There are many reasons why marriages fail. By taking a look at why marriages fail you can help strengthen your own marriage, or if you’re not married yet, be on the lookout for signs for why you should choose your partner carefully.

Here are some of the reasons why marriages fail:

1. Different views on cultures, lifestyle, family and other social factors: When a couple has a major difference of opinions on a topic - such as having children or family obligations, it can have a huge impact on their ability to stay together forever. A partner may begin to feel resentful towards the disagreeing partner or a wall of distance may come in between them.

2. Getting married for the wrong reasons: Being blinded by “love”, one of the partners going off to war, tax benefits, or an unplanned pregnancy are all examples of the wrong reasons for getting married. Marriage is about a lifetime commitment of nurturing and supporting one another. It involves a deep commitment and should not be seen as a “solution” for other problems in a relationship.

3. Financial Problems: Having no money, terrible jobs, and being in debt is one of the leading reasons why marriages fail. The stress of working, raising a family, not being able to have what you want, or the irresponsible spending of another partner all add up to resent, arguments, and anger between couples.

4. Lack of honesty: When a partner lies about where he or she has been and is doing, it can be very destructive to a relationship. Likewise, it is equally bad to be dishonest about your feelings. Having secrets and lying can destroy all trust between the two of you, setting you up for a pattern of lying and arguing and eventually separation.

5. Extramarital Affairs: In conjunction with a lack of honesty, having an affair is a sure way to make your marriage fail. In marriage you commit yourself to one person. When you have an affair, you can only give half of the attention and energy to your partner as before. When your partner learns of the affair, he or she may have problems forgiving you, trusting you, or even wanting to touch you again.

6. Inability to Communicate: Communication is not always the same for everyone, but it is important that partners are able to talk to each other in a way that both feel understood and satisfied about their emotional and physical needs. Without communication, partners become distant and resentful and eventually leads to another reason on why marriages fail.

The good news is that many of these reasons why marriages fail are avoidable. Partners can discuss these things prior to getting married, or if they are experiencing any of these reasons why marriages fail, they can seek the proper care and attention through relationship counseling.

The Boosteroo is a super powerful headphone splitter. You can use the Boostaroo for you and your partner to both listen to the same music from your MP3 player at the same time while jogging together or while watching a movie on your portable dvd player or laptop. The Boostaroo also amplifies the sound, so you don’t have to worry about the splitter making the headphones lose volume. Click here to get more specs on the Boostaroo.
Two Way Radios

If you’re looking for a neat way to communicate with your partner, why not try using a two way radio? The one featured here works up to a 25 mile radius. Click here for more specs on the Motorola T9500XLR 25-Mile 2-Way Radios.

The Quad Extreme Handheld Massager

This little massager is perfect for helping you and your partner get the knots and kinks out of each other’s backs. Taking a little time each day to pamper each other will certainly help bring you closer together as a couple. You can learn more about this HoMedics Quad Extreme Handheld Massager here.

Do you have a favorite gadget that you and your partner like to use together? Feel free to share it in the comments below.

For all you contest lovers out there, you might want to check the new AdSpace Contest which launches today. I am one of the hosts for it and you can find out how to enter over at my Best of Stupid Blog. The grand prize winner gets their site hosted on 10 different blogs for free for 1 month, and it’s easy to get up to 45 entries to win! You can read the full contest post details here. Contest is going on from now until September 15th, so you have lots of time to enter

It’s the unconscious choices that can sometimes be the most important and have the greatest impact on a relationship. Take the classic example of meeting your partner somewhere for dinner. Your partner finally shows up 15 minutes late, with no real excuse other than “traffic”. Right there you have a choice - you can choose to be annoyed or angry by it, or you can choose to just forget about it and move on to an enjoyable evening.

These choices can crop up in thousands of places. Maybe your partner never helps out with housework, or doesn’t show an interest in the activities you enjoy. Again, you can choose to get angry or you can choose to think of ways to ask them to be more helpful or do something you both enjoy instead.

While I’m not saying you should ignore every single one of your partner’s less than positive attributes, you should be trying to identify your choices and thinking about how each choice will affect your relationship before reacting.

Do you make conscious choices in your relationship? Or do you often just react, without thinking through your different options in reacting and the ways it will affect your relationship?

If you’re looking for some free romantic couples games to play together, here’s a few ideas to get you started:

1.Truth or Dare: No, truth or dare is not just for teenage girls at a sleepover, it can also be a fun free romantic game for couples as well. The game works like this: you ask your partner “truth or dare?” and your partner chooses one. If your partner chooses “truth” then you can ask them a question about anything. (Be careful to not to overly sensitive topics, or it might not end up being much of a game at all!) You can ask things like “what’s your favorite childhood memory?” or “What are 3 things you like about me?” for example. If you partner chooses dare, it’s up to you to come up with a challenge for your partner to do. “I dare you to sing me a love song” or “I dare you to unwrap a starburst in your mouth” are all good examples. It’s up to you how mind or risque the game gets.

2. Strip Anything: Just about any game can be turned into some sort of version where you slowly end up getting naked together. Poker, Go Fish, even Monopoly and Scrabble. All you have to do is set up some ground rules: each person starts with x number of articles of clothing - do this, you lose one article, do that you can gain an article.

