I heard a radio ad for a Marriage Fitness website. There is a really interesting free assessment here.
Now, I’ll warn you that they are trying to sell you something, but they also have sent me about 7 emails for free. They stress that they are not marriage counselors (which they loathe), but rather help you maintain a healthy marriage. They give you some “marriage exercises” which help get your marriage in shape.
Anyway, me and my wife took the long assessment, and it was quite interesting. I’m a little embarrassed how bad I did–my wife did better. So, I’ve tried a few exercises, and it seems to have helped. So, whether you’re marriage is healthy, not, or somewhere in between (like me), I recommend doing some of the free stuff–I think it is worth it. Even if your marriage is great, I think there is some really good advice here.
Comments? Anybody have any good real practical advice? (Those work better for me than generic things like “Treat her nice, Love her”, etc.)
Mormon Heretic 
Thanks for the heads up. I think I will give the website a look. I seem to recall you saying some time ago that your wife didn’t know about your blog. Is that still the case? My wife knows about mine but I don’t think she finds it very interesting.
Hmmm… it wouldn’t work for me. All the 5 different links said “service unavailable.” Perhaps because I’m outside of the US?
If it had have worked, hopefully I would have found out that my marriage is in better shape than Elder Nelson would have expected. 🙂
Sanford–my wife still doesn’t know about my blog, although she caught me on it one time and asked me what I was doing. I told her I really liked the author’s point of view. (I know, I can hear the groans….) But I have to agree with you–my wife wouldn’t find my blog very interesting either.
FD–sorry about that. Apparently you have to register before it will let you take the quizzes. So far, they have sent me about 8 helpful emails on marriage, so I think it is worth it if you would like to try it out.
One of the things that this website does that is unusual is it tells you not to dwell on your problems, but rather work to make your marriage better. This is counter-intuitive to me. I like to try to figure out the problem, and propose a mutually agreeable solution. However, the down side is that things can get worse, before they get better.
My wife always hates the worse before better part, and generally never notices the gets better part. So, the funny thing is that after I posted this yesterday, my wife got really upset at me for something that I thought was a minor issue. So, I apologized, and asked her if she was really mad about something else, and was taking it out on me for the minor issue, and she said “yes”, but she didn’t want to talk about it.
So, instead of trying to pry her open like I usually do, I let the issue drop. I’m still wondering what it is that she is really mad at me for, but I’m trying to take the advice and just try to be more loving, and ignore the problem until she wants to bring it up. It’s really tough, because I want to know what is bugging her, but I’m willing to try some new steps.
One of the things this guy says, is that he can help make a marriage better even if only 1 person wants to put forth the effort. I asked my wife about doing it together, and she doesn’t seem very interested, so I told her I wanted to do the “Lone Ranger Track” (that’s what it’s called.) It’s kinda pricey, but I think it’s worth it. I hope she checks out the website, and let’s me know if she wants to do it together, but I’m not holding my breath…
You and I have opposite inclinations. I am much more like your wife. If it were up to me no problems would ever be explored and resolved. I don’t think my approach is healthy at all and I think my wife would agree. I took a couple of the quizzes and I am afraid I did rather poorly. You will have to give updates as to how this works for you. I think my wife would very much approve of me getting a little marital coaching and she would probably be quite interested in joining in but I think I will explore this myself first.
I did 3 of the quizzes so far.
For the “priorities” one, I scored a 15, which is a “marriage fitness champion” (but only by one point 🙂 ) I figure that since we live in a rural area and don’t have many distractions or commitments, our priorities are pretty good.
For “giving patterns,” I got a 45, which is only a bit above average. I think, though, that perhaps that’s a good thing because we’re not too caught up with gift-giving. He never buys me anything and I never buy him anything, so we’re both happy. 🙂
I skipped the one about “knowledge of your spouse,” but I know that I would score horribly on it. I don’t know his favourite colour (although I could perhaps guess), and I definitely don’t know his size in anything. I don’t even know my own size. 🙂
I also skipped the “decision making” one because I couldn’t think of anything to put. I guess we both make decisions about stuff on a daily basis and we trust each other’s judgment, so it’s not a big deal. And if we want to buy anything big or plan a vacation, we do it together.
The one that totally surprised me was the fidelity one. I got a 5, only average. I figure that there were a couple of questions that sank me: Do you keep in touch with ex-lovers? (Well, he wasn’t really a “lover,” but I was close to him and we still keep in touch — with my husband’s knowledge and approval). The other one was: Do you have a hobby, interest, game, sport, or activity that interferes with your connection to your spouse? (LOL, I’m totally guilty of that. Blogging is the main culprit. 🙂 )
I can’t remember my scores, but the “knowledge of spouse” was the one I scored horribly on. I thought some of the questions were unfair, like “what is your spouse’s favorite movie?” or book? For most people, those change frequently, depending on what book/movie they saw/read last, so I thought that was kind of a bogus question. (There were others like that.) Still, my wife scored much better than me on that quiz, though neither one of us did good enough to be average.
It seems I did pretty well on the decision making, and giving patterns (I wasn’t a champion on any, but I think I was high-average.) We both did ok on fidelity. I can’t remember how we did on priorities.
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