Vitamins for marriage

Through 35 years of counseling couples, I often thought of writing a book outlining how to keep a marriage healthy.

Like Luke De Sadeleer, I saw myself as a coach rather than a counselor, educating people who were willing to learn about ways of keeping their marriages exciting and alive.

De Sadeleer has written a book much like I dreamed of doing. I recommend this as a gift to any newly engaged or married couple. Vitamin C For Couples outlines how to keep seven important components in marriage. He shares stories of his own need for growth and skill development at various stages of his marriage.

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The vitamins, or crucial ingredients to a healthy marriage, include:

Caring Ð a concern for the other and also for oneself. He also outlines the danger of caring too much, of becoming people-pleasers to the exclusion of our own needs or carrying caring to a point where it takes over things that someone else could or might want to do.
Changing Ð versus accepting. We need to accept our partner, not try to change them into what we think they should be. Each member of a marriage is a unique person and won’t match perfectly.

The only thing you can change in your marriage is yourself and if you do that, the law of physics says there will be some reaction in your marriage.

Communication Ð is two way, and involves more listening than talking. De Sadeleer brings together good ideas, from many sources, spelled out clearly.
Connection Ð although we need to maintain our sense of autonomy as an individual within marriage, we also need to connect with each other, have a sense of interdependence as well. We need both physical togetherness and emotional togetherness. He quotes John Churton Collins who said “half our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking when we ought to feel.”

Conflict is a part of any relationship. De Sadeleer’s ideas, suggestions and exercises come from many sources.
Creativity, both emotionally and sexually, is what puts the sizzle into a marriage. De Sadeleer has practical suggestions in this area.
Commitment Ð the most important part of any relationship. When people forget this, even for a moment, they may say hurtful things to the person they love, and the hurt they cause will last much longer than they want it to.