Category Archives: marriage advice

David Trinko: Unexpected math of a devoted spouse

  Marriage & Divorce, marriage advice
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Some people say marriage is a 50-50 partnership.

Bologna, I say. If you’re not giving 100 percent, you’re not doing your part.

Today marks the wedding anniversary of my wife and me, which gives me one more year’s confidence that maybe I know what I’m doing.

This one has a little added significance for me. I’ve now been a married adult longer than I was a single adult.

I married a little later in life, although most of my hair was still dark at the time. I spent a decade on my own, long enough to get stuck in my ways and think I knew something about life.

Sure, I’d worked in several places and seen some things. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I’d never really lived, though.

Living isn’t doing what makes you happy. Living is doing what makes someone important to you happy, simply because it makes her happy.

It took a long time to realize I wasn’t the most important character in my life’s story. It took marrying the right person.

I’m not the perfect husband. I didn’t marry the perfect wife. Together, though, we’re a perfect couple, perfectly suited for each other. I find strength when she needs it. She finds tenderness when I need it. We both find laughter when nothing seems funny anymore.

It only works because we’re completely and totally dedicated to each other.

There are times it feels like I’m working a little harder on our relationship. There are times I realize I’m not putting enough energy into it. Life’s funny that way, when we get distracted by unimportant things.

I don’t honestly remember single life anymore. I have a few anecdotes about adventurous things that happened over the years, but they’re just stories. There’s nothing about me capable of living those stories now.

My life and my heart are built around my wife and children now. That’s where I want to be.

I heard plenty of advice before I got married all those years ago. Make sure you get a night a week away. Keep separate bank accounts. Always have an exit strategy.

I’m happy to say I never followed any of that advice. It turns out most of the people offering marriage advice had unhappy marriages.

So take it from a guy who’s never had a bad day of marriage, despite several days that could’ve been awful: If you love fully and completely, 100 percent of the time, and your spouse does the same, you’ll never look back.

David Trinko is managing editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at dtrinko@limanews.com or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.

Advice to deal with blues following wedding

  Marriage & Divorce, marriage advice

By Maggie Parker
The Washington Post

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes depression. Wait . . . that’s not how it’s supposed to go.

Unfortunately, for some, that is how it goes. While many newlyweds are blissed out, others are hit with the post-wedding blues, and it can be debilitating.

“When the wedding was over, I was in a lot of pain,” Anna Shevel-Vreeland said of her 2012 nuptials.

Laura Stafford, professor and director of Bowling Green State University’s School of Media and Communication, and Allison Scott Gordon, associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s Department of Communication, have conducted two studies on depression in newly married women. In a study of 28 women they conducted in 2016, nearly half of the participants indicated they felt let down or depressed after their wedding, and some participants reported clinical levels of depression. In a 2018 study of 152 women, 12 percent reported feeling depressed after their wedding.

And a bad wedding isn’t to blame. In Scott Gordon and Stafford’s first study, none of the “blue” brides linked their feelings of depression or letdown to the wedding itself. “For even blue brides, the wedding appears to have lived up to their expectations,” they wrote.

Still, Jocelyn Charnas, a psychologist in New York who has been dubbed “the wedding doctor,” has found that almost everyone experiences some form of a letdown after the big day.

A wedding can put tremendous pressure on the couple, “and the more pressure and expectations, the harder the letdown can be,” Charnas says. Here are some tips, from newlyweds and psychologists, to help soothe the post-wedding blues.

– Recognize that a post-wedding slump is unavoidable. Charnas stresses that couples should expect a letdown after the planning bonanza is over. When Shira Andres was engaged, “everyone was interested in . . . asking me questions about my upcoming nuptials. Once I was married, people weren’t as interested in my life,” she says. She also pined for the planning. “Having something so huge to look forward to is a real motivator.”

“It flashes by in a second, and that hits you like a ton of bricks,” Andres says.

Pre-wedding stress doesn’t help. “Oftentimes we use wedding planning as an excuse to put off other things that might be anxiety-provoking, like going back to school or getting a new job, and when the wedding is over, we’re then faced with those things, and that can contribute to a sense of disappointment or stress,” Charnas says. One of the stressors could be the financial responsibility. “For brides and grooms who pay for the wedding themselves, now the fun is over, and they just have the bill.”

– While planning their wedding, couples should pick one night a week to not discuss it. That way, Charnas says, they can remember what it feels like to be a couple without a big event on the horizon. For example, by shifting their focus from wedding planning to discussing their expectations of married life, couples can deepen their relationship. “Focus on the beginning of the marriage, as opposed to the end of the wedding,” Charnas says.

