Regular addicts of this column may recall my obsession with connecting relationship help and happiness. Voyagers to the mountain kingdom of Bhutan can enjoy a country whose success is measured in happiness, and that good relationships are honored as the best path to a happy life.

Unless you are a man who is happier than your wife.

The main result from Baker and McNulty was that if you are shy, you will find it just as easy to find a partner as everyone else. But you won’t be as happy. There’s a poignant twist. Your partner maybe blissfully happy with the relationship, partly because you may be too shy to tell them that they need to shape up and meet your needs more

There’s a lot of people out in the internet looking for couples therapy, or marriage counseling. Many of them turn up at our Imago website at www.gettingtheloveyouwant.com, so I wanted to make sure they found something quick and useful, and that immediately gave insights into how Imago can provide relationship help.

From Couples Therapy to “Ciao”, the Italians are known for doing everything in style. The New York Times recently reported on Italy’s first divorce fair, held in Milan.

It turns out a divorce fair isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. It’s just a couple of thousand people streaming into the basement of a hotel, and checking out lawyers, dating agencies, and something called a divorce planning agency. Well, if you had a planner for your wedding, why not for your divorce.

Elizabetta Poveldo who wrote the NY Times article, points out some extraordinarily

My father died late last year at the age of 86. I expect that when he was a young man he would have regarded 70 as a great achievement, let alone 80. But a very close friend this week had an operation to remove cancer which left her without an eye, and another found that a cardiac check-up led almost immediately to bypass surgery. Yet another is struggling with persistent glaucoma. It’s like I’ve reached the age where my friends are falling apart. “Let’s get younger friends” quipped my wife, the mistress of black comedy. Or maybe I shouldn’t hang out with so many marriage counselors?

Here are some stunning facts from a study from the Jubilee Center, a UK-based Christian organization, who says that married parents are nearly 10 times more likely to stay together than un-married parents.

That’s why the workshop/therapy combination can work quickly (two-days for a big change), be lower-cost (you would need a lot of therapy sessions to cover the workshop material), and more effective (the therapy helps re-inforce the workshop).