Save Marriage Tips

If you are having difficulty in your marriage, then you are probably desperately looking some helpful save marriage tips before things get any worse.  Many marriages can be saved, but you need to be willing to look at ways in which you may be contributing to the problems. After all, the only person over whom you have any control in the relationship is you.  

Following are three save marriage tips to consider if your marriage is starting to fall apart.   

Don’t always put the children first

Many couples, and women in particular, believe that once they have children, the children should come first and foremost.  While this is true to some degree, as children are a gift and should be treated as such, you need to be careful to not put them above your marriage. In other words, your spouse needs to be your highest priority.  

You may think this first of three save marriage tips is unreasonable.  After all, good parents put their children above all else, right?  Wrong.  When children take a much higher priority than the relationship and the marriage suffers, then the children suffer also.  And in some cases, they suffer tremendously.  One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is the chance to grow up in a truly happy home.  And the core of a happy home is a loving, healthy marriage.  

Providing this for your children will help their self esteem, their emotional wellbeing, and their sense of security.  Love and cherish your children, but do the same for you spouse and keep him or her a priority in your life.  This is invaluable when it comes to save marriage tips.

Don’t become a workaholic

Career demands can be intense.  And at times they can be overwhelming and take up far more time than you like.  But if you put all your time and energy into your job and leave nothing for your spouse, your marriage is going to be in trouble as a result.  

Men are particularly guilty of this, especially if they are the primary breadwinner in the family.  But with more and more women assuming that role, or at least having high-powered, demanding careers themselves, the problem can go either way.  Making sure you don’t become a workaholic is one of the most important save marriage tips there is.  Lots of couples end up divorcing because one spouse feels the other is married to his or her job.  Over time that will take a severe toll.  

Pay close attention to your spouse’s needs

The last of the three save marriage tips is to make sure you are taking care of your spouse’s needs.  One of the goals of marriage is to meet each other’s needs in many areas, at least to a significant degree.  Your spouse’s intimacy and sexual needs, as well as his or her need to feel significant and needed are important needs for you to meet.  

It’s so easy for two people to get so busy (with work and kids as discussed above) that their spouse gets neglected in the process.  Your spouse may slowly come to resent you.  Even worse, he or she may look to find someone else to meet those needs.  You must pay attention, and talk to your partner.  The more you each discuss your personal needs with each other, the more readily you can fulfill them.  

While the list of save marriage tips could go on and on, these are three particularly important ones which can help any couple.  If you truly want to save your marriage, then consider if any of the above are the underlying issue.   

Help for Marriage

Quite often when couples are seeking help for marriage, it is because their marriage is starting to crumble.  It may be that one spouse has been unfaithful.  It may also be because there has been a significant amount of conflict, often turning into awful fights.  Other times it may be because you have slowly grown very distant from each other, and you know if something doesn’t change soon, the marriage is going to unravel altogether.  

Fortunately, there is help for marriage if you are both willing to make the commitment to work through the problem, no matter what it is.  This can feel impossible at times, particularly if there has been an affair or other type of betrayal.  Hurt feelings can go very deep.  And one of you may be more reluctant to try to work things out if trust has been damaged.  

Many couples do get their marriages back on track, even under pretty challenging circumstances.  Sometimes a crisis can be a much needed wake up call, making one or both of you recognize the necessity of getting help for marriage so you can heal the wounds.  Quite often, if you can get through the process of healing, you will find that you are closer than ever before.  

There are many ways you can show each other that you are truly serious and 100% devoted to making the marriage work.  Following are just a few of the ways you can do this:

Make your marriage your number one priority.  

Careers, children, volunteer work and other family are certainly all very important parts of each of your lives.  But when you have reached a crisis point and need help for marriage, you must first be willing to put your marital relationship above everything else in your life.   

All too often work and children get all your time and energy and there is simply nothing left for the marriage.  Sadly, your children will suffer as a result.  You owe it to them to have a happy, healthy marriage to make them feel secure and to give them good role models.  And, the happier your marriage, the happier home life will be for your children.  

Be open to marriage counseling if needed 

Sometimes couples get stuck and simply can’t work it out without some outside help for marriage.  While marital therapy isn’t right for everyone, it is definitely worth trying.  A skilled marriage counselor can help you find ways to communicate better, break unhealthy patterns and develop new ones, and put things in a new perspective.  

