How do you know what is the best time in your life plans to get married? Many couples come to marriage therapy exploring this crucial question. Is this partner the right choice? Many people are ready to get married, but are not prepared to stay married. What’s the difference? Getting married is the romance and the sharing of your life up to that point. You are attracted to each other, and as my mother used to say, “He (or she) is a good catch.” Staying married is where couple counseling can help. Do you have the skills to move thorough the ups and downs of life; how do you make major decisions together; what about the first (second and third) huge fight?  The median age of women and men getting married for the first time is now 27 and 29, respectively. That compares to a median age of 20 for women and 23 for men in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center. Continue reading →

The US laws should declare 2 types of divorces. I believe Divorce between 2 people is completely different than a divorce that involves kids. Let’s call it super-divorce. Superdivorce is two adults separating with kids dragged unwillingly into the upheaval. Legal problems, property, housing, money should not be a child’s problem. Swearing, demeaning comments, blaming the other parent is so typical in divorces. Does any child benefit from hearing “Idiot!” “Slut!” or “You’re a loser, no one could live with you.”? Adults don’t even want to hear it; but those words sear hotly into a child’s psyche. Continue reading →

HELP. I’m Breaking Up with my Boyfriend

When a pair of lovebirds break up, expect pain, blushing, and anger. It’s a bust. The deal is broken. Your heart is raw, stabbed with razor thoughts. Imagine you go to a party and you see your Ex- dancing with someone else. That adoring look she gives him used to be for you. Don’t spas out. Of course you’re upset when he leaves you. Maybe you can’t go to that school reunion, because you are furious at the guy. Maybe he fathered your child and then forgot to get a job to pay for the child. (The term sperm-donor is said with hissing disdain from single moms who speak in my family counseling office.) Continue reading →

Committed couples sail through life’s high seas, some smoothly and some roughly. Except for a few eccentric eddies in the stream, most people adhere to the moral code of monogamy with their spouse. The creed of most Americans is to have one sexual partner at a time. But the fact is, another sexual partner may lurk below deck. More than other martial arguments, an affair rocks the boat violently. The marriage is stranded ashore, shipwrecked, or goes immediately into the repair dock. Marriage therapists are the mechanics when your relationship is struggling with multiple sexual relationships.

Few fixed statistics show how often affairs occur. The nature of affairs prevents honesty. (What respectable father who talks to his son about the ‘facts of life’ would admit to sleeping around?) Is an affair dishonest when nobody knows about it? Social scientists say grossly that about a third of married men and a fifth of married women have had an affair, a lover, a paramour. Within the US, about 1 in every 2.7 couples is touched by infidelity. (p. 1 Abrahms Spring, 2012)

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