1. Your family and friends sit around the dinner table and tell stories you’ve been telling each other for decades.
2. You still talk with your spouse after having raised at least one child together.
3. You are friends with your parents despite their peculiar ways.
4. Your teenage son talks with you, and he wants you to meet his girlfriend.
5. Your teenage daughter brags about you to her friends.
6. You have had the joy of knowing your grandparents and your grandchildren.
7. You are able to have civil conversations with a former spouse.
8. You have learned that deciding to love someone who has hurt you offers you a greater challenge than harboring resentment.
9. You have benefited from the adage “Least said soonest mended.”
10. You know how to speak up for yourself.

A dad writes…

“I am fortunate enough to have shared care of my two children (5 and 7). They are with me half of each week and half of all holidays. As the children are with both parents a good deal of the time, they feel at home in both houses and have friends at both locations. My ex-wife and I live 5 minutes drive from each other. We do not get along.

“I don’t like the arrangements of 'visits' to the dad every second weekend. In every case I have seen the child ends up seeing the fortnightly visit as a boring inconvenience. The visits are nothing more than a visit. The “visit” parent does not get to share and bond with the child as does the “main” caregiver. All the child’s friends are at the other parent’s place. These arrangements also become a trial for the parent who has the child every second weekend and do not promote a healthy loving relationship with both parents and the child often views the other parent as an inconvenience.

“I live 12,000 miles from the rest of my family so my children can have a dad. I am making the most of what I have to work with in regards to location and work opportunities.” (Edited for space)

Neil / Australia

“I want to tell people that I married a very jealous person. Jealousy does not get better with age. I thought when I dated him he would get better once we were married because then he’ll know I’m truly committed. It didn’t. I thought it would get better when I had his children because surely he would then understand my commitment to him and the children. It didn’t. I thought if we could see a therapist it would get better. It didn’t. I divorced him 12 years into the marriage. Until a jealous person sees the problem and wants to change, your life will not get better with him in it.”

Thanks for your powerful testimony. Jealousy is NEVER an indication of love. Because feelings of love can be so overwhelming, a victim of another’s jealousy can feel inordinately empowered to live with or to accommodate jealousy within a relationship.

Jealousy is an individual matter, and, until he or she who has the problem is willing to face it (and it is usually a matter of control), neither person in the relationship will be free to give or receive all the potential a loving relationship can offer.

1. Speak openly of your love to your spouse, your children, and extended family.
2. Be quick to apologize when you are wrong or inappropriate.
3. Forgive.
4. Affirm the talents and goodness apparent to you in all whom you meet.
5. Live under the influence of wild generosity.
6. Write letters to those who have helped you succeed.
7. Anonymously buy, and have delivered, groceries for a needy family.
8. Resist the innate human urge to gossip.
9. Keep your anxiety in check (tamed, restrained) when faced with tough decisions.
10. Speak well of your spouse and family at every opportunity.

1. Unless all parties are meeting with the goal of reconciliation do not agree to meet. Meeting to hurt and damage each other will serve no helpful ends.
2. Set a date and a time and parameters for your discussion. Agree on limits of time and topic and do not exceed them.
3. Keep to the essential issues without bringing up old or irrelevant material.
4. Listen more than you speak.
5. Don’t draw unrelated people – especially mutual friends – into the conflict.
6. Make notes of what you’d most like to say before you go to the meeting.
7. Leave room for humor.
8. Avoid sarcasm and cruelty.
9. Recall what brought you together as friends in the first place.
10. Be willing to forgive before it is asked of you.

“My fiancé and I have been together for 5 years and something is suddenly wrong. I have tried talking to him about whatever is going on with him but he insists that things are fine but they do not feel fine. It just seems like chore to tell me he loves me or express any type of affection. Everything feels different and I hate it. Our wedding is in September and now I am wondering if he is getting cold feet and just can’t say anything. I have knots in my stomach all the time. What we had has faded. He says he loves me and nothing has changed. I try not to be suspicious and wonder if there is someone else. He seems to be getting more short and snippy and less and less happy with everything. I miss the man I fell in love with. I wish I knew what has changed, what is turning his head or even his heart. I wish he would stop telling me nothing is wrong.”

Put all your cards on the table! If this is how it is months before the wedding you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of struggle. Go face-to-face with him now rather than after the wedding.