how to save a marriage
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How to Save
How to Save a Marriage Sometimes, letting go seems like the easiest thing to
do. But think about this: you've invested so much of
your time and energy into another person (and
possibly little ones); you've made a solemn promise;
and you still know there's love, even if it's hiding
underneath the surface. This article will show you
how to save a marriage and avoid divorce, even if
you're the only one trying. If you want to resurrect
the happy times in your marriage and put the rough
ones on the back burner, read on for a discussion of
how to do just that.
Finding out What Went Wrong
1 Make an effort to figure out what went
wrong. You can't move forward if you don't know
what's keeping you back. Most relationships — and
people — suffer from a few flaws, and perhaps those
flaws are getting in the way of a healthy relationship.
Your job is to take a long, hard look at what you
think went wrong. Here are just a few:
Growing incompatibility. Work, family, stress, finance
and everything else our modern world throws at you
can cause people to reveal their true colors. Are the
real-world husband and wife very different from the
fairy-tale version?
Infidelity. Is the guilt of an affair weighing on you or
your spouse? Did confession cause everything to
suddenly blow up?
Lack of communication. What you say doesn't get
processed by your spouse, and what your spouse
says doesn't get processed by you. Maybe neither of
you says anything at all.
Death of a loved one. You or your spouse's world
changed irrevocably after someone close to you
died, and you can't go back to the life you had
before.
Money. Someone is a spendthrift and the other is a
penny-pincher, and the twain never meet. Or maybe
growing financial insecurity is making home life
bitingly negative.
Sex. If sex is a physical symbol of your love for one
another, the wilting of that symbol can be both
emotionally and physically saddening.
2 Figure out if what went wrong is something
fixable. It's a perfectly natural response to try to
save your sinking ship, but what if the ship is so
tattered that it isn't worth saving? No one can make
this decision for you, but know that certain flaws in
people or relationships might not be worth trying to
save.
Know that people rarely change. People often say
they'll change, but they rarely do. After they're
comfortable, they usually revert back to the people
they were before. It's not impossible for someone to
change wholesale, but it's unlikely.
3 Open communication with your spouse. Get
information from them about how they think the
relationship can be improved. When bringing up this
difficult conversation with your spouse, remember a
few things:
Don't be accusatory. Accusing them of something
will only burn bridges. Instead of"I thought you were
going to take care of that, which is why I'm angry it
didn't happen," you can say "We all know that no
one's perfect. I just thought you were going to take
care of that, so I was surprised when it didn't
happen."
Count to three before you answer. A lot of the time,
our impulse is to fight back instead of hear what the
person is actually saying. Count to three before you
answer, thinking about what your spouse has said.
Calm and composure on your end will produce
similar results on their end.
4 Seek out a marriage counselor (optional). A
marriage counselor, while expensive, offers highly
nuanced insight into the clockwork of your marriage.
A counselor might be able to identify what went
wrong from an informed, but emotionally distant,
place. Because the counselor has no skin in the
game, so to speak, s/he is less likely to lie, to cut
corners, or forget inconvenient facts. A marriage
counselor might very well save your marriage.
5
Test the waters for change. Is your spouse
absolutely unwilling to bend? If so, it might be hard
to create the change you want to see in your
relationship. If you're unsure, test the waters to see if
your spouse seems willing to make the necessary
changes to save the relationship. Again, it's hard to
help somebody who doesn't want to be helped. You
can test the waters by:
Asking your spouse if they're willing to see a
marriage counselor
Asking your spouse if they love you as much, if not
more, than they did on your wedding day.
Asking your spouse if they're willing to sacrifice —
along with you — in order to make the relationship
work.
Putting the Pieces Back Together
1 Create a safe space for this communication. A lot
of the time, a marriage begins to fall apart because
both parties forget to communicate, feel unsafe or
embarrassed communicating, or think they're
communicating when they're actually not. In order to
encourage the right sort of communication, think
about:
Setting aside a time of the day for you and your
spouse to come together and just talk. No sex, no
children, no TV, no work. Just talk. If you want to talk
about your issues, talk about that. If you want to talk
about your day, talk about that. Setting aside time to
talk will grease the wheels and encourage deeper
communication.
Let your spouse vent. Sometimes, your spouse just
wants to get something off their chest: they don't
want an analysis, they don't want direction, they just
want a pair of ears and a shoulder to lean on.
