How you make decisions in your marriage has huge implications for the success of your marriage. According to John Gottman’s three decades long study of over 3,000 marriages, 81% of marriages where one spouse makes most of the decisions end in divorce.

If one spouse has a “my way or the highway” approach to almost every decision in the marriage, from where to eat to how often there is physical intimacy, it makes it difficult for the other spouse to offer ideas. Eventually the other spouse becomes a “doormat” who feels oppressed. Over time the couple loses their emotional and physical connection until they are living different lives in the same house. Affairs and financial mistrusts occur and the dead relationship ends up in front of a divorce judge.

Who Makes The Decision?

We change over time and so does our marriage relationship. Our relationships go through cycles of moving closer to each other and seemingly growing more distant.

The relationship cycle is normal. It is how God built us. Neuroscientists tell us that our brain experiences a dump of neurochemicals when we begin to fall in love. The next 18 to 24 months as our relationship continues, we experience that loving feeling that is due to the “chemical cocktail of love”. But at some point in the first two years of our relationship, our brains chemical system automatically resets.

Communication is central to every relationship. How we send and receive communication with our spouse tears us apart or moves us closer together. Research from a number of fields is clear:   How we listen and how we communicate determines our success in relationships.

All marriages struggle with communication. Couples who do life together forever stay in their negative pattern of communication shorter periods of time and repair their relationship faster than those couples who fail to recognize their communication struggles and make amends.

How is your marriage’s communication?

This brief assessment is best when both of you do separately then compare notes. Take a few minutes and go through the following list and mark each question with who you believe does the question well: You, Your Spouse, Both of You, or Neither.

When we first started dating our spouse, our time together was filled with discovering each other, affection and laughter. The fact that we could laugh together was one of the most attractive things about our spouse.

As we make our relationship permanent with marriage and begin making a home, the things of life grab out attention. Household management, bills, chores, transportation, children, in-laws, and other important matters crowd laughter out of our relationship.

Freedom is not free.

We are thankful to be a part of a ministry, Shield Bearer, that serves, among other trauma victims, veterans and their families. In our work we hear how the experience of war impacts the daily lives of those who’ve served in freedom’s cause. Many of the families we serve are still paying freedom’s price as they move on through life without their spouse, parent, child or sibling.

As we enjoy another celebration of Independence Day with family and friends, we honor those who have paid the price for the freedom enjoyed in this nation. Veterans and their families are held in high regard in our hearts.   Thank you!

Within this great free country, most of us are living without personal freedom. Although some segments of our society live in modern day slavery and oppression, most of us fail to live in personal freedom from forces within us.

Don and Libby were sitting in our office in a Marriage Intensive in the aftermath of an affair. Libby had contacted a divorce attorney and they agreed to go to counseling for the first time ever in their 22 years of marriage.  Don was wrong to have the affair. But as you know from reading our articles, an affair or financial mistrust rarely happens in healthy marriages.

Somewhere in the midst of describing all the pain, Libby said, “I still can’t believe that he took that job. I told him that I didn’t want him to take the job and he took it any way.” The job he took was over 12 years ago.

As the day progressed, it became obvious that her resentment in those early years had created a negative pattern of interacting between them. Libby’s resentment kept her from truly connecting with him emotionally. She began to talk bad about him to other people, eliminate kindness toward him, and use the threat of divorce when they were in an argument. And their emotional and physical connection began to deteriorate to the point that neither really liked the other any more.

This is Part 2 of a two part series during which we want to share some basic facts about money matters in the marriage relationship. We are not accountants or financial professionals and recommend that you seek professionals in that arena for specific questions about your financial matters. However, based upon our experience in working with couples and our personal experiences, here are some basic marriage money matters for you to consider.