spend your entire Saturday watching children bang bats at pinatas and talking to moms about whether Noe Valley Bakery or Mitchell's Ice Cream makes better children's birthday cakes (although I have to admit this is a favorite topic of conversation of mine).
A proper Saturday involves a nap, a good book, a family bike ride or hike, a shared pot of tea with a neighbor, and a lovemaking session (with your partner) while the kids are watching a DVD.
4) Have sex--lots of it. Any therapist will tell you that a happy marriage--hey, a happy life--includes sex. That means more than once a month between periods--that means several days in a row so you can perfect technique and get the juices running.
About one in every four Americans married or living with someone say they are so sleep-deprived that they are often too tired to have sex, according to the New York Times. That Saturday nap should help.
And if you can't possibly stir up enough energy for some lovin, then at least roll over and give your partner a kiss goodnight before you fall asleep.
5) Read a book (not a parenting one) at the park.
I mainly see two types of parents at the park. Those who are madly trying to respond to work emails on their iPhones and those who are fully engaged with their kids, pushing them on the swing, playing tag, digging in the sand. Oh and of course those who are chatting it up with other parents about how to get your kid into the best preschool or kindergarten. (And yes, I do all of these things regularly.)Why not give yourself a break from all of this and bring a book to read while your kids play on the monkey bars? Of course, this isn't an option with a 2-year-old but once your child is 4 or 5 he should be able to play independently for at least 20 minutes so you can read that final chapter of "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."
6) Hang out with childless friends. Right after you have a baby, you avoid childless friends like the plague...at least I did. I'm not sure why. Maybe I feared that I'd feel jealous of their freedom or maybe I was afraid they couldn't relate.
That was a mistake because once I started reconnecting with those friends I realized that they are the best cure for parenting overload. And no, it's not because they can drink more wine. My parent friends are actually heavier drinkers than my kidless friends (wonder why that is?). It's because they know how to talk about things outside of kids. They actually read the "New York Times" beyond the homepage, see movies in theaters, listen to the latest music, and have travel plans beyond going to Hawaii and Tahoe.
And if you want to talk about your kids, these childless friends listen and admire you for trying to be such a good parent, rather than giving you the name of a great child psychiatrist or telling you that you should read such and such parenting book.
7) Get rid of toys. A girlfriend once told me that she had to see a therapist because she became addicted to sorting her kids' heaps of toys into the right bins. She'd spend hours meticulously putting the Legos, the Lincoln Logs, the action figures, and the plastic food pieces into the appropriate bins neatly stacked in a giant Pottery Barn shelving unit. The scary thing was that I remember thinking that if I had a therapist, I'd probably bring up the same topic because I was also obsessed with toy sorting. The rest of my house was a complete and total disaster but the toys were always organized.
Bottom line: Our kids have way too many toys--and it's overwhelming for your kids to keep them organized and you shouldn't waste your precious, little time doing so. We're all drowning in plastic even though we hold no-gifts birthday parties and pass out potted plants as party favors. The toys are causing us stress so don't be afraid to empty some of those toy bins into a garbage bag with stuff and donate it to a preschool or a children's hospital.
8) Pull your child out of at least one organized activity. Your child doesn't need to master the violin, learn to swim all four strokes, perform in a dance recital at the Center for Performing Arts, paint like Picasso, and sing like Barbra Streisand all before age 10. Yes, it's tempting to throw your kids into a million activities because in the Bay Area there are so many cool things kids can do--from organic cooking classes to mommy and me yoga. But have you ever noticed that driving from La Petit Baleen in the Presidio and then rushing to get to Art Works in time for that 6:30 p.m. class is a little exhausting? I have.
Give yourself--and your kid--a break. Your children can still learn to play the guitar in middle school.
9) Sleep, exercise, eat healthy. If you're a parent, you're probably not getting enough sleep. In fact, you're probably walking around like a zombie. The average adult needs at least 71/2 hours every night, according to the Huffington Post, and most parents, especially working moms, aren't getting this. Make sleep a priority.
Also, if you can, make exercise a priority--even a quick walk around the block will help clear the mind, burn a few calories, and air you out.
And finally, try to eat healthy. You probably feed your kids organic blueberries and yogurt for breakfast or at least a bowl of cereal--but what are you eating?
10) Say "no"--and don't feel guilty. It's OK if you don't want to play babies, Barbies, Bionicles, Storm Troopers...You can say no and not feel like you're being a bad parent. Yes, it's important to play and interact with your kids but they also need to learn to entertain themselves. Sit on the couch. Paint your nails. Make a pot of tea. Do something for yourself while enjoying the sounds of your little one playing on his own.
And finally, I'll leave you with this fact from David Code, author of "To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First": "Studies show today's parents spend more time with their kids, and yet today's kids don't seem happier, more independent or successful."
