How To Save My Marriage (Starting From Yourself)

You may be at the end of your rope. You may have tried everything to save your marriage and create a loving relationship but nothing seems to work. Reviving a marriage is not easy. But there are some simple things you can do to dramatically improve your relationship with your spouse. I will be discussing three things that are absolutely necessary in order to save your marriage.

The good thing about working to create a better marriage or to revive a dying one is that you don’t need your spouse’s approval to start working on your marriage. You can work on changing the dynamics of your relationship on your own.

The importance of testing

This is a marriage, what do you mean test? Up until now you have probably been doing the same things to get your spouse to change their behavior. For example if your spouse fails to come home on time at night, your response may be to yell at them or sometimes to even ignore the behavior all together. Whatever you are doing to help with your marriage, you will need to start writing it down and take note of your spouses’ reaction.

Why?

Have you ever been in a situation where you can predict what a certain person will do to annoy you? Maybe it is at your job or at a particular organization you volunteer your time or maybe you are experiencing this with your spouse right now. You may wonder why they keep on doing the same things over and over again when they can visibly see that you are absolutely annoyed.

Well… Why are you continuing to do the same things with your spouse when it is obviously not yielding positive results? This is why it will be so vitally important to write down what you are doing to help your marriage AND the reaction your spouse is having. If one particular technique works, then keep doing it. If another strategy doesn’t work then avoid using this as a technique to help your marriage.

Being Flexible: You will find that sometimes you are using a technique that is working fairly well and your spouse might all of a sudden have a different reaction to it, this is ok because people change. Having a loving marriage is a continuous effort so don’t be so rigid in your findings that you are unwilling to make changes.

A simple way to change your thought pattern

If your spouse is 2 hours late for a dinner date, what is your reaction? What if you knew they were late because of a huge accident on the way home? What if they were late because they suddenly got ill and had to drive themselves to the hospital? What if they were late because they decided to catch up with some old friends instead of coming straight home? – Each of these situations would elicit different responses. But oftentimes it is easier to assume that your spouse is being inconsiderate and choosing the response that best fits that situation.

It will be helpful to take some time and understand, things might always be as they appear. Take time to talk to your spouse and find out what is actually going on before you choose a response.

Do you really need goals when trying to improve your marriage?

How will you ever know that you have achieved success unless you know what the end result is? Many times couples will point to wanting a better marriage, a loving spouse, someone who respects their work, less fighting and arguing, but what do these things really mean? Your goals need to be specific.

Imagine if your boss told you that she wanted you to do better work. What does that really mean? Unless you felt that you were doing horrible work to begin with, it would be difficult to track the results. What does better work mean for your boss? Does it means that you come into work on time all the time? Does it mean that you turn in assignments early? Does it mean increasing your sales? And if so by how much?

Do you see how frustrating this could be? In this situation you don’t know exactly what your boss wants. If you want a more loving marriage, how will you know you have achieved it? Does it mean that your spouse asks you out two times a week? Does it mean that your spouse says I love you more often? What is more often? I think you see what I am getting at. Knowing specifics about what you want will help you understand whether you are getting what you want.

Your marriage does not have to be difficult. You are not in a situation that can’t be turned around. Just as businesses have to tweak their goals and responses to customers to increase sales and keep growing, partners in a marriage have to make changes to continue a loving relationship. You are capable of changing your marriage, even if you are the only one trying.