How to Live Happily Ever After

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Author, Alisa Bowman joins us with some marriage salvaging tips.

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How to Live Happily Ever After alisa bowman BetterTV habits that hurt your marriage marriage problems Project Happily Ever After relationship advice Tips for keeping a marriageHow to Live Happily Ever After

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Audra Lowe: Do you feel like you’ve tried everything to hold on to your marriage until death do you part, but you're still at a lost at what else you can do to save it?

Well Alisa Bowman is the author of project “Happily Ever After” and she says that she’s got the marriage salvaging tips that everybody out there needs to have. Good to have you here Alisa.

Alisa Bowman: Thanks for having me.

Audra Lowe: This is very serious but we’re going to take a little bit of light approach to it because it can be tough thing to deal with. But you have some of those biggest habits that hurt your marriage in your book, and one of the first things is that you rant to your family and friends about your spouse. When you start doing things like that – problems, right?

Alisa Bowman: It is a problem. Most people don’t think of it as a problem too. They think I'm just getting this anger out of my system.

Audra Lowe: Venting, right?

Alisa Bowman: Yeah. They think they're venting and maybe they are. But in some cases, you're turning your friends against your husband; you're turning your family against your husband. And they're just giving you that negativity right back and you don’t need any more negativity in your head.

Audra Lowe: Exactly.

Alisa Bowman: You need positivity.

Audra Lowe: Another sign is rolling your eyes or sighing loudly as your spouse talks as if you're annoyed and also refusing to give your spouse the congratulations that they need.

Alisa Bowman: Yes, exactly. Especially the “atta boy” or “atta girl” we say, “Oh, we don’t want to do it. We don’t want to say thank you because I do it and I don’t get a thank you.” But if you want the dishes washed again, give a thank you. If you want the house vacuumed again, give a thank you. Do you want a clean house or do you want fair? I choose clean house.

Audra Lowe: Exactly. People need that encouragement to get them going. Also, expecting your spouse to read your mind and do things without being told.

Alisa Bowman: Yes. And we don’t do this with our kids. Like my daughter – she’s biting her nails and I don’t think “Oh, I don’t have to tell her to stop biting her nails again. If she loves me she would stop doing that.” I don’t think that, but we think that about our spouses. We think, “If they love me, they’d know what I want and they’d do it anyway.” It doesn't happen obviously.

Audra Lowe: Withholding sex to get back at your spouse for not doing something. That’s not good to do because a lot of people think that’s what they have to do to get him to do something else, right?

Alisa Bowman: What it ends up is you're punishing yourself twice. You don’t have the thing done that you want done and you're not getting sex. And they don’t know that that’s why you're withholding. I've talked to so many people and they're like, “Well, my wife is cold in bed. She won’t do this.” And they have no idea why. It’s better to address the real issue.

Audra Lowe: Now, the five signs that your marriage needs an intervention. The first thing is when you find yourself really planning out every single detail of a divorce – who’s going to get everything. And that not good.

Alisa Bowman: It’s normal, it’s healthy. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with you if you're doing this, and its okay if you’ve just got into fight and you're doing this. But if you're doing this every single day, it’s definitely a sign that there is problem.

Audra Lowe: And also if you fantasize about having an affair but on a regular basis.

Alisa Bowman: Right. Like I said, we all do this sometimes but if it’s about a specific person, you're obsessed about a specific person that person is not your spouse there is a problem.

Audra Lowe: That is not a good thing at all. Also in your book you mentioned that if you fantasize about your spouse conveniently dropping dead everyday, those were your words, right? That’s a big note right there.

Alisa Bowman: Yes, we all have the death fantasy. I mean I want people to know we all have it. It doesn’t mean you're a bad person. I had it. I planned out my husband’s entire funeral at one point.

Audra Lowe: Really?

Alisa Bowman: We were very unhappy during that stage. It was a huge red flag. It meant, “Hey it’s time to work on the marriage.”

Audra Lowe: Oh my gosh. I'm going to keep on my good side. Also, you said that when you rant about your spouse to your friends so much that they start asking, “Why are you guys together?”

Alisa Bowman: Exactly. And it’s for the same problem, they're reinforcing that negativity. And you don’t need that. You need people to support you in your marriage to help you solve problems. You don’t want people to keep telling you your marriage is bad, get out of it, your spouse is bad – it’s not helpful.

Audra Lowe: And lastly but not the least, you also say that when you can’t remember why you fell in love and not even sure if you are in love. You told me before you and your husband are very opposite from one another, but you still manage to make it work.

Alisa Bowman: Right, right. If you can’t remember why you fell in love you're rewriting your history. You married your spouse for a reason. You may not be able to remember it, but if you can it would be so helpful because then it gives you that hope to keep trying.

Audra Lowe: Well hopefully you're not planning his funeral anymore.

Alisa Bowman: No, no, not anymore.

Audra Lowe: It’s good to have you here Alisa.

Alisa Bowman: Thank you.

Audra Lowe: Alisa’s book project Happily Ever After is going to be available in January.