In any marriage there comes a time when, for whatever reason, things become strained and arguments develop. In some ways it’s healthy to have disagreements, but when they start to take over the happy marriage you once new then it’s time to do something about it.

Below are six things that can cause a marriage to disintegrate:

• Spending too much time away from home and each other, either working or mixing with friends, doesn’t help a relationship. It’s inevitable that a spouse will feel neglected and start to wonder what the attraction is that keeps you away from home.
• Sex is important in any marriage as the intimacy between two people binds you closer together. If the sex becomes less and less then the chances are your feelings for each other will diminish and you will feel isolated.
• Financial problems are often a major cause of disharmony in a marriage. However, if you don’t try to work the issues out together your marriage will not survive. The first thing to do is assess the situation and see where the problem lies. Help each other to overcome the problem and face up to whatever needs to be done.
• Don’t let yourself go. A scruffy appearance and unclean habits can be a big turn off. It really doesn’t take that much effort to keep yourself looking good and it’s as much for yourself as your partner. By making the effort every day to look your best you will feel more confident and happier inside. A disciplined daily routine can be achieved no matter what your situation and will keep your interest in each other alive.
• Being affectionate does not always come easily to some people, but if you want to retain that initial feeling you had for each other it’s important to show affection. Everyone likes to feel loved, and it’s not enough to say ‘well you know I love you’. As the song from ‘My Fair Lady’ says…..”show me!”.
• Arguments are inevitable in any marriage, but to carry the grudge around with you, and perhaps sulk for days on end, is very destructive. It builds up even more aggression and makes it impossible to let go. It really isn’t that difficult to say ‘sorry’ and that one little word can make all the difference in the world.

A happy marriage is built on compromise, talking, listening, being prepared to not always be right, and sharing problems together. No problem is insurmountable if you face it together and work to ease the burden of it as one.

Marriage is not an easy institution, but then nothing that’s worthwhile ever is. You cannot expect to be happy ever after if you’re not prepared to put everything you have into the union and face up to whatever comes your way. It’s easy to lose sight of your hopes and dreams when life becomes difficult, but together you can overcome most things if you really want to.

To learn even more ways you can keep the love in your marriage, click here.

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Part of the difficulty with marriage is that the only training we get is “on the job.” Rarely do you say to someone, “I want you to go work with those tools in there. Have fun, get the job done, and don’t kill yourself.” But, essentially, that is the start of a marriage. We have some rudimentary skills from relating to others, but the real knowledge and skills are hard-earned.

And the problem is, sometimes we learn lessons that are incorrect, or at least only partially true. These become the myths of our marriages. They are the stories we tell to ourselves in attempts to understand. Unfortunately, they are only partially right, at best. Often, they are totally wrong. Once we learn the stories, we refuse to give them up.

I’ve chosen 5 of the most common myths of marriage. You can decide if you tell yourself these stories, and if so, what you might be missing. Because, you see, the stories we tell ourselves determine how we act and what we assume. And that, ultimately, can either teach you to use the tools or allow you to injure yourself.

MYTH: “Marriage shouldn’t be this hard.”

Lie this leads to: “If it is, maybe we shouldn’t be married.”

This is a powerful story about marriage. People assume that good marriages are easy, and there is no struggle. There is the romantic belief that good relationships “just work.” Science has yet to discover a perpetual energy machine, and I doubt relationships are any different.

This summer, I was at a beach that hosts the annual sea turtle nesting. The large mother sea turtle lumbers up the beach, just above the high-tide mark, right at the base of the sand dunes, digs a hole some 18 inches into the ground, and lays a large group of eggs. Those eggs are left to develop and hatch, usually a couple of months later.

Now, here’s the interesting thing: those tiny turtles (maybe 3 inches long) have to make the long trek from the nest to the sea. The long trek for the mother turtle is very long for the baby turtle. Some people have felt bad for the turtles in the past, and decided to help them to the surf.

By being picked up and carried to the surf, the “helpers” insured the death of the baby turtles. You see, that long trek to the sea builds the muscles in the flippers of the baby turtle. Those muscles are all that ensure the survival of the babies.

Some struggle (not too much) is necessary for developing the muscles of survival. It is true with relationships, and certainly true with marriage. When we struggle together, we develop the skills necessary to take on other struggles.

The real task is not to have a marriage that is easy. The real task is to learn how to allow the struggle to move you together, not push you apart. The statistics are pretty clear. Almost half of all marriages end in divorce. However, the hidden statistic is that 100% of marriages have difficulties. Staying married is not from a lack of difficulties, it is from using the difficulties to learn and develop.

Click here to save your marriage…

Each year in America alone, nearly 1 million marriages end in divorce.This is an incredible number! That would be as if all the citizens of Houston Texas were divorced (each divorce leaves 2 people).

The question is how many of those marriages could be saved. Unfortunately, that is an invisible number. If your marriage stays together, it is hard to find in the statistics. As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.

Can your marriage be saved? If I could answer that, I would be a wealthy man. I can tell you that if your marriage is in trouble and you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed. If you do something, there is a much better chance that your marriage will be saved.