– It’s not just brides who suffer from a newlywed nose-dive. Of the people I spoke to, the worst off was a groom. “I was so depressed, I honestly didn’t know what to do,” Brian Lambert recalls. Even the honeymoon, which he and his wife, Nicole, took a few days after the wedding, couldn’t lift his spirits.

– If you’re still feeling blue after six months, seek help. This is when the issue goes beyond the wedding. “When it manifests itself in a severe way, it’s more about some underlying and possibly pre-existing issue, like a clinical mental-health issue or a serious underlying problem in the relationship that has to be looked at,” Charnas says.

Shevel-Vreeland’s post-wedding depression in part prompted a difficult first year of marriage. While her husband was able to thoroughly enjoy their honeymoon, she was already in a post-wedding slump, and he couldn’t understand why they weren’t both experiencing the same bliss. This led her and her husband to ask themselves: “If we can’t be happy together on our honeymoon, when our marriage is free of worries and life-related challenges, how will we ever make it?”

Prone to depression, Shevel-Vreeland knew this was something worth discussing with her therapist. “I definitely spoke to her about it in our sessions regularly.” This helped, she says, because her therapist worked with her on moving past the emotional challenges she was facing after the wedding.

– Find a new goal to look forward to as a couple.

Bobby Brown said his marriage to Houston wasn't violent, despite allegations

  Marriage & Divorce, marriage advice

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Bobby Brown says he made some bad choices in his life but denied that his marriage to Whitney Houston ever turned violent, a reversal of a past admission.

Brown, speaking with reporters Friday about BET’s new miniseries “The Bobby Brown Story,” said such allegations involving his late ex-wife were “completely wrong.”

But in a 2016 interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Brown said he once hit Houston. He also told Roberts he is not “a violent man” and that descriptions of him as a “woman beater” are lies.

Brown appeared Friday at a Television Critics Association annual meeting at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Houston drowned in a bathtub in 2012. Coroner’s officials ruled the death accidental and said heart disease and cocaine were contributing factors.

“The spirit of my ex-wife is probably still here,” Brown said. “It just feels good to be here and to promote this movie, and to be able to smile and be here with my wife and my kids. We just came from Hawaii and it’s been a beautiful time. Being here is just another notch.”

Brown, who has been married since 2012 to Alicia Etheredge-Brown, said he still deals with the deaths of Houston and their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown “every day,” and that he doubted he would ever get over it. He credited the grace of God and his wife and children.

During a Q&A, the New Edition founding member was asked about his relationship with Houston in light of his plan to build an Atlanta domestic violence shelter to honor Bobbi Kristina, who died at age 22 in 2015. She, like Houston, was found in a bathtub.

When Brown was asked about news reports and court records involving a 911 domestic violence call Houston made in 2003, he replied, “The public record is wrong.”

Atlanta-area police said at the time that Brown allegedly hit his then-wife, leaving her with a bruised cheek and cut inside her lip.

Brown was asked what advice he would give the younger version of himself.

“I don’t know that I’d give myself advice, because everything I’ve been through in my life, it’s made me the man I am,” he replied. “I don’t have regrets. I have bad feelings about some of the choices I’ve made.”

The biggest misconception about him, he said, is “that I’m a bad guy.”

“I think the bad boy image came from me being on stage, not from me being a human being. If you see me in person, meet in person somewhere, you won’t call me a bad guy. You’d call me Bobby.”

“The Bobby Brown Story,” starring Woody McClain as Brown and Gabrielle Dennis as Houston, airs Sept. 4 and 5.

Solid marriage advice from divorcees

  Marriage & Divorce, marriage advice

There are things you learn in the breakdown of a relationship that you wish you could apply retro-actively. Of course you wish you were a better partner, or that they were a better partner—whatever “better” may mean to you. Maybe you realize you should have been kinder, or maybe you should have put your foot down more often. Either way, the past is the past and you can’t relive it. But you can learn from it. And if you’re generous, you can help others learn from your mistakes. Like the men and women in this video who’ve been there, done that and have lived to tell the tale.

Some key take-aways from the kind, generous and experienced souls who gave their time to share with us?

You need to be happy and to love yourself

No one’s going to do that for you.

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You need to be friends

Respect and trust are the foundations of any good relationship. If you don’t like each other, how can you love each other?

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You need to work out your issues

Maybe it’s with the help of a therapist, maybe it’s just learning how to fight fair.

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You need to keep having sex

Make an effort here. It’ll pay off.

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Sure, you might want to seek marriage advice from successfully-marrieds as well, but there’s value in the saying “failure is the best teacher.” Live and learn, friends and lovers, live and learn.

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