If your spouse feels a strong need for the two of you to get counseling, show your commitment by being willing to give it a try.  If you are unwilling to go, that will likely convey that you aren’t truly committed to the marriage after all.  Your spouse may feel resentment, and there will be even more problems in your relationship.

Make a commitment to focus on everything you love and appreciate about each other.  

When you need help for marriage, remember the saying “what you focus on expands”.  This is very true in relationships.  If you focus on your spouse’s faults, you will end up bringing out the worst in him.  If you want to bring out the best in someone, you must frequently show appreciation for the qualities you really value. In turn, your spouse will be more inclined to show those qualities more.  

These are just three ways to show commitment to your marriage.  While there are many more ways, these three will go along way when you need help for marriage.  The more commitment each of you shows, the more motivated you will be to work together on your relationship.  

Saving My Marriage

If the primary concern going through your head these days is “what am I going to do about saving my marriage”, you are definitely not alone.  At any given time thousands of couples are struggling with marital difficulties.  Many are in a full blown marital crisis or have already given up and filed for divorce.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Allow me to share with you some steps I took to get my marriage back on track when, like you, all I could think about was saving my marriage.  

Change expectations

When my marriage was falling apart I had to realize that if saving my marriage was truly important to me, then perhaps I needed to start by changing my expectations.  I was young and naïve when I got married.  I had all sorts of unrealistic expectations about marriage which were creating problems.  Following were a few of them which I had to change:

• A good marriage should never have conflict

• My spouse should know me so well that I don’t need to say out loud what I’m feeling inside – if I’m upset, he should just know why

• There should always be lots of romance and excitement in our marriage

I wish I could say that is the entire list, but for the moment I will just share those.  As you can see, I had expectations which were impossible for even the best marriage to live up to.

Be a giver not a taker

Another area which I really needed to change for the sake of saving my marriage was to stop always being a taker.  While I didn’t mean to be, I began to realize that I was often very selfish in the relationship.  I expected my spouse to give and give, but I wasn’t really giving much in return.  I had to really step back and recognize that I couldn’t take my spouse for granted; that I needed to let go of my self-centered tendencies and start looking for ways to be much more giving to my spouse.  

Build up my spouse’s self-esteem

One of the areas I had really let my spouse down was by not truly building up her self-esteem.  I had just naively assumed that she never needed that from me.  She had so many wonderful qualities.  I rarely said or did anything affirming, because I thought she didn’t need it from me.  Needless to say, when I really started focusing on saving my marriage, building up her self-esteem became a top priority.  

Be supportive

One of the key areas I really needed to focus on with regards to saving my marriage was to be much more supportive of my spouse.  I had foolishly taken her strengths and self-confidence for granted.  I didn’t realize just how much she longed for my support, comfort and reassurance

Saving my marriage became a high priority for me.  As I worked on each of these three areas I found that my spouse was responding by giving me more of the same in return.  I had been neglecting my marriage for a long time.  Hopefully, you will stop neglecting yours and begin taking some powerful steps.  For me, it took time and effort, but it was well worth it.  I hope it is for you also!  

How to Save Your Marriage

Marriage can be full of joy, but it can also be full of pain.  For some couples, it seems the joy has been gone for so long that it is impossible to ever get it back.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  When it comes to how to save your marriage, there are a lot of things you can do to start getting your relationship back on track.  But you must be willing to look at yourself and make the necessary changes.  Change isn’t easy, but if how to save your marriage is really a priority for you, then keep reading.  

What are you bringing to the relationship?

One of the first things you need to do when it comes to how to save your marriage is to sit down and make a list of what you are actually contributing to the relationship.  This is not a list for things like making money to pay the mortgage, or cleaning the house, or doing the grocery shopping. 

Rather, in what ways are you making the relationship good or bad?  Are you constantly nit-picking at your spouse’s short-comings?  Do you express heartfelt appreciation frequently that your spouse is in your life, or for the wonderful things your spouse does for you?  Are you supportive? Do you listen when your partner needs to talk about something that is bothering him or her?  Are you loving and affectionate?  

Your marriage is like a bank account.  You are either making deposits into it or withdrawing from the account.  If you are mostly making withdrawals, the bank account will eventually run dry.  You must be making plenty of deposits also if you learning how to save your marriage is important to you.  

Is your marriage a two-way street, or must everything always be on your terms?

