Love the One Youre With
Love
the One
Youre
With
Re-Energize the Passion in Your Marriage
Lee Ellis, LCSW
NEW YORK
LONDONNASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER
Love the One Youre With
Re-Energize the Passion in Your Marriage
2020 Lee Ellis, LCSW
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing in partnership with Difference Press. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com
ISBN 9781642794304 paperback
ISBN 9781642794311 eBook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019900254
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To my husband, Ben, and my daughter, Hallie, for giving me a reason to find out what it takes to keep a family together. I love you both with all my heart.
Introduction
When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy. They told me I didnt understand the assignment, and I told them they didnt understand life.
John Lennon
I bet you had an idea of how you wanted your life to turn out when you were a kid. If you are like most people, you thought you would get married, have a house, a job, two kids, a dog or a cat, and you would live happily ever after.
Either you idealized your parents marriage, or you didnt want to turn out like them. Either way, you dreamed that you would find the right person, get married, and it would be easy.
I fall into the category of idealizing my parents marriage. I always dreamed that I would end up just like them as I watched them dance, while my dad kissed my mom and whispered, I love you, in her ear. Imagine my surprise when my mom picked me up from a friends house at the age of 14 and told me they had decided to separate. My dad never came back to the house and they got a divorce a year later. What do you think that experience taught me?
Now that you are married, you realize its not as easy as you thought it would be when you were a kid. Youre probably wondering if you should go ahead and get a divorce before you end up trapped, with kids and no way out. Maybe you think you married the wrong person because that spark just isnt there anymore. With the divorce rate in the United States being 40 to 50 percent and the rate for subsequent marriages even higher, it would be hard to not at least think of divorce as an option.
I bet you would give anything to go back to the way you felt about your partner at the beginning of the relationship, when conversation flowed easily, and passion was a given. Back to when their habits didnt annoy you and their words were almost always kind. What if you never get that back and things just continue to get worse? An unhappy marriage can make you feel like your entire life is miserable.
But what if you could be happy in your marriage again? What if you could actually have an even deeper connection than you ever imagined possible? Picture yourself ten years from now, having stayed in your marriage, and having a stronger relationship than ever. Picture yourself having a happy family, taking vacations together, and living life to the fullest.
The truth is that most marriages go through at least one rough period where divorce is a consideration. The good news is that, according to a study by Linda Waite, two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later.
My desire for you is that you read this book and find out that you can turn your marriage around. I want you to put down this book and not only be inspired to stay in your marriage, but I want you to have a plan of action and the motivation to carry it out. I know your dream come true is to save this marriage and I want to help you do it.
I am going to give you a lot of information in this book. You will start to understand why things in your marriage have gone wrong and why things you have tried havent worked. You will see why so many marriages fail, and how you can beat the statistics. You will have all the information and help needed to be successful.
I know this can be scary. If your only two choices are to stay in an unhappy marriage or get a divorce, your near future looks grim. But I want you to hang in there and know that there is hope. With the information in this book, you can do what it takes to get the passion back in your marriage and in your life.
Chapter 1:
Where Did the Spark Go?
Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.
Marilyn Monroe
T ammy met Chad at a party during her senior year in college. She was immediately attracted to him, and he asked her out on a date. She was nervous at first, but they had so much in common that conversation was easy. They became inseparable in a very short amount of time, and when they werent together, Tammy couldnt stop thinking about Chad. They emailed and texted even when they were supposed to be studying or working. When Tammy talked about Chad, her face lit up, and she was sure this is what it means to fall in love. Chad felt the same way, and shortly after graduation, he proposed.
The wedding was perfect, but not as perfect as the honeymoon. They just couldnt get enough of each other. But a few months later, life seemed to be getting in the way of their relationship and passion. They were both working long hours, and their hours did not always coincide, so they didnt see each other as much as they did before they got married. When they did spend time together, they didnt have as much to talk about as they once did. They also didnt seem as passionate in the bedroom and their sex life suffered. Tammy started to worry. Had she married the wrong person? Had Chad already lost interest in her? What did she do wrong? Why didnt they seem to feel the same way about each other?
As time went on, Tammy noticed that Chad had some annoying habits. When she got home, she would become annoyed almost instantly if she noticed that he left his dirty dishes in the sink or hadnt made the bed when he was the last one to get up. They started bickering about the cleanliness of the house and keeping score of whose turn it was to do the laundry.
Falling in Love
When I ask my clients to tell me about how they first met their partners, their faces almost invariably light up. As they recall how they were feeling in the beginning, I can see the excitement and passion in their eyes. The mere question puts them in a sort of dreamy state. Falling in love is magical.