Please, feel free to add more tips to the list and join the discussion on the Bay Area Moms Facebook page.
| July 13 2010 at 11:23 AM
Kid first or spouse first?
When renowned writer and Berkeley mom Ayelet Waldman fearlessly and famously declared in a 2005 New York Times essay, "I love my husband more than I love my children," she assumed that her feelings made her a bad mother.
She wrote, "If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother."
At the time, many agreed that Waldman was indeed a bad parent and the Times received an onslaught of mail from outraged readers who ripped the writer to shreds for not putting her children first. Some even threatened to report her to the Department of Social Services. And people got even angrier when Waldman appeared on Oprah months later.
But it turns out that Waldman might not be such a bad mom after all, at least according to David Code, an Episcopal priest and family coach, who has written a book titled "To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First," released in September 2009.
The book is geared to today's parents who tend to let everything revolve around their kids. (Sound familiar?) Code doesn't specifically advise parents to love their spouses more than their children, but he does tell them to put their spouses first, over their children, and he says that today's parents spend way too much time with their children. (This is especially interesting when you consider that most of today's parents complain that they don't get enough time with their kids.)
An interview with Code recently ran in The Parent Paper, a parenting magazine serving north New Jersey. Here's an excerpt:
Question: What are the common mistakes that married couples make when it comes to children?
Answer: They put their children first. For decades now, parents have bought into the myth that the more attention they give their kids, the better the kids will turn out.
Where are the results? Studies show today's parents spend more time with their kids, and yet children are more troubled than ever before. Children of course need a reasonable amount of care and nurture, but we've lost any sense of balance.
Over the past several decades, America has drifted from marriage-centered families to child-centered families. This approach seems child-friendly, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
Question: What are the most important things couples can do for their marriage?
Answer: Marry their spouses instead of their children. Parents are avoiding their spouses more than ever in marriage. They claim they're too busy to spend time with their spouses, but when they drift away from their spouses in an "emotional divorce," they never remain alone. They often shift their attention to their children, projecting their distress and neediness onto them. As the child psychologist and author Madeline Levine observes, "When a marriage is cold, a child's bed is a warm place to be."
Question: What happens to kids whose parents focus too much on them?
Answer: Without realizing it, parents may throw themselves into parenting to avoid dealing with their marriages. This only increases the distance between spouses, and puts pressure on kids to fulfill their parents' emotional needs.
On the surface, things may appear calm between the parents, but kids pick up on everything. It's as if the child absorbs the tension of the household until their fragile nervous systems hit overload, and then they act out or develop health problems as a result. That's how parents pass their baggage onto their kids without even realizing.
So a problem in a child may actually be a wake-up call for the parents' marriage. I will never forget the words of a doctor from Columbia Medical School who specializes in children's cancer. She said, "I seldom worry about a child's prognosis when I see her parents fighting with each other. Cancer is a crisis, and all that stress has to go somewhere. It's the kid whose parents are distant and reserved that I worry about."
Do you put your spouse or your children first? Why?
| January 05 2010 at 11:34 AM
It's not love. It's the little things.
My husband and I often joke that all we have in common these days is a love for soup and snow peas. If you have seen Christopher Guest's "Best in Show," you get the reference. If not, you can watch a clip from the 2000 film below.
We make these jokes because before kids we used to go on 50-mile mountain bike rides, backpack into the wilderness, try out new restaurants, and stay up all night watching 10 episodes of the "West Wing" all in a row. Now that we have kids, we often feel as if we have nothing left in common because we don't have time for these sorts of activities.
In actuality we have some things in common, but because most of our free time is taken up with soccer games and birthday parties and piano lessons and birthday parties and shopping for school uniforms and birthday parties, we're only left with bits and pieces of time together. This results in a random assortment of quirky commonalities that are as seemingly pathetic as the ones shared between the octogenarian and babe with Botox lips in "Best in Show."
This all came to mind when I was working on a blog post covering a new study, "What's Love Got to Do with It," indicating that love isn't the key to a lasting marriage. In the post, I outlined the key factors (e.e., smoking, age, money) that determined whether a marriage endured, and a commenter made the point that the post focused on what breaks apart marriages and not what brings them together. And so I decided to dig deep into my head and determine what keeps my husband and I together--beyond our love. Of course, our kids are the glue but I have realized that it's the little things that will lead us to live happily ever after, and then I came up with the list below.
My husband and I get laughs from these two members of our garden gnome family. The one on the left is Dr. Paris; the other is Jamie.
Road cycling drug scandals. Cycling is my husband's passion, and I follow the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's love life in the news because I know it means something to my husband. I think all of the cyclists are drug addicts while he still has faith in the sport. Our differences result in heated arguments--though we're detached enough from the topic that our fights actually end in romantic interludes. This isn't the case when we argue about kids, money, and in-laws.
