At the beginning of 2009 I made note of the following resolutions suggested by Sally Albright and share them with you now for possible inclusion in your list as you prepare for the new year.
Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Couples
#10: Exercise Together
Exercising together as a couple can make getting more exercise fun, and you and your spouse can truly have a “healthy” relationship.
#9: Cook Together
Cooking dinner together is a great way to spend time together.
#8: Play Games Together
Take the time to have some fun with your spouse by playing games together — especially in the colder winter months.
#7: The Little Things
Sometimes, it’s the littlest of things that really matter. Something as simple as setting the coffee machine to brew in the morning or opening the car door for your spouse can really show how much you care.
#6: Get Romantic
The types of romantic gestures you do really depends on what your spouse considers to be romantic, whether it be bouquets of flowers or cuddling together and watching a football game on TV.
#5: Listening
Truly listen. Keep in mind that your spouse isn’t always in search for answers and may not want to receive advice. They just want your ears all to themselves.
#4: Fewer Arguments
Make a New Year’s resolution to argue less. Pick your battles wisely. Most importantly, learn to compromise.
#3: Compliments
Taking the time to compliment your spouse shows them that you do still love them, you appreciate them, and you still find them attractive. Surprise your loved one with compliments during appropriate times, such as when they dress up for a dinner out, do a job well done, or the way they handled your child’s misbehavior.
#2: Dates
A little alone time with your spouse can be all that you need to feel reconnected with them. Having a special date night at the end of the week can give you and your loved one something to look forward to.
#1: Saying I Love You
Say it often, say it with meaning. A simple I Love You can melt someone’s heart.
God cursed the snake, but it finds sustenance everywhere. God cursed the woman, but all men pursue her.
~ Talmud, Yoma, 75
Adams owed more to the American woman than to all the American men he ever heard of, and felt not the smallest call to defend his sex who seemed able to take care of themselves; but from the point of view of sex he flt much curiosity to know how far the woman was right, and, in pursuing this inquiry, he caught the trick of affirming that the woman was the superior. Apart from truth, he owed her at least that compliment.
~ Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams
Woman is the chain by which man is attached to the chariot of folly.
~ Bharitihari, in The Sringa Satak
Nothing enchants the soul so much as young women. They alone are the cause of evil and there is no other.
~ Bharitihari, in The Sringa Satak
Suffer women once to arrive at an equality with you, and they will from that moment become your superiors.
~ Marcus Porcius Cato
One man has never married, and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague.
~ Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy
Every woman should marry, and no man.
~ Benjamin Disraeli, in Lothair
Vitium uxoris aut tollendum aut ferendum est. Qui tollit vitium, uxorem commodiorem praestat; qui fert, sese meliorem facit. [A wife's faults must either be corrected or put up with. Who corrects the faults, makes his wife more pleasant; who puts up with them, makes himself a better man.]
~ Lucius Afranius, in Satirae Menippeae, De Officio mariti
The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life’s struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.
~ Emma Goldman
Once a man’s married he’s absolutely bitched.
~ Ernest Hemingway, in The Three-Day Blow
A good marriage is when you’re married not to someone you can live with, but to someone you really cannot live without.
~ Dr. Howard Hendricks
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There are two kinds of moral law, two kinds of consciences, in men and women , and they are altogether different. The two sexes do not understand each other. But in practical life, the woman is judged by man’s law, as if she were a man, not a woman.
~ Henrik Ibsen
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The making of friends who are real friends is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.
~ Edward Hale
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
~ Ali ibn Abi Talib, A Hundred Sayings
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
~ Henry Adams
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
~ Aristotle
A true friend is one soul divided into two people.
~ Aristotle
I get by with a little help from my friends.
~ The Beatles
A friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are Turning Out Drawers.
~ Pam Brown
Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.
~ Octavia Butler
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.
~ Dale Carnegie
Sometimes our hearts get tangled
And our souls a little off-kilter
Friends and family can set us right
And help guide us back to the light.
~Sera Christann
Woman –a foe of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil.
~ Saint John Chrysostom
You might as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life: for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.
~ Cicero, in On Friendship
Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship.
~ Cicero, in On Friendship
In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.
~ J. Churton Collins
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
~ Dinah Craik
I felt it shelter to speak to you.
~ Emily Dickinson
It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
~ Marlene Dietrich
No one knows with any certainty whether any act of friendship or love is real or simply a calculated ploy to get something from someone else.
~ David Dorsey, in The Force
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
~ Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness, with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Friendship
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
~ Elisabeth Foley
It is a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
~ Benjamin Franklin
True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.
~ D.T. Gentry
Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
~ Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.
