how to save marriage Archives

7 Ways to Save Your Marriage

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Your marriage partner having an affair is probably one of your greatest fears when you’re trying to save your marriage. Sometimes, this fear leads to paranoia, which is not healthy for your married life. The rising cases of infidelity across the country do not help either. More often than not, you may have friends or acquaintances that may have had to suffer after knowing that their spouses had been unfaithful.

Admittedly, there is no fool-proof way to prevent your spouse from having an affair. The key, however, is to establish a trusting and rewarding partnership with your partner. Some of the following precautions might help save your marriage from the pain and heartaches brought about by third-party affairs.

Save your marriage with these tips:

1. Make your spouse your top priority. In terms of relationships, pay closer attention to your partner over your family, colleagues, friends, and other people. Spouses who feel neglected have more tendencies to have an affair over those who are given first-class treatment.

2. Talk. Marriage counselors will never fail to cite communication as an essential way to save a marriage. Do not just talk about events that happened during the day but bring your discussion to a deeper level. Women especially have this need to share their emotions be it joy or frustration. It is important to be able to develop a deeper connection with your spouse.

3. Show appreciation. Oftentimes, husbands take it for granted that their wives’ prepare their meals and do the laundry and so on everyday. It would help to keep saying “thank you” and compliment your partner once in a while even for the smallest things.

4. Hang out. Another thing that is often taken for granted once married couples get too busy with work and other chores is that they need to spend quality time together. Couples who have lasted 50 years together and so on usually go out on a regular basis. Try something different every time you go out. You could even watch TV at home together on lazy afternoons. Just spending time together is an easy way to save your marriage.

5. Spice up your sex life. If your partner does not have a satisfactory sex life at home, he or she will be more likely to receive sexual advances from people outside. Make time for sex and try something new in bed once in a while. Do not let stress or tiredness get in the way. Boosting either the frequency of sex or the passion is a great and fun way to save your marriage.

6. Tackle issues immediately. Having excess baggage could ruin your marriage. Try to resolve problems as they come up to save your marriage. Couples need not agree on everything. You could agree to disagree on some issues without clawing each other’s eyes out. Your partner should be assured that he could talk to you about anything and vice versa.

7. Support your spouse’s goal. One popular piece of advice you would do good to follow  is to understand and fully support your partners’ need, wants, and goals. The two of you could come up with a common goal or goals then work together in achieving them. For personal goals, each of you must make your spouse understand that you are behind him or her every step of the way – and that’s a great way to save your marriage.

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How to Save Marriage by Diffusing Power Struggles

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2778304612 7b3608f8e9 o How to Save Marriage by Diffusing Power Struggles
Marriage is a commitment. We’ve all heard that all our lives. But it’s more than committing to staying with one person for the rest of our lives. We’re also committing to work on our relationship. Part of this work is keeping a giving attitude. Having a giving attitude is important when learning how to save marriage.

We are all selfish — some more than others. It’s very normal for us to be concerned with our own self interests. However, in a marriage, we have to give some of that up and make continual efforts at making sure our spouses interests are being met.

Power struggles are a way to take what we want. We disregard others’ opinions and desires and push our agenda or wants, no matter the outcome. This is very destructive to a marriage.

In a healthy marriage, both partners should be willing and able to freely discuss their needs and wants, and both should be willing to bend to try to help their spouse meet their needs. Each spouse should be willing to consider the other’s opinions. It’s also important that these discussions remain calm and even loving.

Once a couple has learned how to diffuse power struggles, they are often on the road to saving marriage.

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How to Save Marriage from an Affair

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surviving infidelity How to Save Marriage from an Affair
Often in a troubled marriage, an affair by one or occasionally both spouses is the last straw. The emotional trauma of infidelity causes so much pain that it’s hard for the other spouse to think clearly enough to find a solution. The cheater, on the other hand, is lost in a fantasy, and likely doesn’t want anything to change. They like having the security of a family along with the excitement of the affair. It’s often difficult to see how to save marriage from divorce.