"Friday Night Lights." We're both addicted to the show and enjoy watching it together. We like to analyze coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami's marriage--it gives us something to talk about besides our kids. TV series such as "Sports Night" and "Freaks and Geeks" generally bring us closer together, but "Mad Men" and Don Draper's incessant infidelity pushed us apart. My husband eventually gave up on the show and I was left watching the dark, depressing episodes alone.
Garden gnomes. Although we collect French garden gnomes we don't have any in our garden. They all live in our house, and we like to make jokes about them and they make us laugh. The fetish started with the movie "Amelie," which spurred us to purchase our first gnome in Paris. (Now you know the real reason why we named our daughter Paris; it's where we bought our first gnome, who we named Dr. Paris.)
"This American Life." When we happen to be driving somewhere at noon on a Saturday, we both love to listen to this NPR show. When it comes on, my husband often reaches over and grabs my hand and smiles because he knows we're sharing something together--even if the kids are in the backseat poking their fingers in each other's ears.
Bi-Rite ice cream. We both crave it--all the time. If we're driving down 18th Street and I scream "stop" my husband always slams on the brakes even if the line is a block long. On the rare occasion when we hire a babysitter, we like to walk to the ice cream shop in the Mission District and buy cones. My husband often orders the same thing I do telling me that I'm good at picking out flavor combinations. I find his gesture of acknowledgment sweet.
Our 100-year-old piano. I'm using YouTube videos to learn to play Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's "Falling Slowly" from the film "Once." Even though I have zero musical talent and I suck at playing, my husband finds it incredibly sexy when I play this song on our ancient piano and sometimes he sings along and I find that incredibly sexy.
Johnny Cash. I like indie rock, particularly the Shins, and Broadway show tunes from old-school musicals such as "My Fair Lady." Neither are my husband's cup of tea. He prefers what he calls indie folk. I like to call it country-western, which makes him mad because he feels strongly that Dwight Yoakam and John Prine don't fall into that "cheesy" category. Regardless, Johnny Cash is the one place we agree, and we enjoy listening to him on road trips.
Potato leek soup and waffles. My husband loves potato leek soup, and so I'm always trying out new recipes. I'm a fan of waffles and he makes me perfectly crispy ones on Sunday mornings. I think it's nice that we cook for each other.
Wine. After our kids go to bed and I have realized that I'm going insane from trying to write a half-decent blog post, we sometimes drink too much of it and then you know what.
What "little things" do you and your partner share together?
| July 16 2009 at 09:09 AM
What keeps your marriage together?
Movies, television, commercials, Hallmark cards, even the Beatles have told us that all you need is love. It's the answer to a happy life and certainly a happy marriage, right?
Actually when it comes to marriage, a new study, "What's Love Got to Do with It," reveals that love isn't what makes couples live happily ever after. Researchers from the Australian National University followed 2,500 couples--both married and living together--for six years from 2001 to 2007 to determine which couples stuck together and why. They found that it takes a lot more than love for a relationship to last.
A story on MSN.com offers a summary of what researchers found and outlines the factors that played a significant role in whether a marriage succeeds or fails:
- Blending families: 20 percent of marriages with kids from prior relationships end in divorce.
- Second/third marriages: 90 percent of these couples are likely to separate or divorce.
- Age: If a man is under 25 when he marries or if he's nine or more years older than his wife, he's twice as likely to get a divorce than a man who is older than 25 or closer in age to his wife.
- Desire to have children: If the women has a much stronger desire to have kids than her spouse, the marriage is not likely to succeed.
- Relationship status of parents: If couples come from separated or divorced parents, 17 percent were headed toward the same result, as compared to 10 percent who come from stable homes.
- Smoking: Relationships in which only one person smokes is also a factor toward failure.
- Money: The root of all evil? Well not exactly, but 16 percent of self-reported "poor" relationships in which the man was unemployed ended in separation or divorce. Only 9 percent of couples who had a healthy bank account went south.
How have these factors played into your relationship? What beyond love is keeping you and your partner together?
| July 15 2009 at 04:42 PM
Ikea: a cheap place for date night
A game of slap and tickle on an Ektorp sofa, a stolen kiss behind Alvine Spets curtains, and a Swedish meatball feast--do these sound like the ingredients for romance? If you spend an evening at Ikea with your honey, they certainly are.
Ikea's Smaland offers free childcare for up to an hour and a half.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, some parents are going to Ikea for date night. Why? Because the retailer offers free babysitting at its Smaland play centers, where kids who are tall enough (height requirement varies from 36 to 50 inches depending on the location) can watch movies, dive into pits full of plastic balls, or do art projects under the supervision of Ikea staff. Parents can drop off their little ones for up to an hour and a half and enjoy some quality adult time while browsing the furniture store and dining in the restaurant. The Emeryville location even offers bay views from its cafe tables. (You are required to stay at the store while your children are at Smaland.)
