How to Prevent Your Relationship or Marriage From a Breakup
by Susie and Otto Collins, Relationship Coaches
If you look at the statistics, there's a very good chance that marriages
and relationships will experience a relationship
breakup or
divorce. It's
become a part of
life and most people have come to expect and fear it,
although no one wants that for their experience.
How do you prevent your relationship from breaking up?
The relationship advice that we would
give is that
you both take the time
and energy you need to begin
focusing on your relationship and its health.
Whether you need marriage advice
or dating advice,
the information in this
article should start you thinking.
To help you with this process, we'll give you our top
ways to save your
relationship from breaking up:
1. Unearth existing challenges and deal with them.
Most couples avoid looking at and doing something
about the problems
that exist in their relationships--flirting with other people, jealousy,
lack of
passion,
lack of common interests, to name a few. If you don't tackle these
issues when they come up, they tend to fester and end up coming up anyway
as resentments and other ways that can harm your relationship.
What problems need to be addressed in your relationship? Does one
or both
of you want to spend more time together?
If you do, how can this happen
without blaming
each other? Do you need to appreciate each
other a little more?
If so, in what ways can both
of you show appreciation to each other?
2. Make each person's expectations clear for the
relationship and expect
differences.
The people who unconsciously or consciously
think that just
because they expect certain things from
the relationship and their partner,
their partner knows about these expectations and expects the same. They
set
themselves up for overt conflicts or sullen withdrawal
by not getting those
differences on the table, honoring
and accepting them. It's even possible to
have fun
with differences if you look at them in a conscious way.
If you share your expectations in advance, you'll stop
jealousy
and possibly
infidelity and
divorce from
happening. If you expect to be treated a certain
way,
make sure that you tell the other person that this is
the way you'd like
to be treated.
3. Address old fears when they surface.
Most people in relationship experience fears
from the past. These might
include fearing not
being good enough, attractive enough, wealthy
enough
or even feelings of abandonment.
If fears are not looked at and healed, they
interfere in some way or another
with the health
of every relationship. Take some time to notice
when the fears
surface, be loving with yourself
but look inward instead of outward.
Ask yourself if your fears are "true" or are you
just making "stories" up in your
head. If you are
creating those "stories" and there's no basis of
truth to them,
then change your thinking. It's not
always easy to do and it takes moment by
moment
monitoring of your thoughts. If you need help and
support to make the
changes you want in your life,
be courageous enough to get it.
4. Learn how to
communicate effectively.
For many couples, lack of communication is a big
issue. One person may agree
to do something just
to keep the peace and another person may be
wanting to be
loved and appreciated in a certain
way but are not willing to say it.
To improve communication, make sure that each
of you listens to understand
each other. This is a
skill that you have to learn to do because most of
us weren't
taught how.
Listening to understand means listening with your
full attention, being entirely present
with the other
person, without becoming defensive about what
each other is saying.
No, it's not easy to do but when you are able to
do it, the two of you will
become closer, more
connected and more loving. We suggest you
start by giving
your partner your undivided
attention and see how
trust grows
between you.
5. Make sure you each understand, value and
appreciate each other.
Everyone wants to feel understood, valued, loved
and appreciated and
when we're not, we tend to
either withdraw or attack the other person
for not
meeting our needs. If you want to be appreciated,
start appreciating
the other people in your life, especially your spouse or loved one. Sounds
simplistic but it really works!
If you are not feeling loved, start being open to
seeing and feeling love and
appreciation that people
are giving you that you may not be aware of in
your daily life. It may be that someone allows
you to go ahead of them in
traffic or tells you
to go ahead in a grocery line. Send some
appreciation
back to them and to everyone around
you and watch love snowball in your life. For more relationship tips, visit
http://www.relationshipgold.com
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