“Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.” ― Nicholas Sparks
How to Connect with Your Partner Even if You Feel Distant
The dynamics between distancers and pursuers can complicate any relationship. Both patterns are natural ways of dealing with stress, so it’s really a question of compatibility.
Distancers deal with stress by withdrawing and tend to be men. Pursuers deal with stress by seeking more attention and tend to be women. Ironically, if our partners have a different orientation, both approaches tend to produce the exact opposite results than what we want.
Once you understand that distancing and pursuit aggravate each other, you can make changes that will strengthen your relationship. Select the strategies that match your style.
Wait 3 months. We all tend to be on our best behavior when we start dating someone new. Consciously or unconsciously we may be downplaying the habits that undermined our previous relationships. It may take a few months to see how people usually respond to stressful events.
Empathize with differences. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Imagine how they’re feeling. Respect the choices they make.
Accept accountability. Our happiness depends more on our way of thinking than on any external events. Focus on your own behavior rather than trying to change your partner.
Avoid taking things personally. It’s easy to feel abandoned or put down if the one you love avoids spending time with you or nags you. Realize that it’s their way of coping rather than a statement about you.
Choose to feel connected. We can always decide to feel connected. View your partner with love and concern even in the midst of conflict.
Strategies for Pursuers
Make the first move. Pursuers are likely to feel the most dissatisfaction with a relationship. Take the initiative to change your way of interacting.
Curb your enthusiasm. Your partner may respond to your intensity by drawing away even more. Try talking less and turning down the volume.
Practice small talk. Take a break from heavy issues. Warm up by discussing funny cat videos first.
Spend time apart. Nurture your independence. Take up a hobby. Schedule a night out with friends.
Offer more praise.Nagging rarely produces the results you want. Remind yourself of what you love in your partner. Thank them for making breakfast or picking up the dry cleaning.
Strategies for Distancers
Recognize the risks. Relationships often break up when pursuers find the status quo intolerable. You may need to take action if you want to stay with your partner.
Explain yourself. It may be okay to go on doing the same things as long as you give a little advance notice. Let your partner know you plan to work late or want to watch a ball game Saturday afternoon.
Reach out more. Demonstrate your affection and suggest activities that you can enjoy together. Cook your favorite dinner side by side and watch a romantic movie. Hold hands and kiss each other goodbye.
Share household responsibilities. Take an honest look at how much you’re doing around the house. Clean your rain gutters before your spouse asks you about them. Surprise them by doing a load of laundry when it’s not your turn.
Communicate your needs. Speak to your partner directly and tactfully about what you need. They’ll be likely to regard anything you have to say as being better than getting the silent treatment.
We often have tendencies for both distancing and pursuing, and they emerge in different aspects of our lives. The important thing is to control your behavior and work towards healthier ways of dealing with stress. Your efforts will be rewarded with more loving relationships and greater peace of mind.
“It’s OK to say no if you don’t feel moved by an opportunity—no matter how exciting it might sound to someone else. Happiness is a choice, but it’s made up of lots of smaller choices we need to make based on what we actually want.” ~Lori Deschene, TinyBuddha.com
Sometimes, life can feel overwhelming. Between the demands of a home, a family and/or a busy career, many people are finding themselves overworked and over-committed.
If you find yourself feeling this way, like you can’t seem to “get your head above water,” you might need to start re-evaluating your personal choices. It might be time to start saying no.
What’s so hard about saying no?
People-pleasers and victims of narcisissitic abuse are commonly among those who have trouble saying no to friends. After all, who doesn’t want to help a friend who asks for your help?
Unfortunately, there are times you simply need to say no when a friend seeks your assistance. Perhaps you’re way too busy or maybe your friend is asking you to do something that you’re uncomfortable doing.
It can be awkward to say no to a friend. No one wants to risk a friendship. You might be surprised to find out that it’s not that hard to say no and still be friends.
Follow these principles and you can say no without damaging your friendship:
1. Make certain you didn’t misunderstand. Misunderstandings are common. Maybe you didn’t hear what you thought you heard. Get clarification before you say yes or no.
* Maybe you’ll be able to say yes, if you first seek to understand.
2. Separate the issue from those involved. Once you’ve gotten clear on the issue and determined that you’re not getting involved, remember that you’re still friends. Being friends is separate from the issue at hand.
* Ensure they understand that it’s the issue or your own situation that’s preventing you from saying yes, not them.
3. Keep the focus on yourself, not your friend. It doesn’t go over well if you say something like, “I can’t lend you money because everyone knows you’ll never pay it back.”
* Let them know that you care, but explain why you can’t help. It’s important that they understand why you’re saying no.
* For example, you could explain that you have a policy of never loaning money because it has ruined friendships in the past.
4. Be firm and clear in your “no.” Many of us give weak, wishy-washy answers that give the other person hope that we might change our minds. Avoid giving false hope and just give a clear “no.”
* A clear “no” ends the issue quickly. It’s like pulling off a Band-Aid with one quick pull.
5. What is the underlying need? If you can determine what he really needs, you can help your friend come up with another solution.
* Sometimes, a person in need doesn’t have the capacity to find more elegant solutions. You could be of great assistance by taking the time to brainstorm and look for other alternatives in which you aren’t involved.
6. Find another way to help them. Maybe you could help with the current issue in some smaller capacity. Offer other suggestions.
* Maybe they have another need where you would be happy to provide help and support.
* One of the keys to keeping the friendship is to ensure they walk away with something from you, even if it’s only advice and empathy.
* If they feel worse than they did before they approached you, the friendship is likely to be strained.
* How we feel about others is largely dependent on how they make us feel. Do what you can to make your friend feel better without compromising your limits.
It’s never easy to say no to a friend. But sometimes saying no is the only way to maintain a friendship. If helping your friend comes at too great a cost, you’ll end up feeling resentful, which can kill the relationship altogether.
Take care of yourself and say no when it’s appropriate. Be supportive of your friends and try to help in other ways if you can’t acquiesce to their request.
If you can show that you’re empathetic and offer help in another way, your friendship should remain strong. It can be an awkward situation, but sometimes saying no is the best option.
Looking for quotes about good marriages? Quotes about happy marriages? Marriage and love quotes in general? Here are 543 of our favorites!
