Archive for January, 2009

Seek Counseling to Save a Marriage

Married couples tend to disregard the importance of counseling, not knowing how essential counseling is when trying to save a marriage. Couples who experience problems with their union wait too long before seeking the help of a marriage counselor. Counseling has many benefits, such as giving space for people in a relationship to discover the cause of their conflicts in order to find the solutions to these problems. Lots of couples think that succumbing to counseling is just like admitting that their marriage is becoming a failure, and they don’t want that.

In order to save a marriage, you must look at what counseling can do to save your marital woes. To make counseling work, both partners must be fully committed to the cause saving the relationship. Counseling will not help if one of you is just going through it half-heartedly. A councilor will be of great help especially if you as a couple decided to seek advice earlier, before the damage have been truly done. To save a marriage, a couple must communicate openly and must be aware of even the subtle changes in the relationship. Being aware of such nuances can help contain issues before they become too difficult for counseling to solve.

Counseling will not work if one of you has already detached himself completely with the other. There is only so much that outside help can do to save a marriage. Full cooperation is needed to make counseling work for you. If the problem is already a bit complex, individual counseling can be done, especially if one partner is not comfortable spilling his guts out in the presence of the spouse.

Aside from counseling, there are other things that you can do to help save a marriage. One can seek the help of family and friends, provided that they are not biased towards one of you. People around you should be willing to recognize the faults and shortcomings of both partners in order to come up with fair advice.

Seeking the help of a marriage counselor can clear up the common problems that married couples face. These problems include infidelity, compatibility issues and communication problems. Counseling can even help individuals who let past experiences or relationships affect their marriage.

To save a marriage, both partners must be willing to do everything it takes to make the relationship work. Love must still be in the equation in order to make counseling work. Issues can become more complicated when certain factors are involved, such as children and financial problems. But a good counselor knows how to solve these problems. What’s good to know is that most marriages can be saved with good counseling, and both partners should have enough courage to face their problems and deal with the necessary in steps in order to restore the harmony in their union and save a marriage. Good counseling is easy to find; there are lots of counselors out there who are willing to do what they can to salvage what’s left of your marriage.

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Save Your Marriage – Learn to Forgive

Do you nurture hidden feelings of anger and resentment toward your spouse? Are you constantly suffering because you are reminded of the past wrongs of your marriage partner? Are you finding yourself tallying all the injustices you feel have been committed against you down to the last detail? Have you ever been cheated by your spouse?

If your answer to all the questions is yes, you are carrying heavy baggage that will surely be harmful to your marriage and to your family as a whole. You may have had your trust betrayed or felt pain because of a cheating spouse. Maybe it is time for you to forgive.

Before you shake your head and say “no way,” it would help you to see that you need to forgive not just to save your marriage or your family, but for your own sake as well. It is normal to feel miserable either because you have been cheated or simply because of your partner’s insensitivity to your needs. But walking around feeling depressed, disappointed, and frustrated will have an impact to the people around you, especially your children, not to mention, your physical disposition as well.

You tend to overlook all the good things and people that come your way. You keep your head too low, looking at the dirt and the mud you fail to see how blue the sky is or how bright the sun is shining. Forgiveness is not easy to give. It requires humility and acceptance, something many see as signs of weakness. The wounded would rather build walls around them to keep their distance from their partner, refusing to “let go” or “make peace.”

One thing we have to learn about forgiveness is that it should be made as a conscious decision. It is difficult and it takes time and sheer determination but it is also possible. In saving your marriage, you have to decide for yourself that you would like to start all over again despite the risk of being hurt again. In a way, you are little by little rebuilding your trust on your partner.

Think of forgiveness as a gift you deserve for yourself. In the process, you accept that your partner did you wrong, or betrayed your trust, or broke you to pieces. You admit your grief, your pain, and your suffering before you acknowledge that you are ready to forgive to save your marriage or for the sake of your children and whole family. You will forgive because you love your spouse, which is why you were hurt because of what he or she did to you in the first place.

Another thing about forgiving is that it is not synonymous to forgetting. When you forgive past wrongs, you still remember your partner’s wrongdoing but without feeling as resentful as in the beginning. Many couples who found themselves in the same situation make the mistake of blaming each other so they find it hard to move on. It is usually harder for the children seeing their parents resent each other.

You could still save your marriage. Start forgiving and allow the wounds to start healing.

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Stop Divorce and Save Your Relationship

If you want to stop divorce, you have to convince the person what wants to divorce you to give the relationship another try. This isn’t always possible, but it’s absolutely necessary if you have a chance of stopping a divorce. A divorce can be stopped at virtually any stage—before it’s filed or just before it needs the final paperwork. The earlier you stop a divorce, the more likely it is that the divorce won’t be restarted, at least not anytime soon.

So to stop a divorce, you must convince the person to give the relationship another chance. If you have been begging the other person to give you another try or pleading for them to get back together with you, stop now. This might seem counterproductive, as if now that the person has less resistance it will make it easier for them to divorce you. But your pleading probably wasn’t doing anything but convincing them that divorce is a good idea anyway. Who wants to be around someone who is behaving that way?

If you can start acting more mature and behave in a more pleasant manner, it might surprise the other person and help stop divorce. Explain that you really don’t want the divorce and you want another chance in a calm way. The person already knows this so you screaming or carrying on won’t help your chances. Just make it clear that you’re hurt and very sad, and you really want another chance. You might be surprised how the other person reacts when you change your behavior.

You can also show a mature side of yourself that the other person might not have seen over the last several weeks and suggest marital or couples counseling to stop divorce. Counseling has worked for million of couples and your relationship could benefit from it, too. If you can get the other person to agree to couples counseling, then you have precious time before they file for or attempt to finalize a divorce to convince them to give you and the relationship another chance.

During counseling you’ll have the opportunity to show the person why they fell in love with you. You can remind them why you’re together in the first place. And if you can show honest effort in wanting to deal with the problems that come up during the counseling—and many probably will—that might be enough to convince the other person not only to stop divorce temporarily, but permanently.

When you succeed and stop divorce, you must remember that the person was about to divorce you and it would be easy enough for them to change his or her mind and file for divorce later. Having already thought about divorce and maybe even having gone far enough as to file for divorce at one time makes the decision to file again easier. So be aware of the state of your relationship, and perhaps continue counseling. It’s easier to stop divorce temporarily than to have a good relationship for the long term.

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