How to have and keep a happy marriage

The reasons given for divorce are numerous, but at the core of all dead and dying marriages is a relationship problem. Many marriages can be saved if the couple is committed to working things out. On the other hand, some marriages require a hard look at the relationship. Some should be allowed to die because the marriage should never have happened in the first place. Others should be allowed to die because the couple has grown apart.

Four big reasons marriages fail

1. The time factor

Feeling alone in a marriage is common in marriages where one spouse is absorbed with his or her career, hobby, or sport. A prime example of this problem is what probably happened to Wayne Dyer’s marriage.

Wayne Dyer’s wife, Marcelene, left him after 20 years of marriage. Neither Dyer’s fame as a self-help guru nor his fortune could hold his marriage together. How can this happen?

Dyer was a man well versed in the keys to finding your dharma (divine purpose in life). He also knew the hazards of leading your life by your ego. Yet he had a problem keeping wives. Three of them to be exact.

Wayne Dyer was a favorite of mine for years. I read his 1976 book “Your Erroneous Zones” and followed him closely from that time on. I watched him as he evolved into a better version of himself.

Dyer, was devastated when his last wife left him in 1981 and admitted going into a two-year depression. He blamed himself for the breakup.

In 1981, when Marcelene left him for another man, all the kids were grown. Wayne Dyer was already successful and didn’t need more atta-boys. Marcelene, who was the one primarily responsible for raising the kids, probably found herself floundering.

With her husband gone so much of the time, she may well have felt alone. This could easily have driven her from their empty nest into another man’s arms. Chances are the new man, a chiropractor, is going to come home every night after work and spend some quality time with her.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like Marcelene loved her Wayne, but it wasn’t enough to keep them together. She needed more Wayne time than his career would allow.

How to cure this marriage destroyer is to plan ahead. The day comes in any marriage when the kids are grown and then comes the big question. Now what? If only one of a couple has a demanding career, his or her partner may well be left feeling alone at best and or horribly lonely.

Ask yourself the question, what will I do when that time comes? That’s the question you need to answer in advance if you are a stay at home husband or wife. Will you get a job? Will you volunteer? The time to think about that is early because when that time comes, it may come too late.

2. The trust factor

Trust is important in any relationship and once it is gone it can be difficult, if not impossible to return. So, whether you believe the statistics that tell you that there is only a 15% or 50% chance your spouse will cheat, it’s going to come as a blow if it happens to you.

First, ask yourself if monogamy is normal and the way it should be. Chances are 99% of you will say yes. However, if you look closely at the behavior of our nearest genetic relatives, you will change your mind. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and great apes are all polygamous. In chimpanzee and great ape societies, males are dominant and fight for the right to mate with the females in their harems. In bonobo society, females are the dominant sex and bonobos are fine with having sex with most any other bonobo that happens along. Relative to our closest genetic family, the concept of a core family consisting of a mother, father, and the kids appears to only exist with humans.

To be fair, we do see the core family concept play out with species less like us genetically. This trait appears to be most prevalent when it requires both parents to tend the young thus assuring the survival of the species.

Sex and love are not mutually inclusive. Sex is a powerful drive. More so for some people than others. Keep that in mind before you throw him or her out of the house and file for divorce.

Men generally have a stronger sex drive than women. For many men sex is sex. Period. For many women, sex is the culmination of a romantic experience. (1)

Many years ago, I remember a woman commenting about a political notable known in my community as a womanizer. She said, “Having sex with him would make me feel like I just had sex with a public toilet.”

Let’s look at some possible reasons people cheat on their spouses.

