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Is Marriage Obsolete? Part 2 – How To Create A Great Marriage

In Part 1 you discovered why half of American adults are not married and why children of divorce are afraid to get married. For modern marriage to survive, we have to build strong, happy relationships using the success tools you’ll discover during my radio chat with Dr. Doug Welpton. He’s the acclaimed, Ivy-league trained psychiatrist and family therapist who wrote the book, Attract Love, Intimacy and Money. He has helped thousands of couples overcome conflicts over sex, money, love and infidelity.

Children of divorced parents don’t have love models for making a commitment and staying married. And they’re afraid of marriage. We need to show our children how to love and be loved, know and be known and solve problems as they arise in a relationship. Let’s talk about the mindset you need to create a happy marriage.

“I had the mindset that happy couples should never fight and this caused my marriage to fail after 21 years,” Dr. Doug said. “We swept every issue under the rug until there was too much stuff we didn’t deal with. We weren’t communicating in ways to build a healthy relationship.”

So even top love experts may need to change their mindset before you can deal with conflicts as they arise. You believed the myth that happy couples don’t argue, and it cost you a marriage. What are some other myths about what it means to have a happy marriage?

“Some couples think you need to do everything together to be happy, and it’s not true.” he said. “No two people should be expected to like all the same things or hold all the same beliefs and values. And it’s perfectly okay if you’re different, if you like different kinds of movies or hobbies.”

I often say that if both of you are the same, then one of you is unnecessary. I also encourage dating couples to find out if you have compatible views on how you would deal with conflict, raise children, handle temptation and keep love alive before you decide to marry. How else should couples aim to be compatible?

“How you manage money is a key to a happy marriage. My wife is a spender and I am a saver,” Dr. Doug said. “I tried to change her to be more like me, which doesn’t work. Then I realized her spending brought most of the fun to our marriage.

“If you have two savers in a marriage you may save a lot of money but not have much fun. If you have two spenders together you may have a lot of fun but run out of money. In the larger sense, it helps if there’s a compliment so each person does something that the other person doesn’t do on their own.”

Since nobody’s perfect, you also need to get good at forgiveness. Most happy couples can forgive small oversights to serious issues instead of holding a grudge. It’s how you start fresh in a relationship. What are other benefits of forgiveness?

“Forgiveness can raise the bar on how you can make things better than ever,” he said.

You’ve written that love beats lust every time. How so?

“It’s easy to fall in love hard to hard stay in love. It’s easy to be lustful and want a pleasurable relationship. Problem is that lust doesn’t build love.” Dr. Welpton explained why it’s a serious misconception. “We’ve been misled to believe that just having sex and releasing our lust can give us a sense of connection or meaningfulness in being close, but that isn’t what comes out of it.

“Women are unfortunately following the path of men here, only to find out that having serial relationships with a lot of partners doesn’t lead to where you want to go. It doesn’t build a family; it doesn’t build the kind of connection we want in our lives,” he said.

The failure to commit also has health risks. Don’t happy couples often live longer, healthier lives than their single counterparts?

“Men clearly do better health wise in a happy marriage than they ever do living alone. Women do to,” he said. “If you lose a partner to death or divorce, you feel something’s missing by not having that partner to connect with, and it takes a toll on your health and longevity.”

How can singles experience the health benefits of happy couples?

“As a single person you need to fill your life with connections and be with people who really mean something to you.” Dr. Doug explained how singles and couples have been misled in what’s most important in life. “Many of us believe we should fill our lives with a lot of material goods and career success. But most of us don’t get satisfaction from this like we do in our relationships. How we help out and create meaningful, lasting connections is what fulfills us.”

And you can create a great marriage with advice from Dr. Doug Welpton. Claim your free e-book at http://Talk2MyHeart.com

And I’d like to give you all the success tools you need to affair-proof a marriage, revive passion and intimacy, and build even better relationships with your children, co-workers, clients and companions in life. If you’re single and want to recruit your perfect match, find out how I can help. Schedule a FREE strategy call with me at http://ScheduleMyFreeSession.com

Love deeply and live your dreams now,

Hadley Finch

About Hadley Finch

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