Give your marriage a second chance At happiness.
Most experts agree that the best way to start back on the road to a blissful marriage is to rekindle the romance that you had early on in your relationship. Maybe you would get your wife flowers because she was on your mind. Perhaps you would leave your husband little notes to show your love.
After awhile, those little gestures start to seem less important. You just stop doing those things for your partner because you figure they know how much you love them. This is where most couples start to fall into an apathetic state of mind when it comes to their marriage.
Life as a married couple eventually becomes stale and routine with no passion anymore. You are still partners, but are no longer lovers like you once were.
The roots of marital dissatisfaction are usually exposed shortly after marriage, when reality intrudes on fantasy. This adjustment period reveals the other's imperfections, shortcomings, once viewed as minor and glossed over in the full bloom of love, suddenly take on ominous proportions. Cute eccentricities grow into aggravating annoyances, rudeness replaces romance.
Each spouse defends his or her own territory, and the one union reverts to two identities, as the fantasy of romantic oneness begins to fade. Requests become demands. When marital harmony is taken over by negative actions, if left unchecked, can spell disaster for two well-intentioned lovers.
Many couples love each other deeply, and genuinely enjoy each others' company, yet feel that the relationship is stale. They long for some of the old intensity, romance, and spontaneity.
Others don't see the need for that intensity, or even believe that it's possible to feel that again. They assume that intensity exists only at the beginning of a relationship, and that "mature love" is more settled and less exciting. While how we feel toward each other certainly changes and evolves over the years, the truth is that our relationships reflect what we put into them.
Children can be so carefree and loving because they have lived for just a few years- a much shorter time in which to accumulate negative experiences and build up feelings of resentment, anger, and mistrust.
Relationships are similar to this. In the beginning, we don't know each other very well, and aren't carrying around resentments from past interactions with each other. As the years go by, these resentments accumulate. We no longer look at our partner with the same fresh, un-judging eyes.
So what do you do? Retreating into your own worlds will only serve to damage the marriage more. There are several things you can do to regain the romance, but it has to start within each of you. Both of you must be willing to give a little in order to get back that fire that was there before your wedding day and just afterwards.
Start by taking another look at your spouse. A good, hard look at who they are. Look at your partner with a fresh look, let go of past baggage, and remember all the reasons we love her/him so much. This means stretching past any resentments, and opening up to feeling and giving love more fully.
Start out by thinking about your partner and all the reasons that you fell in love with her/him in the first place.
What attracted you to him or her initially? How did you feel when you were around each other? Early in your relationship when you were telling others about this great new person in your life, what did you tell them? Did he make you laugh? Did her smile light up a room?
When we take and look at our partner with the same eyes we had early on in the relationship, we can start seeing that those qualities that attracted you to them in the first place are really still there. They have just been overshadowed by all the other stuff that everyday life entails.
This about what that person means to you. Certainly it’s more than just someone to be around. Sure, you love the security, but what about the companionship, the things you share, the past you have lived? Maybe there have been some rough patches, but there have been good times too. Remember them, wrap your mind around them, and focus on them. That is what will get you started toward bringing romance back to your marriage.
Once you do this, resolve to become self-directed in your quest towards a more passionate marriage. Mates must become responsible for their own actions, they say. Each mate should identify and recognize his or her inaccurate, exaggerated expectations. Recognition precedes change. By recognizing exaggerated expectations, each mate creates room for maneuvering and motivation for change.
This, then, is self-direction: directing the attention to our own unrealistic expectations of the other. Each mate takes full responsibility for his or her thoughts and actions, whether they are realistic or selfishly imagined. Now change can begin to take place in a marriage.
The implications of this new approach are enormous. It takes two people to have a marriage, but only one to change it. We end up feeling helpless and out of control in our marriages simply because we can't control our partners.
The truth is that we need only learn to control ourselves. We ultimately come to feel alone in our marriages because we have replaced an accepting attitude toward our partner with unconscious expectations that are ultimately self-defeating.
The first rule of behavior and controlling our emotions is to accept the fact that we can’t change others, we can only change ourselves. Frustration comes from trying to manipulate those around us when we really should be concentrating on us and our own behaviors.
Being self-directed—taking personal responsibility for one's own actions—empower both husband and wife. Rather than feeling victimized, each mate gains greater control over his or her life. A positive, constructive effect begins to transform the marriage. Counselors know that when one mate begins to change for the better, invariably the entire relationship improves.
Many couples are committed to marriage in spite of the self-centered, self-gratifying, self-oriented influences of the world around them. When a husband and wife, struggling to get their own way in marriage, begin to shift their frame of thinking from a demanding to a sustaining and supportive one, they can happily find themselves in a second honeymoon.
Specific steps must be taken to pave the way to a renewed and revitalized relationship. Marital happiness requires demythologizing marriage, fairly evaluating unrealistic expectations and replacing them with the healthy realities of a fulfilling relationship.
What positive steps can you take to rebuild your relationship, to put real romance and love in your marriage?