5 Conversations You Should Have Before Tying The Knot

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You may be in premarital counseling now, or it might be the last thing on your mind. Either way, you already know there are a few delicate issues engaged couples are "supposed" to talk about before making it official. Here's what a few seasoned couples therapists say you should talk about before saying, "I do" (via TheKnot.com):

1. The Kids. If you haven't brought it up yet, now is the time to talk about whether you want children. But you shouldn't stop there. The experts think it's also important to discuss where each of you stand on issues that'll come up when you start trying to have kids and when they're actually around. For example, are you open to adoption if necessary? Or, how should the kids be disciplined when they disobey? These issues can become huge fights later, so it's better to go over them now.
It's okay to disagree on: The number of kids you want right now. "Once a couple has their first kid, they'll have a better idea of how many children they really want," says Jaclyn Bronstein, a licensed mental health counselor in New York. The number isn't as important as long as you agree on a timetable -- how many years you want to wait before you have children, according to Vivian Jacobs, a licensed marriage and family therapist in New York.

2. Money and your careers. Since one of the biggest things married couples fight about is finances, talk now to avoid arguments later. Decide whether you'll combine all your money or keep your accounts separate. Also, figure out which accounts you'll draw from for daily expenses and for large investments. If one of you is a spender and the other one is a saver, decide on amounts to set aside for the future and for personal spending that you both will be happy with. "No one has the right answer to what your money strategy should be," Jacobs says. "You just have to live within your budget, figure out what works for you, and be reasonable and communicate." Additionally, talk about your career plans. Where do you want to be in five years? How do you see your career, and your salary, progressing over your lifetime. Getting your expectations in line with reality will reduce money-related arguments later on, Jacobs says.

It's okay to disagree on: The number of hours you should be pulling at work right now. "If someone has a busy job and works 12- or 14-hour days, that might be a big issue at the beginning of a marriage," Bronstein says. "But maybe they agree that getting financially stable is more important in the long run." That's a trade-off that works, she says. 

For the other three tips, check out our source, 5 Conversations to Have Before Getting Married. 

Simple Ways to Connect with Your Husband

Photo from | Tomasz Wagner Mananetwork

April is Couple Appreciation Month! And one way to show your husband you appreciate him is by making sure you stay connected, just like you did when you first met. Check out the article below for ways to do just that:

Have you ever rolled over in the morning and not known the man lying next to you? I'm not referring to that time back in college -- I'm talking about the present. After years of marriage, you may start to feel like your husband is a stranger. Or is it that you feel he's getting stranger? Either way, here are five simple ways to stay connected to your husband:

1. Cook a meal together. Whether it's breakfast or dinner, it doesn't matter, as long as you're spending time together. How about getting up early Sunday morning and making a big, old-fashioned Sunday breakfast for you and the kids? Or sending the kids to a sitter and preparing a nice romantic dinner together?

You'll save money fixing the meal at home rather than dining out. Plus, you won't have to get "all dolled up" (unless you want to). Most importantly, you'll be using teamwork, which is the number one priority for any marriage.

2. Take on a project and get dirty. Tackle a big and messy job on your list -- cleaning out the garage, pulling up shrubs in the yard, organizing the attic. Make an afternoon of it, and do it together! You'll both feel a great sense of accomplishment that the job is finally done, and it'll feel great to know that you got it done by operating as a unit.

Now that you've worked up a sweat, why not draw a bath for two?

3. Spend a lazy afternoon going through old photos and reminiscing. Talk about the activities you used to do when you first started dating, and make a plan to start doing them again. You might not be able to do them all, but make the effort to do as many of them as you can, whether it is taking long walks, going to concerts or making out at the movies.

4. Play hooky! Plan a day where you can each stay home from work and spend the whole day home -- alone -- together -- doing absolutely nothing! Lay in bed all day, cuddle and watch movies. Make sure to turn the ringer off on the phone.

5. Make an effort on a daily basis to stay connected to your husband. Listen, ask questions -- be his partner in all aspects of your life. Something as simple as making it a point to say, "How was your day, honey?" every day when he gets home and listening to his response can make all the difference.

The most important thing to remember is that you are not in your marriage by yourself. Share your concerns with your husband if you're not feeling quite as close as you once did. Let him know how you feel, how it makes you feel and that you want to work on it.

Chances are, your husband will be clueless, but once he realizes that you are genuinely concerned, he'll jump right in and make more of an effort. Good luck!

Nicole Dean is a freelance writer for www.RomanceYourHusband.com -- a website dedicated to helping married couples stay friends and to help them remember why they married each other in the first place. 

