The real life of love is in action. Love is a verb. However, when you express your love in language, you are acting out your love in a way that partners get, pretty much immediately. When you say “I love you” with the right tone of voice and in the right timing, you can speak those words directly into the heart of your mate.

But what to do when the words won’t come?

Imagine handing your mate a greeting card. Your mate takes the card in hand, saying “What’s this?” You point to the card and say, “Just read it” Your mate slides a finger carefully under the flap, looking at you sideways, pulls out a card with a scenic picture on the front. Your mate opens the card, reads the words — words you have written in your own handwriting, not printed, handwritten — and tears well up. Your mate makes a slight noise, that little moan deep in the throat, and suddenly you are enveloped in a powerful hug.

Nice image?

How would you like cheat your way to that outcome? No magical language skills required. No genius talent for writing necessary. Less than 10 minutes needed standing at the greeting card rack. Practically guaranteed results.  Here’s a tip that works for even the most tongue-tied, non-romantic, can’t-ever-say-it-like-you-feel-it among us.

Step one. Find a blank card with a pretty picture on the front.

Step two. Find another card with some romantic text inside. Using the camera on your cell phone, take a picture of the romantic text. If your phone has no camera, call your voicemail number and read the text into a message you can pick up later on.

Step three. Put the romantic text card back in the rack. Purchase the blank card with the pretty picture.  (If you want to support card-writers and their publishers, purchase both, but don’t give your mate the card with the writing on it!  That works against you.  You can actually lose points by giving a card with printed words.)

Step four. Sitting in your car,  write your message into the blank card. Here’s the part where you have to use your own sense of personality and style. If the romantic text doesn’t sound like it could possibly have come from your mouth, just rephrase it. Substitute a word or two here and there, words that you would use, words that your mate would recognize as you. Add a sentence of your own, if you like. Sign your pet name.

Step five. Seal the card and deliver.  (If you purchased the printed card, make sure there is no way, absolutely no way, that it could end up in your mate’s hands.  You have been warned.)

Of course you can put your own sentiments inside the card. That’s the ideal, of course, and you can’t go wrong by writing something to the effect of the greatest gift that your mate brings into your life together, or a reason your mate deserves to be happy.

But when your own tongue gets tied around romantic sentiments, when you don’t have the soul of a poet or the gift of a bard to choose words that sing a soulful ballad, you’re not really stuck. There’s a whole industry waiting to provide you with resources for romance.

It might feel like cheating when you start, but it’s really more like practicing. It’s watching an expert and copying the expert’s moves. If you do this often enough, you will eventually get good at writing your own thoughts from scratch.

If your mate calls you out on the method, just say, “I’m practicing by imitating experts, because you deserve the absolute best!”

Mark Rogers, Ph.D.

It’s Valentines Day; and all over the world, women will receive roses, chocolate and jewelry as an expression they are loved.  It’s wonderful stuff and great to receive.  We believe LOVE is a verb, and the way you know your mate loves you is by their actions.  It’s not the once a year display of roses or a nice gift at Christmas.  It is the everyday actions that indicate if they live as though they are in love with you.  It’s the little acts of kindness, displays of affection, kind words, compliments, doing things that make you happy, and giving you love the way you like to be loved.  It is taking initiative on a regular basis to show they are thinking about you.  If your answer is no, your mate’s actions do not show they are in love with you, then the next question is what do your actions show?  Do you initiate?  Do you do actively find ways to show your mate you are in love with them?  If not, what are you waiting for?  When one of you changes, you automatically change the relationship; so, make your love a verb and watch what happens.

