One of the best pieces of advice I got about marriage came from a friend who told me:
When we were dating, I thought as long as we loved and understood each other everything would be alright. I didn't realize how much competition there would be in a marriage. We're competing for closet space, for the time each of us has to spend doing chores, for the time each of us gets to do things by ourselves, for who gets to spend money on what... Sometimes it feels like a tug of war. If we had known from the beginning how much we would need negotiation skills in our marriage, we would have been a lot happier from the start.
Indeed, marriage is a relationship of competition as much as it is about cooperation. It is more like dancing the tango than like going for a walk in the park. Marriage is one of the Feng Shui nine life areas. We talked about this in the class Understanding Marriage, Relationships and Romantic Love last Thursday. (See the link to the replay below.) | 
