25 Ways to a Happier Marriage

by Les Parrott

Overview

A simple guide to helping couples find happiness in their marriage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617956058
Publisher:	Worthy
Publication date:	01/20/2015
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

New York Times bestsellers Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott are founders of RealRelationships.com and the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. Their best-selling books include Love Talk, Crazy Good Sex and the award-winning Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Their work has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today and on CNN, Good Morning America and Oprah.

Read an Excerpt

25 Ways To A Happier Marriage

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By Les Parrott

Worthy Publishing Group

Copyright © 2015 Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61795-605-8

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CHAPTER 1

Remember That to Reap Happiness, You Must Sow Holiness

Happily ever after is not a fairy tale. It's a choice.

Fawn Weaver

No doubt about it, love and happiness make beautiful music together. But truth be told, happiness is in short supply for too many time-starved and sleep-deprived couples. And the reason, we suspect, is that they don't work at it—or more likely, they don't know how to make it. Happiness, after all, is not something that happens; it's something you make.

Some even call it quits for this very reason, saying, "We're just not happy anymore." Really? Is being married supposed to make you happy? No. That's not how it works. Marriage doesn't make you happy—you make your marriage happy. As the saying goes, you bring your own weather to the picnic. A happy marriage does not depend on the right circumstances or the perfect person. A happy marriage is the result of two people committed to making a happy life of love together.

Every once in a while we encounter someone who tries to argue that making happy is a selfish pursuit. We understand that thought. After all, some silly and downright selfish things are done in the name of pursing happiness. Many a marriage counselor will attest to hearing something along these lines: "I'm not happy in this marriage; God wants me to be happy; therefore I want out of this marriage." This self-centered perspective is mistaking hedonism for happiness. They think their circumstances are supposed to make them happy. They are pursuing pleasure at the cost of meaning. Don't fall for this lie. Hedonism does not equal happiness. Hedonism, the goal of which is to maximize net pleasure, lacks meaning altogether. And meaning, as you'll see in this book, is a vitally important ingredient of true happiness. It's a fact, not just a biblical sentiment: You'll find more happiness in giving yourself away than in any self-centered pleasure.

Our long-time friend Gary Thomas, author of Sacred Marriage and many other books, is well known for asking this question: "What if God designed marriage to make us holy instead of happy?" How could it be otherwise? The pursuit of holiness can't help but bring an abiding happiness and joy. Why? Because holiness, being devoted to God's ways of being, subsumes meaning and love. And true happiness is never fulfilled without it. When we sow holiness, we reap happiness.

CHAPTER 2

Happiness Is a Skill That Can Be Nurtured and Refined

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances.

Martha Washington

Every language, without exception, going back to ancient Greek, has a word for happiness. But while we use the same word, we often don't mean the same thing.

People prior to the late seventeenth century thought happiness was a matter of luck or divine favor. Even the root of happiness, hap, means "chance." Happiness was not something you could control. It was dictated by fate or fortune. Happiness literally happened to us and was out of our hands.

Today we think of happiness more as a skill that can be developed. The founding fathers of the United States, in fact, made clear that happiness was a right to be pursued. This new way of thinking engendered more noble humanitarian sentiments—the belief that suffering is inherently wrong and that all people, in all places, should have the opportunity to be happy.

But this new way of thinking about happiness also comes with a challenge. When happiness becomes a given right, it backs away from being something won through moral cultivation, carried out over the course of a well-lived life. Instead, it runs the risk of becoming something "out there" that is not only pursued but also caught and consumed. And that's where the pursuit of happiness can cause problems.

Before we delineate happiness further, let's pause for a moment and ask: What is your definition of a happy life? Are you living it? Think carefully about this because your definition of happiness will influence every other significant decision you make. That may sound like an overstatement, but your definition of happiness really does frame your approach to living. If you think happiness is outside you, for example, you will make happiness into a search or a reward to discover or earn. If, however, you know happiness is inside you, then happiness becomes more of a compass, enabling you to live a better life.

These two basic perspectives are not so much the definition of happiness as they are the means to finding it. So let's make the definition easy. Ready?

Happiness is the emotional state of feeling satisfaction, playfulness, contentedness, amusement, cheeriness, serenity, gratification, elation, triumph, joy, and/or bliss.

It's important to note that happiness, in this definition, is a state. That means it's not static. In other words, even the happiest of people—the cheeriest 10 percent—feel blue at times. And even the bluest have their moments of joy. Like all feelings, happiness can ebb and flow. But for those who learn the appropriate skills, happiness has less to do with chance than with choice.

CHAPTER 3

Understand the Difference Between Feel-Good Happiness and Value-Based Happiness

The gap between our professed values and our practiced values is the gap between us and our happiness.

Marc Gafni

Happiness—the kind that embodies deep joy—is more than a feeling. To really get to the underlying meaning of happiness, you've got to not only pinpoint the feeling but also where it comes from. Why? Because the source of your happiness can make or break your personal pursuit of it.