Each week I get frantic calls from spouses trying as a last ditch effort to save their marriage; but often, it is too late.  Their spouse has already moved out or filed for divorce; and when asked if they knew their marriage was in trouble, they usually say yes.  They also say that they didn’t think their mate would actually go through with their threats.   At this point, we have an uphill battle to try to get their mate to consider “earning their way out” by attending our seminar or at least counseling; fortunately, we have fairly good success at getting their mate to work on it before just walking away.   What would work so much better is for couples to address the things that are not working and to do something about it.  If you find yourself whining about your mate or wishing things were better, then you have a red flag to take action.  Don’t settle for what you don’t want, but rather take action to create something that is a win-win for you both. 

Over the Christmas holiday, an event occured in my life that reinforced so deeply the importance of just being happy rather than fighting over who is right.  My parents who are in their 70’s collided with an eighteen wheeler and miraculously were NOT harmed!  Just before they had the accident, they were squabbling about Dad’s negative attitude about having to go to the wedding reception rather than staying home to watch the New England Patriots vs New York Giants football game.   The car wreck crystalized for me how much time we waste arguing and picking at each other because we have different opions,  unrealistic expectations or haven’t clearly communicated with our mate.  In the Relationship Rich Marriage Seminar, we emphasize that happiness is a personal choice.  Your mate can behave badly, but you don’t have to get mad or react with your own bad behavior.  You have a moment of choice where you can make a difference in the quality of your relationship and your own personal happiness.  Needless to say, learning how to break old habits of arguing or picking at each other isn’t easy.  It is a skill you have to learn and practice, but the results are amazing.  I picked up the wheel cover center from their car wreck, and I now have it displayed in my office as a visual reminder of my commitment in 2008 to choose actions or reactions that will create HAPPY.  Being right can make both of us miserable; and as the car wreck demonstrated, life is precious.   

How much energy does it take?
At times, everything you have and then it is never enough!

How Painful is it?
Watching your mate in pain with no means of curing them leaves you with heart ache of your own; and the wounded mate seldom sees the depth of your pain.

How hard is it?
You are probably a “Drained Rescuer”.  My opinion; the wounded must be willing to heal themselves.  That’s way beyond hard for you; it is practically impossible.

What can you do?
They have a long running relationship with something toxic from within.  Get your mate some help and get both of you off this insidious merry-go-round before it’s too late!

After a marriage crisis, it’s hard to rebuild trust, for both mates.

For the offendee – the mate who feels betrayed, deserted, abandoned, or discarded – trusting feels unsafe, the last thing they are inclined to do.

For the offender – the mate who strayed but who now wants to be trusted – it feels like their partner’s trust is impossible to get back, no matter how earnestly it is desired.

Rebuilding trust is only hard, not impossible. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that it is a long-term project, and no matter how badly both mates want it, it will take a long time before it starts to feel robust and resilient.

Step 1.

Both of you decide that trust is worth working for.

Step 2-A.

The offender volunteers to tell the truth when asked, with only one exception allowed. Questions must be answered, in full, when they are asked, no matter how painful the process.

The exception to truth-telling is simple to describe: don’t answer any questions that will create movies in your mate’s head that will be impossible to erase. That usually means questions about specific sexual behaviors.

Step 2-B.

The offendee commits that truthful answers will not break the relationship. Much as they might not like to hear them, truthful answers give you real soil in which to grow the new relationship.

Step 3.

Offenders commit to becoming reliable.

Step 4.

Offenders commit to becoming predictable.

When you commit to becoming predictable, you are saying “No surprises from me; you’ll know what I’m going to do because I don’t ever shock you.”

Step 5.

The offendee commits to an end to the questions and a beginning to trusting.

The biggest hang-up about trust is that we want it to be all-or-nothing, and it cannot be so once the crisis has broken it. However, just because it isn’t all-or-nothing doesn’t mean it can’t be grown, even from the ashes.