If he cheats:

It may be due simply to his libido and have nothing whatsoever to do with his love for you
His sexual partner makes him feel important (ego driven)
His sexual partner shares common interests
He seeks the excitement of indulging in the forbidden fruit
He simply wants a change
His wife is no longer sexually attractive to him
Drugs and alcohol physically reduced his inhibitions

If she cheats

May be revenge when she discovers her spouse has cheated on her
He is not there for her as a companion
The new partner makes her feel special and or important
Her spouse is not meeting her sexual needs (not common)
Her spouse is emotionally abusive
Her husband is no longer sexually attracted to her
Drugs and alcohol physically reduce her inhibitions

When cheating occurs examine carefully the reasons why. If you determine you still love one another, take the actions to repair the relationship. However, know that large differences in sex drives may well lead to more cheating in the future. Sex drive is a powerful critter. (2)

Long-term loving relationships are hard work and require you to think of the other instead of yourself. Good marriages are born out of mutual respect (keep in mind respect is earned). Relationships are tightened by shared interests and experiences.

One of the best ways of curing this type of failing marriage is to recognize potential problems long before they arise. We humans like to blame relationship problems on the other. It’s hard to go look in the mirror, point at the image staring back at you, and say, “What am I doing wrong?”

4. The money factor

Spending habits

I have known two couples whose marriage was deeply and negatively affected by money problems.

In the case of Paula and Jim (names changed to protect their privacy), Paula is a spendthrift and Jim is exactly the opposite in that he believes in saving and investing.

Both have a high school education. They have one child, Jake, who is now a teenager. Jim has a good paying job with the postal service. Paula has had an assortment of low paying jobs over the years and is currently unemployed. Their son has difficulty in school. He’s a smart kid but refuses to do the work.

The marriage is the ultimate train wreck. Paula drives Jim nuts with her spendthrift ways. She has multiple times maxed out their credit cards. Jim finally cut them up and had the mail delivered to a P.O. box, so no more credit card invitations could be delivered to the house.

To hear Jim tell the story, you would think Paula’s spending habits were at the core of the problem. However, once you get to know Jim, it’s easy to tell that Jim may be equally to blame. On the surface, Jim is a friendly outgoing guy. The problem is he’s only this way with friends with whom he likes to spend his free time. He prefers them to Paula and Jake. In fact, he’s never cared much for Jake and has had little to do with the boy.

Jim admits that the only reason he stays married is that he doesn’t want to pay alimony and child support. He told me that it was cheaper to stay married than getting a divorce.

Paula, on the other hand, is an introvert and when she isn’t spending money shopping, she hangs with her mom. With no means of supporting herself coupled with no self-confidence, Paula also chooses to stay married.

Money is the only glue holding this miserable marriage together.

Jim and Paula could improve their marriage, but it would take commitment on both their parts. Will they do it? I’ll have to get back to you on that.

It is obvious that the problems Jim and Paula are having with their marriage goes far deeper than money, but money was at the root of the divorce between Frank and Dot.

Distribution of assets

Frank and Dot got married after Dot’s husband died and Frank had divorced his first wife. Both had adult kids. She had 5 and he had 3. Before they were married Dot insisted Frank sign a prenuptial agreement to ensure the assets she held would all go to her kids after she died.

Right out the gate, the couple had this thing with my money, your money, and our money. When they got married, they decided that her retirement would go in one account and his would go in a separate account. The idea was that they would each cough up 50% of their cost of living expenses out of these funds. Since Frank was still working when they got married, they set up a third account and that was to be their money to share.

Both Frank and Dot are wonderfully generous people, but there was ongoing rancor over money. Dot wanted to hoard as much as possible for her kids. Frank wasn’t worried about what he left to his kids but resented Dot’s apparent aversion to paying her share of their expenses.

Over the years the problem only got worse. They even battled over Christmas presents for their kids. Dot argued that the Christmas budget fund wasn’t fair to be split 50% for his kids and 50% for her kids because she had 5 kids and he only had 3.

When they decided to build a retirement home, all the money for the home came out of Frank’s account. Dot was fine with that but given Dot’s history of wrangling over every penny she had to spend, Frank’s resentment was inevitable.

Once the house was built, Frank decided he wanted to purchase a fifth-wheel so they could travel. Without consulting Dot, he bought it and put the title in his and his son’s name. Dot was furious. Not only had Frank not consulted her about the purchase, she wasn’t even on the title as equal owner.