When someone asked Eleanor Roosevelt to define happiness, here's what she said: "A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others." Mrs. Roosevelt obviously understood happiness to be an inside job.

Researchers call that intrinsic happiness because it's values based. It's the result of personal growth, healthy relationships, contributing to the common good. Extrinsic happiness, on the other hand, is feelings based and comes about from obtaining rewards, praise, money, status, or popularity.

Harvard social psychologist William McDougall said people can be happy while in pain and unhappy while experiencing pleasure. Take a moment to let that sink in. You can only be happy in pain when it's value based. And you can only be unhappy while experiencing pleasure when it's feelings based. We're really talking about two kinds of happiness that both result in feelings of satisfaction, gratification, and all the rest, but that have very different levels of shelf life.

Feel-good happiness is the momentary sensation of pleasure. When we joke around or have sex, we experience feel-good happiness. But here's the catch: we know from research that feel-good happiness is ruled by the law of diminishing returns. This type of happiness can lose its punch, and it rarely lasts longer than a few hours at a time.

Value-based happiness is a deeper sense that our lives have meaning and fulfill a larger purpose than just pleasure. It represents a spiritual source of satisfaction. And here's some good news: it's not ruled by the law of diminishing returns. This means there's no limit to how meaningful and happy our lives can be. Some like to call values-based happiness joy because it's deep and more abiding. That's fine with us. Whatever you call it, it's found in our values.

Value-based happiness is the great equalizer in life. You can find value-based happiness if you are rich or poor, smart or mentally challenged, athletic or clumsy, popular or socially awkward. Wealthy people are not necessarily happy, and poor people are not necessarily unhappy. Values, more than pleasure, provide a deeper well for true happiness, and it's a well everyone can drink from. After all, everybody has the potential to live in accordance with his or her values.

How to Increase Your Odds of Disappointment

Happiness has increasingly been thought to be more about getting little infusions of pleasure, about feeling good rather than being good. For the uninformed, happiness becomes less about a well-lived life and more about experiencing the well-felt moment. That's a dead end to true and solid happiness.

When feel-good happiness becomes more important than value-based happiness, hedonism rears its head. Andnarcissism isn't far behind. Feeling good becomes the ultimate goal. Toughing it out and self-sacrifice are avoided at all costs. Self-seeking indulgence becomes the name of the game. Their orientation toward external sources of happiness means they're looking for things like admiration, acquiring stuff, and status. And we know from research that people who lean into this kind of happiness report less satisfaction and feel less energized.

It's known as the hedonistic paradox: when one aims solely towards pleasure itself, one's aim is continually frustrated. That's what novelist Edith Wharton was getting at when she said, "If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." It's also what underlies what the great teacher Helen Keller said: "True happiness is not attained through gratification, but through a worthy purpose."

Of course, if you swing back the other direction too far and try to avoid feel-good happiness altogether, you risk becoming a stoic or puritan who relies on duty and represses pleasure to prove you can endure without having fun. And who wants that—especially in marriage? Either way, if you embrace one form of happiness exclusively, you instantly increase the odds for being disappointed.

Healthy happiness involves balance. That's why at the heart of this book you'll find a half dozen proven happiness boosters for couples that intermingle both feel-good and value-based happiness. They include things like counting your blessings, trying new things, attuning your spirits, and so on. While some may appear to be exclusive to one camp or the other, they're not. For married couples, these actions are not one-off tricks or techniques to conjure contentment. They are not mere mood managers. They are a way of life. Scratch that. They are a way of being happy in love together.

CHAPTER 4

Happiness Doesn't Equal Selfishness

Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.

W. P. Kinsella

Some people are afraid to value happiness. It's true. They think it's selfish. Until the eighteenth century, Western standards encouraged, if anything, a slightly saddened approach to life, with facial expressions to match. Walk through any historical portrait gallery to see what we mean—including the ambivalent smile of a Mona Lisa. Back in the day, good Protestants "allowed no joy or pleasure, but a kind of melancholic demeanor and austerity." They felt it best for sinful humanity to display a somewhat sorrowful humility.

Do you think that's what God wants? We agree with Catherine Marshall who asked, "Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can't be God's will? The God who made giraffes, a baby's fingernails, a puppy's tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite's call, and a young girl's giggle, has a sense of humor. Make no mistake about that."

Even Jesus said, "I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature."

Still, some sincere people, even today, have a tough time valuing happiness because they think it's selfish. But isn't the opposite really true? Isn't unhappiness the ultimate form of self-indulgence? When you're unhappy, you tend to be self-consumed. You take yourself pretty seriously. Happy people, on the other hand, are more selfless. When we choose to value happiness, gratitude, playfulness, and joy, we become easy to live with. If this sentiment doesn't sit so well with you, if you're holding onto the idea that happiness is selfish, hang in there with us. We're going to shed more light on this in future chapters.

This book is dedicated to helping you be happy in love together. Does that mean the proverbial fairy tale of living happily ever after? We'll get to that. For now it means being easy to live with. And that makes every couple happy.