Some gifts that you give your spouse are toxic. They poison the relationship, and you do neither yourself nor your partner any favors by giving them.Any time it feels like you are ‘giving in,’ you are preparing to bestow a toxic gift on your partner. You should stop immediately, tell your partner what you’re feeling, and take a few steps back in the interaction.What makes a gift toxic has nothing to do with the characteristics of the present, with how it is presented, or with whether or not it’s cheap or expensive, romantic or practical. In fact, toxic gifts aren’t even material objects at all. They are a way of resolving conflict that almost works, but doesn’t quite.Conflicts cause stress because they seem to pit you against each other. If you can’t both have what you want, the most natural stance to take is to try to win. To try to get as much of what you want as possible, and give as little as absolutely necessary. Conflicts inspire competition.But competition doesn’t feel like love.The temptation to “give-in” to resolve a conflict is a warning sign that you may be preparing a toxic gift.Letting your partner have his/her way, and just giving up your own preference, so that the conflict can be ended, is almost sure to be a toxic gift when:

• You resent the gift, either overtly or covertly.
• You believe the gift incurs an obligation on your partner’s part to reciprocate.
• Your relationship has a climate of non-mutuality, and your partner is unlikely to respond in kind.

Suppose that you were listening to the radio, and you heard an announcer say over dramatic music, “There’s magic when you’re mad that can make everything … every single thing… better… immediately. Instantaneously! … Instantly better…Are you interested?”

Would you be? Interested?

When you are in the middle of a screaming match, there’s magic that will calm things down.

When you are doing a slow burn, there’s magic that will release the tension without an explosion.

When your partner is raging, there’s magic that will smooth the waters.

Here’s the magic wand, the magic potion, the magic bean – someone says “I’m listening.”

That’s it. Just that one little thing.

“I’m listening.”

All it takes to defuse a drama is for one person to stop the back-and-forth of hand grenades and say “I’m listening.”

When the volume goes up beyond the normal range of conversation, all it takes to dial it down is for you to shift your contribution from the volley across the net to saying “I’m listening.”

If you say “I’m listening,” and then start to, you work magic on the madness.

You make it possible for your partner to ‘just talk’ instead of having to shout to be heard.

You make it possible for you to see another side of the issue, from your partner’s perspective, rather than insist that you are the only one entitled to be right.

You give your partner nothing to push against, nothing to overcome, nothing to resist, and then s/he can stop domineering.

When you say “I’m listening,” and then you stay quiet for at least three sentences, your partner doesn’t have to keep hammering on the same point.

And you can holster your verbal sidearm as well.

Magic for the madness – just to begin listening.

You do get to choose. That’s the good news

The bad news is you have to choose. You don’t get to have both, even though the committee that meets inside your head is clamoring for a both-and victory.

During the euphoric/romantic phase of a relationship — when your brain is on drugs — we don’t care about being right. It’s irrelevant. The sheer joy of being together, with the rich pleasure of companionship and the marvelous games of courtship make any kind of competition for power or position matter not a whit. Not the least little bit of whit. All we want is to be together.

Fast-forward a few years. You have had about as much togetherness as you can stand. Your heart no longer pines when your partner is apart from you, in fact, you may rejoice in a few hours of freedom, of privacy, of solitude or the chance to chat with girlfriends or to play poker till the wee hours.

If we cannot simply command obedience from those who live with and love us, we try the next best thing.

We try to talk them into it.

We try to persuade our partners to see things the way that we see them, to believe what we believe. We try to win conflicts and resolve disagreements by convincing our loved ones that they are wrong. And right is what I want.

There’s only one problem with being right. Partners hardly ever agree.

No matter how I marshal my arguments, no matter how persuasive my rhetoric, no matter how unassailable my logic in the defense of my position, my partner sees right through to the core. My partner knows what I really want is to win.

At my partner’s expense. When I’m trying hard to be right — arguing passionately so that my partner will abandon her position and adopt mine — the subtext is always that my partner loses.

That’s why it is always choice, between being happy and being right.

When my partner loses, we don’t get to be happy.

Feeling like you lost is incompatible with happiness. Although I think that winning will make me happy, winning over my partner’s objections always contaminates the relationship with resentment, some degree of bitterness, and a guarantee of future friction. To win the battle of being right always loses the war for a rewarding relationship.