And I can tell you, in four simple steps what you can do to save your marriage. You can start right now. But you must understand that I said “simple.” That is not the same as “easy.” These steps are not easy. They do, however, give you a path that you must follow if you want to change the destiny of a marriage in trouble.

Here are the 4 steps:

1) Quit the blame game. Stop blaming your spouse and stop blaming yourself. This is the first step because marriages get frozen into a pattern of blame that immobilizes any prospect of progress. Instead, the momentum gets dragged down and down.

Blame is our way of avoiding seeing ourselves clearly. It is much easier to point the finger somewhere and say “It’s their fault.” But in marriage, you can just as easily turn that pointing finger on yourself and place the blame there, saying “it’s all my fault.”

Unfortunately, blame feels good in the short-term, but in the long-term, it prevents any shift or change. So, even if you can make a long list of why you or your spouse should be blamed, forget it. Even if that list is factual, it will not help you put your marriage back together. Blame is the fuel of divorces.

2) Take responsibility. Decide you can do something. Change always begins with one person who wants to see a change. Understand that taking responsibility is not the same as taking the blame (see above).

Instead, blame is saying “regardless of who is at fault, there are some things I can do differently, and I am going to do them.” What buttons do you allow your spouse to push? What buttons do you push with your spouse? Decide not to allow those buttons to be pushed and stop pushing the buttons.

What amazes me in my counseling is that everyone knows what they should be doing or not doing. But it is difficult to move in that direction. Don’t be caught in that. Decide that you will take action.

The difference between blame and responsibility is this: if I am in a burning building, I can stand around trying to figure out who started the blaze, why it has spread so quickly, and who I am going to sue when it is over (blame), or I can get myself and anyone else I can out of that building (taking responsibility). When a marriage is in trouble, the house is on fire. How will you take action to save the marriage?

3) Get resources from experts. If others have been helped, you can be, too. Experts with a great deal more perspective and experience can be a real help in these situations. Do your research and divide the useless from the useful, then take advantage of the useful.

Don’t assume that your situation is so different from every other situation. I can tell you that after 20-some years of providing therapy, not too much new comes through my doors. Don’t get me wrong; the story changes, but the dynamics are the same.

Remember what Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” In other words, what got you into trouble will not get you out of trouble. That requires a whole new level of thinking. And that is what you get from an outside expert, someone with a fresh perspective.

4) Take action. More damage is done by doing nothing by taking a misstep. It is too easy to get paralyzed by the situation. Therapists often talk about “analysis paralysis.” This occurs when people get so caught up in their churning thoughts and attempts to “figure things out” that they never take action.

It is not enough to simply understand what is causing the problem. You must then act! On a daily basis, I find people coming to my office with the belief that if they can just understand their problem, it will resolve itself. That simply does not happen. Resolution of the situation takes action.

Will your marriage be saved? If you follow my suggestions, you have infinitely more opportunity for saving your marriage than if you do nothing. Marriage is one of those places where it takes two to make it work, but only one to really mess things up. You can only do your part, but many times, that is enough. Resolve not to ask the question but to begin to act.

Are you ready to take action? Grab the best-selling resource on the internet for saving marriages: Save The Marriage, Even If Only You Want It! You can find it HERE!

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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It’s disheartening to know that there are lots of unhappy marriages out there and many end up in messy divorces. The fact is, getting is a divorce is not the usual solution when a marriage hits rock bottom. There are many ways to save marriage. If both partners are committed to save their relationship, they can always seek help from a reputable counselor.

Aside from counseling services, there are other practical tips on how to save marriage. Take note of the following, for this will help you.

* Learn to realize that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Every relationship has its own share of problems, and there are those that are so massive that it will threaten your relationship as a whole. This is all very natural. A couple must learn how to overcome all their problems and keep the marriage intact. Those couples who seek perfection will be doomed to deep disappointment. People will always make mistakes and they must learn how to fix them, especially if they are in a marriage.

* Good communication is essential. Couples who can’t communicate openly always experience problems in their relationship. Being honest with your partner is one of the most important ingredients when it comes to saving marriage. Issues of all kinds can be resolved with the right amount of communication.

* Learn how to compromise with your partner. There is a reason why compromise is considered an art, and for a good reason. It’s not easy finding a middle ground between two people and their principles in order to come up with something that both of them can live with. Marriage is all about compromise, actually. You can’t afford to be selfish when you’re married. There are times that you will have to give way, and there are situations that your partner will have to do the same.

* It’s all about commitment. Remember that marriage is like having a car. If the car breaks down, you just don’t say that you want to get rid of the car, do you? You will do all you can to fix it, of course. Getting rid of a car is usually the last resort, and this is only done when the damage is truly beyond hopeless. How to save marriage relies largely on the amount of commitment that both partners put into it. It just won’t work if one is disinterested in making things work.

Of course, there are marriages that can’t be saved no matter what measures are taken. There are issues that can’t really be solved no matter how much help is extended by counseling. In these cases, divorce can be considered. Just as it’s not good to dissolve a union, it’s also not a good thing to keep two people who are at odds with each other in a relationship. It’s great to know that there are many ways to save a marriage, but again, some things can’t be resolved and such relationships are meant to be dissolved.

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