Marriage is meant to last a lifetime but reality is that over 50% of the marriages will fail. I know two couples who recently gave up on their marriages and each of them were married over 30 years. Is your marriage heading down the wrong path toward divorce? If your marriage is frustrating you I hope you find this useful.
First, I would like to say that if you are concerned about your marriage and looking for ways to save or improve it, you are ahead of many couples. Unfortunately, many couples have given up on their marriage and are only together because it’s financially difficult to separate.
Perhaps you are willing to fight more for your marriage than your spouse. This doesn’t make your task impossible but rather a bit more challenging. Saving a marriage is so much easier when both individuals are willing to make changes, compromise and sacrifice for the sake of the marriage. However, instead of working harder and burning yourself out, you just need to be wiser and get the same results.
I hope and pray that your marriage will succeed and that you will spend the rest of your lives together. Please consider the following as you work through your marriage issues as these could become stumbling blocks on your marital journey.
Reasons Your Marriage Might Fail. These are in no particular order.
- Not spending any time together. It’s easy to let life, (kids, work, and leisure activities) get in the way of spending time together. You should look forward to spending time together, creating joyful memories. If spending time together is more of a burden to you than something you look forward to, something needs to change.
- Lack of understanding. Not taking the time to know each others needs is a sure way to lead to misunderstandings. The problem is that expectations are no longer met when you don’t understand each other. You must continue to understand what matters most to your spouse if your marriage is going to thrive.
- Not paying attention to each other. It’s easy to take your spouse for granted and vice versa. Days and months go by and you pass each other like friends or colleagues in the night. If you don’t know the intimate goings on in your spouses’ life, you aren’t paying close enough attention.
- Failing to support each other. One of the often missed important aspects in marriages is the showing of practical support. This requires putting your spouses’ interest ahead of yours at certain times. It has been said that it is better to give than receive. In marriage, its better that both spouses give and both receive.
- Being disrespectful. Marriage is a partnership between two loving individuals who should feel respected in the relationship and in the home. If you aren’t treating each other as valuable equals, something is missing in your marriage.
- Not affirming each other. One of the downfalls of many couples is not feeling appreciated. Unfortunately this can lead to feelings of loneliness and discouragement.
- Lack of sexual intimacy. Very easy to understand why this issue can derail any marriage. Lack of intimacy often times has the tendency to cause conflict and might result in an extramarital affair.
- Not providing practical help. Your spouse needs to know that you care by being a helper. Your actions must speak for themselves. If your spouse never gets to see you demonstrate how much you care then your spouse may assume that you don’t care. Make sure you don’t just say that you care but show your spouse how much you care but what you do. Try to make life a little easier for your spouse.
- Failing to communicate. After a number of months or years of being together, we often fail to listen to our partner. It’s important to listen and take the time to understand each other’s points of view.
- Being untrustworthy. If you can’t trust each other then your marriage will struggle in many areas. One of the ways to build your trust is ensure that your communication is open and honest. The other thing that you must do is keep your promises.
I really do want your marriage to succeed. There are two things I know for sure about your marriage. First that it’s not perfect and second, it can be improved.
If you are experiencing some of the issues noted above don’t be discouraged. Once you identify the issues and differences in your marriage you are half-way there to fixing them.
Please take some time to think about the issues you are dealing with in your marriage. The goal for you should be to resolve the issues one at a time and watch your marriage be transformed right before your eyes.