Does that mean we have to give up ever getting what we want?

Of course not. What we have to learn is to be collaborative, cooperative, and maybe compromising, instead of competitive.

In a loving relationship, the long-term reward of increasingly satisfying and fulfilling companionship over the decades justifies giving up any rigidity about being right or needing to win the short-term conflict.

Long-term loving trumps short-term winning every time, over time.

Being happy beats being right. Eventually.

November and December are stressful enough, much less for couples who are having trouble. The reasons are obvious.

Thanksgiving and the December holidays are family celebrations. Couples are families, by definition, whether or not they have kids. So you’re supposed to spend your time together, and all the traditions imply that you’re supposed to enjoy being with family at this time of year. But if you’re already having problems, it doesn’t feel like celebration. It feels like a prison sentence.

And you’re supposed to buy gifts - expensive ones. When you are in a rough patch in your relationship, giving gifts isn’t what you most feel like doing.

Plus, there’s the extended family you’re supposed to visit with during the holidays. It might be just merely awkward to pretend that you’re both doing ok, when you are far from it. Or maybe you’re expected to pull off an academy award-winning performance, masquerading as a delightfully happy couple to prevent explosions of familial dysfunction. Even worse, you might face outright hostility or a chilling reception from in-laws who know full well that things aren’t all sweetness and light with you and their precious loved-one.

So the pressure to give up on a relationship, to call it quits, to just end the misery so you can begin a new life in the new year is tremendous. It can be nearly overwhelming to imagine another round of pain in the midst of everyone else’s merry-making, and the relief you may have been imagining seems like it might be immense and immediate, delivered to the doorstep of your heart before January.

Don’t do it. No matter how bad the relationship troubles, splitting up over the holidays is a bad idea. (With the one exception of physical abuse, of course. There’s never a bad time to separate from someone who makes staying together a lethal danger.)

When you split over the holidays, you make a set of painfully poignant memories that will be revisited every single holiday for the rest of your lives. There really are anniversary reactions, powerful psychological revisits of traumatic feelings that recur simply because the calendar recycles.

If you have kids, breaking up over the holidays multiplies the misery exponentially. Not only will the pain of parental splitting be magnified by the sentimentality of the season, but every holiday celebration in their future will be tinged with trauma instead of tinsel. They won’t be able to forget; they’ll be reminded over and over, forever.

How can you hang on over the holidays?

1. Invest in hope as well as gifts. Give your marriage a gift as significant as those you give your family and friends. Fund some training, some therapy, some coaching, something for your marriage.
2. Remember that these are just months, a few weeks, only days. You can make your holidays feel routine as much as you make them feel special. If they’ve become increasingly painful, then let them be shallow this time instead of special. Relax into mostly routine, and avoid doing those special things that make the calendar have an aura. Make it normal, not special.
3. Agree to just get through till the new year. Preserving the specialness of your future holiday seasons, especially for the kids’ sake, may be one of the easier settlements you can negotiate with an estranged partner. If you get into a fight about this goal, it may really be a case of irreconcilable differences.
4. Tap your spiritual resources. Let the season be a time for renewing your religious faith, your spiritual heritage. Take comfort in the eternal and the transcendent, and remind yourself that just as you are not your job, your education, or your body, neither are you completely or even essentially defined by your relationships. You are both more and deeper than that.
5. Rely on family and friends; they may also welcome and comfort you during the holiday seasons.
6. Perhaps you might also consider letting the spirit of the season seep into your psyche. There might just possibly be some kindness, some grace, some love that kindles from the celebrations of these months. Perhaps not, but you have so little to lose if you loosen up your inner Scrooge, and there might be much marital merriment to gain. Perhaps you might say something like, “We have many problems yet to solve, but we can celebrate what love there has been, and what might even bloom again.