10 modern myths about marriage

5. My parents raised me, so my LOYALTY to them should be stronger than my loyalty to my spouse.

We should always honor our parents, but when we do it at the expense of our marriage, we’ve created a toxic and dysfunctional dynamic. Your first loyalty must always be to your spouse. Practically speaking, this means you shouldn’t talk disrespectfully about your spouse and you shouldn’t allow anyone in your family to talk disrespectfully about him/her either.

6. I should NOT have to TELL my spouse what’s wrong, if he/she was paying attention, they would know.

One of the most common miscommunication traps in marriage happens with these unspoken assumptions. We think our nonverbal hints should be more than enough to get the message across OR we think the answer is so obvious that we shouldn’t have to say it out loud. When we fall into this trap, one spouse stays clueless and the other spouse stays frustrated. We need to communicate with consistency, clarity and transparency.