You kiss your spouse every day, you pick up after yourself, you even share custody of the remote control, but your marriage is still on the rocks. What’s going on? Dr. William Glasser is a psychiatrist, author and president of the William Glasser Institute in Los Angeles, which offers therapy classes. His wife Carleen is a teacher at the Institute, and together they wrote a book called Eight Lessons for a Happier Marriage.

They say that if your marriage is suffering, one of the following habits may be to blame. Criticizing. If you say things like,“You’re wearing that to dinner?” Or, “You let your boss talk you into working late again!?” - your marriage may be falling victim to criticism. When you take digs like this at your spouse, it hurts their self-esteem and increases tension in your relationship.

Blaming. “Why didn’t youtell me we’re out of milk?” Or, “Well, if you didn’t snore I wouldn’t be so tired!” The Glassers say you have to figure out whether the benefits of identifying who’s at fault for something outweigh the big drawback – eroding your marriage. For example, if you just want the satisfaction of being right, that’s going to hurt you. You need redirect your energy toward remedying the situation. If you can’t do that, there’s no point brining up the gripe in the first place.

Punishing. He leaves the toilet seat up, so you leave his toothbrush in the toilet bowl. She tracks mud in the house, so you throw away her shoes. Vengeful punishments may have been entertaining when we were kids, but spousal rivalry is disrespectful and leads to resentment and divorce. You both need to grow up and give up the passive aggressive behaviors. To learn more, check out Eight Lessons for a Happier Marriage.