How to Save a Marriage: 9 Tips to Rescue Your Relationship
I thought my relationship with my wife was dead in the water multiple times. Yet here we are 24 years later. Our marriage has its ups and downs, but it’s better than ever. The most important thing is that we know that we love each other. I realized a long time ago that there is no more difficult job in the world than marriage. (Well, maybe having kids!) When you’re in a tough place in your relationship, it’s hard not to focus too much on the bad times and the differences between you. They start to lose sight of the good times they’ve had together and why they really care for each other.
If things have gotten tense between the two of you lately, try to take it one step at a time. Don’t get too caught up in all the ways it doesn’t work. If you worry only about looking at the little details that neither of you can seem to figure out, you’ll never be able to deal with the big things that threaten to overwhelm your marriage.
In this article I want to give you some points on where to start to build a lasting relationship and not one that is brittle and fragile. Here are 9 tips for building a lasting and transformative relationship.
1. Focus on communication. That sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? I say this jokingly because communication is usually the Achilles heel of every marriage. Either we communicate too harshly, insensitively, or we become withdrawn and sullen and expect our spouse to guess how we feel. Open up, be honest; try to be sensitive to how the other person feels about his words.
2. Learn to listen. Do you know what really works if you are a counselor? It is learning to listen to people. It’s not the advice you give, it’s not some fancy techniques, it’s learning to really listen to people so they feel like you understand how they feel deep down.
3. Spend time with each other. Without time together, even if it’s half an hour at night, going out to lunch on a weekend, or just getting up a little earlier together, your marriage will stagnate. Time together is the fertile soil that will allow your relationship to grow.
4. Liven things up. Do something unexpected for your spouse, surprise him. Practice little ways to show your appreciation. Don’t let the monotonous routine of everyday life deflate your relationship.
5. Ask questions. Try to find out something about your spouse that you did not know, and then use this information in some way to please him.
6. Compliment your spouse. Psychologists have learned that the best way to change anyone’s behavior is through positive reinforcement. I’m sure you probably know that positive reinforcement emphasizes behaviors we’d like to see and ignores behaviors we want to stop. The more you compliment your spouse, perhaps by acknowledging and commenting on how helpful they can be in a certain way, the more likely you are to see more of that behavior.
7. Solve problems. Instead of emphasizing the problems that have been going on between you, find solutions that you both can work on. If she ever complains about your behavior, like you hang out with others too often and don’t spend time with them, find balance, try to give them what they want. Don’t always get hung up on thinking that problems will never be solved.
8. Get help. Sometimes it’s so easy to focus on the problems between us that we forget to realize that people have been through this kind of trouble before and survived. A marriage is something that needs to be worked on every day and can never be taken for granted. The fact is that other people have faced problems just like yours and are still happily married.
9. A fundamental commitment to the other person and to the marriage will ensure that your marriage survives and grows. Trying to escape problems and avoiding them will also guarantee something, and that is that your marriage will not change and will become more and more of a prison. The options are before you.