One Best Tip For Improving Your Marriage

It’s hard to come home to a bad marriage.  

When the one place that is supposed to be loving and supportive, is actually cold and lonely, it’s a challenge to keep positive and have hope that things can turn around. As hard as it might be to believe, though, it is possible. I have one tip for you, something you can start doing right away, that will help improve your marriage. It’s a simple tip, but not always an easy one.

Too often, as our relationships start to slide, we begin to lose touch with the positives.  

We notice all of the ways that our partner is letting us down, or all of the missed opportunities our partner didn’t take to let us know how much s/he cares.  Over the course of time, we can become very, very aware of just how disappointing our partner is, of how she or he has wronged us, of all of the things that have happened that we just can’t believe makes sense to him or her – why would she even do that?! And as time goes on, we begin to focus more and more of our attention on what our partner is doing and how our partner is behaving.

Maybe we use his bad behaviour as an excuse for our own petty behaviour.

Or maybe we’re just so hurt that we are hyper-aware of every little thing that she does or says, and we interpret it all to mean that she doesn’t really care. However it happens, for whatever reasons it happens, it can become very easy to spend much more time thinking about our partner’s behaviour, which we can’t control, rather than focusing on our own, which we can.

So here’s my tip: Start noticing small actions you can take to improve your marriage.

‍If you’d like your marriage to improve, focus on what you can do that would start to move things in a better direction. Are you coming home grumpy and gearing up for a fight each night after work?  Make a point of doing some deep breathing before you walk in the door, and focus on what was good about your day, so that you’re not accidentally giving off a “Don’t talk to me” vibe. Have you been waiting for your partner to make the first move in apologizing/planning a date night/unloading the dishwasher?

Don’t tell yourself that it’s ok to base how you behave on how your partner is behaving; instead act from a place of integrity and be the person you would like to be in your marriage, regardless of what your partner is or isn’t doing.

Perhaps you feel that you’ve been doing all of the work in your relationship already, and you’re tired of feeling as though you’re going it alone. Fair enough. You know yourself how hard you’ve been trying to get things on a better track. But if you’re still interested in seeing your marriage improve, it’s never too late to look at what you have been doing and asking yourself, “If this isn’t working, what might work better?  In this situation, what is in my power to change, what might make a positive difference in our relationship?”

If we only focus on what we want or need someone else to do, and then they don’t do it, it can lead to a real sense of despair and helplessness.

While we can’t make anyone else do something, we can create an environment between us that is fertile ground for a positive shift in both our behaviours which leads to a positive shift in our relationship.

Maybe this means asking about your partner’s day and showing a genuine interest. Perhaps it means sharing more of yourself, contributing more to the conversation and the atmosphere at home, rather than hiding in the den all evening. It could even mean that you need to count to 10 before responding when your partner is short with you, especially when you feel that attitude is uncalled for.  Maybe you’ll need to do the same thing a few times before your partner trusts that you really are trying to do things differently, and s/he starts to respond in a kinder manner.

When we tell ourselves that we’re not going to change what we’re doing until our partner changes what he or she is doing, we’re setting ourselves up for a stalemate.

Someone has to break the ice, make the first move – let it be you. Do something kind, genuine, loving or different, not because it’s your job to fix your relationship, but because it empowers you to know that you have the ability to positively influence the situation, the ability to control how you behave in any situation, and that you also have the ability to start the snowball rolling in the direction of a more loving and satisfying relationship.