Frequently Asked Questions

About Dr. O’Hara’s two books

“How to Marry Right and Avoid Divorce: Tips from Thirty-Three Years of Private Practice”

&

“Love and Marriage for a Lifetime: Why It is Important and How to Do It”

Who can benefit from reading these books?

Anyone interested in a successful marriage should read them because a successful marriage is highly correlated with happiness, physical and mental health and financial comfort.

The first book How to Marry Right and Avoid Divorceis written for people who are thinking of marrying for the first time and for divorced people who want to marry again, but do not want to become yet another divorce statistic. I include lots of ideas on how to avoid picking the wrong person to marry.

Family members and friends of single people may also benefit by reading this book, because I wrote two chapters just for them to explain the ways they can make themselves useful in helping someone marry right.

In the second book Love and Marriage for a Lifetime, I offer advice on how couples can work to save their marriage through hard times. I also share new research information on how divorcing can be very harmful to men, women and children. I do this so that people can understand the post-divorce, long-term problems they will likely have. I believe that the understanding of these problems often helps people decide to try to save their marriages instead of calling a divorce attorney. So if you are having marital problems or know someone who does, it is helpful to read this book.

Am I going to be lost in psychological terminology if I read these?

No. I use plain language. My advice is always simply stated. To make it even clearer, I include real-life examples of people who married right and how they did it, and how others stayed successfully married. In these examples I use the peoples’ own words as I remember them.

Dr. O’Hara, why did you decide to write about these topics?

As a psychologist with over thirty-five years of experience in working with adolescents and adults, I have seen first-hand the traumatic and long-term effects of failed marriages. Over the years, I have helped countless men, women and children cope with the sadness, hurt, anger and financial damage of divorce. Their sorrows have touched me deeply and I thought a lot about how I could prevent others from such agony, especially when some divorces could have been avoided.

Although I realize that not every marriage can be saved, I do believe that many marriages can be if the people involved were encouraged to work a little harder on their problems. Indeed, this has often been the case with my marital therapy clients. Similarly, I believe that many bad marriages and divorces could have been prevented if the individuals had been more careful in selecting who they married to begin with.

By writing these books, I hope to prevent sadness, upset and divorce. At the same time, I want to offer hope and encouragement to people who want a good marriage.

From a personal standpoint, I have been married to my husband for thirty-seven years, and some of the advice I give is based on what worked (or did not work) in my own marriage. I want to share any information which might be helpful to my readers.

What kinds of advice do you give in How to Marry Right and Avoid Divorce?

I hope that most people will read this book first, because if they do, they can prevent marital problems and possible divorce later on.

There are many steps to marrying right. In general, my advice falls into the following major areas:

• how to figure out what kind of a person you are and what you want out of your life,
• how to think clearly about the kind of person you want to marry, as well as who you do not want to marry,
• how to talk to people so that you find out what they are really about,
• how to protect yourself (physically and emotionally) as you go about meeting people,
• how to tell if someone is lying to you and what you can do about it,
• how to present yourself to people truthfully and to your advantage,
• how to overcome personal disadvantages, and
• how to accept help from trusted family members and friends.

What kinds of advice do you give in Love and Marriage for a Lifetime?

I start this book by sharing my view of why the divorce rate has skyrocketed in the last fifty years, and then cite some of the new research evidence documenting the long-term, harmful effects of divorce on men, women and children. I do this because many people are not familiar with this information.

There are many things that married individuals can do to strengthen their marriages, and I cover the following major areas:

• how to become a team and build a long-term marriage,
• how to find the right words to communicate better, and support each other,
• how to accept and respect the fact that women and men have different needs and sometimes do things differently,
• how to discuss and accommodate each other, instead of fighting
• how to live by the rules of married life,
• how to use the powers of Hope and Faith in staying married,
• how to avoid stupid ideas that hurt people,
• how to better manage cash flow and money matters,
• how to realize if you are “overdoing something” and hurting the marriage,
• how to deal with physical, mental health, substance abuse and electronic addiction, and
• how the marriage can survive if a person develops chronic illness.

A Thank You

Thank you for visiting my website!

I hope you will read one or both books and find them useful in making a good marriage and keeping it strong. I wish you all the happiness, comfort, and success that a good marriage provides!