10 Tips for Having a Smart Marriage(R) from the Smart Marriages Conferences

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1. Marriage matters. Married people and their kids do better on all measures of health, wealth, happiness and success. And married folks report having more and better sex than single or divorced people.

2. It's not the differences but how we handle them that separate successful marriages from the failures. Disagreeing doesn't predict divorce. Stonewalling, avoidance, contempt, criticism and the silent treatment predict divorce. Learn how to disagree in ways that help you fall more in love.

3. All happily married couples have approximately 10 irreconcilable differences -- 10 issues they will never resolve. If we switch partners, we just get 10 new issues that are likely to be even more annoying and complicated. Sadly, if there are children from an earlier marriage or relationship, disagreements about them go to the top of the list. What's important is to discuss our own set of issues just as we would discuss how to manage living with a chronic bad back or trick knee. We wish they weren't there, but what's important is to keep talking about how to manage them and still do the marriage "dance."

4. Love is not an absolute (a yes or no situation), and it's not limited to substance. It's a feeling, and feelings ebb and flow, depending on how we treat each other. We can learn new ways to interact and the feelings "of being in love" can come flowing back, often stronger than before.

5. Martial satisfaction often dips with the birth of a baby. That's normal. Marital satisfaction is at its lowest when there are kids in the house between 11 and 16. That's normal. We need to know what to expect, appreciate our parenting partner -- and hang on. It makes good sense to stay married for the sake of the kids -- and for our own sake. Even with challenges, it's a lot easier to be a parenting team than to be a single, divorced or remarried parent. Plus, there is a silver lining: satisfaction goes back up with the empty nest. The final stage of marriage -- a job well done -- is the real honeymoon period.

6. Sex ebbs and flows. It comes and goes. That's normal. Plan and make time for more "flows."

7. Creating good marital sex is not about putting the sizzle BACK INTO your sex life. Early marital sex is sex between strangers -- we don't yet know our partners or ourselves. The passionate sex is intimate sex based on knowing our partner and letting them know us. One of the most important tasks of marriage is to develop a satisfying marital sex style. It's not about going BACK; it's about going FORWARD together.

8. Repair attempts are crucial and are highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic, but the willingness to make up after an argument is central to every happy marriage.

9. Learn to welcome, embrace and integrate change -- to discuss and update your wishes, hopes and dreams -- on a regular basis. We often "interview" each other before marriage and then think "that's it." The marriage vow is a promise to stay married, not to stay the same. (Thank goodness!) Keep up-to-date with changes in your partner. Don't fear changes, celebrate them!

10. Try several different marriage education courses. Become informed consumers -- rate the courses, discuss what you liked best, which ideas were most helpful. Decide which courses to recommend to your kids, friends and family, which to give as wedding, anniversary and new baby gifts. The courses don't tell you what kind of marriage to have. That's up to you. They give you the tools -- the hammers, screwdrivers and levels -- so you can build the kind of marriage that suits you, one which can help you negotiate, and renegotiate, your own values meanings and goals.

Find a class here. Strengthen your own marriage and/or learn how to become a Marriage Educator and teach courses in your community.

By Diane Sollee, founder & director, www.SmartMarriages.com(R)

How to Enjoy A Stress-Free Marriage

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If you're like many married couples, you might find it difficult to find time for your marriage. And that lack of time to enjoy your relationship can actually cause you stress. All the stuff on your plate -- career, parenthood, chores -- isn't easy.

So, how do you keep stress from affecting your marriage? Here are some tips from Joanie Winberg, the CEO of National Association of Divorce for Women and Children:

Practice good self-care. Do something for yourself and as a couple daily, even if it's just for 10 minutes. Winburg suggests that couples take 10 minutes before going to sleep to share how much they appreciate each other and be thankful for what was achieved throughout the day instead of focusing on what wasn't.

Plan ahead. Create a schedule together to get all the important things done. Ask yourself this: Does this really need to be done today? Would anyone be affected if we didn't do it? If your answer is "yes" to either question, it's a priority. Focus on your priority to-dos first, then do other less important things.

Forget perfection. Relax and concentrate on what brings more ease into your life. Keep it simple.

For two more tips, check out 5 Tips To Enjoy A Stress-Free Marriage.

Marriage That Lasts a Lifetime

by Rob Scuka, Ph.D.

The engagement parties, the wedding showers, the big day itself and the honeymoon have all come and gone. They were wonderful, the memories are still fresh, and you want to keep the delight alive as long as you can.

