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Monthly Archives :

February 2008

Please Watch This Video
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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OK, this is slightly off the subject of marriage. It is more about me.

I have created my first YouTube video. It ain’t great. But it is an entry in a contest to help me be a best-selling author. Will you help? Just watch it. It is only 2 minutes long, and has two of my favorite quotes at the end.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K03lbxg3gPY]

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Valentine’s Day Message: Why Marriages Last
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Very frequently, I am asked by individuals, couples, even the press, “what makes a marriage last?” I chuckle a little because the answer is so simple (simple is NOT the same as easy).

But before I tell you the secret, I am aware that we are quickly approaching Valentine’s Day. At least in the United States, this holiday has become a retailer’s dream (and many an individual’s nightmare!). We have woven this whole ideal of romance into the fabric of this day.

Do you know who Valentine was? The facts are a little sketchy, but the theory is that it started with a Roman celebration where a lottery was held, matching girls and boys together for the duration of the celebration. Some of these became marriages. That celebration was, evidently, around mid-February, probably on the 14th.

Then enter Emperor Claudius. Claudius outlawed marriage, so that the young men eligible to be soldiers would not be encumbered by marriage. But a Catholic priest, Valentine, continued to perform marriages. He defied the emperor to honor love.

This led to his imprisonment and beheading. So his martyrdom was celebrated on February 14th, partly to overtake the Pagan celebration by honoring love in Christian terms.

Valentine was quite the counter-cultural! He refused to allow an emperor to prevent the union of two people who wanted to be together. And we have managed to bring back only the romantic, sexualized nature of relationships in our current celebrations!

So, that is the apparent history of Valentine’s Day, which leads me to the secret of a lasting marriage. You see, we have taken this holiday and made romance the cake, not the icing on the cake.

The secret to a lasting marriage? Two people who choose to stay married. That’s it. Marriages that last don’t necessarily have less conflict, more sex, more money, less anger, or anything else we assume. Marriages that last do so because each person makes a daily decision to stay married.

The commitment to the marriage, then, is the cake! From that commitment, a couple decides to work through difficulties. And since there is a commitment, a couple realizes they must come to some solution to the problems that arise in any marriage. Their solution just does not involve dissolution of the marriage!

When there is commitment, the cake, then romance really is the icing on the cake! It is not that romance and romantic feelings are unimportant. They just should not lead us into believing that their absence means a marriage is over.

Every marriage, successful or not, has times when passion wanes. That is the natural pattern of relationships. But those that share a commitment end up carrying the day when the passion is not the glue of the relationship.

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, and commit to commitment in your marriage!

If you need tools to help you get to the icing on the cake, grab my ebook!

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Excuse #4: “It’s Not My Fault!”
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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I have heard that one over and over: “It’s not my fault!” There are two subtexts to this:
1: “Since I am innocent, why should I have to do something?”
2: “Since I didn’t cause it, what can I do?”

Let’s say your house is on fire. Perhaps you didn’t cause the fire, but do you stand there and say, “this isn’t my fault” while the building burns around you, or do you take responsibility to get yourself and any others you can out of harms way?

While that one seems obvious, that is basically the issue at hand: we do not have to be at fault to take responsibility! In fact, those who study resilience (how people bounce back after challenges and crises), have found that this is one of the central issues that determines a person’s resilience. Can we take responsibility for making situations change without having to take the blame?

In fact, I would go so far as to say that blame should be dropped as an issue in marriage. Blame is always looking backward. Marriages recovering is about moving forward. To say it more simply, blame = backward, stuck, failure; responsibility = forward, progress, success.

And to apply the “burning house” metaphor further, why do you have to take action? Because the house is on fire! There are no options but to take action.

But to continue pushing against this excuse, I have yet to find a couple where one or the other was entirely blameless. We all act in ways that are not optimal. We all do things that hurt those we love. We all find ourselves responding in ways that surprise and sadden us.

In other words, we all have something we can work on. At times, the situation is this: we have worked to hard to make the relationship work that we are no longer being true to ourselves. Then, our task is to get back to the place where we are healthy. If we do that, we are taking responsibility for our own lives. We are able to make healthy changes in our lives that will likely lead to healthier places in our marriages.

“It’s not my fault” is only an excuse to keep from taking responsibility. Don’t fall for it.

Ready to take responsibility? Grab my ebook and get started!

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Excuse #3: “I Can’t Do Anything!”
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
By:

Do you feel hopeless and unable to change the outcome of your relationship? Then excuse #3 may be the thought that is running through your mind: “I want to do something, but there isn’t anything I can do.”

Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.” In other words, part of the issue is the mindset we enter a problem with. No doubt, you have tried to improve things in the past, and perhaps found no success.

But I would contend that a lack of success in the past does not predict a lack of success in the future. . . unless you just do the same thing you were doing before!

Another quote I love is from Albert Einstein. He wrote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Think about that — if you are thinking and acting in the same way you were when the relationship was deteriorating, then that thinking is not going to change the outcome. You end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy: same thinking equals failed relationship.

The point of getting outside help is getting a shift in thinking. When you see things differently, then you will have new tools with which to fix the relationship. It is like going into a home project with only a hammer and nails. Sometimes, you need a screwdriver and screws, or maybe even a saw.

Whenever you gain new tools, you gain new capacities for changing. Whenever you discover new understandings, you discover new possibilities for change. I was an amateur magician in my childhood. I remember having bought this really great magic trick at the magic shop. Little did I know that it actually required a bit of sleight-of-hand (I was hoping for the self-working!).

In the car, I discovered I COULD NOT do this trick. But I kept working at it. Then, I suddenly realized what I needed to do. The instructions had been there all along, but in an instant, they made sense! I could suddenly do the magic trick!

Now, I am not suggesting that your marital problems are as simple as a magic trick, but I have been in the field long enough to know that the problems are more basic and simple to solve than most people wish to believe.

Your task is to quit playing the victim excuse, “I can’t do anything,” in your head, and find some new ways of thinking and some new tools to work on your marriage. I invite you to try my ebook as a way to to this. You can grab it by CLICKING HERE.

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .