The answers are pretty simple. It's making them habits that's hard.



Here's the shortlist, but it's really his delivery and the details he provides that make it all sound so simple.

1. Accept painful emotions as a part of life.


2. Spend more uninterrupted, non-multitasked time with people who love and support you.


3. Exercise.


4. Cultivate gratitude.


5. Simplify.

I specifically like the emphasis on how #4 needs to be ritualized and not just "understood" in the abstract. I grew up in a religious family and am a "more spiritual than religious" adult. The loss of prayer is, even from an agnostic's perspective, a real loss in the sense that it deprives a person of a regular engagement in reflecting on things to be grateful for.

I wrote in my last post about how your view of the world impacts your relationships. You learn a way of being in your family of origin (the family you grew up in) and you and your partner both came from entirely different families. Even if you think you have a lot in common, it is soon apparent that differences in expectations can cause you a lot of pain and conflict. Today I'd like to talk about three common expectations that can give us trouble in our relationships.

1. The Happiness Expectation

One of the expectations that we often bring to a relationship is that marriage, or another person, will make us happy. I long ago framed an old cover copy of LIFE magazine, in which one half showed the wife lounging in bed being served breakfast on a tray by her adoring spouse. The other half of the cover showed the spouse, also lounging in bed being served breakfast by his adoring spouse! I am sure that I found this particularly enduring because of some of my own unfulfilled expectations. We expect the behavior of our partner to bring us happiness. For example, I fully assumed that my husband would be the one to handle the trash in our family. My father always took care of that chore in my family or origin. I assumed that taking out the trash was equal to an act of love. My husband, however, had a different idea. His mother took care of the trash and he considered it women's work. We battled that difference for many years before finally reaching peace. We still both try to pass off the task to the other, but we don't any longer make the same assumptions as to who owns the problem.

This idea that we our happiness depends on another person's behavior is a troublemaker. Happiness begins as an inside job and expecting your partner to fulfill all your needs will only lead to frustration – and unhappiness! I spent my early married years waiting for my husband to bring me flowers. That is not the way he shows me love and when I realized that, I began to buy myself flowers.

2. The Change Expectation

Another expectation that causes problems is assuming that your partner will change after you are married. If you don't like the package prior to the wedding day, don't assume that you can bring about change. I will admit that change does happen in response to each other in a relationship. Sometimes it’s changes we want; other times it’s changes we didn’t expect. But assuming that you will be the change agent in forming your partner into the perfect man or woman of your dreams is sheer fantasy.

Barbara Streisand said, "Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?" This is not a funny joke. Many people, when asked what they saw initially in their spouse, will produce a list of qualities and behaviors that were once endearing. Often these are the same qualities or behaviors now topping their complaint list! Perhaps your partner was spontaneous and fun loving. In later years, that might translate into "unpredictable" and "irresponsible." Or maybe you were serious and down-to-earth, only to hear now that you are "no fun," and "too boring." Beginning to accept your partner "as-is" is the beginning of a healthy relationship. We are often attracted to a person who is very different from us or our family and then spend a lifetime trying to make that person more like us!

3. The Peace-At-All-Costs Expectation

Many of us came from families where conflict was avoided at all costs. In those families, it is considered taboo to bring up topics that will cause anyone to become even the slightest bit upset. In other families, yelling and arguing are considered the norm and are not upsetting. Isn't it interesting that we seem to gravitate to someone who is the opposite of what we are accustomed to? Often the two types will marry and before long will wonder why there is such a disagreement in how arguments are solved. But the expectation that everything will always be smooth and that disagreements won't need to be worked out is also a poor start to a relationship.

Recognizing that these expectations exist is a good starting place for understanding why it is that two people who started out thinking that their relationship was perfect, find out soon enough that there is work to be done to make the relationship last!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?

When my husband and I were engaged to be married (40 years ago this month!), we were required by our church to have several sessions of pre-marital counseling. The pastor who counseled us was an older, single man. He asked us how we handled conflict. I answered, "That's easy! We fight and fight and fight and then I cry and he gives in!" I was dead serious. The pastor suggested that perhaps we weren't ready to get married and should put off our decision until we had worked out better ways to solve our conflicts.

Being all-wise at the age of 21, we were quite sure that this pastor, having never been married, couldn't possibly know what was best for us and had no right to tell us we weren't ready for marriage. Besides, our method was working quite nicely (for me at least), so we ignored his comments and proceeded to use this very method of conflict resolution for the next 6 or 8 years. I was the master of the long pout and could hold out for several days, if necessary, to get my way. My husband, himself a conflict avoider, wasn't happy with the outcome at times, but since his goal was to keep me happy at all costs, this method worked for him as well. We would kiss and make up and have great make-up sex!

A funny change happened about 8 or 10 years into our marriage however. At some point, my tears stopped moving my husband to give in, and we gradually realized that our methods weren't getting either of us any satisfaction. We began the long process of learning to fight fairly, learning to negotiate, learning to look at the possibility that we might both have a valid point in any given situation. Many methods, books, counselors, retreats, friends helped us along the way. I plan to bring some of those ideas to you in later posts, but today I want to talk about how my own world view changed.

We establish our world view in our family of origin (the family we grew up in) and usually don't realize that we are acting out of that world view. My world view was that the most important thing about an argument was being "right." If I wasn't "right" then my whole belief system began to crumble around me. I needed to be "right" to prove that I was a loveable, "okay" human being. If I was "wrong," then there must be something fatally flawed about me. Many of us suffer from this black and white thinking.

One of the most important changes you can make in your relationship is to begin to accept the fact that your partner's position on a given subject has equal validity to your own and that there is a possibility that you are both "right." For example, you might assert that the "way" to get to the grocery store is by taking certain streets, making sure that all of your turns are left turns. Your partner, however, may choose a route that goes past some familiar landmark and assert that this is the correct route. Is there a "right" way to get to the grocery store? Obviously, this is a simple example, and many far-more-complex examples abound in any relationship. What is the "right" way to discipline your child? Or the "right" way to clean the kitchen? Or the "right" way to celebrate a holiday? Or the "right" way to spend or save your money?

When I began to accept that both my husband and I had valid points in a disagreement, our relationship began to grow. I began to understand that we could both hold different ideas at the same time and both be "right." I began to look at the world as a place where not only black and white exists, but many colors and shades in between.

Think of some areas where you might be willing to consider your partner's point of view and begin to change the way you see the world!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?