“I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence? ~Author Unknown
“What’s for dinner?” is the only question many husbands ask their wives, and the only one to which they care about the answer. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
[M]y mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they’ll never get all the pennies out of the pot. ~Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City, 1978
[W]hen you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. ~Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally
“A fool in love makes no sense to me. I only think you are a fool if you do not love.”-Unknown
“A good marriage at age 50 predicted positive aging at 80. But, surprisingly, low cholesterol levels did not.”-George Valliant, MD, Harvard Medical School
“A good marriage is a contest of generosity.” -Diane Sawyer
“A good marriage is each for the other and two against the world.” -Robert Brault
“A good marriage is good for you. That isn’t just a platitude. Mounting research shows that it is the literal truth. When your marriage is healthy, your body and mind are healthier.”-Cliff Isaacson
“A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.” ~Pearl Buck
“A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.”-Rainer Maria Rilke
“A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.”-Dave Meurer
“A great marriage isn’t something that just happens; it’s something that must be created.”-Fawn Weaver
“A great spouse loves you exactly the way you are. An extraordinary spouse helps you grow; inspires you to be, do and give your very best.”-Fawn Weaver
“A happy man married the girl he loves; a happier man loves the girl he marries.”-Susan Douglas
“A happy marriage doesn’t mean you have a perfect spouse or a perfect marriage. It simply means you’ve chosen to look beyond the imperfections in both.”-Fawn Weaver
“A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyment of sense and reason – and indeed all the sweets of life.”-Joseph Addison
“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”
“A happy marriage is a selfless journey in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” -George & Yvonne Levy
“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.”-Robert Quillen
“A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time.”-Anne Taylor Flemming
“A long-lasting marriage is built by two people who believe in -and live by- the solemn promise they made.”-Darlene Schacht
“A loving marriage helps transform us from the person we once were to the marvelous person we were always meant to be.”-Fawn Weaver
“A marriage is a gift. It should be opened up and enjoyed.”-Greg Evans
“A relationship is like a house. When a light bulb burns out you don’t go and buy a new house, you change the light bulb.”-Unknown
“A successful marriage isn’t the union of two perfect people. It’s that of two imperfect people who have learned the value of forgiveness and grace.”-Darlene Schacht
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”-Mignon McLaughlin
“A wise physician once said, ‘The best medicine for humans is love.’ Someone asked, ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ He smiled and answered, ‘Increase the dose’.”-Unknown
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great.”-Roger de Bussy-Rabutin
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”-John Lennon and Paul McCartney
“Any home can be a castle when the king and queen are in love.”-Unknown
“Any reason is a good reason and any time is a good time to say ‘I Love You.’” -Fawn Weaver
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” -Lao Tzu
“Being in a long marriage is a little bit like that nice cup of coffee every morning – I might have it every day, but I still enjoy it.”-Stephen Gaines
“Being loved makes us smile. Being married makes us grow…and smile.” -Fawn Weaver
“Being married is the nicest thing to be.”–Germaine from the movie, “If A Man Answers”
“Being someone’s first love may be great, but to be their last is beyond perfect.”-Unknown
“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.” -Simone Signoret
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”-Henry Ford
“Don’t compare your love story to those you watch in movies. They’re written by screenwriters, yours is written by God.” -Unknown
“Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without.”-James C. Dobson
“Enjoy the little things in life… For one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”-Kurt Vonnegut
“Excitement and fire are not qualities inherent to relationships they are what happen when two people make marriage the number one priority.”-Michele Weiner-Davis
“Family: Where life begins and love never ends.”-Unknown
“Follow your heart wherever it may take you and my heart is with You, YOU are my heart” -Belinda Descombes, HWC member
“For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.”-Rosemond Gerard
“Friendship is a deep oneness that develops when two people, speaking the truth in love to one another, journey together to the same horizon.” -Timothy Keller
“Good relationships don’t just happen. They take time, patience, and two people who truly want to be together.”-Unknown
“Happily ever after is not a fairy tale. It’s a choice.”-Fawn Weaver
“Happiness in marriage is a moment by moment choice. A decision to love, forgive, grow and grow old together.”-Fawn Weaver
“Happiness is by choice…not by chance.”-Unknown
“Happiness: “You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic.” ~Gretchen Rubin
“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.”-Tom Mullen
“Having a partner in this lifetime -to grow together, love completely, ride out every storm and overcome all of life’s challenges- is one of the most beautiful blessings of marriage.”-Fawn Weaver
“I can’t say anymore than I love you. Anything else would be a waste of breath.”-Elvis Costello
“I got gaps; you got gaps; we fill each other’s gaps.”-Rocky Balboa (Rocky, the movie)
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”-Mother Teresa
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”-Rita Rudner
“I miss you a little, I guess you could say, a little too much, a little too often, and a little more each day.”-Anonymous
“I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more.”-Candice Bergen
“I want a marriage more beautiful than my wedding.”-Unknown
“I’ve learned … that no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.” -Andy Rooney
“If it’s important to her, then it’s important to me.”-Greg Provance
“If you live to be 100, I hope to be 100 minus 1 day, So I never have to live without you.”-Winnie the Pooh
“If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wonders.”-Unknown
“In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced.” -Robert Sexton
“In every marriage, more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and to continue to find, grounds for marriage.”-Robert Anderson
“In marriage, each partner is to be an encourager rather than a critic, a forgiver rather than a collector of hurts, an enabler rather than a reformer.” -H. Norman Wright and Gary Oliver
“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.”-Albert Clark
“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything and two minus one equals nothing.”-Mignon McLaughlin
“In the enriching of marriage, the big things are the little things. There must be constant appreciation for each other and thoughtful demonstration of gratitude. A couple must encourage and help each other grow. Marriage is a joint quest for the good, the beautiful, and the divine”-James E. Faust
“In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the opposite: it begins all.”-Anne S Swetchine
“It is a risk to love – what if it doesn’t work out? . . . Ah, but what if it does!”-Peter McWilliams
“It is love that makes the impossible possible.”-Indian Proverb
“It is love that makes the impossible possible.”-Indian Proverb
“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”-Thomas Mann
“It’s always nice to have someone in your life who can make you smile even when they’re not around.”-Unknown
“It’s the little things that keep us together. Those little things will make me love you forever.”-Sonia Schaad
“Keep choosing happiness and happiness will keep choosing you.” -Fawn Weaver
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”-Oscar Wilde
“Keep the fire lit in your marriage and your life will be filled with warmth.” -Fawn Weaver
“Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can’t see anything wrong with each other.”-Rene Yasenek
“Lean on each other’s strengths. Forgive each other’s weaknesses.”-Unknown
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”-Victor Hugo
“Love and respect will make any good relationship better.”-Stephen Ramjenan
“Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.”-Sam Levenson
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction.”-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”-Franklin P. Jones
“Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made everyday, made new.”-Ursula LeGuin
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, it’s what you are expected to give — which is everything.”-Anonymous
“Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage.”-Finnish Proverb
“Love is a language spoken by everyone, but understood only by a heart.”-Shirley Rindani
“Love is a partnership of two unique people who bring out the very best in each other, and who know that even though they are wonderful as individuals, they are even better together.”-Barbara Cage
“Love is a promise; love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.” ~John Lennon
“Love is always bestowed as a gift -freely, willingly, and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved, we love to love.” -Leo Buscagalia
“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”-Peter Ustinov
“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.”-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Love is given to us as a time, but to keep it always, we must make it a place.” -Robert Brault
“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”-Unknown
“Love is life. If you miss love, you miss life.”-Leo Buscalglia
“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”-Joseph Addison
“Love is like the wind. You can’t see it but you can feel it.” -Nicholas Sparks
“Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart.”-Kay Knudsen
“Love is not blind – it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.”-Julins Gordon
“Love is not blind, it sees but it doesn’t mind.”-Rizi Jane Baldon
“Love is not something you look for… love is something you become.”-Alina Villasante
“Love is not what the mind thinks, but what the heart feels.”-Greg Evans
“Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. Love is not rude. Love is not self-seeking. Love is not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil. Love rejoices with the truth. Love always protects. Love always trusts. Love always hopes. Love always perseveres. Love never fails.”-1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ~Robert Heinlein
“Love is the greatest gift when given. It is the highest honor when received.”-Fawn Weaver
“Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.”-Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.” -Hoosier Farmer
“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something knew about yourself.”-Andre Breton
“Love like there’s no tomorrow, and if tomorrow comes, love again.” -Max Lucado
“Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.”-Michael Leunig
“Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart.”-Anonymous
“Love sees roses without thorns.”-German Proverb
“Make a list of ten of your spouse’s faults, which, for the sake of your marriage, you will always overlook. You can live with those ten.” -J & G Murphy
“Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.”-Zig Ziglar
“Marriage does not guarantee you will be together forever, it’s only paper. It takes love, respect, trust, understanding, friendship and faith in your relationship to make it last.”-Unknown
“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.”-Timothy Keller
“Marriage is a commitment- a decision to do, all through life, that which will express your love for one’s spouse.”-Herman H. Kieval
“Marriage is a mosaic you build with your spouse. Millions of tiny moments that create your love story.”-Jennifer Smith
“Marriage is a partnership of two unique people who bring out the very best in each other, and who know that even though they are wonderful as individuals, they are even better together.” -Barbara Cage
“Marriage is a thousand little things that make up the sum of our vows.” ~Darlene Schacht
“Marriage is like a fine wine, if tended properly, it just gets better with age.”-Unknown
“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. Its the way you love your partner every day.” -Barbara De Angelis
“Marriage is our society’s most pro-child institution. If you want kids to do well, then you want marriage to do well.”-David Blankenhorn
“Marriage is the virtuous exploration of love in its purest form and pleasure in its highest state.”-Fawn Weaver
“Marriage provides the solace of worked-on friendship and the joy of being known profoundly.”-Imogene Stubbs
“Marriage succeeds only as lifetime commitment with no escape clauses.” ~Dr. James Dobson
“Marriage. It’s like a cultural hand-rail. It links folks to the past and guides them to the future.” -Diane Frolov
“Marriage: If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. You shield it and protect it. You never abuse it. You don’t expose it to the elements. You don’t make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new. It becomes special because you have made it so, and it grows more beautiful and precious as time goes by.” ~F. Burton Howard
“Marriage: Love is the reason. Lifelong friendship is the gift. Kindness is the cause. Til’ death do us part is the length.”-Fawn Weaver
“Marriages, like a garden, take time to grow. But the harvest is rich unto those who patiently and tenderly care for the ground.”-Darlene Schacht
“Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking.”-Chinese Proverb
“More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.”-Doug Larson
“Motto for the bride and groom: We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract.”-Phyllis Koss
“My husband is one of my greatest blessings from God. His love is a gift that I open every day.”-Darlene Schacht
“My philosophy: If it doesn’t add love, trust & value to your life, it doesn’t belong in your life.”-Lisa Manyon
“New love is the brightest and long love is the greatest. But revived love is the tenderest thing known on earth.”-Thomas Hardy
“No one has ever measured (not even poets) how much love the heart can hold.” -Zelda Fitzgerald
“No relationship is all sunshine, but once you’ve learned how to play in the rain, you’ve discovered the secret to surviving the passing storm together.”-Unknown
“Nothing feels better than when you love someone with your whole heart and soul and they love you back even more.”-Karen Kostyla
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”-Bertrand Russell
“Once we figured out that we could not change each other, we became free to celebrate ourselves as we are.”-H. Dean Rutherford (in a letter to his wife on their 59th wedding anniversary)
“One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.”-Judith Viorst
“One day, in your search for happiness, you discover a partner by your side, and you realize that your happiness has come to help you search.”-Robert Brault
“One of the greatest gifts you can give your husband is your own wholeness.” –Stormie Omartian
“One of the most amazing gifts in life is to find someone who knows all your flaws, differences, and mistakes, yet still loves everything about you.”-Unknown
“One of the most beautiful things in the world is a woman’s heart. It is fragile yet strong. Delicate yet resilient. When a woman gives you her heart, she gives you her most prized possession. If you love, nurture, cherish and protect it, she’ll give you the world.” -Fawn Weaver
“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” -Antoine de Saint Exupery
“Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.”-Joseph Joubert
“Rules for a happy marriage: 1. Never both be angry at the same time. 2. Never yell at each other unless the house is on fire. 3. If one of you has to win an argument, let it be your spouse. 4. If you have to criticize, do it lovingly. 5. Never bring up mistakes from the past. 6. Neglect the whole world rather than each other. 7. Never go to sleep with an argument unsettled. 8. At least once a day say a kind word or pay a compliment to your partner. 9. When you have done something wrong, admit it and ask for forgiveness. 10. It takes two to make a quarrel, and the one in the wrong is usually the one who does the most talking.”-Unknown
“Show me a man who is smiling from ear-to-ear and living a beautiful life, and I’ll show you a man who is grateful for what he has and utterly in love with his wife.”-Fawn Weaver
“Sometimes two people stay together for the sake of the kids — two kids who sat under a full moon and pledged to be forever true.”-Robert Brault
“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.”-Barnett R. Brickner
“The beauty of marriage is not always seen from the very beginning…but rather as love grows and develops over time.”-Fawn Weaver
“The best love is the one that makes you a better person, without changing you into someone other than yourself.”-Unknown
