Valentine's Day brings sweet expressions of romance. "I love you" fills telephone lines, mailboxes, airwaves, personal ads and cybertraffic. The price of flowers mysteriously rises in February. How do you say, "I love you"? Maybe a kind greeting in the morning or a phone call midday? A nice lunch or dinner can convey the feeling. So can a surprise...

Men, if you want to have a great relationship here is my advice to you: Stop trying to cheer up your girlfriend or wife.  I know this might not make sense to you right now, but trust me, it’ll be one of the best things you can do for your relationship. As a brand new husband, one rookie mistake I repeatedly made was always trying to fix my...

They say that when you marry someone you marry their entire family. There’s a lot of truth in that. In reality, you don’t just have to deal with parent-in-laws, there are sibling-in-laws, their respective spouses and children, grandparents, step parents and ex-spouses too. For both my husband and I there were things that were normal and accepted...

Learning to forgive is CRITICAL to building a healthy marriage. We’ve only had “little” offenses to forgive each other on this first year, but I’m not going to kid myself that “little” hurts are all that’ll ever touch our marriage.  Even so, in this first year I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice forgiveness (and so has my...

They say that “Life is always greener on the other side of the fence” and sometimes that seems to be true.  In the midst of divorce it’s easy to think that everyone else’s life is going better than our own.  But that can be dangerous thinking. Contentment is something that comes from within. We can’t order it from Sears, take a pill...

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I Just Called To Say "I Love You"

Don and Jen's love story started at a pool in Vancouver. After their first date he called her everyday, right around lunch time, just to see how she was. When he proposed she said yes right away. Not long after their first child was born, things got a bit more complicated. Don grew angry and Jen withdrew. They separated and two years later their...

I bet everyone wishes they knew the answer to this one. Before diving into the topic of conflict, one thing to understand about conflict is that it’s absolutely normal and to be expected in the marital relationship. Conflict doesn’t happen because you’re married to the wrong person; conflict happens because you’re human. One of the pitfalls...