By Jeff Forte — Written on Sep 11, 2018
In America, about every 4 minutes, a couple gets divorced. That’s over 40,000 divorces a week. That’s a tidy sum of legal billing hours for the attorneys involved. Adding to that financial pain is the emotional trauma for all the family members of any couple going through the process.
Is any of that divorce pain preventable? Is there an answer for how to save your marriage? Most of it is, and the majority of marriages can be greatly improved or completely turned around.
How would I know? I have been working with couples to resolve particularly difficult relationship challenges for close to a decade. In my experience, people simply don’t know what to do to sustain love and passion in their relationships. I used to be one of them.
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I finally got fed up from struggling, and not knowing what to do, and figured out how to save your marriage and have a great one at that. Fortunately and unfortunately, we all model some of the behaviors that we experience from our parents. Did you want the day to day joy that your parents experienced with each other?
For most of us the answer is absolutely no. Our role models matter because we know that children of divorce have much higher rates of divorce when they ultimately marry. Will that be your legacy?
In my opinion, divorce often becomes a choice made by what people perceive as a lack of valid options. And people often fail because of what they don't know. The reality is that we all make simple mistakes unknowingly that it devastates our relationships.
In my book The 90-Minute Marriage Miracle: The Only Guide You Will Ever Need to Making Love Last, I write about 7 strategies that work immediately to resolve conflicts and improve most aspects of the relationship, even if the situation might seem hopeless. Just about anything is possible when people finally learn what to do that actually works. Here’s a quick summary of the strategies:
Stop doing the things that are hurting the relationship. A little honesty goes a long way here. We have all done things from time to time that have not been helpful to sustaining love and passion.
Know what you want, not what you don’t want. Most people just wing it day by day, without any idea of what they are working towards together. As a result, they get caught up in the stressors of the moment, instead of the pursuing a vision of what they want their intimate lives to be like.
People change over time and it impacts the relationship. People forget what initially captivated the hearts of the couple. If they were to think back to the beginning of the relationship and begin now to interact with each other that same way, then feelings of disconnect can begin to disappear.
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Some things are easy to do, and just as easy not to do. Show your partner more appreciation. Give them your attention when they need it. Give them your reassurance about your commitment instead of subtle and not so subtle hints of your unhappiness and leaving.
When couples push each other’s buttons arguments tend to escalate. The fastest way out is to remember why you are with this person. Soften up and bring more playfulness, fun, silliness, and surprise back into your interaction with your partner. Stop taking things, including yourself, so seriously. You’ll enjoy it too.
Bottled up emotions will come out. Can you have heartfelt understanding for whatever your partner is going through? Can you remember to completely focus on them when they need you? Can you tune into what’s really going on without taking it as a personal attack, because mostly it’s not?
Who is going to initiate the repair or improvement of your relationship? Are you waiting for your partner to go first because they owe you? If someone doesn’t step forward first and initiate, then things will never change. Many couples are silently waiting for the other person to do something to fix the marriage. Nothing ever changes that way. Take 100 percent responsibility for the relationship by being the one to give first.
Having a great marriage requires knowing what to do and what not do to. Having a great marriage is also a choice. We each get to decide how we will interact with our partner, despite past events and circumstances. Every moment we share creates a new opportunity to deepen the connection, or to elevate communication. What will you choose to do in any of these moments?
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Jeff Forte is the author of The 90-Minute Marriage Miracle and founder of PEAK Results Coaching, an Executive and Peak Performance Coach specializing in Marriage Resolution and Team Dynamics. Contact him for direct answers to your situation.
