Stronger at the Broken Places

How challenges can strengthen your relationship

by Linda Bloom, L.C.S.W., and Charlie Bloom, M.S.W.

Just Hang in There—But For How Long?

The opening line of the chorus of the Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler”, goes: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em.” How true! Sometimes there’s a lot of wisdom in country Western music. The same could be said about marriage. One thing that most traditions do agree on is that marriage involves a commitment between two people. Read More

The Hidden Cost of Fitting In

Here's a story that you may have heard, but its message is timeless and it bears repeating. Read More

Why You Can’t Always “Just do it.”

Unless you’re very unlike most people, you’ve had the experience of failing to do what you really wanted to do not once or twice but countless times in your life. Read More

The Price of Success

As you probably know, J. Paul Getty was one of the wealthiest and most successful American industrialists in history. Fiercely ambitious from an early age, Getty made his first million at age 23 in 1916. He later went on to found the Getty oil company. Read More

Non-Reactive Listening

Jules and Sue came into marriage counseling clueless as to why there was so much pain and suffering in their relationship. After listening to each of them describe their situation however, it became quite obvious what the problem was. Read More

Amazing Grace

Charlie: On the verge of my fortieth birthday, I was going strong and fulfilling my life vision. I had a loving marriage, three beautiful children, a large comfortable home, a good income, and work that I loved. I was on the fast track to success, leading personal growth seminars all over the country and enjoying the good life. Read More

It's Not the Differences That Are the Problem

The next best thing to preventing conflict is having the skills to manage differences effectively. Differences are inevitable in relationships; conflict is optional. Read More

When You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling

"Jeremy told me that he loves me but he's not IN love with me. When I asked him what he meant, he couldn't really explain it. Something about no longer feeling the same way that he used to but nothing specific. I knew where this was going and sure enough I was right. The next thing he said was 'I want us to be friends, good friends'. Read More

Do Relationships Really Have To Be This Hard?

One of the most frequent questions that we hear from people is “Why is it that creating good relationships requires so much work? If it’s so natural for us to love one another, shouldn’t it be easier than this?” Read More

The Epidemic of Gray Divorces

Barbara and Jack got married twenty-four years ago. Barbara is fifty-one and Jack is fifty-two. Their oldest daughter is in college and their younger daughter, a high school senior, is soon going off to college as well. Over the years Barbara and Jack have drifted apart, avoiding each other in an attempt to keep the bickering to a minimum. Read More

The Hidden Gifts of the Financial Crisis

Lost homes, lost jobs, lost job prospects, lost savings, lost investments ... these are some of the many casualties of the downturn in the national and international economies. Read More

Get Smart

As most of us are all too aware, simply staying together isn't necessarily a measure of success in a marriage. A disturbingly high percentage of those couples who do manage to avoid divorce court live lives of "quiet desperation" characterized by a lack of fulfillment and intimacy on the parts of one or both partners. Read More

I Didn't Know That

A funny thing happened to us on the way to writing our recently-published book featuring couples with long-term exemplary marriages: we got to be wrong about some of the beliefs that we had regarding the factors that we thought couples needed to experience in order to create great relationships. Read More

Has Your Sex Life Got You Down?

If so, you may be suffering from an ailment that is common to a great many individuals and couples, more than most of us would imagine. And speaking of imagining, it's the lack of imagination that is the source of this problem. Read More

"The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn"

One of the great things about traveling, especially the kind of travel that takes you to far away places where people have customs, practices, beliefs and values that are different from your own, is that you get to see how different people can be in some ways and how similar we are in others. Read More

When Being Wrong is Right

Charlie: When it comes to relationships, it's very possible that the ten most powerful words you'll ever hear are "You can be right or you can have a relationship." And the most powerful word of those ten is "or." I first heard this phrase about twenty-five years ago when a friend from whom I'd been trying to gain some sympathy instead gave me something far more valuable: the realization that b Read More

The Real Key to Good Health

When we hear the word 'health', most of us think of diet, exercise, genes and . . . well that's about it. We like to focus on the first two because we have some control over them. As for the genetic factor, it's a little late to do much about that. Read More

The Break That Can Save Your Marriage

Jesse, our first born, was three years old before I was willing to leave him for a vacation with my husband, Charlie. To say that I had been an obsessed, overprotective, neurotic, overwhelmed mother was... well, just about right. My parents, who lived over four hundred miles away, were the only other people with whom I would entrust my baby. I wasn't totally wacko, but pretty close. Read More

True Love Isn't For Sissies

True Love Isn't For Sissies

"For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

- Rainer Maria Rilke Read More

The Three Magic Words

If the three magic words in real estate are location, location, location, then the three magic words in relationships are communication, communication, communication. But just as some locations are more desirable than others, some types of communication are more fruitful than others. More talking doesn't necessarily produce better outcomes. Read More

The Cost and Benefits of Emotional Honesty

"Most of us feel that others will not tolerate emotional honesty. We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others; and having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships." from Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? by John Powell.

"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." -Thomas Paine Read More

The “C” Word

One of the most frequently asked questions we hear from people (mostly women) these days is: "What is it about men and commitment?" If you look closely at this question you might notice a few things about it. First of all, it's not actually a question, but rather an assertion with a question mark at the end of it. Read More

Vive La Difference

Linda: During our first few years together, Charlie and I knew what kind of a relationship we desired, but it took more than hope to bring it to fruition. Like most people, we were up against conditioned patterns and lifelong habits most of which didn't support our vision. Neutralizing them would take discipline, devotion, time and practice, lots of it. Read More

Can I Give You Some Feedback?

If this question makes you feel like running for the nearest exit, it's not surprising. When most of us hear the word "feedback" we expect that what will be coming next is one or more of the following: judgments, advice, opinions, or maybe "constructive criticism". Read More

Who Comes First, the Kids or the Marriage?

Making your kids the centerpiece of your life may seem like a good idea, but generally it's not. Besides the more obvious risks and dangers such as overprotection, indulgence, and other practices that can lead to a sense of entitlement and prolonged dependency. Read More

Believing Eyes

One of the things that I notice about successful couples is that nearly all of them demonstrate a capacity to not only see the beauty and goodness in each other, but to reflect it back to one another on an ongoing basis. Read More

Going for the Gusto!

Linda: Back in the old days, at the very beginning of my relationship with my husband Charlie, what I wanted most in my life was the comfort and security of a committed partnership. I grew up in a family where chaos and struggle ruled and I was determined not to replay that scenario in my adult life. What I wanted was peace and predictability. Read More

Don't Underestimate the Value of Life's Little (and not-so little) Crises

Resilience has to do with the capacity to recover, learn, and grow from the experience of adversity. Resilience isn't acquired or inherited, but is developed in the process of surviving life's inevitable and often unanticipated difficulties and coming through these experiences with greater wisdom, compassion, understanding, and maturity. Read More

Is There (Marital) Life after an Affair?

When extramarital affairs occur in 55-90 percent (depending upon whose statistics you believe) of all American marriages, it might be a good idea to begin looking at whether such occurrences indicate an inevitable death toll to the affected marriage, as some "experts" claim, or whether there may in fact be a possibility for couples to heal the wounds that such transgressions often cause. Read More

Linda Bloom, L.C.S.W., and Charlie Bloom, M.S.W., are the authors of Secrets of Great Marriages: Real Truths from Real Couples About Lasting Love.

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