I Want To Save My Marriage What Am I Doing Wrong

I really want to save my marriage, but nothing I try seems to work!” If that sounds like the thoughts you’ve been having lately, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Whether it’s due to well meaning bad advice or just reacting on emotion, there are thousands of us who’ve made mistakes that just end up pushing our partners farther away. Once you have an idea of where you might be going wrong, though, you have a much better chance of healing your marriage.

Pressuring your spouse!

It’s all too easy to do when you’re stressed out, but threatening or guilting rarely help matters. One of the most common forms of pressure is begging. You may not get down on your knees and wail, but if you’re pleading, crying, telling your spouse you can’t live without them or that they’ll destroy the kids’ lives, it still amounts to emotional blackmail.

Another thing to avoid is trying to pressure your spouse into counseling. Instead of pushing, appeal to logic. For instance, you might say something like “Considering all the time we’ve invested in each other, isn’t it worth a few hours of counseling to save that?  

Apologizing too much!

There’s nothing wrong with apologizing for mistakes you know you made, especially when you have a plan to help you keep from making them again. The problem comes in when you apologize for things you didn’t even do. It sounds insincere at best and mocking at worse. It also makes you look desperate, which is hardly attractive.

More importantly, it doesn’t solve anything. Accept your responsibility for 50% of the problems and acknowledge that you have some issues you need to work out together, but if you mean it when you say, “I want to save my marriage,” don’t take more than your fair share of the blame.

Jumping to conclusions!

Even if you’ve lived with your spouse for decades and think you can read them like a book, you cannot read their mind. Don’t assume you know how your spouse feels and why they feel that way. After all, it’s possible your spouse has been burying certain emotions about your relationship or unrelated events in the past that are interfering with the present.

Dishonesty!

Needless to say, lies do nothing to build emotional intimacy. Whether you’re hiding your feelings, facts about important events in your past, or your financial details, it all goes to drive a wedge between and your spouse. I’m not talking about those little white lies like “No, honey, I don’t think you’ve put on weight.” There’s plenty of room for those. What I mean is something that has an effect on the relationship beyond the next 30 seconds like lying about your needs in the bedroom or for time to yourself.

Waiting and hoping!

This is probably the biggest mistake of them all, yet it’s also the easiest to fix. So many people wait and hope things will work themselves out eventually. In the meantime, you and your partner are growing farther apart and any resentment only grows deeper. Marital problems don’t solve themselves anymore than they cause themselves. To save a marriage that’s headed for divorce, you need to take concrete action now. 

If you’ve heard yourself say “I want to save my marriage!” a few too many times, it’s very possible you’re making some of the mistakes most couples make when their marriage hits a rough patch.

How To Save A Marriage 5 Things You Can Do Today

Have you been looking for advice on how to save a marriage, but can’t seem to find anything more than vague tips about learning communication skills, not criticizing, forgiving each other? Well, sure, those things are great, but there’s a lot you can do today to make things better. While most of these steps for how to save a marriage take some time, they’re all things you can start doing right now.

Have a cooling down period!

Whether your spouse has just told you they want a divorce or you’ve been talking about it for a while, a cooling down period will do you both some good. Take about a week to get away from each other and gather your thoughts. This is no time to make a laundry list of your “future ex’s” faults, though!  Instead, focus on remembering why you fell in love with your spouse in the first place and think through some calm, respectful ways to address the problems when you see each other again.

Work on your own issues!

Yes, you have issues, too. Sorry. And these aren’t just issues between you and your spouse, but issues related to any emotional baggage you brought into the marriage, too. If you’re taking a cooling off period, that’s a great time to work on these problems, although you shouldn’t expect to resolve any deep issues in such a short time.

Keep in mind, too, that you need to be careful about assigning blame, especially if your spouse has been violent or verbally abusive. While many therapists who understand how to save a marriage will remind you it “takes two to tango,” don’t start thinking you “made” your partner act a certain way.  

Resolve conflicts!

If you’ve already taken your cooling off period and given some serious thought to how you might be contributing to the conflict, set aside a few uninterrupted hours (read: get a babysitter) to talk things over. If it seems like you always end up in shouting matches every time you try to work things out, you might want to do this in a marriage counselor’s office. A neutral third party knowledgeable about how to save a marriage can really help keep things sane so you can make some real progress.

Spend quality time with each other!

Not spending enough quality time together is often what starts marital problems in the first place. Then once the marriage is really on the rocks, you spend more and more time apart. Fortunately, it’s an easy trend to reverse. Find something you both enjoy doing, as long as you can chat with each other while doing it, and schedule a time for the activity at least twice a week.

Be Patient!

