The Best Way To Save Marriage – Embrace Conflict
November 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment
In many states, all a husband or wife has to do to end the relationship is state to the court that there are “irreconcilable differences” and the court will grant the divorce. But, in any marriage, there should be irreconcilable differences. The best way to save marriage is to embrace the conflict that is inherent in a close partnership between two people.
We often think of divorcing couples as the ones who screamed at each other all of the time. But if these couples can communicate their needs through elevated voices, they are actually doing better than the couple that avoids all conflict at the cost of expressing their needs and beliefs.
It is these silent couples who need to save marriage through embracing conflict.
While no one is suggesting that emotional and verbal abuse is a good thing for a relationship, couples who don’t acknowledge that there are problems and differences are actually more likely to split up according to Dr. John Gottman, a researcher who runs the Love Lab.
So, if you want to save a marriage, you need to learn how to communicate and express your differences. Here are some tips for communication in marriage:
- Allow enough time for proper communication. If you are not spending enough time together to air your differences and share your strengths, you will find your relationship is in trouble. Work on building couple’s time back into your life. For instance, make a point of eating dinner together several times a week or going out on a date very week.
- Really listen when your partner speaks. It is amazing how much we tune out our partners. He or she may be telling you what you need to know. But, if you are not listening, it is all in vain.
- Get inside his or her world. As couples begin to drift apart, they start to live in separate worlds. When you make an attempt to get inside his or her world, you may just save the marriage.
- Stop judging. Express what needs you have and listen to your spouse’s needs. But, don’t be quick to judge or criticize.
- Be honest. One of the biggest problems for people who don’t like conflict is that they can’t be honest about what they want and need. When you start to express honest opinions about things, you will begin to save marriage.
Marriage is hard work. But, if it is worth it to you to save marriage, you will do the work. That means more communication, and yes, more conflict.
Rekindling and Maintaining a Passionate Marriage
October 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment
The passionate feelings wane as with the passing of time in marriages. There many easy ways, however, to rekindle and sustain it throughout the partnership.
It is seldom for people to marry without passion. It is the primary reason that binds the two together. Passion and romance are the essential expressions of love and are mostly the reasons why men or women decide to bind their lives together for better or for worse.
The sexual chemistry among couples has a lot to do with the marital bliss they enjoy. Of course, it is important that they are compatible in other aspects as well but a healthy sexual relationship is helpful in reducing differences into levels where couples can easily deal with them. It is more difficult for couples to adjust with one another when passion has been taken out of the equation because suddenly incompatibilities occupy a central role in the marriage.
An unfortunate phase in a married life is when couples can no longer express their love physically and their bonds tend to become weaker and is further weakened by the stress related to incompatibilities.
With this said, it is important for couples to seek ways in keeping the partnership alive. It is natural for sex life to taper down after years of being together. Yet psychologists tell us that sexual relationships is much better and even more satisfying from ages 40 to 60 years of age. Obviously with the rate of couples seeking counseling to repair tattered relationships, this is not true for many couples. There are many ways to maintain passion in marriage.
Here are a few tips for rekindling and maintaining a passionate marriage. First is to set an appropriate atmosphere. Equating making love to sex is a mistake. Making love is much more involved. It means building up an appropriate atmosphere.
Marriage counselors suggest that making love starts from the time a couple open their eyes in the morning. A gentle touch, a caress and spoken words of love are intimate acts that set a tone, create electricity between the couple that results to a spontaneous and thus more satisfying love making later on.
Keep trim and fit. Part of a healthy married sex life is physical conditioning that keeps you trim and fit all the time. When one is always tired and spent from the hectic activities related to work or housekeeping, love making is farthest from the minds of one or two of the partners. However, as much they would like to make love, their bodies cannot respond which lead to of times of dissatisfaction. One of the ways then to maintain a passionate marriage is to keep fit through exercise.
Set aside time for renewing the ties. When children come, it is natural for couples to have less time for one another. There is work to keep food on the table, ensure education of the children, a house mortgage to pay, housekeeping, etc. Eventually couples drift apart, there is less time to talk and express a well as sustain the feelings that previously held them together. A vacation where couples can be alone to rekindle the intimacy and passion in the marriage is definitely a must.
If a vacation is out of question, just must find ways to have at least adequate time for yourselves once in a while. Alone time is very important. They can resort to dating once again. Doing the things they used to enjoy early in the relationships is a good way to rekindle passion in the marriage.
Communication is very important. You are each other’s strength and there is nothing you cannot handle enough without the other’s support. So whatever it is that it is bugging you, you can always talk it out.
Author Bio: For more information on Passionate Marriage and Nobody’s Ready for Marriage- Marriage.Please visit our website.
How To Stop A Divorce
October 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Are you worried that you might not be able to find ways how to stop a divorce? If you’re like most people, you would have tried everything you can think of in an effort to keep your relationship and stop it from falling apart.
Unfortunately, if you’re also like most people, some of those things you’ve been doing to try and figure out how to stop a divorce are actually pushing your partner further away.
Here are some of the things most people do when they think they know how to stop a divorce.
1. Reassurance
Most people try hard to tell their partner that they’ll change. They reassure them that if they stay in the relationship, things will be different. If you’ve been pleading with your partner to stay and reassuring him that everything will be better, then you could be pushing him further away.
2. Desperation
The majority of women trying to stop a divorce tell their partner over and over again ‘I love you’. They want him to see how much they care in the hope that it will make him stay. Trying to make your partner understand how much you love him and how much you need him is almost certain to make him want to pull away. After all, if you keep telling him that you can’t live without him and he’s the only one who can make you happy, then he’s seeing that act of desperation as coming from a person who no longer has the confidence of the woman he originally fell in love with.
3. Talking
Many women spend endless hours talking, arguing, reasoning, analyzing and trying to fix a failing relationship. This tactic never works. In fact, it simply reinforces to a man that the relationship must be in serious trouble if it requires this much arguing and analyzing, so why keep trying? Nobody wants to be married to someone who constantly wants to focus on the negative aspects of everything that’s going on.
While these things are almost normal instinctive behaviors for many women, they don’t actually work when it comes to finding ways how to stop a divorce. What works is taking a step back and looking at your relationship a little differently. It’s time to remove the emotion for just a moment and work on the dynamics of how you and your partner connected in the first place.
Think about when you first met. You would both have been happy and confident and cheerful. It was just fun to be in each others company. You would have been quite happy to accept your partner for who he was and you would have both made an effort to be sure to compromise on some things so you were both happy. Your partner would have fallen madly in love with you because you made him feel happy when you were together.
In order to find a real way how to stop a divorce, you need to figure out how to get back that happy, confident woman your husband fell in love with originally. This is not the same thing as getting a make-over. Your physical appearance isn’t going to change a person’s emotions. You’ll need to stop focusing on the negative aspects of what’s going on and work on your own inner happiness. When you’re happy and confident on the inside, you suddenly become more like the person your partner loves and respects. That’s the woman he enjoys spending time with and that will also be the woman he will stop pulling away from.
When you can raise your confidence levels to that point and avoid all the usual triggers that push men away, you will have learned the easiest way of how to stop a divorce.