CHAPTER 5

Remember That Money Can't Buy Lasting Happiness

There is nothing wrong with people possessing money. The wrong comes when money possesses people.

Billy Graham

If you think money is the key that unlocks the door to a happy marriage, think again. As the old saying goes, you can't buy happiness.

We can almost hear you saying, "Well, I wouldn't mind having to struggle to be happier with a few extra million dollars in my bank account." Okay. We hear that. But beware. A landmark study on happiness and major lottery winners published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the overall happiness levels of lottery winners spiked when they won but returned to prewinning levels after just a few months. In terms of overall happiness, the lottery winners were no more happy than the nonwinners and were sometimes less happy than they were before winning.

Another study at the University of California, Santa Barbara, measured people's happiness six months after winning a modest lottery prize, equivalent to eight months' worth of income. It also found that the win had no effect on happiness.

You might be thinking that's just fine because you're not about to gamble your hard-earned cash, let alone play the ludicrous odds of a lottery. We're with you. But what about a pay raise? How would you feel about a little increase in your current income? Would twenty thousand dollars more put a big smile on your face? Of course. Research in psychology and economics has found that people do get happier as their income increases—but only up to a certain level. Researchers find that life satisfaction rises with higher incomes up to a household income of about seventy-five thousand dollars. It levels off afterward. In other words, money doesn't make us happy so much as it prevents us from being miserable. Still, that doesn't stop the vast majority of us from believing that more money, regardless of our income, would make us happier.

Today, as you consider ways to make your marriage happier, please remember this: money can prevent you from being unhappy, but it won't ensure happiness. A joyful marriage isn't for sale at any price—you have to earn it.

CHAPTER 6

Understand That the First Half of Your Happiness, Your Set Point, Is Hardwired

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

As it turns out, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy and how long that happiness will last. They expect positive events to make them much happier than those events actually do, and they expect negative events to make them unhappier than they actually do. In both field and lab studies, we've found that passing or failing an exam, winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a great house, getting or not getting a promotion, and even getting married all have less impact on happiness than people think they will. A recent study showed that very few experiences affect us for more than three months. When good things happen, we celebrate for a while and then sober up. When bad things happen, we weep and whine for a while and then pick ourselves up and get on with it. Scientists call it habituation. The rest of us call it surprising. After all, you'd think that the thing we're pining for would make us happier than it actually does.

It all has to do with what experts call our happiness set point. In fact, they say that 50 percent of our happiness is determined by our genes. We have a range of happiness we naturally fall into regardless of what happens. And generally speaking, we eventually return to our happiness set point even after a tremendous high or a deep low.

With a skull cap containing 128 sensors, Dr. Richard Davidson and his research team at the University of Wisconsin have been watching people's brains respond to happy as well as distressing circumstances. Their ongoing study aims to understand how much of our joy level is set at birth, and how much we can control.

People with happy brains have their parents to thank, to a certain extent, not only for happy genes, according to Davidson, but also for loving childhoods. His studies as well as many others have shown that angry or critical parents can actually alter where a child's happiness level eventually rests until it's set around age sixteen.

The bottom line? Half of our happiness is determined by a combination of our biological heredity and early upbringing. While our happiness will seesaw following pleasing or traumatic life events, it will inevitably shift back to a natural level.

But this accounts for just 50 percent of our happiness factor. Which raises a question: What about the other half of our happiness? Can we stretch the limits of our preprogrammed temperaments to be happier? The answer to that question, thankfully, is a resounding yes.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from 25 Ways To A Happier Marriage by Les Parrott. Copyright © 2015 Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott. Excerpted by permission of Worthy Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction,
1. Remember That to Reap Happiness, You Must Sow Holiness,
2. Happiness Is a Skill That Can Be Nurtured and Refined,
3. Understand the Difference Between Feel-Good Happiness and Value-Based Happiness,
4. Happiness Doesn't Equal Selfishness,
5. Remember That Money Can't Buy Lasting Happiness,
6. Understand That the First Half of Your Happiness, Your Set Point, Is Hardwired,
7. The Second Half of Your Happiness—Your Choices,
8. The Hat Trick of Happiness: Pleasure, Engagement, and Meaning,
9. Be Grateful,
10. Curb the Complaints,
11. Learn How to Count Your Blessings Together,
12. Try New Things,
13. Choose a Brand-New Passion Together,
14. Seek New Friends and New Experiences Together,
15. Start Dreaming Together,
16. Dream Wisely,
17. Celebrate Each Other,
18. When You See Your Spouse Do Something Good, Say So,
19. Fight the Poison of Pessimism,
20. Redefining Intimacy,
21. Attune Your Spirits with Great Conversations,
22. Add Value to Others Through Acts of Kindness,
23. Avoid Those Destructive Comparisons,
24. Don't Obsess Over the Past, and Don't Fixate on the Future,
25. The Best Predictor of a Long, Happy Marriage: Endurance,
Footnotes,
About the Authors,