Most truly useful advice on, "how to save a marriage", won’t give you quick fixes that you can get done in one day, but a lot will give you tactics you can at least try out right away. Whether you think you need a short break from your spouse to ease tensions or you just need to focus on each other a little more to keep things from really falling apart, there’s always something you can do today to get started in the right direction. The important thing is to take action now and not waste
any more time hoping things will get better on their own.

Who Can Help Me Save My Marriage

Feel like you’ve exhausted every option you could think up on your own and you just want to storm into some marriage counselors’ office as shout, “Help me save my marriage? Please!” Except for the shouting part, you’re actually on the right track looking for advice from some place other than your own head.

Friends!

If you have any friends who’ve managed to dodge an impending divorce, ask them how they did it. Don’t just think about friends your age, either. Older couples can be a goldmine of advice on working through marriage troubles.

Even if they seem to have a perfect relationship now, you might be surprised to hear what they’ve gone through. Of course, the problem with asking friends for advice is their experience is limited to what worked for them. What worked for them won’t necessarily work for you, though.

Online forums!

The Internet is great place to find information on just about everything and marriage is no exception. The advantage of getting advice from forums is that you can ask questions anonymously and get opinions from a variety of people who’ll most likely have very different view points from you. The drawback is that you won’t get a truly useful response from one “help me save my marriage” post. The lack of real-time interaction means you don’t get the back-and-forth dialogue you’d need to really get to the root of your problems and find a workable solution.

Marriage counseling!

It’s one of the first thing well meaning friends ask when you admit your marriage is on the rocks: “Have you thought of counseling?” There’s good reason for that. A professional marriage counselor has training in resolving marital conflicts and many years of experience working with different types of couples and problems.

The trouble you usually run into here is that one spouse doesn’t want to go. Usually, that partner believes the marriage has already flat-lined and any attempt to revive it is a waste of time and energy. If you’re partner feels that way, don’t give up just yet. While you want to avoid pressuring or begging, simple logic can work wonders.

Counseling can help, of course, but it’s not a cure-all. Did you know the average marriage councilors’ success rate is only around 30%? That’s hardly enough to make it worth shouting “Help me save my marriage!” at the counselor.

Self-help books!

If you’ve been looking online for tips, you’ve probably run into a few of those ebooks that provide guidance for working through a rough patch in a marriage even when one partner is ready to call it quits. They may not seem like much, but in reality, the best of these can be surprisingly effective.

Most of these plans were developed by highly experienced marriage counselors who found a “formula” for what works, so they usually have a success rate higher than that of most marriage counselors.

Whatever you do, don’t delude yourself into thinking the problems between you and your spouse will disappear of their own accord. It’s not enough to sit and wonder “Who can help me save my marriage?” You need to decide where you’re going to go for sound advice and act on that advice as soon as possible. The longer you put it off, the harder your problems will be to solve.

Free Effective Marriage Counseling Advice Online - How To Get It!

In reality, marriage is one of the most difficult tasks to handle. Problems and quirks are normal things to encounter in marriage. However, couples still choose to stay in the bond of marriage so save the holy matrimony. But some couple are not able to handle things well, so they definitely have to seek help from the authorities. Who are these authorities?

One way to seek help is to ask advice from marriage counselors. They are considered the doctors in terms of marriage problems. As you know, marriage is very important especially when there are kids in the family. So it is important to hold on to the relationship.

One among though things to handle is marriage. If a problem arises between the couple, at least one should be concern about how to solve it. One should seek the solution and one among the most effective solution is to seek for advices from the marriage counselors.

It is good for someone in the relationship to be educated about how marriages are handled. One way to educate self is by attending the sessions about marriages. You can also open up you problems so the counselors will give you advices on how you can handle your marriage problem well. You should only listen carefully so you would know how to deal with it correctly.

Marriage counseling is a form of confrontation where in the topic is all about marriage. it is normal for couple to experience difficulties in marriages, this is why counselors are willing to help them with their concerns. Counselors can be a good help to these couples by listening to their problems and giving out advices in which the couple should follow in order to maintain a good and harmonious relationship.

You should also take into consideration the credentials and qualifications of the marriage counselors that you are going to relay your problems on. Of course, to convey trust you must know the background of your counselors. From this you will know that the counselor you will be handing over your problems are professional and will sure help you with your marriage problems.

You can also look for counselors that give free marriages advices. There are many marriage counselors online can help you with your concern but will not ask anything from you.

The online marriage counselors will also discuss to you the different traditional arguments about marriage. if you cannot afford to pay for a therapist, you can use online marriage counseling to solve your problems with marriage. the only problem with this is the lack of live activities.