Ikea estimates that Smaland attendance has jumped roughly 20 percent so far this year in its stores in major American cities, according to the Times.
"Lately, we've seen an increase in a lot of new parents," Yumiko Whitaker, public relations manager for Ikea's Orange County stores in California, told the Times. "They're getting out of the house and we're providing an environment that gives them a break."
Have any parents out there had an Ikea date night?
| June 17 2009 at 07:33 AM
Women: Think of marriage as a bank account
Last week, The San Francisco Chronicle reported on a UC Berkeley study revealing that women grow increasingly happy in their marriages when the kids leave the nest. So what does that mean? Mothers with kids at home are miserably married? Elizabeth Dixon, a Licensed Clinical Social worker who works with employees and their families at the Kaiser Permanente Employee Assistance Program, doesn't think that's necessarily the case but she does work with a lot of struggling couples with children at home.
"Here you are a couple and you have all the time in the world to spend together and then suddenly you have a child and you have almost no time together," Dixon says. "This new child is so much work and demands all your attention. Your own needs fall to the very bottom and then your relationship falls right above that."
So what can mothers do to make their marriages happier?
Dixon says the key is to think of marriage as a bank account. You're constantly writing checks and making withdrawals--when you ask your partner to empty the dishwasher, pick up the kids, change into a clean shirt. "But you have to make some deposits or else your account will run dry," Dixon says. "In fact you need to be constantly making deposits, even if it's just pennies, nickels, a few dimes here and there."
Here are Dixon's top tips on how to make deposits into your "marriage account" and how to keep the flame alive--when the kids are sleeping in the bedroom next door.
Take notice. You need to compliment, thank, and acknowledge your partner--several times a day. "Every time you authentically acknowledge something your partner has done, you're depositing change into that account," Dixon says. "Try to say things like, 'Honey, thank you for changing your schedule so you could pick up the kids for me,' 'I appreciate you folding the laundry,' 'I love it when you wear that shirt.'"
Be careful of the 'but.' "Thanks for cleaning the kitchen--but you didn't wipe off the counters"; "Thanks for taking the kids out so I could sleep in, but you didn't stay out long enough"; "Thanks for the gift, but you know that I hate perfume." When you do acknowledge your spouse, don't mix praise and gripes, Dixon advises.
Focus on the positive. Identify specific instances when the relationship was going well and try to re-create those experiences. "We often focus on the negative and what went wrong: 'You didn't cuddle me,' 'You didn't tell me that I looked nice,'" Dixon says. "Instead, look for the positive. 'I really enjoyed my time with you after the kids went to bed and we were sitting on the couch cuddled under a blanket reading magazines."
Schedule time together. It's easy to say that you should go out more, but how do you actually make that happen? Dixon encourages parents to plan a regular "kid swap" with another family. It's affordable and plus you're setting up a commitment with the other family so you can't easily back out. Pick a night of the week, say Saturday, and trade off with the other family every other weekend.
Do exciting things. Forget the movie-and-dinner date. When you go out together, try something new and different: play a game of tag (without the kids); go sky diving, take a cooking class, visit a paint-your-own-pottery place. "Married couples often talk about the intensity of their feelings when they first met their partners--the cravings, the obsession, the lust, the attraction--and they feel like they have completely lost those feelings and are no longer passionately in love. By doing an activity that's exhilarating with your partner, you can re-create that physical excitement. You can share the excitement of doing something new with your partner."
Talk intimately. Instead of asking, "So how was your day?" a tired question that leads to mundane responses, try "What was the happiest and saddest part of your day?" Dixon says, "You want to ask your partner questions that invite him to dig deep and pull out an experience from his days. These more probing questions lead to personal, intimate conversations and allow you to share a moment together. This creates that sense of bonding."
Practice small acts of love. Dixon often asks couples to create a list of 10 things they like that their partners do for them. These are small acts of love: warm, holding hugs; phone calls to just say hello; a simple, "You look nice today" or a "Would you like a cup of tea?" Then the couples display their lists in their homes and try do three things from their partner's list a day. "Think of it as playing catch with someone," Dixon says. "When he throws the ball at you and pays you a compliment, you have to throw the ball back at some point."
Get physical, often. Want to know how to put millions into the bank account? Sex. "We give so much physical attention to our kids that our vital need for touch gets drained away," Dixon says. "But it's important that couples make the decision to regularly have physical intimacy. It's crucial to the health of the marriage." Dixon advises couples to check out The Sex Starved Marriage. "It has a terrible title and it's a book that makes you cringe when you walk up to the register. But it's practical and hopeful and might help you figure out how to make sex a part of your regular routine rather than something that's always being put on the back burner."
How do you find time for your marriage? How do you keep the spark alive with kids running around the house? Also, if you try out any of these tips, please share.
| December 11 2008 at 03:00 PM
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