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ARE YOU GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT?
50 years ago my mother, after 5 years of
marriage, told my grandmother that she wasn't sure she loved my father
anymore. My grandmother replied, "You have a house and a
child, he has a job and he comes home every night...what's love got to
do with it?" (Yes, my grandmother coined that phrase long
before the movie and the song became popular.) So my parents
stayed married and did the best they could to raise their 3
children....but times have changed and increasingly when couples are
unhappy they decide to split up.
Over 50% of first marriages and over 60%
of second marriages end in divorce. Despite these grim statistics
we have created a culture in which there is a stigma attached to talking
about relationship problems, seeing a couples therapist or even
attending a couples enrichment workshop. How much worse do the
statistics have to get before we can acknowledge how difficult it is to
maintain a good intimate relationship?
I will be presenting anecdotes, ideas and
facts about relationships over the next several months in my
"Articles". My hope is that they will stimulate
discussion and perhaps even enable you to make changes in your own
relationships. Remember if you keep doing what you have been doing
you will get the relationship you already have.
Are you ready to become more conscious
about your most important relationships? It is critical for us to
recognize that as a society we are beginners at understanding how to
have satisfying love relationships. There are no experts on
this journey...we are taking it together.
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