4 Ways to Save Your Marriage
Each year in the US alone, almost 1 million marriages wind up in divorce.This is an astounding number! That would be as though all of the residents of Houston, Texas, were divorced (each divorce leaves two people).
The question is how many of those marriages could possibly be preserved. Sad to say, that is an invisible number. In the event that your marriage remains together, it is not easy to find in the statistics. As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.
Can your marriage be preserved? If I could answer that, I’d be well-off. I can say this that if your marriage is in difficulty and you do nothing, the end result is certain. If you do something, there’s a much better chance that your marriage will be saved.
Plus I can tell you, in 4 straightforward steps exactly what you can do in order to save your relationship. You can start right this moment. But you need to understand that I said “simple.” That is not the same as “easy.” These actions will not be easy. They do, nevertheless, present you with a path that you have to follow if you would like to alter the destiny of a marriage that may be in trouble.
Allow me to share the 4 steps:
1) Stop the blame game. Quit blaming your partner and quit blaming yourself. This is the first step as 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 else and say “It’s his or her fault.” Yet in marriage, you are able to just as easily turn that pointing finger on yourself and place the blame there, stating “it’s all my fault.”
Alas, blame feels fine in the short-term, however in the long-run, it prevents any shift or change. So, even if you can make a huge list of precisely why you or your spouse ought to be blamed, forget about it. Even though that list is factual, it will not help you to put your marriage back together. Blame is the fuel for divorces.
2) Accept responsibility. Conclude you can do something. Change always starts with just one individual who wishes to see a change. Understand that taking responsibility is certainly not the same as taking the blame (see above).
Instead, blame is saying “regardless of who is at fault, there are many things I can do in different ways, and I am going to do them.” What buttons do you make it possible for your partner to push? What buttons do you push with your husband or wife? Decide to not allow those buttons to be pushed and stop pushing the buttons.
What amazes me in my counseling is that everybody understands everything that they should be doing or not doing. However it is not easy to move in that direction. You shouldn’t be caught in that. Decide that you are going to take action.
The main difference between blame and responsibility is the following: if I’m in a burning building, I can stand around attempting to figure out who started the blaze, precisely why it has spread so quickly, plus who I’m likely to sue as soon as it is finished (blame), or I could get myself and anybody I can out of the building (taking responsibility). Whenever a marriage is in difficulty, the home is on fire. Exactly how will you take action to save the relationship?
3) Get resources from professionals. If others have been helped, you can be, too. Professionals equipped with a good deal more perspective and experience can be a real support in such circumstances. Do your basic research and divide the useless from the useful, after that take advantage of the useful.
Never think that your predicament is so different from every other circumstance. I can tell you that after over twenty years of giving counseling, not too much new comes through my doors. Do not get me wrong; the story varies, but the dynamics are the very same.
Consider 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, the thing that got you into dire straits will not get you out of hard times. This requires a whole different level of reasoning. And that is what you get from an outside professional, somebody with a new viewpoint.
4) Take action. A lot more harm is done simply by doing nothing than by taking a misstep. It is extremely easy to become paralyzed by the situation. Therapists frequently speak about “analysis paralysis.” This comes about when people get so caught up in their churning thought processes and efforts to “figure things out” that they never take action.
It is not enough to simply comprehend what may be causing the issue. You must then take action! On a daily basis, I get individuals coming to my office with the perception that if they can just understand their issue, it will resolve itself. That just does not transpire. Resolution of the situation requires action.
Can your marriage be preserved? If you follow my recommendations, you have infinitely more opportunity for salvaging your marriage than if you do nothing. Marriage is one of those areas where it takes two in order to make it work, yet just one to seriously mess things up. You can just do your part, but most times, that is enough. Resolve never to ask the question but to start to take action.
Are you willing to take action? Grab the best-selling resource on the net for saving marriages: Save The Marriage, Even If Only You Want It! You can find it at Save the Marriage.