For any marriage, there comes a time when it seems as if you're stuck in a rut so to speak. This same ole routine can lead to a number of problems that begin to add up over the years, sometimes to the point of one of you becoming depressed or unhappy with the marriage. It often results in one of you thinking that the grass may be greener on the other side and leads to one of you considering that ending the marriage may be the best idea to spring new zest for life. The marriage has become unattractive and tiring without any outlook of change, and it sometimes scares the living daylights out of your spouse. So how do you make staying in the marriage more attractive then ending it?
A lot of times, the first thing to make sure you have in order are your priorities. Over time, these priorities tend to flip flop or trade places. This flip flopping of priorities can lead to a number of marital problems and or neglect in certain areas of your marriage that were more important in the beginning and ultimately provided the environment in which the both of you decided to get married in the first place. We tend to forget how important it is to nurture and maintain that environment that brought the two of you together.
A simple rule of thumb, in understanding and maintaining where your priorities should lie in marriage is as follows:
- God or which ever deity that your beliefs in are held. Give thanks and assure you are in order with what your beliefs would have you do.
- This should be your wife/husband, priority number 2. Make sure you are listening and taking care of their needs next and doing what you need to do to maintain your marriage.
- Family or children. Your family and or children should come next, making sure you have done or have taken care of what your family needs from you.
- Work. Of these basic and starting points of your priority list, work should come last to all of the above.
This may seem simple, but a lot of times this list can really get out of order or other things are set above where they should be. Sometimes, work is in most peoples priority 1 spot, and leads to neglect in many other areas, which the problems that arise out of this ordering begin to multiply quickly. You should always remember that you should "work to live, not live to work".
I hope this opens your eyes a little bit to some things in your life that may be in the wrong spots in your priority list. Getting them back into this basic order can help tremendously in showing your spouse that you're ready to change or get your priorities back on the right track. Of course there are more things you could do to make staying in the marriage more attractive than ending it, but this should be a good starting point.