“The best proof of love is trust.”-Joyce Brothers
“The best thing about me is you.”-Shannon Crown
“The best time to love with your whole heart is always now, in this moment, because no breath beyond the current is promised.”-Fawn Weaver
“The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly.”-Peter De Vries
“The couple who prays together – stays together.”-Unknown
“The difference between an ordinary marriage and an extraordinary marriage is in giving just a little ‘extra’ every day, as often as possible, for as long as we both shall live.”-Fawn Weaver
“The doors of happiness remain locked. When they are unlocked, they swing open quickly and widely but close right behind them. They must be reopened throughout each day and there is but one key that fits that lock: Gratitude.”-Fawn Weaver
“The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest.”-Unknown
“The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.” -Robert C. Dodds
“The greatest favour we can do our children is to give visible example of love and esteem to our spouse. As they grow up, they may then look forward to maturity so they too can find such love.”-Eucharista Ward
“The greatest marriages are built on teamwork. A mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace.”-Fawn Weaver
“The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they’re still alive.”-Orlando Battista
“The happy State of Matrimony is, undoubtedly, the surest and most lasting Foundation of Comfort and Love . . . the Cause of all good Order in the World, and what alone preserves it from the utmost Confusion.”-Benjamin Franklin
“The highest happiness on earth is the happiness of marriage.”-William Lyon Phelps
“The highest love a person can have for you is to wish you to evolve into the best person you can be.”-David Viscott
“The more things we can laugh about, the more alive we become: The more things we can laugh about together, the more connected we become.”-Frank Pittman
“The more you invest in a marriage, the more valuable it becomes.” ~Amy Grant
“The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It’s focused attention.”-Rick Warren
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”-Theodore Hesburgh
“The most precious gift that marriage gave me was the constant impact of something very close and intimate, yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant – in a word, real.”-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“The older I get, the less time I want to spend with the part of the human race that didn’t marry me.”-Robert Brault
“The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It’s a choice you make on your wedding day, and over and over again and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband…”-Barbara De Angelis
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all of the time.”-Julia Child
“The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.”-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The True Measure Of Success is determined by your home life.”-Dan Black
“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?”-Mary Oliver
“There are few things in life more beautiful than a couple in love and a marriage in full bloom.”-Fawn Weaver
“There are few things more frightening to a man than giving away his heart. And there are few things more comforting to a man than to know the woman he gave his heart to, will protect it with her life.” -Fawn Weaver
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.”-John Lennon
“There comes a time when a man and woman realize that their separate schemes can be better achieved as a conspiracy.”-Robert Brault
“There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.”-Ronald Reagan
“There is no greater risk than matrimony. But there is nothing happier than a happy marriage.”-Former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”-Henry David Thoreau
“There is no such thing as a perfect man or a perfect marriage. But the one I have is perfect for me.”-Fawn Weaver
“There is nothing more admirable than two people who see eye-to-eye keeping house as man and wife, confounding their enemies, and delighting their friends.”-Homer
“There is only one happiness in life; to love and be loved.”-George Sand
“They say it takes a village to raise a child. That may be the case, but the truth is that it takes a lot of solid, stable marriages to create a village.”-Diane Sollee
“They say, ‘It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.’ I say, ‘It is better to love and when you get discouraged, love some more, and never lose your love at all.”-Fawn Weaver
“This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.”-Rainer Maria Rilke
“To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.”-Robert Brault
“To keep the fire burning brightly there’s one easy rule: Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart – about a finger’s breadth – for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule.” -Marnie Reed Crowell
“To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up.”-Ogden Nash
“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”-David Viscott
“To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.”-Unknown
“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.”-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
“True story… Once upon a time there lived a wife with the most incredible husband ever… The End.”-Darlene Schacht
“Turn your love into promises, that when you doubt your love, you may simply ask, “Am I keeping my promises?”-Robert Brault
“Two things are owed to truthfulness: lasting marriages and short friendships.”-Robert Brault
“Walking with your hand in mine and mine in yours, that’s exactly where I want to be always.”-Fawn Weaver
“Was it love at first sight? It wasn’t then – but it sure is now.”-Ann Meara (comedian Ben Stiller’s mom), married 58 years
“We adore more than we irritate, that’s why we’ve lasted so long.” -Cathy Thorne
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”-Sam Keen
“We have the greatest pre-nuptial agreement in the world. It’s called love.”-Gene Perret
“We love the things we love for what they are.”-Robert Frost
“We sat side by side in the morning light and looked out at the future together.”-Brian Andres
“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”-Frederick Keonig
“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.” -Tom Robbins
“What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.”-Nathaniel Hawthorne
“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting.”-George Eliot
“What I love most about my home is who I share it with.” -Tad Carpenter
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” ~Emily Brontë
“When I am with you, the only place I want to be is closer.”-Unknown
“When people tell me they’ve learned from experience, I tell them the trick is to learn from other people’s experience.”-Warren Buffett
“When there is love in a marriage, there is harmony in the home; when there is harmony in the home, there is contentment in the community; when there is contentment in the community, there is prosperity in the nation; when there is prosperity in the nation, there is peace in the world.”-Chinese Proverb
“When you compromise your beliefs for the sake of gain, that is a lack of integrity. When you compromise your beliefs for the sake of greater understanding with your spouse, that’s called wisdom.”-Fawn Weaver
“Where there is love, there is life.”-Mahatma Gandhi
“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
“You didn’t learn how to play an instrument well in one night. It will take time to learn how to “make music” with your spouse too.” -J & G Murphy
“You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact they’re not.”-Jodi Picoult
“You don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as a result of being married to you.”-Richard Needham
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”-Dr. Seuss
“You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you, and then you meet one person and your life is changed forever.” ~Jamie Randall (from the movie, Love and Other Drugs)
“Your priorities aren’t what you SAY they are. They are revealed by how you live. What does your life say about the value of your family and marriage?”-Marriage Today
”…Your gift to me is uninsurable. No appraiser can put a value on it… It’s like fruit of the month or a lifetime subscription – a perpetual-motion happiness machine. It starts off fresh and brand new every day, shining up my whole world…”-Ronald Reagan – in a letter to his wife Nancy
”No one can go back and change how it started but a new future for any marriage can begin the moment one person begins to invest in it.”-Fawn Weaver
A butterfly in her cocoon
A church filled with family and friends.
