Here’s something that marriage expert Dr John Gottman (who has found a way to predict with 90 per cent accuracy whether a marriage will last) says about marriage predictability:

“The issue isn’t whether you fight, it’s how you fight and HOW RICH YOUR STOCKPILE OF GOOD FEELINGS is about each other to weather difficulties and keep your basic attitude toward your partner positive. At the heart of my research is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship—a mutual respect and enjoyment of each other’s company. A couple that keeps their friendship strong despite the inevitable disagreements and irritations of married life experiences what I call ‘positive sentiment over-ride’ — their positive thoughts about each other and their marriage are so pervasive that they tend to supersede their negative feelings,” He tells us. “It takes a much more significant conflict for them to lose their equilibrium as a couple.”

It comes down to the importance of knowing that couples NEED to stockpile good feelings towards each other so romancing and doing loving things for each other helps keep their love alive to get through the tough times together. Without doing that, it’s difficult to sustain having even a mediocre type of marriage.

The fact that your fiancé is already showing that he isn’t interested in stepping beyond his own comfort zone to do things that best shows love to you (especially when you specifically ask) is something I’d be concerned about. It indicates that this kind of thing isn’t important to him and gives you a glimpse into what you can expect after you marry. It’s an indication that he will receive loving gestures from you, but he won’t go out of his way to romance you as well. And that can chink away at you after a while.

If you’re one who longs to have little gestures of love shown to you at various times, then you’ll live with many hurts and feeling “low” over this matter for all of your lives together.

You may give your fiancé the benefit of the doubt because some men aren’t very romantic and need help with this type of thing. But if they aren’t even willing to stretch beyond their comfort zone to do this at all and be willing to do this for the rest of your lives together –ESPECIALLY when you make it easier by providing a list, I’d be concerned.

At this point, you have to decide if this is what you can live with day in and day out for the rest of your life. I sure wouldn’t want to– little gestures of love are important to me. But maybe you can. If so, then you’re marrying the right man. If not… consider the future of being married to him. Most likely he will be more caught up in approaching married life as a receiver rather than a giver AND a receiver.

I encourage you to get him to go with you into the “Marriage Preparation Materials” section (and other pre-marriage sections) to honestly discuss together the questions and read and discuss the issues brought up so you both have a better idea of what you’ll both be living with if you decide to marry. If he doesn’t want to do this, then I’d be VERY skeptical about marrying him, because it wouldn’t seem that he views marriage as a partnership, but rather as a “you put up with how I am, and the way I want to do things, and if you don’t like it, that’s too bad for you.” It becomes a marriage of “convenience” — “what is ‘convenient’ to me is fine… but don’t ask more from me than that.”

NOW is the time to decide if you’ll be good marriage partners together. You may just be good together on a temporary basis, but not over the long term. Now is the time to try to work out all the issues you can (some will have to be worked out after marriage, but do what you can now)– and this type of issue is one of them.

I wouldn’t marry unless I knew that my future husband valued me as the Bible talks about in Ephesians 5 “husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and CARES for it, just as Christ does the church — for we are members of his body.” Please prayerfully consider what I’ve written. It could save you years of future heart-aches.

I cried the whole night, and a little bit today. I am not completly healed over that. He did apologize to me today. I should’ve apologized to him in the first place. It is evident that we do not know how to treat each other, so I am looking forward to learning how to show my husband that I do care and love him.

One day out of the blue I told him that he was a very hard worker. It was cute because he said you are too, and I haven’t even been working for 2 months at my job. Sometimes it is hard to come up with compliments when a marriage is having some problems like ours is having at this time, but instead of focusing on all the negative that has been going on in our marriage the last 2 years, I let go of it all and everyday I say out loud “Thank you for the healing for our marriage” over and over. It has helped me to feel better about myself and lose weight. Now it’s time to pray for the healing of our marriage, now that I worked on myself. Just by the few positive things I say to my husband on a daily basis, it has made a lot of difference. He has definitely given me more attention than he has in some time. GOD BLESS

I found that the best way to show my husband love was with the language he “speaks” love and visa versa. Also, I created a blog site, http://www.dailyprayerchallenge.com that brings wives together to pray daily for their husbands. It hits on a lot of these types of suggestions. We are looking to improve our marriages, to strengthen them, to NOT be a divorce statistic, so why wouldn’t we be open to ideas? Trust me, I was stubborn and unteachable with my first marriage, it was women rule, men drool and look where it got me. Never again! Great list and thank you so much for sharing!

There is a list of things to do for your wife too… read that too… but I know even if he reads it, much as he loves me, he will say it’s a load of rubbish and that’s it.

But for all those who are still hopeful and happy even… I wish you the best and God Bless… Life is blessed for those who have found true companionship and love in their partner.

What can I do to make our marriage feel like it did in the beginning I don’t want to be the one doing all the butt-kissing and getting nothing in return for it? I am always nice to my hubby and I feel like he takes me for granted. Please help

It really won’t do you any good to say he’s not loving, because he’ll argue he is. That’s why I suggest asking him to explain the ways he expresses his love towards you. I think that is a much better way to open the conversation, than to simply level the assertion that he is unloving.

Also, it’s not a matter of just doing things on the list. Just as he’s probably doing things, but perhaps not the right things, the same can be true for you.

So I’d approach it as learning to see how he does express love, and approach the discussion not from a “we need to talk” which I can almost guarantee you will be interpreted by 99.44% of men as, “We need to talk about what you are doing wrong hubby.”

Every time I hear of someone getting a divorce it makes me so sad. It isn’t easy to be married but it is the most worthy of a fight than anything else in the world. Entirely too little effort is given by so many.

My daughter is getting married on the 20th of June and I pray she will be as happy as her dad and I. By the way she is 20. Another reason I love my husband so much, he has been the best stepfather to my children.

If we would all as Christian women show the rest of the world how it is done we could do so much for society. Just love as Christ did without anything in return, and husbands would not be able to resist loving back.

We thank the waitress for refilling our coffee cup, but we don’t thank our spouse for doing something simple for us. Simply saying things like, "thank you", "I appreciate it when…", "your help with …means so much to me"… these all make our spouses feel important and appreciated. Shouldn’t we appreciate our spouses more than we do strangers? It makes sense! Thanks for the wonderful suggestions. For all of you that are nay-sayers… don’t knock it until you try it for a month or longer!