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Are you struggling in your marriage? Read on to learn marriage building tips which may help your marriage work better for both of you.
What are the most important qualities of a marriage? Sticking with each other, through thick and thin? Loving each other no matter what? Never being someone they can’t count on, etc? Well, that’s all quite Disney fairytale stuff but in reality, it's actually, just the simple human qualities we all want to receive. Respect and perseverance are the two top things you need. Respect comes in many forms. Respect for their body, their space, their property, their personal life that doesn’t include you, their style, their side of the bed, etc. perseverance is needed because you have to accept, they aren’t perfect, and neither are you!. You’re going to want to strangle each other at some point. You will get into arguments, you will feel slighted and jaded. But you have to remember, they aren’t a robot, they are a human being with flaws. Strap yourself in because this read is going to be illuminating.
All-important, integrity Integrity isn’t just about telling the truth, it's about upholding some unwritten rules. This is what makes marriage so holy and so precious, because we don’t just follow the standard rules everyone knows about like ‘don’t sleep with anyone else’, but we follow those that we can’t see and haven’t technically agreed. The foundation of integrity is self-respect. You know right from wrong, and you shouldn’t want to degrade yourself by doing something morally wrong. Integrity in marriage means, showing up at a time you said you would. If your spouse’s car is broken down, and they call you to be picked up, don’t tell them you’re on your way and then catch 5 more minutes of the football game. Integrity means doing the right thing, even when your spouse isn’t watching. Each word has to be met with action. If you say you’re going to do something, you stick to your word. It's about being ethical for yourself and your partner. The crucial aspect is, only you can uphold good standards, only you can be a good person, your spouse cannot make you into these things. Don’t close the doors Openness is something that can fade over time and that can lead to you going from a married couple to just a couple. Those rings on your fingers don’t mean much if you aren’t sharing your deepest darkest secrets, insecurities, and desires with your spouse. But why then, would openness in a marriage deteriorate? It's usually because of over-critique. If you’re playing whack-a-mole with your partner’s feelings and desires, you are going to burn them eventually. They won’t want to share with you because they know what is going to follow if they do. So, what you need to stop doing is, belittling their feelings, saying that they’re making a mountain out of a molehill when they are clearly seeing and feeling a situation through a different lens. If you need help understanding when they are being serious and when they are over-thinking something, read a body language book or watch a few videos on the subject. Without saying a word, you can look at your spouse and know when they are emotionally fragile when they have experienced something very troubling. It's good to try and bolster their confidence by sometimes showing they are worrying over nothing, but other times, you should be sensitive to their needs. Power and Humility The power dynamic in a marriage is just like the one in a normal relationship without a holy bond. Here’s what you may know already about this dynamic. Men:
Women:
Humility in this regard goes a long way. Admitting that you have some kind of power over your spouse is the first step to breaking down invisible barriers. Otherwise, couples can get into a Cold War-type of a situation where no one acknowledges they have the power that scares the other person, and they both end up trying to one-up each other. Husband and wife, have to honestly talk about these things if you are to have a balance of some sort. Do you enable each other? Do you do things such as cover-up or make excuses for your spouse’s bad behavior? This might seem like something a ‘loyal’ husband or wife would do, but when you know they are doing something harmful, you’re just enabling them. With your silence or even, the backing of some kind, they feel emboldened to do it again and again. This can result in both spouses becoming locked in a descending spiral where nobody will win. If you find that both of you or just one person, in the marriage is experiencing substance abuse of any kind, call the couples rehabs center. They have been delivering incredible services to married couples that have addiction concerns. They have both inpatient and outpatient services. They believe that when couples are addicted to drugs or alcohol, their behavior progresses together. In other words, you both enable each other. With their rehab services, both of you can turn from enablers to solid rocks of self-belief and direction. You can help each other become sober and look after one another. This is why the success rate among couples is so much higher than individuals because you stop each other from falling back into the cycle. Check out their cognitive behavioral therapy program which helps couples to understand their thoughts and feelings may be counteracting their need to overcome addiction. Become fitter together Couples that workout together and exercise in unison, are far healthier both mentally and physically than those that don’t. Married couples might think they need time alone and working out is a good thing th |