Online marriage counseling is very new in the net, so regulation should be established first. However, it can be a great help for those who want to seek for help but do not have much budget to spend. Everyone with marriage problems can log on to the particular site and seek help.

Counseling is one of the effective ways to save marriages. Free online marriage counseling is made available for you so you do not have to worry about paying dollars on therapist just to help you seek solutions to your marriage problem. The important thing is the self involvement. You should have faith and be patience to live a happy married life.

Does Marriage Counseling Work?

When considering marriage counseling, it's difficult not to wonder whether seeing a marriage counselor will actually work. This article provides some objective information based on data obtained from a national survey of marriage and family counselors and their clients. Also presented are several interesting opinions provided by individuals who have actually been through marriage counseling and were asked to comment on whether or not seeing a marriage counselor proved effective in helping their relationship.

An honest marriage counselor would agree that the motivation of a couple may be the single most important factor in determining the success of marriage counseling. It's unlikely that even a brilliant counselor would be able to save a marriage where one spouse has already decided upon a divorce, and a mediocre marriage counselor can probably help a couple who are utterly committed towards making their marriage work. With this in mind, research has been made in an effort to determine, on a more scientific level, the effectiveness of couples counseling.

In an article published by Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, clients of marriage and family counselors from 15 different states reported on their experience with counseling. The findings indicated that marriage and family counselors treated a wide range of issues in relatively short-term fashion, couple and family therapy are briefer than individual therapy, and that client satisfaction and functional improvement are quite high.

[*] Specifically, of clients from 526 marriage and family counselors in 15 different states:

98.1% rated services good or excellent
97.1% got the kind of help they desired
91.2% were satisfied with the amount of help they received
93% said they were helped in dealing more effectively with problems
94.3% would return to the same therapist in the future
96.9% would recommend their therapist to a friend
97.4% were generally satisfied with the service they received
63.4% reported improved physical health
54.8% reported improvement in functioning at work
73.7% indicated improvement in children’s behavior
58.7% showed improvement in children’s school performance
[*] Excerpted from "Clinical Practice Patterns of Marriage and Family Therapists: A National Survey of Therapists and Their Clients", Journal of Marital and Family Therapy--Volume 22, No. 1

While the above study provides raw data that supports the effectiveness of marriage and family counseling, a very interesting discussion on the question "Does Couples Counseling Work" from a public forum devoted to this topic offers a less clinical, but still positive view. Based on what seems to be a very honest and frank discussion among couples "who've been there," the answer to the question of whether or not marriage counseling is effective is a positive one. Read these posts on the Berkley Parents Network.

Regardless of the studies and opinions which seem to support the effectiveness of marriage / couples counseling, there are those who question it's effectiveness. An article on the about.com portal, had this to say:

The science of marital counseling is being studied in great detail these days. Research is showing that it is not as effective as people think, that women seem to get more from it than men, and that it might not have a lasting effect on the couple's marriage.

What type of couple gets the most from couple therapy? The answer is young, non-sexist, still in love, open couples.

Which couples receive the least from therapy? Some factors that can make couple therapy unsuccessful include couples who wait too long before seeking help, and often one or the other is set on getting a divorce and is closed to any suggestions that may save the marriage.

Excerpted from the marriage.about.com portal

Unfortunately, the data supporting the above-mentioned research is not specifically cited in the article. The article seems to imply that couples who seek counseling because they want their relationship to work are more likely to succeed with marriage counseling than are those who enter into counseling with the (perhaps hidden) truth that they already want out.

Considering Marriage Advice For The Newly-hitched!

There’s a big step from engaged to married. It’s not just exchanging rings and wedding vows, it’s exchanging one lifestyle for another. Even as an engaged person you had a certain independence that meant you had some space of your own. There was a part of your day or night that you were your own person. In a marriage this more or less disappears completely.

No matter how much freedom you have in your marriage, how flexible the boundaries – you still have to remember that there is now someone else that you must keep 100% in your life-loop! If you’re going to be late from work, you need to make sure your husband/wife knows. If you aren’t going to be home for supper, they need to know. If you aren’t going to be able to get the dry cleaning on the way home, and it’s needed for the next day, they need to know so they can go get it! This is a major life change. At first it feels as if you are back answering to your parents! You may even rebel against the idea. But think about it for a moment. Your husband/wife always walks through the door at 6.52pm – give or take 4 minutes. You have supper waiting on the table. At 7.20pm supper is cold, and they still haven’t arrived. 8.25pm when they walk through the door, you’re halfway through dialing the number for the local hospital because you’re sure something’s happened to them. They smile and apologize for being late but they got caught up in a last minute meeting. No thought to the anguish you’ve been through picturing them hurt or worse! You don’t want to be the one feeling this way, and so make sure you don’t do the same kind of thing to your beloved! Letting your partner know your schedule is a sign of consideration. Of acknowledging that this other person cares about you and will worry if you are not where you’ve said you’ll be at the time you said you’ll be there.

