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About Mira Kirshenbaum
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Blog postPeople often ask, especially since there are so many relationship books out there, what do you have to say that’s new?
Why Couples Fight is the first book to show that the reason couples get in trouble is they battle for power. That’s what’s new.
It’s the power dynamics in a relationship that destroy a relationship, and the tragedy is that no one wants this. People in a relationship don’t battle for power because they want power for themselves. No. It’s just that they don’t wa -
Blog postWith our new book, Why Couples Fight, being released on Jan. 26, a mere three weeks away!, I would like to use these blogs between now and then to talk not so much about the book itself but to take you inside and talk about why we wrote it, why it’s important, and what we learned doing the research for it.
Why is it so hard for us to figure out what's really the problem when things are going wrong in our relationships? This is worth exploring. It can be a painful subject, but fortuna -
Blog postThis post is an article we just did in request for a piece on “disagreeing with your partner.” As you see, we disagree with the very premise of the request!
The first thing to say is that if you’re disagreeing with your partner, you’re already doing it wrong. The last thing a relationship needs is two people sitting there disagreeing with each other! Disagreeing is never the path to anything good. Much less anger!
What, then, are we talking about here? Clearly, your partner has -
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Blog postPlanning to get married in the near future? Probably not. Know someone who’s heading—maybe—towards marriage? A lot of us fall into that category. So whether you’re heading towards marriage yourself or know someone who might be, this is for you.
Memories. That’s what you have to plan your wedding around.
The average age for marriage in the US is about 29. Based on life expectancy, people married at the average age could expect to be married to one another for 51 years.
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Blog postYou know, it’s not all that productive to worry about whether your relationship is “healthy” or about exactly how “healthy” it is. It would be like asking your doctor, “Am I healthy?” Most of the time you’ll get an answer that begins, “Well,...” What’s important is that the parts of your body that need attention get attention.
It’s the same with your relationship. Why don’t we all just accept that we all have an imperfect relationship? Good. That’s over.
The huge and scary iss -
Blog post“Then... now... what difficulties here, for the mind. (Pause.) To have been always what I am—and so changed from what I was.”
Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days
It may not sound like it at first, but this is about hope. Really!
Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I woke up this morning in this brand-new year and found I looked just the way I did last year. And that pretty much nails the dilemma we face as the new year faces us. New beginnings? Or same ol’ same ol’? -
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Blog postConflict, power struggles. Too much yelling and screaming. You can’t talk to each other without bickering. Do you see yourself and your relationship in these words?
A lot of people know they are unhappy in their relationship and yet feel these words do NOT describe their relationship. They would say something like, “We get along okay. We just keep to our lanes. Though things are pretty bland. Boring, actually.”
This is the cold side of the dark side. The other way things go ba -
Blog postWhat is the key to a happy relationship? The joke goes: “Love. Love and money. Love, money, and a very big boat. Love, money, a very big boat, and a beach house. Love, money, a very big boat, a beach house, and a couple of dogs.”
“But wait a minute—that’s asking for too much.”
“Okay, then. Just money, a very big boat, a beach house, and one dog.”
Now if you ask most people what the key to a happy relationship is, they’ll say love or communication or compromise or havin -
Blog postI have a million stories like this: I knew a guy. A brilliant mathematician. He used his intelligence and education to start a business showing the Navy how it could make its submarines super-silent. Fascinating, important stuff, and he made a fortune. He came to me, sad. “I wish I’d been an anthropologist,” he said.
Want another one? World War Two landed on my mom like a ton of bricks. She was a poor Jewish peasant girl in Poland. Just married in 1939 when the Nazis invaded. Escapin< -
Blog postBack in Boston, our bedroom was up in the trees, and right outside were the squirrels with their bedrooms. And I could see every day that a squirrel's perfectly at home in that world of trees.
But imagine taking that squirrel and plunking him down in the middle of the desert. This wonderful animal will suddenly feel depressed, anxious, confused, completely at a loss. There are plenty of animals who make a home in the desert, but not the squirrel.
There's nothing really wrong w -
Blog postThis is a season of love, joy, peace, and hope.
May it be so for you.
But it needs to be said that for many this is a time of year that highlights sadness, loss, and struggle, especially this year.
