Marriage - Start Saving Your Marriage by Stopping at the Red Lights

I remember once when I was a child, visiting some relatives in a village town where the traffic laws where just there for the show. I was taken on a tour of the town centre, and noticed no one stopped at the red lights; they just kept going if they saw no one coming through. Funny enough, this could easily be used as a metaphor for a marriage gone wrong, where both partners in the marriage are crossing each other's red lights, sometimes without any conscious awareness of it. So one of the useful tips to save your marriage would be, what red lights are you crossing?

Our partners sometimes fail to communicate to us what their red lights are, and so do we, then when the marriage turns sour, you really aren't in a position to say: "It's not my fault that my partner doesn't communicate their boundaries to me", remember, you are in a relationship, not a joint business venture and this is where you can start looking for the clues that you may be running through the red lights without knowing.

It may seem overwhelming at times if you find yourself with no clue whatsoever where to start. Here a few useful tips to consider:

1. Spend some time reflecting - Look into your past and see if you could identify a few things you've done repeatedly that might not seem like the best thing to have done. How can you know if they're not the best things, a simple rule would be if you wouldn't like it yourself, no matter how trivial it seems.

2. Complement your spouse - But this has nothing to do with crossing red lights you say? Sometimes the lack of complementing and appreciating your spouse is not meeting an expectation your spouse may have. As simple was throwing the rubbish, washing the dishes, taking care of the kids, cooking, planning, the avenues are limitless. Something along the lines of: "This is usually a feeling I have, but I thought of expressing it to you, and I want you to know how much I appreciate you doing this", or a simple "Thank you"

3. Ask your spouse if they need help - If the answer you get is: "it's ok, I got this" your spouse is almost always waiting to see what you do after they give you that answer. If you just sit down and do nothing, they would be telling themselves that you probably never meant it to start with, but if you say something in the lines of: "well, I've got a few minutes, and I'd like to help you with this". Be sure that you are not offering to help with something highly specialized that you could screw up and your partner ends up doing more work after you just to clean up your mess. Pick something simple, like sweeping the floor, or chopping up some vegetables. If your spouse is a control freak, make it a challenge for yourself to perfect your work and get up to at least 80% of the standard, and be open with your spouse, and say, I couldn't do it as good as you, but I believe I've saved you some time! Be sure not to indicate it was a favor.

The sky is the limit to what you can do so start saving your marriage, there are many areas where you can start improving on, but the recommendation is to start with one or two, and aim to get good at them and then start including more as you feel ready.

Source: Ezine