Dot steeped and fumed for weeks about how horrible a husband Frank was. Finally, she saw an attorney and filed for divorce. The day she handed Frank the papers, he was working in his garage on a project he was making as a gift for her. Frank was dumbfounded, he hadn’t seen this coming.

He didn’t see it coming because Frank had the ability to argue Dot into silence about how she was feeling. She would talk to her friends about her resentments, but not Frank. It seemed to her it was no use talking to Frank because he never seemed to hear her.

As the weeks and proceedings went by, Dot started to have second thoughts about her decision to divorce Frank. She attempted to reconcile with him, but Frank was done.

Frank and Dot ended up with a legal separation. The courts ruled that half the house he had built with his funds was Dot’s. (Frank had been lax about not co-mingling funds and he had a lousy attorney.)

Today, Dot lives alone in a small apartment. Frank has moved on with lots of friends who visit him regularly in the new home he has built. He’s happy. However, one way to get Frank riled up is when the topic of Dot and their money arrangements come up in conversation. It’s a sore that never fully heals.

Lack of money

In the above two instances, a lack of money wasn’t the issue, but sometimes it is. When there is a lack of funds, the stress can be almost unbearable. There’s an old saying, ‘When money flies out one window, love flies out the other.’

It doesn’t need to be that way. I’m going to share with you how my husband and I worked things out. We had a mountain of debt. We started a business, had a large mortgage payment, and two teenagers living at home. We were holding our own until he had a major health issue and ended up taking an early retirement (civil service).

Suddenly our income was cut in half. I was the one handling the finances and I’m here to tell you panic set in. I sharpened my pencil and looked at the situation. No matter how sharp I got the pencil, the situation remained dire.

I had been a stay at home mom so hadn’t been in the job market for years. The debt was now and a job that paid enough to get us by was months in the future. Our business was hanging on by a thread and not making enough to pay the bills.

My sharp pencil told me that we had enough income to pay the bills every other month. That was the best we could do and still have enough left over to buy groceries and pay the utilities.

The first thing I did was get on the phone to our creditors. We had two credit cards, a Bank of America and a Citibank along with a small business loan from a local company. And then there was the mortgage.

The simple way out was to declare bankruptcy, but that wasn’t how I was raised. My mom and dad believed if you owed someone, you paid them. So, that’s what I decided to try and do. Step one was to call my creditors and let them know what was happening in our financial life. I told them they would be paid, but it would be every other month until things straightened out which was going to take some months. The only company that gave me flak was Citibank.

When I called Citibank, the credit person accused me of being a deadbeat and demanded I send their card back to them. He followed that with a cascade of additional threats. That’s when the stress turned to rage. I told the man on the other end of the line that they were going to agree with my terms of payment or I would simply declare bankruptcy and then they wouldn’t get a damn dime since there were creditors way ahead of them in line. (They left me alone after that and I haven’t done business with them since.)

Every month after that, I was in touch with my creditors just to let them know they were going to get paid. I didn’t wait for overdue notices, I was on it right away.

My husband and I had invested in a piece of property we were holding to cash out on when the market was better. We sold that property at a loss to pay off the mortgage. (By that time, I was on a first name basis with the person managing our mortgage account.)

I foraged and sold other assets we had. Over time, we climbed out of the hole. It was a horrible time for both of us. We didn’t travel any further than the grocery store which became our weekly outing. Here’s how bad it was. I remember one afternoon we were at the store and had to dig for change between us just to come up with enough money to buy a loaf of bread.

I feel very sorry for couples these days. So many of you have no assets to sell and are barely eking out a living with both of you working for salaries that are too low. My advice, or at least what I would do if I were in your shoes is the following:

I would first sharpen my pencil and take a hard look at my debt as in what I must pay out every month.
I would sit down and have a discussion with my spouse/significant other. We would not only look at our current situation but also look at ways to improve it.
If we worked at a minimum wage job, we would look at what we could do to increase our income. What jobs are available that pay a respectable wage and what skills do we need to get one of those jobs. We might consider starting a side service business of some kind.
We would make a plan
We would then set in motion the actions necessary to implement our plan.

