Making a marriage work is not easy.

I have been married for 11 years and have known and dated my husband for a total of 14 years. We have been through ups and downs, dealing with external family stress, financial stress, children stress and all sorts of run of the mill problems like any other marriage; yet after all these years with added stress, I consider our marriage to be strong.

A week ago, I met an old friend whose marriage was dead. “What happened?” I asked. He told me the very long story and I tried playing devil’s advocate even though I’d never met his wife but totally took her side, just to, you know, make sure he was really sure that he had really no inclination to save the marriage. It was so scary meeting him because I was thinking to myself all the time, Oh My God! What if this is how my husband feels about me???

Anyway, to cut a long story short, let me share what he’s paid big bucks for to have the formula of making a marriage work:

In order for a marriage to work (according to a top dollar American Marriage Psychologist), two columns must be filled. There is a column for Desire and Love and another for a Happy Life. Go on then, grab a pencil and draw it out.

Let’s first talk about the first column – the Desire and Love column:

In the Desire and Love column, you have the cognitive and emotional. This is everything that your minds and hearts do. Where are the both of you in this? Do you sync emotionally? Do you share the same ideas? Or are you complete opposites? Along a scale, you are either both completely alone or completely together, or somewhere in between. Naturally, you want to be at the highest end of the scale and sync your minds AND hearts together but this does not mean you will have a marriage that will work! No. There is more to it than just this.

The second item under the Desire and Love column is Intimacy and the act of doing it. Action speaks louder than words, as they say. Again, are you intimate? Do you kiss each other every time you part? Do you kiss each other every time you meet? Do you even HUG? Do you hold hands? Touch…..touch…….and touch. So where do you stand on the intimacy scale?

And finally, SEX forms the third item under the Desire and Love column. Are you f*cking for the sake of f*cking or are you f*cking because you really want to? Simple. Or are you just NOT f*cking???

After assessing where you are on the scales of each of the above items, we now proceed to the Happy Life column.

First item on the list includes Trust, Honesty and Transparency. How much do you trust each other? How much do you hide from each other? Have you been completely honest with one another? Again, give yourself a score.

The second item to a Happy Life is Nurturing – this is the random acts of kindness that you do for one another. Do you cook for one another? Do you buy each other gifts or surprise each other with….surprises? How far do you go for your partner? How many times would you get off your ass to work towards making your other half’s life easier and/or more fulfilling? Some people are more hard working, some more lazy.

And last but not least, DAILY activities that bring you together. Or not. When you organise to go on holiday? How do you plan your activities? Is it what Mommy wants to do, what Daddy wants to do or what Baby wants to do? Do you do it all together or separately? What about family meals? What about tennis games? What about cycling expeditions? What about the visit to the park? In some cases, Daddy wants to perform an activity (such as golf, cycling or whatever) by himself with his own boys. Or Mommy wants to go shopping by herself. Sometimes, Mommy is eager to take Baby out to the playground but Daddy isn’t too keen. It always goes back to how much you want to be with each other on this scale and obviously, the more happy both of you are in meeting at this scale, the better.

So. You see? Hard work.

In my friend’s case, his dot on the scale was far away from his wife’s dot on the scale in the majority of the scales above, so you can see why the marriage is failing. Sometimes, people take the easy way out because they do not want to work at a marriage and so they introduce a third party into the marriage. These people are cowards. Lazy asses. They do not have a clue how badly it damages the entire family unit when one selfish party decides to frolic. I urge you to think 10 times really hard before you venture into any frolicking activities and if you are so weak as to run away from your family disgruntlements, then may God curse you a shitty life for abandoning your loved ones.

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Who is Mamapumpkin?
Mamapumpkin is a former Design Architect turned Multi-Million Dollar Digital Entrepreneur. She sets out to prove to all that you can have anything and everything that you want; if you have that fire of desire burning within and the drive to work hard. Even better with much love.

Mamapumpkin has not only grown corporate businesses successfully in the past and doubled her salary 5 times over 5 organisations but has grown THREE BUSINESSES to 7 FIGURES within an 8 year period. She now shows others EXACTLY HOW after retiring her own husband from employment. He is now the official dog walker, family driver, chef and THE BEST FATHER to their two girls and THE BEST HUSBAND to the woman who CHOSE HIM!

Mamapumpkin is the girl who has nothing but fights for everything including YOU. She is idealistic in her desire to put unbelievable amounts of money and extrardinary happiness into the lives of good people so we can change the world together believing in happiness for ALL. She strives to impact lives authentically wanting to reduce poverty cycles and enable quality education for all and always supports the voiceless. She believes we can all have a life of our own desires to enable real contribution into the world. But first, one needs to understand what this all means.

A beautiful life without limits.

If you wish to learn how to propel your life forward guaranteed, be brave to take action. Mamapumpkin's purpose is to build people. Her gift is to help them UNCOVER their HIDDEN GIFTS. She operates fairly and always leaves an impression. You either love her or not and she is alright either way.

She is a living testimony that women really can have a lot. Being financially and time free has enabled her to travel the world anytime, anywhere, doing anything with anyone, as she spends most of her days with her children, having fun, supporting others wherever she can. Also having fun.