Living Intimately

Notes from the Marriage Checkup Project on walking the intimate path

by James V. Cordova, Ph.D.

Affirming the Container

Holding ourselves off from intimacy because we need this problem to go away first is a trap. If you drag your relationship into this trap, it will happily chew it up, spit it out, and ask for more. Read More

Healthy Miscommunication

We miscommunicate more commonly than we communicate accurately. Some level of miscommunication is a normal part of any conversation. If you think about it for only a moment, this state of affairs begins to make sense. Read More

God Grant Me Serenity

We are all familiar with the Serenity Prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that must be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Serenity, courage, and wisdom are the three attributes most needed in our endeavor to remain in intimate relationship with one another. Read More

To Love Me Is to Judge Me

One of the trickiest things about intimacy is that it requires that we allow ourselves to be judged. And not just judged, but judged guilty. Entering willingly into an intimate relationship involves stepping up as ourselves, with all of our baggage and none of our armor. Of course, in practice, it doesn’t actually work that way Read More

You Are Not the Person I Married

"You are not the person I married!" How many times have we heard this from each other? We hear it from people we know: "He's just not the same person I married anymore." We hear it from each other: "You've changed. This isn't what I signed up for. I don't even know you anymore." We hear it from our own tangled minds - "This isn't the person I married. Things aren't the same anymore." Read More

Attention Is the Most Basic Form of Love

There is an epidemic ravaging the health and happiness of American families. We simply have no time for each other. All of our attention is paid elsewhere. One of the most common relationship concerns we have found in our Marriage Checkup study is that partners stop paying attention to each other in the struggle to accomplish the myriad demands of the day. Read More

James Cordova, Ph.D. developer of the Marriage Checkup Project, is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and is a leading figure in the field of Couples Research and Therapy.

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