A dog is much like a married man, obeying his master’s voice for the sake of his master’s touch. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together. ~James H. Boren
A fellow ought to save a few of the long evenings he spends with his girl till after they’re married. ~Kin Hubbard
A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband. ~Michel de Montaigne, Essays
A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones. ~Ellen Key, quoted by Sprading in Liberty and the Great Libertarians
‘A great spouse loves you exactly as you are. An extraordinary spouse helps you grow; inspires you to be, do and give your very best.’ -Fawn Weaver
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short. ~Andre Maurois
A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. ~Ruth Bell Graham
A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted. ~Helen Rowland
A little boy resting
A little girl praying
A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time. ~Anne Taylor Fleming
A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn’t love. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished. ~Zsa Zsa Gabor
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn’t want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing. ~W. Somerset Maugham
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. ~H.L. Mencken
A man without a wife is like a vase without flowers. ~African Proverb
A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals
A million stars without form
A perfect marriage is one in which “I’m sorry” is said just often enough. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. ~Joey Adams
A question asked in a Surrey school exam went: “Why do cocks crow early every morning?” A twelve-year-old replied: “My dad says they have to make the most of it while the hens are asleep.” ~Quoted in the Peterborough Daily Telegraph, 1983
A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. ~Benjamin Franklin
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
A swan in the lake
A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~Paul Sweeney
A wedding is just like a funeral except that you get to smell your own flowers. ~Grace Hansen
A woman ought to look up to her husband, if only a half-inch. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
A woman who loves her husband is merely paying her bills. A woman who loves her lover gives alms to the poor. ~Paul-Jean Toulet
Adultery is the application of democracy to love. ~Henry Louis Mencken, “Sententiae,” A Book of Burlesques, 1920
Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
After a few years of marriage, a man can look right at a woman without seeing her – and a woman can see right through a man without looking at him. ~Helen Rowland
After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6º of marriage! ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Against them while they stand so. ~Maxwell Anderson
Alimony – The ransom that the happy pay to the devil. ~H.L. Mencken, “Sententiae,” A Book of Burlesques, 1920
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse. ~Arthur Baer
All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble. ~Raymond Hull
Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage. ~Sydney J. Harris
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit. ~Pliny the Younger, Letters
An orchid in full bloom
And he vows his passion is
And when will there be an end of marrying? I suppose, when there is an end of living! ~Tertullian
-Andre Maurois
Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences. ~Isadora Duncan
Any married man should forget his mistakes – no use two people remembering the same thing. ~Duane Dewel
As a general guideline, never marry anyone that you can’t picture helping you go to the bathroom. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
As a man, I’ve learned that there is nothing easier in married life than pleasing your wife with your cooking. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent. ~Socrates
Bachelor: the only man who has never told his wife a lie. ~Author Unknown
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too. ~H.L. Mencken
Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him. ~Marilyn Monroe
Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won’t even lay down his newspaper to talk to you. ~Helen Rowland
Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left. ~Jean Kerr, Mary, Mary, 1960
Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. ~William Penn
Bigamy is having one husband or wife too many. Monogamy is the same. ~Oscar Wilde
Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect behind her. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
But married once, a man is stak’d or pown’d, and cannot graze beyond his own hedge. ~Philip Massinger, Fatal Dowry, 1632
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. ~Socrates
By the time you’re his
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret
Come, let’s be a comfortable couple and take care of each other! How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with. ~Charles Dickens
Courtship to marriage is as a very witty prologue to a very dull play. ~William Congreve, The Old Bachelor, 1693
Dew covered grass
Divorce: The past tense of marriage. ~Author Unknown
Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means. ~Henny Youngman
Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without. ~James C. Dobson
Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in shade. ~Leo Buscaglia
Either about God’s secrets or one’s wife. ~Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law. This is our idea of useless legislation. ~Author Unknown
-Fawn Weaver, Still
For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked. ~Bill Cosby, Love and Marriage
Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. ~Zsa Zsa Gabor
Getting married is a lot like getting into a tub of hot water. After you get used to it, it ain’t so hot. ~Minnie Pearl
Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive. ~Juvenal, Satires
God created sex. Priests created marriage. ~Voltaire
Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless
Has washed the dishes with his wife
He said one that would make me his wife. ~Author Unknown
He still is largely celibate. ~Christopher Morley, Washing the Dishes
Here’s to matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented! ~Heinrich Heine
He’s the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of. ~Mae West
Home cooking: where many a man thinks his wife is. ~Author Unknown
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being. ~Oscar Wilde
Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages. ~Barry Goldwater
Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended. ~Zsa Zsa Gabor
I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for,
I came from a big family. As a matter of fact, I never got to sleep alone until I was married. ~Lewis Grizzard
I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance,
I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan. ~Claire Cloninger, “When the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else’s Mouth”
I guess walking slow getting married is because it gives you time to maybe change your mind. ~Virginia Cary Hudson, O Ye Jigs & Juleps, 1962 (Thanks, Charlene)
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all. ~Lord Byron
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it. ~Lyndon B. Johnson
I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. ~Rita Rudner
I never even believed in divorce until after I got married. ~Diane Ford
I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late. ~Max Kauffman
I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night. ~Marie Corelli
I’d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage, and guarantee he’d be dead within the year. ~Bette Davis
If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse – as a man shoots himself. ~H.L. Mencken
If marriage were outlawed, only outlaws would have in-laws. ~Author Unknown
If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods,
If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry. ~Anton Chekhov
If you haven’t seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven’t seen her smile her prettiest. ~Kin Hubbard
If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you’d have a hell of a lot of overlapping. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
If you want to read about love and marriage, you’ve got to buy two separate books. ~Alan King
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married. ~Katharine Houghton Hepburn
If your husband and a lawyer were drowning and you had to choose, would you go to lunch or to a movie? ~Author Unknown
In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. ~Robert Sexton
In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. ~Robert Anderson, Solitaire & Double Solitaire
In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again…. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring. ~Enid Bagnold, Autobiography, 1969
In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar, a custom which is still continued. ~Helen Rowland, Reflections of a Bachelor Girl, 1909
In the early years, you fight because you don’t understand each other. In the later years, you fight because you do. ~Joan Didion
