My parents live over 6 hours from us, but my children have been fortunate to be able to spend a week, each by themselves, being spoiled by their grandparents.  We always plan the weeks back-to-back, and meet after the first week at a half-way point to exchange children.

A few years back, at the end of the two weeks, our son needed to be retrieved.  So, my parents were going to meet us at the half-way point.  I thought to myself, “there really is no reason to drag us all there, just to grab my son and turn around to come home.”

The week before, I had had to spend most of the week at a work conference away from home.  But while I was away, I explained this to my wife, thinking “wow, what a relief it will be for her and my daughter to not have to spend 7 hours in the car.”

I flew in Friday evening, confirmed the plans for Saturday, and went to bed.  I was pretty proud of myself!  (That should have been my first clue!)

Saturday morning, bright and early, I struck out.  Nobody was even up yet.

So there I was, driving across the state, and starting through the mountains.  The story I was telling myself?  What a hero I was!  Everyone at home would enjoy a relaxing day, we would be back by mid-afternoon, and hey, I was sacrificing, “taking one for the team!”

Imagine my surprise when I called home, and my daughter answered.  I quickly realized all was NOT OK on the homefront!  She asked where I was.  I told her I was in the mountains, about 45 minutes from picking up her brother.  She was quiet and said “mom’s mad.”  Then I lost reception.

When I finally got to better reception, I realized that in my zeal to be the hero, I didn’t really listen to my wife.  She hadn’t so much agreed as had little chance to disagree.  She was wanting to go, wanting to ride with me, wanting to spend those hours in the car.  I had been gone for several days, and now was gone again.  I would have the joy of hearing about my son’s week.  I would see my parents, not her.

Wow!  The story in my head was NOT the story that was happening.  In my story, I was the hero.  In my wife’s story, I was the villain!

Who was right?

Turns out, the same thing happens to all of us!  Invariably, we tell a story more kind to ourselves.  But if everyone is doing that, then someone else is going to have to play the villain.  Unfortunately, in marriages, that is often a spouse.

My point?  Simply this:  when there is conflict, we usually tell a story that puts us in the best light, and by doing so, tell ourselves a story that puts our spouse in a poorer light.  In reality, neither is true.  We are never as altruistic, benevolent, and helpful as we spin ourselves.  And nor is our spouse as mean, malevolent, and destructive as we spin them.

Since we humans are all fiction writers at heart, making up the scenes as we go along, it is important that we be more careful with how we play the “protagonist/antagonist” plotline in our minds.  In fact, I always suggest we:

1)  See others as innocent.  Everyone really tries to do the best they can, albeit imperfectly.
2)  See ourselves as realistically as possible.  In the end, we all want what we want, and sometimes act in ways that are less kind than we would like to think.
3)  Realize that the plots, stories, and scripts we write in our heads do as much to limit us as they do to comfort us.  They comfort us by allowing us to believe what we want to believe, but also limit the possibilities that we need to be a bit uncomfortable.  That is what makes us grow!

I hope you will indulge me for just a single post that is slightly off the subject.  You see, my dear Grandmother passed away yesterday morning at the age of 95.  She was a dear soul that left a huge impression upon me.

My grandmother, Ruth, was an amazing person, probably the most optimistic person I have ever met.  Even through tough times, she always managed to see the silver lining.  What a rare commodity in a world of cynicism and deficit.  My grandmother was a woman of abundance.

A devoted wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, she lived through amazing times.  When my grandfather died over 30 years ago, she continued to consider herself married for the rest of her life.  When she and my grandfather lived through the Great Flood in Louisville, she remembers fondly watching the city come together.  What an attitude!

I vividly recall spending a week each summer with my grandparents, awakening to find my grandmother in a meditative mood, reflecting on the wonders of God’s creation — and I also remember her Sanka breath.  She did love that Sanka, although I have yet to figure out why!

And when I finished my dissertation, my grandmother relished reading it word-for-word.  Soon, I discovered that she also read all of my references, getting access to obscure books through inter-library loan.  I discovered she was still digging when she contacted me for some of the books that the library could not get.

I still believe that she more thoroughly read my dissertation than any of my faculty advisors, and I dare say, more closely than even I!