You've heard that relationships change over time, that challenges will present themselves and that the "spark" won't last forever. Part of you knows that all that is true. But you are determined not to let that happen. Here's a recipe for how you can keep your relationship glowing in the first few years of marriage -- and beyond.

Commit to yourself that you will never take your relationship for granted. It's all too easy in the hurly-burly of everyday life, to get caught up in the externals of life such as work, household chores, television and the Internet. Even family and friends can draw attention away from your spouse.

Marriage entails making adjustments, and changing ingrained patterns of behavior can be challenging. A lot of the challenge is about finding the right balance: the balance between together time and alone time, between couple time and time with family and friends, between work and play, between fun time and down time. Finding the right balance often involves setting boundaries, establishing priorities and making commitments that will increase the odds that certain things actually happen.

You may be wondering: Does this leave any room for spontaneity, or do we have to so regiment our married life together that all the fun gets squeezed out of it? There's a challenge there, too: Over-regimenting one's life can be as non-nurturing of your relationship as taking an approach that is too laid back and unstructured.

So here are some concrete steps that will keep your relationship vibrant.

First, commit to scheduling a minimum of 15 to 20 minutes each day where you sit down with one another just to touch base. A wonderful way to begin this daily check-in time is to share a 'partner appreciation' with each other. A 'partner appreciation' is something you like or admire about your spouse or something that you appreciate that he or she did. Then you can share how your day went, how you're feeling at the moment or small points that you'd like to catch up on. However, this is not a time for complaints or big issues. Keep it positive.

Second, engage in mutual physical touch each day. This may sound like a no-brainer and the last thing that you would ever have to think about. "We touch one another all the time!" you might be saying to yourself. Over time, however  anything that initially may have been fresh and spontaneous runs the risk of becoming overly familiar and even routine. At that point, you may start paying less attention to one another's physical needs and what once seemed so natural and spontaneous begins to fall by the wayside. The antidote is to bring active awareness to engaging each other in physical touch so that it remains fresh in the moment.

Third, do something fun at least once each week. Yes, you are probably having lots of fun most of the time at this point in your marriage. But beware of the gradual creep of those external pressures such as work, friends, family or volunteer commitments that can begin to push having fun into the background.

Fourth, structure into your schedule a weekly dialogue time where you sit down together for an extended conversation about a significant issue, a potential or real problem area or even ways to enhance your relationship. The key to a successful dialogue is to follow a few simple guidelines:

• Only one person talks at a time and the other person does not interrupt.
• The person who is talking shares his or her feelings, concerns and desires regarding the issue at hand. 
• The other person tunes in emphatically, listens intently, then verbally acknowledges what the other person has shared. This is to be done without adding any commentary from your own point of view, but do try to "read between the lines" to identify what is implied in what your partner has shared.
• Repeat, perhaps several times, with each person remaining in the same role.
• Change roles so that the other person has a chance to express his or her feelings, concerns and desires about the issue at hand. It is helpful for the new person expressing to begin by saying what makes sense to you about what your partner has shared. 
• The partner's job now is to tune in emphatically, listen intently and verbally acknowledge what the other person has shared.
• Repeat, and go back and forth as long as necessary until both of you feel well understood.
• When appropriate, aim to come up with a solution that leaves both of you feeling that your concerns and desires have been taken into account, creating a win-win solution. The "secret" here is to commit yourselves to meeting your spouse's needs as much as your own.

This leads to one final recommendation: If you have not already done so, attend a marriage education seminar in order to learn how to communicate and dialogue more effectively. This, in turn, will enable you to deal with the inevitable issues that come up in any marriage in a manner that minimizes hurt feelings and disappointment and maximizes the satisfaction of being able to deal with issues in a constructive and respectful manner.

Repeat liberally every few years, and reap the rewards of a relationship that renews itself through a mutual commitment to enhancing your relationship.

Rob Scuka, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the National Insititute of Relationship Enhancement in Bethesda, Maryland and author of Relationship Enhancement Therapy: Healing Through Deep Empathy and Intimate Dialogue (Routledge, 2005). Information about the Relationship Enhancement Program and places where it is offered nationwide can be found at www.nire.org. Additionally information about Rob Scuka can be found at www.robscuka.com.  