One thing we wouldn’t do is bury our head in the sand and hope the bad thing goes away. That never works unless you’ve got a rich uncle on his death bed and you’re the sole heir.

4. Commitment factor

Believe it or not a lack of commitment accounts for 73% of the reasons couples file for divorce. The real problem is not a lack of commitment, but a problem with the relationship. Below I will discuss more about relationships.

Once you have the sense that your partner is no longer committed to making your marriage work, the first question that should pop into your mind is why.

Why did I marry this person? Why did s/he marry me?

In the case of Bob and Sue, the answer was easy. Bob had loads of money and Sue enjoyed spending it which didn’t bother Bob at all. He married a trophy wife. She was a beautiful ego-driven woman. Men often refer to this as having a ‘high maintenance wife.’

Over the years, Bob wearied of this empty relationship and divorced his beautiful wife. Later, he married a woman that truly cared for him and they remain happily married to this day.

Love comes second

Mutual love is usually given as the most important element in a marriage. However, it isn’t the most important. I have a close friend that I truly love but know I could never be happily married to him. He lacks the give and take necessary for a long-term intimate relationship to work.

More important than love is the right set of characteristics. You may have a different set than I do, but these are the most important things I would look for in a spouse.

Is he honest?
Is he compassionate?
What are his interests?
Will he be a good dad? (Of course, this one is if I intend on having kids.)
Does he have an upbeat outlook on life?
What is his relationship with his family? (Family is very important to me.)
Is he more liberal than conservative?
Are we sexually compatible?
Does he think for himself? (I would have difficulty respecting a guy that allowed others to do his thinking for him.)
Does he dislike killing things for the fun of it? I consider this an abhorrent trait and wouldn’t be compatible with a guy who liked to hunt.

The biggest problem I had in my marriage was that my husband wasn’t completely honest. Now he wouldn’t steal, lie, or cheat but he was passive aggressive. (I didn’t realize that until we had been married quite a while.) Here’s a small example of how a passive aggressive individual behaves.

Me: Let’s go out to dinner.

Him: Sounds good. Where do you want to go?

Me: Let’s have Mexican food.

Him: (long pause) Yeah, we could do that, but you know we haven’t had Chinese food in a while.

Me: Why didn’t you just say you wanted Chinese food in the first place instead of asking me in the hope I would give you the answer you wanted to hear? Chinese food is fine.

On the surface, this seems like a small problem, but believe me, it isn’t. Most of the rancor in our marriage was over his inability to be honest about what he was thinking. If you’re that type of person, don’t expect your spouse to always give you the answers you want to hear. Ain’t gonna’ happen!

Marriage is a business partnership with love thrown in to sweeten the deal.

Marriage is a partnership first and foremost. During courtship when we “fall in love” we don those proverbial rose-colored glasses. We only see the attributes of our prince charming or queen to be. That can be a gigantic problem later when reality sets in. Often, we even delude ourselves into thinking that our spouse will make us happy. Big news: Your happiness is your responsibility and yours alone.

You might identify potential problems down the road, but think you’re going to change the person. More big news. That’s not how it works. If she’s a miss prissy now whose idea of a great vacation is going to a fancy spa, don’t expect her to love that tent vacation in the wilderness. If he’s a sports fan, expect to be a sport widow during part of the year.

If you want a marriage or any other partnership to work here is what it takes:

Trust – If you are the jealous type, this one may be difficult for you.
Shared responsibility with clearly defined roles based on the skills each partner brings to the table. Decide who is going to have the last word on decisions (critically important).
Decide who is going to have the final word on how and where money is spent. We each have different levels of risk aversion. Some of us are very uncomfortable with anything we see as risky and others are willing to put everything on the line for a potential gain. If the difference is too great between partners, there are big problems coming down the road.
Honest and open communication – Learn to not just hear what your partner is saying, really listen to what s/he is saying.
Mutual respect – Without this, it’s almost impossible to make any partnership work.
Encouragement – Celebrate the success of your partner as though it were your own. Be there when your partner fails.

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