Some people don’t know how to be in a relationship without trying to control it.  If you are the type of person who has to have everything happen on your terms, then you are not only being incredibly selfish, you are also treating your spouse with disrespect.  And maybe your spouse has put up with it for a long time, but if how to save your marriage is a concern for you, chances are it is because your spouse has had enough.  

A marriage is meant to be a partnership, not a dictatorship in which one person calls all the shots and expects the other to “obey”.  Attempting to control your spouse will usually foster resentment.  Your spouse is a separate human being whose wants and needs may not always coincide with yours.  Compromise is essential to a good marriage.  Honoring and respecting his or her feelings, wants and needs instead will go a long way towards creating a healthier, more loving relationship.

Are you being passive-aggressive in your marriage?  

While controlling behavior is very destructive to a relationship, passive-aggressive behavior is as well.  Passive-aggressive individuals attempt to get their needs met in very unhealthy ways.  Rather than speaking up and expressing their true needs or feelings, they say one thing and then act in a way which subtly or not so subtly contradicts it, usually in an attempt to get back at the other person.  

For example, a passive-aggressive wife may tell her husband its fine if he wants to spend the day golfing with his friends.  However, in actuality she is not happy about it all and decides to get back at him by “accidentally” putting a new red shirt in the wash with his underwear as she does laundry that day.   Needless to say, this is also destructive to a marriage and defeats the goal of how to save a marriage.

These are just a few questions to ask yourself if you are worried about your marriage.  The only person you can change is yourself, so if you are wondering how to save a marriage, you must start with making changes in how you interact with your spouse.  As you make positive changes, you will likely find that your spouse does also.

Do Not Divorced

When married couples find themselves in a relationship crisis, the possibility of divorce often starts coming up more and more frequently.  Certainly divorce will give you the freedom to go your separate ways and be done with the conflict.  But if you truly desire to stop your divorce, there are several strategies you can begin implementing right now which may turn your relationship around.  In fact, your spouse will never know what hit him!

  

Granted, these strategies take a little work.  And most of the work, if you want to stop your divorce, is yours to do.  Don’t put the onus on your spouse to change.  In fact, if you try following these strategies, your spouse will likely be surprised and start changing in response to you.  Keep in mind, that these will feel very counter-intuitive to you initially.  They will likely be the very opposite of how you have been behaving.  So be prepared to try on some new behaviors which will help you stop your divorce in its tracks!

The first thing you need to do is stop complaining about or criticizing anything about your spouse or your marriage.  Every time you engage in that sort of behavior, you just push your spouse further away and give him more reason to want to go through with the divorce.  So, work hard to catch yourself when you want to make a critical or negative remark if your goal is to stop your divorce.    

Instead, take an unusually agreeable stance.  If your spouse makes a critical comment or complains, agree with him.  For example, if he says something like, “all we ever do is fight”, rather than try to convince him that that isn’t true, (and thus be letting him know how wrong he is) agrees with it.  You might say (and you must be sincere), “you are right….we do fight a lot.”  And once you have agreed, drop it.  Don’t say anything else.  Don’t give in to your urge to defend yourself or the marriage.  Just agree.  

Second, don’t pressure your spouse in any way.  When people are having marriage problems, it is not uncommon for one spouse to be pressuring the other to make changes.  If you want to stop your divorce, this is a huge mistake. 

Whenever you pressure someone, you not only put them on the defense, you trigger their resistance.  No one likes to feel pressured, so the natural tendency is to resist it.  Stop yourself whenever you feel the urge to pressure your spouse to work on the marriage, make changes, etc.  

Third, avoid having serious conversations.  Those can do more harm than good in a fragile relationship.  The reasons they can be so damaging is because they create undue pressure in the relationship.  Again, pressure will backfire if your goal is to stop your divorce.  

Last, keep things light hearted, casual, and upbeat.  In other words, cliché as this may sound, “go with the flow”.  So many problems arise when we try to fight against a situation.  By allowing it and no longer fighting it, it frees up the resistance and will often lead to things turning themselves around.  And it takes far less energy to go with the flow than against it.  

Practice doing these things and you will be much more likely to stop your divorce. Keep in mind, you must do them consistently.  If you slip back into old habits of criticizing, pressuring or complaining, you will just shift things back to where they were.  But keep doing these, and it will give your marriage the best chance of working out after all.