Marriage Success

Supporting Your Spouse

One of the fastest ways to reduce trust with your spouse is to badmouth them to others, i.e. friends, associates, co-workers, or, worse, to your parents or other members of your family.

If this gets back to your spouse (which it inevitably will), or even worse, if you do it in front of them, this will reduce and possibly destroy the trust in your relationship.

Another version of this is failing to defend your spouse when another criticizes them. For example, let’s say your parents start to criticize your spouse. You have to, at that point, stick up for your spouse. To not do so is to start down a slippery slope. When you said “I do” you agreed to create a team with that person, and you have to defend that person, even if it’s your parents giving them a bad rap. If you don’t, it will begin to drive a wedge between your spouse and your parents.

You have to think of you and your husband or wife as a team. You are working together to create a good measure of survival for the both of you, your kids, and everyone related to the family.

So how do you work well with members of a team? Well, you have to be supportive and positive. This means to consider, think about, and communicate about that person’s best qualities. You want to build them up and make them feel good about themselves.

This doesn’t mean to lie to them and tell them how great they are at something when they aren’t really. And I’m not talking about fake “self-esteem” where you make someone feel great about themselves without any consideration of actual achievement. What I’m saying is that you are supportive of your spouse and make them feel good about the person they are and about the things that they are good at. Protect and defend them against attack.

And they’ll do the same for you. That’s a real team.

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Is Compromise the Answer?

Today with most marriage counseling, the marriage counselor will advise the couple to compromise with each other.

In other words, learn to accept your spouse’s faults or quirks. If she burns dinner, that makes it OK that you lost $300 at the casino. If he or she cheats, well, that makes a good number of the other’s faults OK.

An article on Buzzle.com stated “Marriage is all about compromise. Compromise is hard. With or without marriage counseling, married couples need to learn to solve their problems. Counseling can be a place to learn these skills, but should never be the only thing used to save an unhappy marriage.”

But compromising doesn't really restore the love and passion, does it? To be frank, compromising doesn't even restore the enjoyment to a relationship.

I believe that in order to save a marriage that is in trouble, you have to sit down and take a hard look at what your spouse has done to you that was difficult for you to experience or that broke the agreements of the marriage. But you also have to take a serious look at what you have done to your spouse that was difficult for them to experience or that was against the agreements and commitments of the marriage.

It’s a 2-way street. Everybody knows about the Golden Rule, i.e. not doing something to someone else that you wouldn’t want to have done to you. Well those are the things that can wreck a marriage. If you look at it from both ways, it can really have a healing effect.

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You've Just Had a Big Fight...

You and your spouse just had a huge fight. You're absolutely sure you're in the right and most likely your spouse feels the same way. You have a few options:

1. You could continue fighting.


2. You could stop fighting and let the upset simmer for awhile (maybe days or weeks).


3. You could both take a walk around the block (each in the opposite direction) until the two of you are extroverted from the upset.

I'm going to recommend Option Number 3.

When two people are very upset, it's difficult to resolve things from that very upset state of mind. If the two of you take a walk around the block, the idea is to walk long enough until you are "extroverted" from the upset. In other words, you've popped out of the upset and you no longer want to strangle your spouse. While on this walk, each of you needs to put your attention on things in your external environment: look at plants, trees, houses, other people, clouds, etc. Put your attention on things outside of you and this will produce an extroversion from the upset. And, as mentioned, each of you goes a different direction on this walk.

When the two of you have successfully completed this walk, you can then sit down and take a fresh look at what's upsetting both of you.

Do not underestimate the effectiveness of this "walk." I can absolutely assure you it will put the two of you in a better position to resolve the upset before it gets too far out of hand (or goes onto the backburner where both of you stay upset for awhile).

In my book, When the Thrill Is Gone, additional procedures are given to resolve marital upsets. There is also an entire chapter to help people get over the loss and upset of a previous relationship that didn't end well.

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The Advantages of Sleeping On It...

You and your husband are upset about something. What advantages are there to sleeping on it?

I'd have to say...none.

If you and your spouse are in the middle of an upset, it's worth the extra effort to try to resolve it before heading off to bed. For a few reasons:

1. You'll get much better sleep if the upset is behind you.


2. Though some upsets will "fade away" with time, many do just the opposite. They linger and can have a negative impact on other areas of life.


3. Upsets (even minor ones) that are allowed to accumulate can put unnecessary strain on the marriage.


4. If there are kids, whether they view the upset(s) directly or not, they are affected by them.

Sometimes we're just too tired to sit down and resolve an upset before going to bed, but any effort you (and your spouse) make on this kind of thing can be very helpful. Even if all you do is look each other in the eye and say, "hey, I know we're upset but I think the world of you. Let's agree to fix this tomorrow for sure." — that's far better than sleeping on it. And a fast hug or kiss wouldn't hurt.

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Outside Influences

While driving around town a few days ago, I heard a radio talk show host give a woman advice that was so off-the-wall, I figured I'd mention it here as a good example of "outside influences."

The talk show host is well known, has a national audience and his subject is money and finances. (I won't mention his name, as that part of the story is not that important). A woman calls all excited to talk to the host and says her fiance wants a pre-nuptial. She says he's got a handful of old cars that are treasured collectibles and apparently he doesn't want to lose them if the marriage goes sour.

The woman explains a bit more about her fiance, that he's been in school for awhile, learning a craft and the talk show host jumps in and goes on for about five minutes about how big a mistake the woman is making by going ahead with the marriage! He even tells her that if you were my daughter that, "I'd do everything in my power to make sure you didn't marry this guy!" He uses this five minutes to severely criticize the woman's fiance.

Now I realize this is a more-than-obvious example of an "outside influence" but this woman started off the conversation with a fiance she loved dearly and a minor concern about the pre-nup and as the talk show host worked her over for those five minutes you could see that she was starting to feel different about her fiance.

And I also realize this woman most likely should NOT have called the show to get "advice" about her fiance AND whatever advice he gave she should NOT have let it affect her. But unfortunately these kinds of things can and do happen.

If you (or your spouse) are talking to a friend or another family member about your spouse and you receive advice that is derogatory in some way, realize the potential exists that you'll leave that conversation with less affinity for your spouse. You may have had good intentions going into that conversation, perhaps wanting to air some concerns you have, but you have to be aware of the fact that someone outside of your marriage has the potential to reduce the love and affection one spouse has for the other.

Sometimes a marriage is being hurt by a hidden outside influence. This person is not immediately obvious to the husband or wife. In my book, When the Thrill Is Gone, a procedure is given to locate a hidden, negative influence on a marriage. Locating such a source of trouble can bring tremendous relief to a marriage.

Having an awareness of "outside influences" as a factor in your marriage can be very helpful.

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