In the first place, lawyers do not have clients seeking to be legally separated from spouses who are fun to live with. Sometimes they have clients who are seeking to be divorced from righteous spouses who have no mirth left in their heart, or from good husbands/wives who are not kind, or from fine upstanding citizens who simply go through the routine of living with no spontaneity. 

Divorces do not happen when two people are fun to live with. And another thing—children do not run away from families that are fun to be a part of. It makes a BIG DIFFERENCE whether or not you are fun to live with!

For me it makes a BIG DIFFERENCE because of the way I want to be remembered. It is important to me that I be remembered as being a person of integrity. I want to be known by my family as someone committed to Christ His church. But when I am no longer around, I would like for my family to be able to say, "You know, Dad was a lot of fun. We had a lot of good times together."

When Loftin Hudson was director of the Midwestern Christian Counseling Center he listed five characteristics of people who are fun to live with. In case you would like to join me in trying to be "a lot of fun" to live with, I share his characteristics:

People who are fun to live with are FLEXIBLE. These folk are able to bend a little - give a little. They are able to adapt. The antithesis to flexibility is rigidity. The rigid person is stiff, unyielding---not much fun.

Fun people are folk who are able to be INTIMATE. These folk are able to be close to others. There is a lot of interaction---a lot of touching with these folk. The opposite of intimacy is coldness. People who are cold and distant do not experience much "getting through" and they are not much fun.

People who are fun to live with have good skills in COMMUNICATION. All good communicators have one thing in common, they are great listeners.

Fun people are folk who have learned how to care for others. Hudson calls this CREATIVE CARING. Caring people are folk who spontaneously make those around them feel good about themselves.

Finally, if you want to be fun to live with, you must learn to accept others who are different. ACCEPTANCE is allowing others to be who they are---to hold the opinions they hold, to possess the feelings they have---in short, to be the person he/she is. The opposite of this is the person who tries to change others into what he/she wants them to be.

If you will focus on growing in FLEXIBILITY, INTIMACY, COMMUNICATION, CARING, and ACCEPTANCE, people in your family are going to enjoy being in your presence. And if they find out that your becoming "a lot of fun" had its genesis in this article, I am going to get a lot of e-mail thank you notes.