Gone too are the days when you could say “Sure, I’ll come for pizza tonight!” to work colleagues without even thinking about it. First of all you need to call your partner and tell them that this is what you’re planning, and making sure that they’re ok with it. Yes, I know, too bad if they aren’t, but they may have made other plans for the evening that you don’t know about and so it is worth checking first!

Consideration for your new husband or wife is the first and most important aspect of your marriage during the early days because it’s the thing that’s most difficult to adjust too. Is your music too loud? Does your partner want to watch a different channel? Do you take all the blankets in bed? Do you snore? You don’t check these things because you benefit, nor as a partner would you usually complain about them, but you do them because you want your marriage to be a partnership with two equal partners. If you argue about something, find common middle ground. There should be no power struggle if both parties respect each other enough to accept that both people are entitled to hold differing viewpoints. Don’t back down from confrontation, don’t press forward your advantage, be considerate towards each other and negotiate a situation you can both agree to.

In the early weeks and months of marriage, you’ll find many things new and sometimes not exactly the way you thought they’d be, but if both parties add consideration to their menu of love, trust and respect, then married life will soon settle down and you’ll become accustomed to doing things without resentment or obligation. You’ll do them because you want too.

Common Marriage Problems : Neglect

It is so easy to work your life away, forget about your family, your partner and your relationship. People putting work before family is such a common marriage problem that seems to pop up time and time again.

It’s ok for a while, your partner will understand that you need to put some time and effort into your career especially if it generates a good income but as time goes on and the ‘W’ word pops up again and again, even if your partner enjoys the benefits of your efforts, all patience fades and the realisation sets in that work is more important!!

I used to know a couple who spent most of their life apart. He worked nights and she worked days. She enjoyed spending the money that night shifts generated, loved new clothes, new cars and all the little luxuries a comfortable life style brings but hated her partner being tired when he was at home. They were between a rock and a hard place with him knowing that if he gave up nights bang went the luxuries and more than likely bye bye wife but if he carried on working nights and striving for promotion he was dead in the water anyway. What a choice. Needless to say they never reached a compromise, she wasn’t willing to wait for the promotion and a return to day shifts, so they are no longer married.

Working excessively long hours, travelling a lot and constantly leading separate lives is bound to put a strain on your relationship and it has proven to be a real relationship killer, a common marriage problem that is prolific in the ‘career’ society. Just look at the number people that are addicted to long unsociable working hours and then see how many of them are still married.

I’ve only ever met a handful of couples who are truly comfortable with, at best, a weekend relationship and these are couples that have learned and are happy to live independent lives. The problem in their relationships will come when the long hours and travelling comes to an end and they have to learn to live with each other 24/7.

How many partners spend their whole life at work, rarely seeing their children and having little time for their spouse? Their partners so often feel neglected, crave adult company, and as time goes on, the neglected partner’s cries go on ignored the relationship begins to wither and fade and the couple tend to grow apart.

When children are involved it is even more difficult with just one partner having to make sure they are around. That they are the ones there in the mornings and there in the evenings and that they alone have to revolve their whole lives around children and school. Again this pressure on one partner is all too common, a marriage problem that seems to be ignored by spouses who tend to avoid their responsibilities under the misguided understanding that their partners can and are happy to cope.

Those early years, when your children are growing up are very special and are years that can never be recaptured. They aren’t years that should just pass you by at your desk under the false impression that next time your child wants you it will be different, you just need to clear this project and then the next and then the next….. It’s never any different.

Children struggle with the concept of work being more important than them and what is going on in their lives. They are too young to understand the concept that their parent is just short sighted, perhaps confused as to what should take priority in their lives. Money doesn’t mean much to a child.

When work takes over your life, no matter what you best intentions are, if your vision isn’t understand and accepted by your family and they aren’t 100% behind you all of the way they will learn to resent the time you spend at your desk rather than with them. They will feel abandoned, unwanted and unloved.

If you want to revolve your life around a work driven environment you must make sure that that your partner has the same all consuming driving ambition. If either one in a relationship feels that work has taken over the family life it is time to sit down and discuss what is important in to you both. Consider the issues, understand the feelings on both sides, think about the children and work out what is best for the individuals, the relationship and the family as a whole.

Catch this common marriage problem before it develops into something more serious don’t loose your family over something you probably will learn to regret, save your marriage before it’s too late.