In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin – consideration for their feelings. As it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged. ~Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal, 1974
In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the opposite: it begins all. ~Anne Sophie Swetchine
Infinite, undying
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, 1850
It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being. ~Benjamin Disraeli
It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I’m just a kid. I don’t need that kind of trouble. ~Kenny, age 7, when asked if it’s better to be single or married
It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time. ~Balzac, Physiologie du mariage, 1829
It is easy to mistake being ready for a wedding with being ready for marriage. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
It is not for the fresh cheek, the full lip, the fair forehead, the parted sweeps of sunny hair, and the girlish charm of form and features, that we love the wives who have walked hand in hand with us for years, but for new graces, opening each morning like flowers in the parterre, their predecessors having accomplished their beautiful mission and gone to seed. Old love renewed again, through new motives to love, is certainly a thing lovely in itself, and desirable by all whose ambition and happiness it is to sit supreme in a single heart… ~Timothy Titcomb (Josiah Gilbert Holland), Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs
It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick
It isn’t tying himself to one woman that a man dreads when he thinks of marrying; it’s separating himself from all the others. ~Helen Rowland, Violets and Vinegar
It takes a loose rein to keep a marriage tight. ~John Stevenson
It was Mrs. Campbell, for instance, who, on a celebrated occasion, threw her companion into a flurry by describing her recent marriage as “the deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue.” ~Alexander Woollcott, While Rome Burns
It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married. ~Robert Frost
It’s a nasty divorce when they can’t agree on how to divvy up the His and Hers towels. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
It’s easy to understand love at first sight, but how do we explain love after two people have been looking at each other for years? ~Author Unknown
I’ve been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out. ~Lee Grant
I’ve sometimes thought of marrying, and then I’ve thought again. ~Noel Coward, 1956
Lady, make a note of this:
Leaves in the fall
Like good wine, marriage gets better with age – once you learn to keep a cork in it. ~Gene Perret
Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage. ~Finnish Proverb
Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight. ~Samuel Lichtenberg
Love is grand; divorce a hundred grand. ~Author Unknown
Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock. ~Author Unknown
Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. ~Mark Twain
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and church-begotten weed, marriage? ~Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Love-matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar. ~Countess of Blessington
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. ~Stephen Leacock, Literary Lapses, 1910
Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Marriage ceremony: an incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family. ~O.C. Ogilvie
Marriage changes passion – suddenly you’re in bed with a relative. ~Author Unknown
Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses. ~English Proverb
Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. ~Beverley Nichols
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she’s a householder. ~Thornton Wilder
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner. ~Charles Caleb Colton
Marriage is a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention. ~Ian Hay
Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution. ~Mae West
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness. ~Virginie des Rieux, Epigrams
Marriage is a meal where the soup is better than the dessert. ~Austin O’Malley
Marriage is a mistake every man should make. ~George Jessel
Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is a bicycle repair kit. ~Billy Connolly
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open. ~George Bernard Shaw
Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night. ~St. Jerome, Attack on Jovinian
Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest. ~Irwin Corey
Marriage is like a phone call in the night: first the ring, and then you wake up. ~Evelyn Hendrickson
Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole. ~John Mortimer, The Trials of Rumpole
Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed. ~Hoshang N. Akhtar
Marriage is nature’s way of ensuring that a woman picks up some mothering experience before she has her first child. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Marriage is not a word – it is a sentence. ~Author Unknown
Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them. ~Ogden Nash
Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy. ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Marriage is three parts love and seven parts forgiveness of sins. ~Langdon Mitchell
Marriage isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Let me tell you, honestly. Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce. ~Larry Gelbart, M*A*S*H, “Bulletin Board,” original airdate 14 January 1975, spoken by the character Frank Burns
Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity. ~Author Unknown
Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine. ~Honore de Balzac
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance. ~Michel de Montaigne
Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Marriage: A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other for ninety-nine years, or until death do them join. ~Elbert Hubbard
Marriage: A word which should be pronounced “mirage.” ~Herbert Spencer
Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Married life teaches one invaluable lesson: to think of things far enough ahead not to say them. ~Jefferson Machamer
Marry someone who looks sexy while disappointed. ~”Phil’s-osophy” by Phil Dunphy (Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan, and Dan O’Shannon, Modern Family, “Schooled,” original airdate 2012 Oct 10)
Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it. ~Josh Billings
Matrimony is a process by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had. ~Francis Rodman
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier. ~H.L. Mencken
Men never know how tired they are till their wives sit them down for a nice long talk. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards. ~Madeleine de Scudery
Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage – they’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry. ~Rita Rudner
Mistress: something between a mister and a mattress. ~Author Unknown
More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse. ~Doug Larson
Morning rays of sunlight
Most marriages can survive “better or worse.” The tester is all the years of “exactly the same.” ~Robert Brault
Most wives think of their husbands as bumbling braggarts with whom they happen to be in love. ~Jackie Gleason
Mother-in-law: a woman who destroys her son-in-law’s peace of mind by giving him a piece of hers. ~Author Unknown
My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn’t. ~Author Unknown
My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. I said I’d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit. ~Jerry Hall
My still point in a turning world
My wife says I never listen to her. At least I think that’s what she said. ~Author Unknown
My wife tells me she doesn’t care what I do when I’m away, as long as I’m not enjoying it. ~Lee Trevino
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you. ~Jean Rostand, Le Mariage, 1927
Never get married in college; it’s hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you’ve already made one mistake. ~Elbert Hubbard
Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you’ll meet that night. ~Paul Hornung
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. ~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1966
Never marry for money. Ye’ll borrow it cheaper. ~Scottish Proverb
Never strike your wife – even with a flower. ~Hindu Proverb
Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work. ~Author Unknown
No man expects a great deal from marriage. He is quite satisfied if his wife is a good cook, a good valet, an attentive audience, and a patient nurse. ~Author Unknown
No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married. ~Benjamin Disraeli
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single. ~H.L. Mencken
Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid. ~Harlan Miller
On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. ~Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast. ~Marlene Dietrich
One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again. ~Judith Viorst