Part of what I understand about being a thriving human, one who sees marriage and life as devotion and growth, comes from that legacy.  My grandmother was always curious, reading books and asking questions all her life.  And she was devoted.  She loved my grandfather and was a partner with him throughout their lives together.

I will miss my grandmother.  But I know that she lived a rich and full life, one that spanned both depth and time.  Even with 95 years, I don’t think she wasted a minute.

You may not recall that on August 13, 1988, it was a Saturday.  It was also somewhere between 90 and 150 degrees in the mountains of North Carolina.  But I still recall melting away in my WOOL tuxedo. . . bathed in sweat, and waiting for my beautiful bride to come down the aisle.  People thought it was touching how I was crying throughout the service, as my father who was one of the pastors of the service (my father-in-law the other), handed me his handkerchief.  I was using it to mop my face, not my eyes (not that I wasn’t a little tearful, just not buckets!).

My mother-in-law, God love her, had matched the bridesmaids’ dresses to the stainglassed windows, and by golly, those windows were going to stay closed!  Well, they did, and we did survive the service.

I still smile about that.  But 22 years later, Kathy and I are still married.  Not just married, but happily married.

Many people wonder about me, writing and teaching on marriage.  They wonder whether I do what I say (I try), and whether my marriage is healthy.  Sometimes, people imagine I must be the perfect spouse (FAR from it!), because I “know so much about marriage.”  Just remember that knowing about marriage and knowing about your own marriage is not always a perfect match.

However, I believe we have a very strong and good marriage.  Not because we do it perfectly, but because we keep on trying!  And that is part of what I have learned in these last 22 years.  I am learning as I go.  Sometimes I learn fast, and sometimes I learn slow.  But my commitment is to keep moving forward.  That is what makes the difference:  we are committed to working through and staying together.

Do we have disagreements?  Absolutely!  Every marriage has its struggles.  The difference between marriages that make it and those who don’t is NOT the absence of struggle.  It is the commitment to struggle together, to stay together.

Which leads to another opportunity for growth:  In these 22 years, I have discovered the great gift of forgiveness.  Living so close together, the only way a marriage can survive is if both people decide to forgive, over and over, for slights that are accidental and sometimes even on purpose.

One day, I truly realized that not forgiving was doing ME the damage, not the other person.  Sure, it was hurting the relationship, but it was ME doing it.  What I really needed to do was to let it go, stop dragging it around, and decide to move back into relationship.  Thank God my wife is naturally forgiving and gave me something to see.  And given my propensity for hard-headedness, I gave plenty of opportunities for Kathy to demonstrate it.

I often hear people say “I just don’t have that loving feeling anymore.”  Thank you, Hollywood, for selling us the story of falling madly in love, and always feeling passionate!  That isn’t reality, but it is our measuring stick.  We assume that not having those feelings means the relationship is in trouble.

Problem is, there are times that I forget what I have.  Sometimes, I get busy, distracted.  I take for granted my loving, lovely wife.  I stop looking at her with those loving eyes.  But then, I pause for a moment and look into those eyes, or I see her do something selfless and loving, and I fall in love all over again.

In the meantime, I keep acting loving.  I learned that, too!  Love is a verb, not a feeling.  The feeling follows on the heels of acting loving.  And the feeling returns, when you stay committed to being in the game.  Two people acting in loving ways toward each other is unstoppable!

I believe, both from my practice and my experience, that the same two people can either drive each other crazy or be crazy about each other.  And the choice, known or not, is theirs.

No marriage is perfect, because there are no perfect people.  But the task is to keep perfecting, keep trying, keep playing, and keep the commitment.

Thank you, Kathy, for being my partner, friend, confidante, and love for these past 22 years!

I just received a marketing email from yet another “relationship expert.”  In it, he stated that it is “crap” that an expert would claim that someone can save a marriage, even if only that person wants to save his or her marriage.

I laughed, but then I was sad.  You see, this “expert” exists in the same realm of others that have given up on marriages where one person has “checked out.”  More than that, he is convincing others they can’t do anything!

What a shame. . . and what a falsehood!

On a daily basis, I watch people work on their marriage, starting by themselves, and restore their relationships.

So, let me be clear about my beliefs:  It is NOT possible to completely restore a marriage by yourself.  You CANNOT force someone to stay in a marriage.   You can’t, in some “magical” way, create a zombie of a spouse.