5 Simple and Quick Tips for Improving Your Relationship

Want an instant love boost? Sometimes, all you need is the obvious for your relationship to feel fresh and new once again:

1. Make small, unexpected gestures. Many times, the best validation that you're loved and appreciated is when you experience an act that shows your partner is always thinking about you. Of course, planning a romantic date night takes thought and is always appreciated; but, buying your spouse a sweet treat just because you happened to pass a bakery and know he/she would love it really makes an impact. The feeling of "for-no-real-reason" makes the gesture mean a lot.
2. Let your spouse breathe. Why? Because you'll be more excited to see one another. Yes, having a person to come home to is a big plus of being married. However, sometimes, it's nice to walk into an empty home, and take a bubble bath or just chill out in front of the TV without having to talk. Whatever space your spouse needs, give it to him/her, guilt-free; you could make dinner plans with friends or conveniently come home late from work one evening. Just a little distance makes the heart grow fonder.
3. Write it down. While it may seem sappy or cliche to let your mate know how much he/she means to you, expressing your feelings (even when you assume they're known) is important in long-term relationships. Otherwise, you risk getting into "taking each other for granted" syndrome. You don't have to pen a 10-page love letter (or a really long email); an "I love you" written on your dry-erase board or leaving a "Have a fantastic day!" post-it note on the bathroom mirror is all it takes to let your significant other know you cared enough to take some time to write it down.

For the final two tips, check out our source.

How do you keep the romance in your relationship and/or marriage going?

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5 First Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas

You're coming up on the anniversary of your first full year of marriage -- happy anniversary! Traditionally, paper is the gift for the first wedding anniversary. However, it can be difficult to find ideas for gifts that feature paper prominently and that are romantic. Luckily, it's not impossible; read below for a few ideas that your spouse will surely love:

1. Tickets. Whether they're for a concert, sporting event or maybe a second honeymoon, be sure it's an event your spouse will truly enjoy.
2. An invitation. If you want to make dinner or take your spouse out, you can invite him or her with a nice invitation you create yourself or buy. This shows that you put thought into the date since you're paying attention to the details while still incorporating paper.
3. Scrapbook. Creating a paper scrapbook that features photos (which are printed on paper) is a very meaningful gift. You can focus on the wedding itself or document your first year as a married couple, from your wedding to your first anniversary.
4. Gift certificates. A gift certificate to your spouse's favorite store or spa or a movie rental subscription gives him the opportunity to choose whatever he desires. Also, this can be a good excuse to shop together, get a couple's massage or have movie night.
5. A love letter. There's nothing that says, "I love you," more than a thoughtful, sincere, handwritten love letter. Not only is it old-fashioned and sweet, it will also warm your spouse's heart.

For 10 more first wedding anniversary gift ideas, check out our source, 15 First Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas.

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How to Have a Happy Marriage

Photo from: lighthousemetch.com

Marriage can be difficult at times for all couples, no matter how much in love you are.  Fortunately, you can enjoy a fantastic and fulfilled marriage by simply working at it as a team. Here are a few tips to help you have a happy marriage:

1. Change you instead of trying to change something about your spouse. Many times, people marry thinking they can just change the person they married, shaping him or her into the "perfect" mate. Instead, you should accept your spouse for the person he or she is. And if there is a behavior that needs to be changed, give him or her your support and encouragement.
2. Remember that communication is key. This means talking through issues instead of holding them inside or yelling. By showing each other respect, you can work together like a couple should. Also, by talking, you two can understand each other's sides better.
3. Maintain intimacy. Keep in mind that this person is the one you love and the one you want to share your life with, and that means letting go of inhibitions. Being intimate is a great way to stay close and does wonders for any marriage. 
4. Accept your spouse's flaws. Of course, nobody is perfect, so you should learn to appreciate the differences you and your mate have. 

For six more tips, check out Ten Tips for a Happy Marriage.

8 Date Night Ideas for Newlyweds

Photo from: everydayhealth.com

One way to keep the spice and romance alive after you're married is to continue dating your spouse. Since you may be tired of going out to dinner every week, here are a few other ideas to try:

1. Head to the grocery store, and pick up some ingredients for an amazing meal. Return home, and cook together.
2. Perform a duet at a karaoke bar. Even if you can't sing, it'll be fun. 
3. Visit the zoo or museum. Check out the exhibits and chat about what you see and learn. 
4. Fill a picnic basket with some goodies like wine, bread, cheese and fruit. Head to the park, and share your feast. Bring along your picnic blanket, too.
5. Pretend that you're tourists in your own town. Visit one of the major sites, take pictures, and act like it's the first time you've seen the place.
6. Watch the sun rise or set from a beautiful place. 
7. Volunteer together, whether it's visiting a nursing home, organizing a fundraiser for a nonprofit or working at an animal shelter. Not only will you be spending time with each other, but you'll be making a difference as well.
8. Take a ride on a hot air balloon.

Want more tips? Check out 50 Great Date Night Ideas.