One man’s folly is another man’s wife. ~Helen Rowland
One of the best things about marriage is that it gets young people to bed at a decent hour. ~M.M. Musselman
One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it. ~George MacDonald
One of you is lying.~Dorothy Parker
One should never know too precisely whom one has married. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
One shouldn’t be too inquisitive in life
One thing you learn in a long marriage is how many sneezes to wait before saying, “Bless you.” ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman. ~Joseph Joubert
Or polished up the silver plate –
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale. ~Robert Graves
Our marriage has always been a 50-50 proposition – with the possible exception of closet space. ~Gene Perret
Our wedding was many years ago. The celebration continues to this day. ~Gene Perret
Painted colors of a sunset
People do not marry people, not real ones anyway; they marry what they think the person is; they marry illusions and images. The exciting adventure of marriage is finding out who the partner really is. ~James L. Framo, “Explorations in Marital & Family Therapy”
Pity all newlyweds. She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think: How easy marriage is. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows – marriage does. ~Groucho Marx
Rain that cries no more
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook. ~Tommy Manville
Shivering and sighing,
Snow on a mountain
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three. ~Alexandre Dumas, fils
Some marriages break up, and some do not, and in our world you can usually explain the former better than the latter. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
Someone once asked me why women don’t gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensical reply that we don’t have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women’s total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage. ~Gloria Steinem
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. ~Katherine Hepburn
Spouse: someone who’ll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn’t have had if you’d stayed single. ~Author Unknown
Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition. ~Samuel Pepys
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. ~H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, 1916
Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner
That all your courtship’s at an end.~Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger. ~George Eliot
The best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once. ~H.V. Prochnow
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less. ~Brendan Behan
The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly. ~Peter De Vries
The chief reason why marriage is rarely a success is that it is contracted while the partners are insane. ~Joseph Collins
The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep. ~A.P. Herbert
The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting. ~Michel de Montaigne
The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character. ~Peter Devries
The eye of the storm
The highest happiness on earth is marriage. ~William Lyon Phelps
The husband who doesn’t tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn’t know won’t hurt him. ~Leo J. Burke
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin. ~Honore de Balzac, The Physiology of Marriage
The man who never in his life
The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
The marriage state, with or without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life. ~Richard Steele, The Spectator
The most dangerous food is wedding cake. ~American Proverb
The older I get, the less time I want to spend with the part of the human race that didn’t marry me. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast. ~Gabriel García Márquez
The reason for much matrimony is patrimony. ~Ogden Nash
The reason they’re called the opposite sex is because every time you think you have your wife fooled – it’s just the opposite! ~Walter Winchell
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret. ~Henny Youngman
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The surest way to be alone is to get married. ~Gloria Steinem
The total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. ~Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing – and then marry him. ~Cher
The view that a peptic ulcer may be the hole in a man’s stomach through which he crawls to escape from his wife has fairly wide acceptance. ~John Allan Dalrymple Anderson
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous. ~H.L. Mencken
The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle. ~Heinrich Heine
Then marriage may be said to be past in all quietnesse, when the wife is blind, and the husband deafe. ~Thomas Heywood, “Dialogues”
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage. ~Martin Luther
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for granted relationship. ~Iris Murdoch
There is no such cozy combination as man and wife. ~Menander
There is so little difference between husbands you might as well keep the first. ~Adela Rogers St. Johns
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake. ~Alexander Pope, The Wife of Bath, 1713
Think not because you are now wed
Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves ’em still two fools. ~William Congreve
Though women are angels, yet wedlock’s the devil. ~Byron, Hours of Idleness
Three rings of marriage are the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering. ~Author Unknown
Thus Dante’s motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: “Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.” ~Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
To avoid mistakes and regrets, always consult your wife before engaging in a flirtation. ~E.W. Howe
To keep the fire burning brightly there’s one easy rule: Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart – about a finger’s breadth – for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule. ~Marnie Reed Crowell
To keep your marriage brimming,
Two lovers dancing in the night
Two mothers-in-law. ~Lord John Russell, on being asked what he would consider a proper punishment for bigamy
Two things are owed to truthfulness – lasting marriages and short friendships. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Valentine’s Day is when a lot of married men are reminded what a poor shot Cupid really is. ~Author Unknown
Wasn’t marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt. ~Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926, Water in a vase
We have the greatest pre-nuptial agreement in the world. It’s called love. ~Gene Perret
We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years. ~Nick Faldo
Wedding rings: the world’s smallest handcuffs. ~Author Unknown
Wedlock is a padlock. ~John Ray, English Proverbs
What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. ~George Levinger
What we love about love is the fever, which marriage puts to bed and cures. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. ~Helen Rowland
When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife. ~Prince Philip
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. ~Sacha Guitry, Elles et toi, 1948
When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels desert heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy. ~The Brahma Sutras
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. ~G.B. Shaw, Getting Married, 1908
Why do married men gain weight while bachelors don’t? Bachelors go to the refrigerator, see nothing they want, then go to bed. Married guys go to the bed, see nothing they want, then go to the refrigerator. ~Author Unknown
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married? ~Barbra Streisand
Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan. ~Quentin Crisp, “The Art of Celibacy”
Winds that have ceased
With love in the loving cup,
Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses. ~Francis Bacon, “Of Marriage and Single Life,” Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, 1625
Woke up in bed with a gorgeous woman, who I’m going to have lunch and the rest of my life with. ~Jason Barmer
Women hope men will change after marriage but they don’t; men hope women won’t change but they do. ~Bettina Arndt, Private Lives, 1986
Women seem to be all right on bargains till it comes to picking out a husband. ~Kin Hubbard
You can never be happily married to another until you get a divorce from yourself. Successful marriage demands a certain death to self. ~Jerry McCant
You should never kiss a girl unless you have enough bucks to buy her a big ring and her own VCR, ’cause she’ll want to have videos of the wedding. ~Jim, age 10
“To keep the fire burning brightly there’s one easy rule: Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart – about a finger’s breadth – for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule.” ~Marnie Reed Crowell
Unfortunately, there aren’t many classes in high school or college that teach us how to be successful in long-term relationships and divorce is common. That’s regrettable, because a fulfilling relationship can contribute so much toward enjoying a happy and successful life.
