8 solutions to make married life easier

• Women must defend their equality. When the children are still small, many women feel especially "tied up," "locked in," and robbed of their personal freedom. Being a mother is a round-the-clock job. The woman is also less financially independent at this time, because she is at least partly going without her own income. At the same time, she sees that parenting doesn't have this same effect for the man. Despite his burdens, her working husband has it both ways: children and flexibility, which she painfully misses. When they have children, most women lose some of the equality (e.g., control over their time and money, mobility). So she complains to him and demands compensation: he has to help out more in the family. He defends himself against the bad mood at home, which takes away the last bit of his refuge: he's not allowed to relax at home or anywhere else. And he always has to feel guilty because he "gets" to go to work.

• Recognize the warning signs. When it starts boiling inside of you like a volcano ready to erupt, and you start to feel resentful of your partner, it's a sign that you're not taking care of yourself. Constantly sacrificing yourself is the worst thing you can do, according to therapists (and husband and wife) Patty Howell and Ralph Jones. Resentment is you soul's way of telling you that your batteries are empty. No matter how much you take your silent anger or loud rage out on your partner, your children, or your whole surroundings, resentment will stay as long as you don't establish balance between caring for your children and caring for yourself.

• Give yourself some freedom. Swiss relationship therapist Rosemarie Welter-Enderlin has formulated an important equalizer for a fair partnership: both parent partners must be able to continue to operate as adult individuals. Use the following two-part question to check how much freedom each of you really has:

Question 1: Can the woman leave the family now and then to retreat to her private sphere without first having to arrange child care and meals? Does she have ready access to time and money when she does?

Question 2: Can the man do the things he likes to do now and then without it involving either work responsibilities or negligence toward his family?

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Excerpted from How to Simplify Your Love, copyright 2008 by Marion Küstenmacher and Werner Tiki Küstenmacher. Used by permission of McGraw-Hill Companies.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.