2 Don't use threats as a bargaining chip. Often,
threats are bandied about a failing marriage like
horseshoes on the 4th of July. Threats don't mean
you're a bad person, they just mean that you've
learned a bad habit, one you should unlearn. The
problem with threats is that they encourage people
to do the right things for the wrong reasons: your
spouse shouldn't want to save the marriage because
you're threatening to leave them — your spouse
should want to save the marriage because they
absolutely, deeply love you.
3 Learn how to argue effectively, with
humility. Arguments in marriage are bound to
happen. The couples that survive and build on their
love are able to overcome personal hangups, put
themselves in their partner's shoes, and learn from
their mistakes. If you want to save your marriage,
both you and your spouse are going to have to learn
how to argue the right way.
Don't dig up the past. It's really tempting to bring up
what happened 14 years ago as a piece of evidence
about why your spouse is undeserving or wrong.
This misses the point: the point isn't to "win" the
argument, it's to get your spouse to hear your point
and possibly change their behavior. If you constantly
dredge up old dirt on your spouse, they'll feel
attacked instead of involved in a discussion. That's
when the argument starts to go astray.
Don't use ad-hominem attacks. An ad-hominem
attack is when you attack a person (their physical,
emotional, psychological traits) instead of their
ideas. Sometimes, a trait needs to be criticized and
dealt with. But too often, it feels like a serious low-
blow and causes more mudslinging than than
coming together.
4 Say what you do and do what you say (and
expect the same from your spouse).A relationship
is all about trust. Trust is gained when expectations
are met, and when actions are followed through on.
If you say you're going to do something, do it. A
failure to follow through on your words causes your
spouse to believe that your words aren't what you
say they are. This leads to a breakdown in trust.
5
Learn how to celebrate the successes and
commiserate the failures. Every life is filled with
ups and downs, just as every person is filled with
strengths and weaknesses. In a failing marriage, we
too often use our partner's failures as a chance to
secretly gloat and pass over our partner's success
like we take them for granted. What more does a
husband or wife want than to have their loved one
be with them in times of despair and share
happiness with them in times of joy?
If the idea of celebrating your spouse's successes
and ruing your spouse's failures sounds horribly
weird, take a step back and think about what you
want to get out of your marriage. Most happily
married couples admit feeling joy for their spouse
when they're happy and feeling sadness for them
when they're not.
6 Leave time for some time apart. Falling back into
love all over again is great, but sometimes that
personal independence that we all yearn for gets
lost along the way. Often, what we need is an hour
or two of alone-time to engage ourselves in
something that we absolutely love, whether it's
gardening, fixing cars, or reading books. If one
person in the marriage feels smothered, they're
going to take that displease out on their spouse, and
it's unlikely to lead to happiness. During your time of
reconciliation, set aside time to do things you both
love, to recharge, and most important, to reflect.
7 Admit to your spouse that neither one of you is
responsible for this lull in your marriage. It's
tempting to blame everything wrong that's happened
on your spouse without admitting that you were
somehow also complicit. There's also space for
admitting that you both shoulder blame and
responsibility. The process of saying that to your
spouse can mean a lot, helping you to reform your
bond.
For example, it's unfair to say that your spouse
never made dinner with the family a priority if you
didn't try to work with them to fix that. You can say
something like:"You didn't make dinner as much of a
priority as I would have liked, but I was guilty of
holding that against you and not trying to work with
your busy schedule to accommodate you when you
were free."
Practical Things that You Can Do Right
Away
1 Rededicate your commitment by making it
tangible. A marriage is also about commitment, a
commitment that puts other people ahead of oneself.
If you feel like rededicating your commitment to your
marriage, consider making it physical or tangible to
that your spouse can see that commitment. Gift your
spouse a:
Ring
Picture
Flower or plant (something growing)
Meal
Work of art (made by you)
2 Switch up the environment. Couples whose
marriages are in danger often take trips, both
faraway and close, because the monotony of life
back home has them taking each other for granted.
When the obligations of work, kids, and family go
away, couples rediscover why they fell in love in the
first place.
Note: a vacation can be a pretty poor litmus test of
whether the relationship is going to succeed. A
vacation is all play and no work. Going back to the
familiar routine of work, family upkeep, and chores
can cause the fairy tale ending to end very quickly.
3 Try to go on a date. A loving marriage is one in
which both partners still enjoy the thought of being
with one another all alone. Some couples try to
engineer a date night every week, others every
couple of weeks. At the very least, try to plan a date
night with just you and your spouse once a month.
This should help reignite your passion for one
another, as well as eliminating some of the more
tedious responsibilities of everyday life.
Save Your Marriage… Starting Today!
Here’s Your Step-By-Step Guide!
Learn more http://bit.ly/1TEu1On