If you’ve discovered that your spouse is involved in an affair, the first step is to take a long, hard look at the relationship and decide if it is worth saving. The steps you’ll have to take to save a marriage after an affair are not easy. Of course, neither is divorce, but unless you’ve been dealing with abuse or destructive behaviors, even a long, difficult rebuilding of your relationship would be easier than divorce.

If you decide that you do want to save the marriage, you need to steel yourself for some difficult steps. Your spouse will become very angry, and there are no guarantees. However, if you constantly remind yourself and them that you’re “fighting to save your family,” eventually they’ll understand. Remember your goal is to end the affair and save your marriage. You’ll both have to work on rebuilding the relationship after the affair is over. But until that happens, you can’t move forward.

After you’ve decided that your marriage is worth fighting for, you have to work to end the affair.
Before confronting your spouse, review all of the evidence you’ve gathered. Is it conclusive? Are you certain? If so, you’ll need to find details about the other man/woman. Where do they work? Are they also married and cheating on their spouse?

Now for the difficult first step.

You need to contact your spouse’s family, friends, and work and tell them all about the affair. This needs to be done in one fell swoop. Make all of the calls at one time so that your spouse doesn’t have time to formulate a “story.” Tell your pastor. Tell your kids. Tell your neighbors. Your spouse has a support group. Once they know of the affair, they won’t support that activity – especially if they know you’re “fighting to save the family.”

During the same session, you need to call the other man/woman’s spouse and tell them about the affair. It seems drastic, but they also deserve to know. It will put pressure on the affair from both directions. Affairs are usually very fragile fantasies, and this kind of pressure will quickly bring them to an end. Suggest to their spouse that they also make calls like you’ve done to bring down their support as well.

Your spouse will be very angry. “It’s none of your business.” “We’ve already ended the affair, so how could you do this?” “You’re making me out as the bad guy.” They don’t know it, but they’re just following a script. You need to follow yours by saying, “I’m fighting to save our family.”

Any time the anger begins to escalate (and it will), calmly repeat that phrase.

Do not move out. Do protect your finances. If your spouse threatens to leave, tell them that they are welcome to, but the kids are staying. Tell them that the only ways out are to leave without the kids or completely end the affair.

Eventually, either they will move out or the affair will end.

If they choose to end the affair, you need to both openly close all possible means of contact. Get them a new cell phone where you get the bill. Get a new unlisted home telephone number. Change churches (if they’re both in the same church). Make them change jobs (if they work together). Move to a new neighborhood – or city. Do whatever it takes to completely sever the relationship.

Once it’s over and some time has passed, your spouse will understand what they’ve done and the process of saving marriage can begin in earnest.

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How to Save Marriage – Differences Between Sexes are Important

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man woman controls How to Save Marriage Differences Between Sexes are Important

I’m always on the lookout for good information on how to save marriage, and today I found a great article talking about the differences between how men and women handle these problems. It also goes a little bit into the root of the differences.

The author had been running marriage counseling classes for women for years before finally starting classes for men (after women in her classes asked, “why is it always the woman’s job to make the changes?”). During these first classes, she found that men respond completely differently to these situations than women do.

Men tend to be more direct and need specific answers, whereas women tend to accept generalizations.

But most importantly, she touches on some of the differences between men and women that can eventually lead to problems in a relationship.

Men tend to be more physical and women tend to be more phychological. She says that it’s often a man that teaches a woman to be proud of her body and that it’s something to enjoy. It’s more natural for a man due to his physical nature.

On the other hand, a man often has to be taught by a woman to be tender, sensitive, and patient. For women, the closeness, attention and caring are more important that the physical.

Finally, she compares a relationship to salesmanship. The first step in selling anything is to find out what the customer’s needs are. The exact same thing holds true in a relationship. Given the differences between men and women, it’s no wonder when we expect our partner’s needs to be the same as ours that we often miss the mark.

While the article doesn’t have any immediate solutions, for someone who’s trying to figure out how to save marriage, it might just provide a nudge in the right direction.

The article can be found here.

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The Myth of Marriage

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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.

How To Save Your Marriage

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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!

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