Looking Inwards To Save your Marriage

When you wanted to get married, many people probably took it upon themselves to tell you how hard and tough marriage can get, but you thought to yourself that yours would be the different one. It can’t and won’t be that tough (after all the both of you have dated for a long time), what would be so different? While marriage is awesome and the best thing that has happened to you, it is not a bed of roses. You get what you invested into it, you can’t expect to find the empty box full when you haven’t put anything inside it. At times, you will find yourself being frustrated and in the tranches of trying to balance your marriage, work and every other thing in-between. You are not alone. And assuming you think you have the perfect marriage, that you and your spouse are a “match made in heaven”, it is also absolutely normal for people and relationships to evolve and change and the little things that were once lovely become annoying. If you find your marriage on the rocks (everybody does at some point in time), the problems not seeming to want to go away and you truly want to save your union, then it is probably time you look inward and see if there is anything that you are doing that is not right. Sometimes after marriage, your insecurities, you always trying to get the upper hand, manipulation (from your side) are the cause of most problems and you are too adamant to acknowledge it. Sometimes it is just the way you over-react to something’s that is making it worst. But one sure thing is that, until and unless you start acknowledging the effects of your role and actions in the problem, it might never go away. To effectively improve your relationship with others, most times you need to focus on improving yourself. Some of the things that need to be worked on include communication, passive-aggressive behaviors, nagging and pouting among many others and you can easily see that these are things that happen every day in your marriage. You need to learn how to do away with any negative behavior and incorporate positivity in your daily life if you really want to save your marriage.

Communication

It’s a no-brainer that effective communication is the key to success, not only in your marriage but in every sphere of your life, as long as you are in it with someone. When you keep things to yourself, thinking the other person is “supposed” to know, it becomes cruel. Nobody is a mind reader and unless you speak out, you won’t be heard. And until you learn how to do it effectively, the message will never get across. Do you have the attitude of thinking you are always right? Always wanting to have the last say? And saying whatever your brain thinks is right without thinking it through? Then you really need to take a step back and ponder, because you might be pushing your spouse further away from you without knowing it. Whether you are the one with the communication problem or your spouse (you still need to learn how to deal with it). Here are some tips to improve the communication level in your marriage.

1. Spend more quality time with each other.
2. Try to use more “I” and less “You” – this will reduce the chance of your spouse feeling the need to defend their actions and apologize instead.
3. Try to be more specific – don’t ever generalize.
4. Stop assuming and ask for clarification.
5. Learn to listen without trying to be defensive.

When you put these tips into action you will find it is easier to get the message across.

Passive Aggressive Behavior

This is a fatal trait and the worst part is you might not even know you are exhibiting such behavior. Do you withdraw emotionally from a misunderstanding with your spouse? Do you always put the blame on your spouse whenever something goes wrong? Always wanting to punish your spouse for something you think they did wrong or is their fault? Then you may be a passive aggressive person. You might not know it (that’s why it is called “passive-aggressive”) and you think it is normal because you are outwardly kind and friendly, but it’s not normal and you need to work on correcting it. The effect of such behavior on your spouse includes frustration, feeling less of a person and feeling incompetent and this can lead to a divorce as they can’t seem to do anything right and are fed up of the marriage.

Nagging

If you are always at the edge with your spouse over things they should be doing or done and this scenario seems to keep replaying itself and you now sound like a broken record, you are nagging. Synonyms for the word nagging include faultfinding, continually complaining, pestering and demanding among many others in case you don’t know what it is. Nagging doesn’t in any way solve the problem, instead it either escalates it or makes your spouse withdraw from you. It is not a solution and it just eats away the productive time that would have been used wisely and according to Dr Markman, “Nagging is an enemy of love if allowed to persist”. So the next time you feel the need to complain about something, why don’t you find the solution and share it with your other half and work to help each other better.

Pouting

How can you decide to pout and refuse apologies instead of talking about the issue and still expect the problem to just go away? It doesn’t work like that. The silent treatment has never been the answer to anything and it won’t start now because you decide to pout. You prolonging the issue will not make the solution appear out of thin air and you need to learn how to be mature and handle issues the way it is supposed to be. You are not a kid anymore (because if you are, you won’t be married).

Conclusion

Marriage is a two-way street, you have to take all the necessary steps to meet your spouse in the middle and if you don’t give them the chance to grow and evolve into the better person they are meant to be, how do you expect to be happy? Taking the first step to changing your behavior that might be the cause of the problems does not make you weak, instead, it gains you more respect and love from your partner. Your partner’s happiness completes your own circle of happiness and vice versa, which in turn gives you that dream married life you want.