After a brutal 2013 (way too many deadlines and too much travel), our family was really REALLY looking forward to the working vacation we had this past week. Jeff and I had a speaking engagement on a week long marriage cruise to the Caribbean. (Suffering for Jesus.)  We brought the kids with us, spoke several…
Dear Shaunti, My husband and I have been getting irritated with each other lately. He said that I don’t appreciate him, which is ridiculous because I do! But he said that I never thank him for things like taking out the trash or mowing the lawn. Why should I thank him for doing something that’s his job? …
Dear Shaunti, I’m a working mom with two kids. We have a comfortable lifestyle, no major financial problems — just the typical mortgage and monthly bills — and I just got a big raise at work. Still, my husband seems stressed about work and frequently mentions his worries about layoffs. I don’t understand why he’s…
Author note: This is one of a series giving a sneak peek into what I discovered about what makes happy marriages so happy! After years of nationally-representative research with more than 1,000 couples, I reveal the twelve most important little habits in The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages: The Little Things That Make a…
Dear Shaunti, I was really looking forward to our second Valentine’s Day together, until I unwrapped my present.  A blender.  He knows that I like jewelry, and he’s the one who likes smoothies. I got upset that he was being selfish, and then he got upset and said he had seen me looking at that…
Author note: This is one of a series giving a sneak peek into what I discovered about what makes happy marriages so happy! After years of nationally-representative research with more than 1,000 couples, I reveal the twelve most important little habits in The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages: The Little Things That Make a…
