The ability to achieve a fulfilling and long term marriage reflects emotional maturity and resilience. It is often taken for granted that successful marriages just "happen." Indeed, I disagree. I think that marriage is not for children. Marriages require the best of one's adulthood. It is necessary that each partner keep their eye on the prize, the success of the marriage. Below are seven tips to improve the quality of your marriage. At my Affordable Relationship Counseling practice in San Diego, I routinely counsel my clients in these areas, and they often report back to me their positive results.
1. Remember that love is a verb. If love is an action, keep your eye on what you are doing for the love between you. Do not make demands on your partner. Develop strategies to help you self-soothe your anxiety when he or she is not doing what you wish they would. There are myriad ways to self soothe, such as exercising, seeing a friend, doing a crossword, reading a book, writing a journal, or listening to some good music. Keep your focus on yourself rather than on your partner to get to a changed place in your dynamic. You cannot change another. The only person you can change is yourself.
2. Make your marriage the number one priority. This means that you have a weekly date night. Do not veer from this tradition except in the face of illness or an urgent work or school-related deadline. Make sure the date you plan involves time to talk rather than just viewing a movie.
Take turns planning the surprise date for the other. Develop a tradition just for the two of you, such as Care Days. With Care Days, you each select one day of the week that you will regularly be pampered with acts that each of you have previously identified to the other. These acts will be tangible, observable acts that make you feel as if your partner cares to make you feel good.
3. As individuals and as a couple, do not forget to acknowledge the triumphant things you have achieved separately and together. Keep your eye on what you are doing right rather than on what you have done wrong. Have a solution-focus, not a problem focus.
4. Develop your own assertiveness skills, In other words, know your bottom line. Decide what you will do and won't do in relationship to your partner. And be proud that you are a principle-driven partner.
5. Consider all your "yes-es" carefully. Instead of just going along and accommodating in order to avoid making waves, be willing to say no. Also, do not let angers pile up like so many old clothes piled up in the middle of the room. They will clutter your positive feelings, create escalating resentment, and can lead to explosions. Monitor and express your truest feelings….self awareness and then the ability to "be a self" is key in good marriages.
6. Avoid what John Gottman, a pioneer in marriage and family therapy, calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Defensive communication, Critical communication, Contemptuous Communication, or Stonewalling (lack of communication). Research has shown that these forms of communication are lethal to a marriage.
7. Learn to respect–and even- celebrate difference in one another. Yes, opposites often attract. Learn to acknowledge the reciprocity in your relationship. Yin and Yang, Dark and Light, Close and Distant, Distancing and Pursuing, Over-functioning and under-functioning….these examples and other opposites are always at play in relationships as they are in life. Getting to acceptance on opposing and opposite forces and tolerating the contradictions is part and parcel of relational maturity.
If you want to learn more about my model of practice and pick up some more free tips just for stopping, come to http://www.cunninghamtherapy.com/ or call 619-990-6203 for a complimentary phone consultation.
Affordable Relationship Counseling: We Are All More Alike Than Different!
To create a more secure bond is the goal of good couples therapy. I am located in the heart of San Diego and welcome a beginning conversation about getting you started on a therapy journey.