Gottman Seven Principles Program

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the Gottman Institute's Seven Principles Educator Training in Seattle. This training was designed to prepare educators to lead couples' classes and workshops using the Seven Principles Program.

Nobody Has a Perfect Marriage

Your parents didn't have a perfect marriage.
Your best friend doesn't have a perfect marriage.
Your neighbors don't have a perfect marriage.
The popular girl from high school doesn't have a perfect marriage.

The president doesn't have a perfect marriage.
Your friends who are so smug about their marriage don't have a perfect marriage.
Your marriage counselor doesn't have a perfect marriage.
I don't have a perfect marriage.

You Can't Start Over

Having Our Cake

After finding a snapshot of my parents sharing cake at their wedding, I thought it would be fun to see how my husband and I looked performing the same ritual.

We didn't bother with forks, but just grabbed a slice of cake by hand. And clearly, nobody had advised us about the importance of small portions. I was afraid to look!

Amazingly, we both got fed without getting crumbs in his beard or frosting on my dress.

By the way, it was a fabulous cake. Traditional white frosting on the outside, dark chocolate with amaretto filling inside. Yum!
 

Let Him Eat Cake

What a surprise to find this snapshot in a box of junk I retrieved from my mother's house.

Here are Mom and Dad on their wedding day, sharing their first meal as husband and wife. They are so young! So thin! (Mom weighed less than ninety pounds that day.) They look sweet, but very serious.

Dad is concentrating quite intensely as he bravely confronts the enormous chunk of cake Mom is trying to guide down his gullet.

When I mentioned this picture to Mom, she told me she learned an important lesson that day. When feeding someone, you need to make the bites very, very small.
 

You Don't Have to Be Young

My great-aunt Ruth was 48 years old when she married the love of her life, Steve. They both worked for the County Sheriff's department and had known each other nearly twenty years. I don't know when their romance started, but I know that for a time they hesitated to get married because their families did not approve. They both lived with widowed parents who were very protective of their middle-aged children.