~ Dave Tyson Gentry
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
~ Arnold Glasow
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
~ Goethe
A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.
~ Grace Pulpit
Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
~ Elbert Hubbard
Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
~ Elbert Hubbard
Character is so largely affected by associations that we cannot afford to be indifferent as to who and what our friends are. They write their names in our albums, but they do more, they help make us what we are. Be therefore careful in selecting them; and when wisely selected, never sacrifice them.
~ M. Hulburd
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and more symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
~ Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World
My father always used to say that, when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.
~ Lee Iacocca
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
~ John 15:13
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.
~ Emily Kimbrough
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
~ C.S. Lewis
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
~ Abraham Lincoln
The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
~ Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Joseph Gillespie, 13 July 1849
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
~ George MacDonald
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
~ Katherine Mansfield
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
~ Katherine Mansfield
I’ll lean on you and you lean on me and we’ll be okay.
~ Dave Matthews Band
Friendship is a cadence of divine melody melting through the heart.
~ Charles Mildway
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh!” he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?” “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
~ A.A. Milne
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”
~ Michel Eyquen de Montaigne, in Essays, Bk. 3, Ch. 13
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved
Hold a true friend with both of your hands.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
~ Anaïs Nin, diary entry, March 1937
We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
~ Caroline Sheridan Norton
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
~ Henri Nouwen, in Out of Solitude
And when somebody knows you well, well there’s no comfort like that. And when somebody needs you, well there’s no drug like that.
~ Heather Nova
Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship.
~ Dorothy Parker
You can always tell a real friend; when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.
~ Laurence J. Peter
Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.
~ Plautus
Friends can be said to “fall in like” with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.
~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
~ Marcel Proust
A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
~ Proverbs 17:17
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
~ Proverbs 18:24
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
~ Proverbs 27:6
To attract good fortune spend a new penny on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.
~ Chinese proverb
Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
~ Czech proverb
The road to a friend’s house is never long.
~ Danish proverb
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
~ Japanese Proverb
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
~ Sicilian Proverb
Life without a friend is death without a witness.
~ Spanish Proverb
Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.
~ Swedish Proverb
A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
~ Donna Roberts
Friends never betray you, only people you thought were your friends.
~ T.Mike Runger
A friendship that can be ended didn’t ever start.
~ Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques
To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.
~ Sallust
One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
~ George Santayana
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
~ Albert Schweitzer
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price,
no sum can balance his worth.
~ Sirach 6:14-15
In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend.
~ Solon
A friend is a present you give yourself.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
~ Sun Tzu
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
~ Henry David Thoreau
True wealth can not be found in your bank account. It can only be found in those you call friend. Those with whom you share your deepest feelings. And those who accept you for who you really are.
~ Mary Vandergrift
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
~ Virginia Woolf
Are we not like two volumes of one book?
~ Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
~ William Arthur Ward
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.
~ Flavia Weedn
A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.
~ Frances Ward Weller
There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.
~ Edith Wharton
A true friend stabs you in the front.
~ Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
~ Oscar Wilde
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
~ Oprah Winfrey
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
~ Winnie the Pooh
A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.
~ Lois Wyse
A real friend is someone who would feel loss if you jumped on a train, or in front of one.
~ Author Unknown
A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked.
~ Author Unknown
Friends are family you choose for yourself.
~ Author Unknown
Friends are kisses blown to us by angels.
~ Author Unknown
Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer.
~ Author Unknown
If you’re alone, I’ll be your shadow. If you want to cry, I’ll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I’ll be your pillow. If you need to be happy, I’ll be your smile. But anytime you need a friend, I’ll just be me.
~ Author Unknown
The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you’ve had.
~ Author Unknown
There are big ships and small ships. But the best ship of all is friendship.
~ Author Unknown
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Remember, happiness doesn’t depend on who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.
Believe you will be successful and you will.
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If you could read everyone’s mind for one week only, would you tell anyone or keep it a secret? Explain.
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Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car for an hour.
When you open the trunk, which one is happiest to see you?
I have often thought that there is too much emphasis on confrontation and negotiation in the counsel typically given on ways to best resolve conflict. Frequently, I think it is best to simply overlook personal offenses. I received an email today noting that this approach is highly commended throughout Scripture, and share a few of the passages with you here:
“A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense” (Prov. 19:11; cf. 12:16; 15:18; 20:3).
“Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out” (Prov. 17:14; cf. 26:17).
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8; cf. Prov. 10:12; 17:9)
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2).
“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13; cf. Eph. 4:32).
The above passages were taken from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal ConflictThe Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande, Updated Edition (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2003) p. 82.
Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.
~ Phillip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
