How To Save Your Marriage

Historically, women have a much easier time with this concept than men. Don’t get too cocky women — sometimes the communication from women is so muddled that the man never really knows what you want!

There are two things at work here. First, the man tends to shut himself down when there is a problem. He is oriented on fixing the problem, and if he can’t do so right away, there is no sense in dealing with it. The book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus describes this as men retreating to “their cave”.

Women, on the other hand, tend to spill out their feelings to the man. The man reacts by offering solutions to problems, or by ignoring. Either way, the woman doesn’t feel like she is really being heard. Women also have a tendency to say one thing, and mean another. Men are often expected to be mind readers, which only leads to resentment and frustration from both sexes.

Understanding these differences in communicating, and making an active effort to communicate effectively is key.

In our last post we talked about the power and importance of communication in a marriage.  But I also want to tell you that while communication is certainly key, it does not solve everything! There are certain times where NOT communicating is a better idea, in fact. For example, if you just hate something your partner is wearing and you say something to them in a hurtful tone, you’re definitely not using communication to your advantage. Just like you need to pick and choose your battles, you need to pick and choose what you communicate.

Also, the more time you spend with a person, the more you know how to push their buttons. You know exactly what can make them mad in a flash. You need to hold yourself back from making hurtful statements or you could be setting yourself up for a rocky relationship for years.

Finally, even when you take all the right steps to communicating, your partner might not respond like a textbook case. For instance, if you’re mirroring your partner’s thoughts they might take it the wrong way and think you’re mocking in some way. Being clear about your intentions is important. It’s also good to remember that those old methods of communicating just didn’t work. Still, it can take a little while to get used to the new ones.

The majority of couples who are going through a split could have saved their marriage through some simple communication. Luckily for you, you’re going to get that information right here that can save your marriage and make your bond stronger than ever.

Please understand that communication is the doorway to understanding. Have you ever just thought to yourself, “I don’t UNDERSTAND why they think/do/say those things!” If there were more communication in your relationship you would start to understand.

This goes back to the issue of having different views about the world. We often don’t honor their view or even consider that theirs is different due to a lack of communication. If you open up those lines of communication you’ll start to understand where they are coming from. You’ll be able to view the world the way they view it whenever conflict arises. This is a powerful relationship saver!
Another aspect of communication that you need to understand is that it works both ways. Your relationship cannot be strong if one person is good at communicating, while the other person doesn’t even make an effort. Don’t get me wrong — you can still improve things on your end even if your partner isn’t currently willing to. But the strongest relationships will come as a result of both partners giving it their all.

The steps of good communication include:

l    Committing yourself to sharing as much as possible
l    Fully expressing your thoughts without place blame
l    Repeating/mirroring statements and asking for clarifications

The first thing you saw on the list was committing yourself. If you don’t commit yourself to better communication, you won’t see it through! We’re so used to “talking” about things that it can seem like it’s supposed to be totally natural to do so. The problem is, that it DOESN’T happen naturally. That’s where this active commitment comes in.

Then, you need to express your thoughts using a lot of “I” statements. If you start placing blame right away you are going to run into a lot of resistance and you’ll be back at square one. No, this does not mean you ignore it if your spouse does something wrong, it just means you should let them know how you feel about what they did rather than saying, “well, you did this, that, and the other.”

As you communicate with your partner they will hopefully open up and communicate with you as well. You need to really listen to what they are saying! Listening often means repeating things back to them that they’ve said. You’re not being a parrot, just mirroring back some things they’ve said. This will show them that you truly do understand and care, and they will trust you a lot more as a result.

This step also helps you get things clear in your own mind. Instead of jumping to conclusions and looking at things from your own worldview, you’re suddenly forced to look at it from theirs. This step does wonders in helping to improve communication.