HOWEVER, you CAN start the process of restoration by yourself.  You CAN work to bring a spouse back into the relationship.  In fact, it has happened countless times in EVERY relationship, in smaller ways.

Every relationship has problems.  In my own life, there are times when one or the other is upset, and my wife or I approach the other, unilaterally, to restart the relationship.  One of us starts acting differently, apologizes, acts lovingly, etc.  Then, the other of us steps back into relating.

The question is how one begins acting, unilaterally, when a huge crisis is underway.  That is what I have specialized in, how someone can start the process.  From there, the other person must, at some point, rejoin the process.

Can someone save a marriage alone?  Absolutely!  Can someone start that process alone?  ABSOLUTELY!

Marriage is a relationship of balance. . . and a balance that is easily upset these days. Unfortunately, the solution many people choose to deal with the situation is to divorce. I say “unfortunate” because the vast majority of people enter into getting a divorce with a very optimistic view of the consequences. In fact, people underestimate the cost, the emotional toll, the length of time, the energy, and the consequences for children.

So, they blindly head down the road to divorce. The only ones to benefit from this action? The Divorce Industry, but the couple will not figure that out for awhile. And when they do finally realize this, they will be so angry with each other that they won’t care. That is the secret that many divorce attorneys will just not tell you!

But allow me to make an assumption here. Let me assume I am “preaching to the choir.” Let me assume that you are already on-board with me about the damage wrought by a divorce. Let me assume that you are not wanting to lose your spouse, that you don’t want your children split between homes, that you don’t want your finances devastated. Let me assume that you want to save your marriage, but you don’t know if a divorce can be avoided.

If your question is “Is it even possible to stop a divorce?” — then let us try and think through this together. You see, I don’t find it helpful to try and convince people to save a marriage. I only try to provide the information you need to do that.

So, consider the following circumstances and factors that determine the likelihood you will succeed in stopping a divorce and saving a marriage. But first, let me tell you that in my 2 decades of helping people deal with a marriage crisis, I never cease to be amazed by two things: 1) marriages that should not, in my estimation, end — do, in fact, end. 2) marriages that I think are likely to fall apart and end actually find healing and stay together.

One major lesson I have learned through this: It truly takes two people to make a marriage work, but it only takes one to royally screw it up (that is my technical term)!

That said, there are factors that play into the likelihood:

1) How long the problems have been known. This is not a matter of how long the problems have existed, but how long one person or the other has been aware of it. The longer a problem has been known, the longer someone has been asking for change. When that change doesn’t ever happen, someone often becomes more and more resentful, eating away at the marriage. So, when a threat is made to divorce, it is often more entrenched and defended.

2) Whether there is infidelity or not. First, let me say that statistics show the majority of marriages where infidelity has happened do manage to survive. Second, let me also point out that I did not say “whether has been infidelity or not.” We are talking here about whether the infidelity is current and on-going.

The reason is because the affair becomes idealized as the “better relationship,” and that can attract the person involved away from the marriage and toward the paramour. That said, the vast majority of extramarital relationships fall apart. Think about it: one day, the person thinks “that person cheated on his/her spouse with me. . . and that could happen to me!” Any relationship built on dishonesty already has the seeds of its destruction sown.

3) Whether children are involved. Parents are capable of pulling outside of themselves and seeing that a divorce would be difficult for the children. So, while it is easy to rationalize and pretend that everything will be okay, the parents know on some level that they are fundamentally ripping away the security the children have known. This gives more opportunities for healing and restoration of the marriage in relationships where there are children.

4) How a spouse responds to the threat of divorce. This is the one you have control over! You can’t go back and redo not changing earlier. You can’t stop a spouse’s infidelity. And you either have children or you don’t. But this one, you have control over.

Spouses that take action, that find the helpful information (as opposed to the lame and useless information floating around) tend to have the best chance for restoration. Why? Because good information will helps you avoid the mistakes that make things worse, helps you to create sensible strategies for reconnecting, helps you to understand what went wrong and what needs to go right. In other words, good information gives you the tools and understandings you need to make some real, lasting changes.

Albert Einstein observed that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Good information gives you new ways of thinking. And with that information, the chances of stopping a divorce and saving your marriage go up astronomically!

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Information and help can be found in my System, SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE HERE.