By Dr. James Dobson
Make a conscious effort to put four new ingredients back into your lives, beginning with pleasure. You and your wife should go on a date at least once a week, leaving children at home. Likewise, some form of sports or recreational activity should be enjoyed as a family, whether it be tennis, golf, swimming, skiing, or another option.
By Sharon May, Ph.D. and Alan Hart, MS, MAT
Adjusting to the changes in a family when a child gets married is often just as difficult for parents as it is for adult children. There is no textbook on how to balance between 'leaving' to establish one's own family while 'staying connected' to one's family of origin. The journey can place stress on the young couple's marriage and be a source of grief for the parents.
Often when stressed, depressed or overwhelmed with life, we isolate ourselves, cutting ourselves off from our most powerful life-giving resource: close friends. Research shows over and over again that when we have close, connected relationships in our life, we do better. We are able to manage the stress, struggles, and strains that life brings our way knowing that someone is there to listen, understand and help us get through it.
Couples in a stress-filled or difficult marriage are often working on repairing arguments and trying to use kinder ways to express their views, while couples in an emotionally destructive marriage hardly ever repair and instead live silently hurting and crushed. What is the difference between a difficult marriage and an emotionally destructive marriage? How do you know when your marriage has crossed the line and become emotionally destructive?
It is the end of the week. Finally, it's date night. Work can wait until Monday. Kids have a babysitter. It's you and your sweetie. Time to relax, talk, laugh and unwind together. Then it happens. An argument ruins the night.
Question: Dr. Dobson, can you be more specific regarding the differences in sexual desire and preferences between males and females? Since I'm getting married next July, I would like to know how my future husband's need will differ from my own. Could you summarize the major distinctions that will occur between us?
If a commitment to Christ is the foundation for a successful marriage, then daily prayer together is the steady, brick-by-brick construction that provides a safe haven for genuine intimacy.
It is my belief that feminine depression associated with the hustle and bustle of living could be reduced significantly if men comprehended and accepted the three ideas which follow.
Romance can mean vastly different things to women and men, but for most of us the word describes that wonderful feeling of being noticed, wanted, and pursued—of being at the very center of our lover’s attention.
By Dr. Tim Clinton & Patrick Springle
We all carry relational wounds. So we go through life with a skewed definition of love. Our actions are often a far cry from true love. The truth is, we may be trying to “love” the other in an attempt to satisfy our “need” for the other.
By Julie Clinton
I remember the email Tim and I got from a friend of ours shortly after his wedding. It told of a crystal vase he and his wife had received as a special wedding present, a vase that was very special to her. The email also told about their first real fight they had as newlyweds. He wrote that in the heat of an argument, "I got stupid and so angry that I grabbed that vase, threw it across the room, and it split into a million pieces. It was awful. Since then it's gone downhill." In a Charlie Brown-style postscript at the end of the email he wrote, "Marriage…uggggghhhhh."
Shirley and I have taken our prayer life a bit more seriously. In fact, this communication between man and God has been the stabilizing factor throughout our years of married life. In good times, in hard times, in moments of anxiety and in periods of praise, we have shared this wonderful privilege of talking directly to our Heavenly Father. What a concept.
Question: Dr. Dobson, you've been happily married for more than fifty years now. Have you ever been tempted to be unfaithful to your wife? What are the danger points that those of us who are younger should watch for?
Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. —Ephesians 5:33 In Men are Like Waffles—Women are Like Spaghetti, Bill and Pam Farrell describe the mind of men and women.
Would you identify some of the major "marriage killers" that are most responsible for the high divorce rate that plagues today's families?
Each of us has a heartfelt need to be honored and respected. All too often, however, we take our spouses for granted at home. Is it any wonder that so many mothers hold down jobs in the workplace today? Many work for financial reasons, but some do so to find the recognition and praise they don’t get from their mates. Could this also be why many men spend excessive hours at work—to receive from colleagues the accolades that they don’t get at home?
Whether a few days, weeks, or months after the wedding, something begins to happen to “that lovin’ feeling.” A man and woman just seem to lose the wind in their romantic sails. It does not always occur, but too often it does.
I will not soon forget a television program aired in Los Angeles which was devoted to the topic of aging. It was one of those unusual documentaries which burns its way into the viewer's memory forever. The subject for the half-hour program was an eighty-eight-year-old woman named Elizabeth Holt Hartford. She lived in a tiny room of a decrepit hotel in the slum section of Los Angeles. The film crew for the station selected Miss Hartford to dramatize the plight of the poverty-stricken, sick old people who populate the central part of the city.
Robertson McQuilkin, as reported in his book A Promise Kept, served as president of a thriving seminary and Bible college in South Carolina for more than twenty years. His wife, Muriel, supported him in many ways, including as an excellent cook and hostess when they entertained guests of the college in their home. They were an effective ministry team.
Life will test each of us severely, if not during younger days, then through the events surrounding our final days. Jesus spoke of this inevitability when He said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
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