Save Your Marriage Now:

The short answer is…
Yes. It can.

We’ve seen marriages pulled back from the brink of divorce time and time again.

In fact, at one time I told my husband that I was done and wanted out of our marriage.

He implemented many of the tips you’ll find below, and now, thirty years later, we’re still happily married and more deeply in love than ever.

But just because a marriage CAN be saved doesn’t mean it SHOULD be saved.

This is a legitimate question.

As a marriage counseling service we take a marriage first approach but sometimes a marriage should not continue.

If you are the victim of abuse (physical, emotional or both), or if you’re the victim of rape (yes, you can be married and raped by your spouse) then it may be best to end the marriage.

If you’re in crisis, we urge you to call us for immediate help.

When firefighters arrive on scene to a rescue operation, they don’t just start running around without first assessing the situation.

As the designated “firefighter” on scene of your burning marriage, you need to accurately assess the situation.

Get a notebook out and write down what you deem to be the main issue(s) with your relationship. How did you get here?

Even in extreme cases of infidelity, or abuse, you have a responsibility to the situation.

It’s important that you take an unbiased look at your behavior within the relationship and identify how you’ve contributed to the situation.

It needn’t be anything you’ve done. It could be a lack of action that’s contributed to your current situation.

Want to see something cool?

Check out this video…

What do dominos have to do with saving your marriage?

Well … a lot, actually.

In their book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan show how the simple, powerful concept of focusing on what matters most in a particular area can yield incredible results.

For each issue you identified as a contributing factor to your failing marriage, ask yourself this question:

What is the one thing I can do to improve [insert issue here] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

For example, if one of the issues in your marriage is that you’re not having sex because you’re both too tired at the end of the day, ask yourself…

What is the ONE thing we could do to have more sex such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Maybe all it takes is turning the TV off by 10pm.

Turning off the TV can be your trigger to tidy up the kitchen, have a quick shower and get ready for a little fun.

Or maybe it’s scheduling some sexy time in your calendar. (Come up with a codeword so that anyone looking at your calendar has no idea what you’re talking about. E.g. “Flow Yoga” or “Jumping Jacks”)

What type of person do you think has the best chance of pulling your marriage out of the fire?

Is it a bitter, cynical, angry and resentful person who spits venom with every word uttered?

Or is it a kind, compassionate, understanding, empathetic person who speaks with care, understanding, and kindnesskindess?

It’s the latter just to be clear.

“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius

A team of psychology researchers at Queen’s University in Canada discovered that the average person has more than 6,000 thoughts per day.

For most of us, those 6,000 thoughts revolve around the same things.

Most of those 6,000 thoughts are actually habitual thoughts that requires very little work on our part to formulate.

It’s been estimated that 40-55% of your daily activities are done on autopilot.

In that way, being angry and bitter towards our spouse can become a habit.

Habits need three things to form: a contextual cue, action, reward.

What are the triggers that feed the habit. What are you getting out of being so angry towards your spouse?

Write down all the things that have triggered a less than positive response from you.

List out the rewards you get from your reaction.

Let me give you an example of what this looks like…

One of our clients complained about how his wife would leave her pajamas on the floor in the bathroom – right in front of the sink – where he needed to stand to brush his teeth.

This drove him bananas.

He resorted to throwing the pajamas across the bedroom … or into the living room where his wife was relaxing on the couch.

His reward was a heaping feeling of self-righteousness.

Now it turns out his wife was not leaving her pajamas on the floor in an effort to drive her husband out of his mind.

It was simply a habit for her.

So our client had two choices:

He could hope his wife changed her behavior (out of his control)
He could change his reaction and reward to this trigger.
With some guidance from us, he chose #2.

Now when he sees the pajamas on the floor (trigger), he thinks about how much he loves his wife and how supportive she’s been over the years. He still picks up the pajamas but now instead of becoming angry, he does it out of love – wanting to do something nice for her in return for all of the support she’s shown him in the past.

His reward is the warmth he gets from doing something for someone he loves.

Now, go through each of the triggers and reconstruct new actions and rewards that will support your efforts to repair your marriage.

Here’s a video by the author of The Power of Habits, Charles Duhigg talking about how to construct better habits…

Space for you to think.

Space for you to relax, destress and just be.

The unfortunate truth is your spouse would probably welcome the idea of seeing you less right now, so take this opportunity to carve out some alone time.

Go to a coffee shop. Get a mani/pedi. Go to the driving range (or gun range).

Whatever helps you relax, and to think deep thoughts – do it.

Remember to take your notebook and a pen so you can…