3. Roll the Dice: For this game, all you will need is a pair of dice, preferably different colors/styles. On a piece of a paper, make a list of from 1-6 of romantic things (kiss, hug, squeeze, massage, etc.), then make another list from 1-6 of places (kitchen, shoulders, Toes, Bed, etc.) Now each of you taking turns rolls the dice and has to do what the two numbers match up - so going along with our example kiss in the kitchen, massage shoulders, etc.

4. Make Your Own Game Board: Making your own game is pretty easy to do. All you need is a piece of flat cardboard (or even heavy duty paper like card stock can work) and a marker to draw out a game board. Then on each square, write something like “kiss your partner” or “tell a joke” or “sing a song”. Recycle old game pieces or toys as your game pieces and roll the dice to move from one square to the next. At the end you could put something like “congratulations - you won, now your partner has to do anything you want for the next 10 minutes.

5. Do a Romantic Puzzle: For this free romantic couples game, all you need to do is either assemble the puzzle and write a BIG message on the back, or you can choose to write different sayings and words on each individual piece. Either way, it will be fun to do the puzzle together.

Need more inspiration for free romantic couples games? Check out this ebook or browse some of the romantic games for couples available on Amazon below:

I will then feature these questions in future posts with my answers and advice. While I might not be an expert, sometimes it just helps to write out your question to a complete stranger to get a different viewpoint on something.

You can ask me anything you want - questions on your family, your friends, your spouse, your single life - if you think it can somehow relate to the usual stuff I write on here I’ll be happy to answer it!

I’ve also decided it would be fun to give my readers a chance to learn more about me - so go ahead and ask me any question you want in the comments below, and I will do my best to answer it in a future post.

No question is too unusual or bizarre, really. I think I’ve seen enough and heard it all you won’t shock or scare or surprise me. Even if you’re not a regular reader I welcome any questions you might have - so go ahead now and don’t be shy

P.S. - If you have a site I’d be glad to also include a do-follow link to you when I answer your question

Some are a little…eh…interesting? Others are REALLY good…some are a little more folksy or 80’s than true alternative love songs.

Thanks to everyone for your great suggestions again - hope you enjoy this list of alternative love songs.

If you’d like to add any of these songs to your personal collection, most of them are available to download at Amazon - I even included a handy dandy banner below to take you straight there.

Today I had the great opportunity to write a guest post over at Josh Whitford’s Unconventional Marketing Blog, a blog I genuinely enjoy reading about marketing. The article, 7 Tips for Building Business Relationships is all about how building relationships can help your marketing efforts become easier and your business more successful.

While I wouldn’t go so far to say dating and business are alike, there are many principles that apply that can help you succeed both in marketing your business as well as dating and personal relationships.

To see what I mean, take a look at a few if the past posts I’ve written that are hiding a little business wisdom in them:

The Power of a Simple Thank You

5 Ways Real Estate and Dating are Alike

Forget About the Bar Scene

How to Ask Someone for Their Phone Number

This weekend I’ll be posting another installment of 100 Love Songs (I have about 23 more to go before my list is complete!) and hopefully some more great stuff next week, so if you’d like to stay updated on what’s new here at itmightbelove.com, sign up to subscribe by email.

It wasn’t until last year I got into fantasy football. It didn’t make sense to me why you would pretend you have a team and all…but as my husband patiently taught me everything about the game I realized it’s a lot of strategy, a little bit of luck, and makes it not so bad when the Steelers have a bad game, because you can fall back on your fantasy team for a little entertainment.

We’ve decided to create our own league this year for Best of Stupid and thought I would extend the invitation to join the best of stupid league here.

It’s free to join and play - all I ask if you join our league that you actually play every week. The live draft is August 25th at 10:00 pm EST but you can always let the computer pick for you also.

It’s a lot of fun, and can really be a good way to share something with the guy in your life if you’re a girl, or if you’re a guy, get your girl involved in something you enjoy. Football doesn’t have to be a relationship breaker every fall - if you both get into it, you can have A LOT of fun together.

Want to join my league? You can get the details here. I have no control of who gets in the league or not though, so if you want a spot, better hurry!

P.S.- Many of you may also notice IMBL’s got a brand new look, let me know what you think! I will be adding a few more extra features & tweaks through the week but so far think it turned out pretty nice! I didn’t do it completely from scratch, instead modified by far the most customizable theme I’ve ever played with.

Dandelions to most people are considered to be weeds. Anyone who meticulously cares for their lawn hates to see dandelions sprouting all over the place. They also hate to see them in their neighbor’s lawn since they have a habit of spreading rather quickly.

I on the otherhand, do not see dandelions as a weed or a nuisance. In fact, I’m quite glad they exist.

Dandelions are here because little kids LOVE picking flowers for their mother. Take a walk in a garden with any kid under the age of 6 and they are going to want to touch the flowers and pick them.

Naturally, the people who own these gardens, and put hours of effort into planting them and growing them, do not want the flowers to be picked, and certainly not by a child who will mercilessly tear the plant to shreds.

Here is where the dandelion comes in handy.

See those little yellow flowers? Pick those ones honey, they’re my favorite!

Garden saved, child happy, and mom feels like she’s pretty smart.