After finding herself on the receiving end of her husband’s hurtful behavior one too many times, Andrea questioned me about a principle I shared in my book The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages: it’s important to believe the best of your spouse’s intentions. As she saw it, all that principle does is give your spouse…
Back in graduate school, I clashed repeatedly with one of my classmates, a guy with very strong opinions and a personality to match. Not being a wilting lily myself, it was easy for me to go to Mach 2 when he would say (in front of the whole class), in a condescending tone, “Shaunti, if…
One of the key relationship principles I shared in my book The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages is the importance of not holding anything back emotionally. Since the book came out, we’ve heard from a number of people who expressed uncertainty about the balance between being “all in” and having boundaries with our spouse as…
In my research with thousands of men for For Women Only, I discovered that the things that light your man up—and the things that hurt him—are quite different from those that would do the same for women. And while we know men are indeed visual and many times “external” in their thinking, there are actually…
It started off as a nice Saturday, right? Doing yard work together, going for a walk, and even a sitter scheduled for the evening. But then it seemed to go south fast with an argument about paying off the credit card versus taking a vacation at the lake. You want to get your finances under…
Every political campaign brings more contention into previously civil political conversation—among friends, Facebook “friends,” family members, and even between husbands and wives. Many of us couldn’t wait for the last election to be over, so some of the division and rancor could stop. But instead of a return to civil public discourse since the election,…
