How to Salvage Your Relationship
Every year within America alone, about 1 million marriages end up in divorce or separation.That is an incredible number! That would be as though all the residents of Houston, Texas, were divorced (each divorce leaves 2 people).
The question is how many of those marriages may very well be saved. Sad to say, that is an unknown number. In the event that your marriage stays together, it is not easy to find in the statistics. As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.
Can your marriage be preserved? If I could answer that, I would be rich. I can say this that if your marriage is in difficulty and you do nothing at all, the end result is guaranteed. If you do something, there's a much better chance that the marriage is going to be preserved.
Plus I can show you, in four straightforward steps exactly what it is possible to do to save your relationship. You can start right this moment. However you must understand that I said "simple." That's not the same as "easy." These actions are not easy. They do, however, give you a path which you must follow if you want to alter the destiny of a marriage that's struggling.
Allow me to share the 4 steps:
1) Quit the blame game. Quit blaming your spouse plus stop blaming yourself. This is the first step as marriages get frozen into a pattern of blame which immobilizes any opportunity of progress. Instead, the momentum gets dragged down and down.
Blame is our way of avoiding seeing ourselves clearly. It is less difficult to point the finger somewhere else and state "It's their fault." But in marriage, you can just as easily turn that pointing finger on yourself and place the blame there, stating "it's all my fault."
Unfortunately, blame feels good in the short-term, but in the long-term, it prevents any shift or change. Therefore, even if you can create a lengthy list of exactly why you or your husband or wife ought to be blamed, forget about it. Even though that list is factual, it will not help you to put your marriage back together. Blame is the fuel of divorces.
2) Take responsibility. Conclude you can do something. