by guest blogger Stephanie Sarkis, PhD, author of 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD, 2nd ed.

What if you had the option to renew your marriage license every five years?

I think we can all agree that we would like to see happier people and a lower divorce rate.

What if every five years, you and your spouse could decide if you wanted to "re-up" or not?

Let's start considering the possibility of offering the option of a renewable marriage license.

While oxytocin, the "hormone of love," makes mothers more nurturing & people more giving, could it also fuel intolerance & discrimination? Susan Kuchinskas, author of The Chemistry of Connection, participates in a lively roundtable discussion about it. Listen to it here:

by guest blogger Elliot Cohen, PhD, author of The Dutiful Worrier

It is often said that love is a feeling. Since feelings are subjective, this makes it very difficult to describe love let alone determine how much someone loves another person. However, I want to take a different approach. Love, I will show, is not merely a feeling. Rather it is an activity. Moreover, this activity involves skill-building. Thus you can work at cultivating your love for another. You can get better (or worse) at loving someone. It is also possible to rank how well you are doing at loving someone. In fact, I will provide a "love inventory" that will help you to determine just how good you (or your significant others) really are at loving.

"To love," said Stendhal, "is to derive pleasure from seeing, touching, and feeling through all one's senses and as closely as possible, a lovable person who loves us." This is the popular view of what love is--a deep, all-pervasive positive feeling toward another person. Indeed, it is such a view of love that leads many of us to ask questions like these: "Is this feeling that I have really love?" "Yes I feel comfortable with him (her), but is this love?" "I thought falling in love would feel like fireworks going off, and this doesn't." "We have great sex but I am just not sure if it's love."

by guest blogger Suzanne Phillips, Psy.D., ABPP, co-author of Healing Together

No one just shows up for a good relationship and relationships don’t just get better because time passes. It is what we do during that time that helps heal and enhance our relationships. Over the last few years I have written many blogs for couples. Here are six simple resolutions drawn from them that many have found enhance the bond they share with their partner.

Huffington Post has just launched their Weddings section and we’re right there with them! Read The Conscious Bride author Sheryl Paul’s first blog piece.

It's one of our culture's last taboos. We can discuss sex; we can talk about money; we can divulge the darkest secrets about our family history in blog posts and on forums. But when it comes to the fear, doubts, anxiety, and ambivalence that characterize thousands of women's engagement experience every year, we hush up.

So the challenge is, how do we deal with the cultural injunction against feeling anything less than pure joy from "yes" to "I do"?

by guest blogger Randi Gunther, PhD, author of When Love Stumbles and Relationship Saboteurs

Good long-term relationship partners have many of these traits. You can probably think of others that have special significance for you or your partner. The following short quiz will help you evaluate where you stand now on these fifteen.

The quiz is comprised of one summary question for each of the fifteen traits. Answer each question with a number corresponding to the following guide:

Most of the time = 5

Some of the time = 4

Occasionally = 3

Not often = 2

Never = 1

Suzanne Phillips, Ph.D., co-author of Healing Together, was featured on "Good Day New York" to discuss how social media affects relationships and interactions:

 

by guest blogger Susan Pease Gadoua, LCSW, author of Stronger Day by Day

It seems that the news has almost weekly reports of a famous couple who has experienced a breach in the marriage by one party or the other having extramarital relations. Today it's Arnold and Maria, last week it was Shania Twain's husband, before that Jesse James, Kelsey Grammar, John Edwards, David Letterman, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, etc., etc., etc. The list certainly seems endless. So, what is going on?

by Suzanne Phillips, Psy.D., ABPP, co-author of Healing Together

Recently, we again witnessed the dismantling of a celebrity marriage with the exposure of an affair. As always, the world watched, condemned, condoned and debated the question: Can a marriage survive an affair?

The fact is that whether celebrity or not and regardless of what the world thinks–only the couple can decide if their marriage will survive an affair.

by Randi Gunther Ph.D., author of When Love Stumbles

One of the most difficult dilemmas people face in the dating world is when to tell potential partners something that could scare them away. They hope that embarrassing histories might fare better when they've had a chance to secure a stronger footing first.

Even after we develop trust between us in a therapeutic setting, my patients often wait a long time before they reveal potentially off-putting stories. It can be gut-wrenching to talk about their financial mistakes, religious beliefs, family skeletons, traumas, failed relationships, quirky tastes, inheritable illnesses, or past sexual experiences. Most people are understandably nervous about the consequences of sharing delicate information. They anticipate that someone who is important to them will feel critical of what they've shared.

Most people understandably tell new people in their lives the things about them that are more inviting. Some of their past experiences have shown that partners who have grown to love them might forgive their transgressions more easily. They're willing to risk being seen as untrustworthy rather than give up the chance to prove otherwise from a better vantage point.