Marriage News! An Unhappy Marriage is Literally Poison In research reported by Dr. John Gottman, "An unhappy marriage can increase your chances of getting sick by roughly 35% and even shorten your life by an average of 4 years."* The sad fact is that only a very low percentage of people in unhappy marriages seek help in spite of the fact that therapy can almost always help. Feeling Loved and Appreciated is Critical to Your Marriage "Eighty percent of divorced men and women said their marriage broke up because they gradually grew apart and lost a sense of closeness, or because they did not feel loved or appreciated." Good relating is a skill that can be learned, so if your marriage has a low IQ (Intimacy Quotient), go to a sex therapist for training! Deny Partner Influence at Your Peril I f a marriage is to be happy, the partners need to respect and honor each other's opinions and feelings. Men have more trouble with this than women. They have trouble understanding that if their marriage is to thrive, they have to share the 'driver's seat'. "Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81% chance that his marriage will self-destruct."** I n a marriage where there are power struggles and competition, both partners use a lot of energy being alert to defend themselves and they are less open to make the warm connections that create a loving interpersonal field. *Gottman, John M., Ph. D. and Silver, Nan, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Crown Publishers, New York, 1999. ** Ibid.