Are You Remarried?

    Are you remarried? Are you trying to make this new relationship work. Dr. Romance offers three tips to help this new marriage work better than the first one.

1. Understand your baggage.
You both have leftovers from earlier relationships.If you understand your own history, and seek to learn about your partner’s, you’ll stop repeating past mistakes. Talking about your past will help you understand each other, and resolve guilt, fear and jealousy about past loves. Learn about your similarities and differences, hopes and dreams. Familiarity with what went wrong in the past will help you recognize problems before you repeat them. 

2. Learn to solve problems without fighting.
You need to disagree and solve problems, but you don’t need to fight. Learn to focus on solving the problem rather than blaming and criticizing each other. Regular weekly update talks keep problems minor, the resentment level down, and the communication open, so that there is time and space for intimacy. 

3. Create good will.
Every kind or unkind word, every gesture of support or criticism, every honest or dishonest interaction between you, and every gesture of affection or coldness are stored in your memory. Store up good feelings, forgiveness, support, honesty, appreciation, caring and affection, and sexual and emotional intimacy, to build up a backlog of good will, affection and warm memories. 

Store up coldness, criticism, ingratitude, dishonesty, demands, and dissatisfaction; and you’ll have a reservoir of resentment and disdain. To face problems, separations, disagreements, illnesses, and stress, you will draw on your relationship reservoir. Memories of good feelings and goodwill let you cheerfully give what’s needed. Resentment and hurt feelings stifle generosity.  

Tina Tessina, Ph.D., has been a licensed California psychotherapist for more than 30 years. She's authored more than 11 books, including "Money, Sex and Kids."  She can be reached at tina@tinatessina.com.