And so it is more important now than ever for each of us to do what little we can to bring love, joy, peace, and hope into the lives of others.
Thank you for the great gift you have been to us.
Love, Mira and Charles
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Blog postIn the previous two posts I talked about why we shouldn’t worry and about how to stop worrying, but there was something missing: an understanding of how we live in a culture that works as hard as it can to keep us worrying!
I want to give you some examples so we can see how as we try to worry less almost everyone else out there is trying to get us to worry more. If we can just understand what we’re up against, it’ll have far less impact on us.
Let’s just take news and commenta -
Blog postWe’re all agreed that worrying is as useful as eating crackers in bed. Now let’s put an end to it.
What is worrying, exactly? It’s restless, pointless sifting over and over through our fears and concerns without getting much out of the time and emotional energy spent. It’s like you want to walk to the store, but you get on the treadmill instead and twenty minutes later you wonder why you’re no nearer the store. That’s worry.
Where we want to end up is a place where you either -
Blog postAlmost everyone says it’s hard for them to stop worrying. Have you ever had someone say to you, “Oh, stop worrying!” Did you ever find that helpful?” I didn’t think so! So let’s begin be talking about how it is worrying has us in its clutches. Then we can talk about letting go of it.
A big part of the problem is that it’s easy to feel that only stupid, clueless people don’t worry. People like Alfred E. Newman:
Dopes, right? We’re kind of like, hey, if you knew what was going o -
Blog postIn my work with couples, I get to see the deep roots of later disasters. Joe and Ariel’s story is pretty typical.
By the time they came to see me their marriage had descended into a whirlpool of bitterness and hurt. Long story short, at the beginning, Joe had seemed like a happy, fun guy. Ariel had seemed like an angel of sweetness and calm. But! In real life, once the period of putting your best foot forward was over, the happy, fun guy part of Joe turned out to be mostly about drink -
Blog postWow! Right out of the box, long before the release date, our lovely publisher is offering 100 free copies of my new book, Why Couples Fight to YOU. Be the first kid on your block to get your copy! And be on your way to having the very best marriage in your whole circle of friends!
To get a chance to win your free copy, click HERE. Good luck!!
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Blog postAs we’re all finding out, COVID-19 is not only bad for our bodies and our pocketbooks, it’s bad for our relationships as well. But why?
Distance. One of the great hidden rules of how relationships work is that there’s no problem between two people that can’t be solved by creating more distance. If my neighbor and I violently disagree over politics, we can make distance by not talking about politics or, if necessary, by not talking at all. Problem solved.
Couples do this kind o -
Blog postToday we’re going to look at one of the things we do as individuals to make ourselves miserable. And it’s a big one that’s easy to get caught up in.
Lisa grew up never knowing her father. Never even knowing who her father was. For her mom the months around the date of her conception were fogged out by booze, who had no idea how many guys she’d slept with during that period, and little idea who any of them were. So Lisa was brought up by an on-again-off-again mom and a rotating circuit -
Blog postWhen I saw this piece it brought tears to my eyes.
For those of you who don’t know, Girls’ Life is a magazine for tween and teen girls. Get ’em while they’re young, right? Smother girls with meaningless distracting insecurities that sap their energies. The cover says it all.
But then Katherine Young, my new hero, lit a candle instead of cursing the darkness. She took a Girls’ Life cover and matched it piece by piece with what our girls—and our society—needs.
The differ -
Blog post(This is a follow up to our previous post:
How imperfect people find true and lasting love)
Of course it would be lovely if you never had to confess a long-buried—or even a recently buried—secret to your partner. It never goes well. We’re all such freakin’ hypocrites! We say starting out, Oh, let’s always be honest with each other. And the other person says, Yes! I’ll never ever lie to you.
And then? You do tell some truth. “I forgot the mortgage payment. Now we have pe
Books By Mira Kirshenbaum
Why Couples Fight: A Step-by-Step Guide to Ending the Frustration, Conflict, and Resentment in Your Relationship
Jan 26, 2021
$9.99
Other Formats:
Paperback
$4.99
Todo pasa por algo: Como encontrar el significado verdadero de lo que sucede en tu vida (Spanish Edition)
Jun 4, 2020
$7.99
Other Formats:
Audible Audiobook
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