There are many things you can do to strengthen your marriage and help make it last until death do you part. If you want to have the best chance of marital success, it’s a wise idea to learn some of these strategies.
The following tips are compiled from data gathered from researchers and are designed to strengthen and heat up marriages and make them last! (Please note: they should only be applied if you’re in a healthy relationship! If not, you can start fixing things right here.)
Have realistic expectations. It’s easy to make it through the early stages of a relationship when everything is new and exciting. But those annoying little habits aren’t quite as cute and endearing ten years into the future. A relationship requires work and energy to grow and thrive.
Become good at saying “I’m sorry.” Despite your best efforts, you’ll make mistakes in your marriage. Studies have shown that the people slowest to apologize are the ones most likely to stay single or get divorced.
Sometimes you have to decide if you’d rather be correct or happy. Be strong enough to say you’re sorry and move on.
It’s okay to argue in a respectful way. The presence of arguing in a relationship doesn’t affect its success as much as how a couple argues. One psychologist claims a 95% success rate for predicting which relationships would fail just by listening to an argument for five minutes!
The four factors that make all the difference when you argue are: contempt, defensiveness, criticism, and withdrawing. Avoid these behaviors and your marriage is more likely to survive.
Laugh together. Remember the good times you’ve shared. Talk about and relive them. Reminiscing about fun times helps keep couples together.
Consider creating some happy, new memories and remind your partner about the great times you’ve already enjoyed. Laughing together strengthens your marriage!
You need five good times for each bad one.Research has shown that marriages require at least five positive interactions for each negative one. What is a good interaction? A fun afternoon, a positive conversation, or a good hug. You know what a negative interaction is.
You can complain, but avoid criticizing. If your partner’s behavior is bothering you, it’s okay to point it out and ask them to stop. But, avoid attacking your partner. You can say, “It drives me crazy when you throw your dirty socks all over the floor.” But avoid saying, “You’re such a slob. What’s your problem?”
Most people can accept that they might be doing something bothersome. However, that’s different from being personally attacked.
A happy marriage is important for your mental and physical health–and if you’ve got kids, theirs too.There are times when we all have to put our own needs aside and do whatever we can to strengthen our relationships. These tips will help you work toward a happy partnership as you give your marriage the time and attention it deserves.
“I love romance. I’m a sucker for it. I love it so much. It’s pathetic.” ~Drew Barrymore
Love it or hate it, romance almost always helps to keep the spark in a relationship!
You’ll likely agree, but maybe you feel like you lack an understanding of romance altogether. Have you tried your hand at romance, but still haven’t quite mastered it?
Romance is a topic that many people in a relationship feel uncertain about. So you’re definitely not alone with your insecurities.
It’s actually pretty easy to develop and refine your romantic streak. Romance takes nothing more than a little creativity and a genuine interest in treating your significant other in a special way.
Try these tips to spark your romance:
1.Consider what makes you feel loved. Take a moment to think about what made you get those butterflies in the past. What special act caused the romance to bubble over?
Is there a special term of endearment your partner uses when speaking about you? Why not consider taking a similar approach?
Perhaps those “I’m in love with you” hugs that feel different from the others could be reciprocated more often.
Has your partner ever dedicated a song to the day you met and fell in love? That would surely make anyone melt!
2. Understand your partner’s likes. Being romantic can be as simple as doing things your partner likes. Create a bucket list of those things to make it easier to think of romantic gestures.
Does your partner love to dine at a specific restaurant? Why not set a dinner date and have the restaurant bring out a love token on cue?
Everybody loves massages! Offer a massage when your partner least expects it.
Is there a favorite dessert your special person loves? Instead of buying it at the bakery, try making it yourself. There are likely plenty of recipes for that dish on the internet.
3. Be yourself. It’s possible you haven’t exactly mastered romance because you aren’t being yourself. It’s pretty difficult to “play a role” that you’re obviously uncomfortable playing.
You’ve probably read that dressing in alluring lingerie is a surefire way to spark romance. But if you feel uncomfortable parading around in lingerie, you don’t need to. It will be blatantly clear to your partner that you’re not feeling it. And that’s the fastest way to kill romance!
It’s absolutely important to show that your gestures are genuine. Always choose things that you’re genuinely happy doing. One of the most significant victories comes when your partner realizes you’ve done it from the heart.
Sometimes all it takes is a little quality time. Show your partner that you’ve specially reserved time for just the two of you.
4. Create lasting memories. Make plans for an outing that you can reminisce on together years down the road. Being able to recall your romantic gestures helps to keep the spark alive!
Find ways to relive special moments.
If you’ve arranged a special occasion, why not get it videotaped? You and your loved one can watch it over and over.
Make a special event an annual occurrence. If it’s something that allowed the romance to spark, it’s a great idea to do it every year at the same time.
With these creative yet simple tips, you’re guaranteed to have ongoing romance in your relationship. Just remember that love and genuine desire to make your partner happy are key. Then it’s smooth sailing the rest of the way!
What are your favorite ways to get romantic? Share your thoughts in the comments section, below!
The dynamics between distancers and pursuers can complicate any relationship. Both patterns are natural ways of dealing with stress, so it’s really a question of compatibility.
“I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence? ~Author Unknown
Unfortunately, there aren’t many classes in high school or college that teach us how to be successful in long-term relationships and divorce is common. That’s regrettable, because a fulfilling relationship can contribute so much toward enjoying a happy and successful life.
Consider what makes you feel loved. Take a moment to think about what made you get those butterflies in the past. What special act caused the romance to bubble over?
