Marriage Success

Supporting Your Spouse

One of the fastest ways to reduce trust with your spouse is to badmouth them to others, i.e. friends, associates, co-workers, or, worse, to your parents or other members of your family.

If this gets back to your spouse (which it inevitably will), or even worse, if you do it in front of them, this will reduce and possibly destroy the trust in your relationship.

Another version of this is failing to defend your spouse when another criticizes them. For example, let’s say your parents start to criticize your spouse. You have to, at that point, stick up for your spouse. To not do so is to start down a slippery slope. When you said “I do” you agreed to create a team with that person, and you have to defend that person, even if it’s your parents giving them a bad rap. If you don’t, it will begin to drive a wedge between your spouse and your parents.

You have to think of you and your husband or wife as a team. You are working together to create a good measure of survival for the both of you, your kids, and everyone related to the family.

So how do you work well with members of a team? Well, you have to be supportive and positive. This means to consider, think about, and communicate about that person’s best qualities. You want to build them up and make them feel good about themselves.

This doesn’t mean to lie to them and tell them how great they are at something when they aren’t really. And I’m not talking about fake “self-esteem” where you make someone feel great about themselves without any consideration of actual achievement. What I’m saying is that you are supportive of your spouse and make them feel good about the person they are and about the things that they are good at. Protect and defend them against attack.

And they’ll do the same for you. That’s a real team.

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Can a Pet Help a Marriage Succeed?

We're all familiar with the emails that make their way around the net that tell a story compelling enough for us to forward the email along to our friends. Some of these emails tell a hilarious story; some inspire us to do something kind, compassionate or perhaps even adventurous. We do love stories!

Well, today I received one of those emails and it was about a very grumpy father (in his 60s) and his daughter's attempt to bring some joy and peace of mind to her dad. And as the title of this post suggests, it was about a pet.

Now, I realize not everyone is a pet lover. And I certainly respect that. I grew up without any pets in the house and I always felt I missed out on something. So when I got my own place (a beat-up apartment above a restaurant that had fabulous French Fries), one of the first things I did was get a dog. It wasn't a pure bred, but he sure didn't know it, and he and I had a fabulous relationship.

Some years later, my fiance and I were sitting outside chatting away when a stray dog came by and befriended us. We gave the little fella a bit to eat and she decided right there on the spot that we were an acceptable couple for her new home. (Yes, we tried to find her owners but were not successful.)

My wife and I have been married now for 28 years and during that entire time, we have almost always had a wonderful pet, sometimes two. Our daughter was thrilled whenever there were puppies and/or kittens to take care of.

For me personally, I really enjoy the friendship that can exist between a dog and a person. And I'm sure for others a cat or even a bird can bring a great friendship into being.

But I also observed a very interesting effect a pet had on my marriage. My wife and I love dogs and this was a strong point of agreement between us. There have been times when my wife and I were upset with each other and our dog would come between us and do one of two things: 1) she'd bark at us with this commanding intention that we stop fighting or 2) she'd come right into the middle of us if we were in bed or on the couch and snuggle up next to both of us. Invariably my wife and I would step back and start laughing, realizing that our dog was doing what she could do to end the upset.

Beyond the "marriage counselor" role that our dogs have played, they have always been considered a part of the family. And this bond had a very positive effect on the bond that existed between my wife and I and between us and our daughter. Anything that increases reality and agreement between people will also increase the affinity and communication. This principle (of the effect Affinity, Reality and Communication have on each other) is discussed in greater detail in this article.

Anyway, this is a much longer post than I had envisioned, so I'll wrap it up here. If you carry on further into this post, you can read the email that I received earlier today that I found very touching and every pet lover will enjoy...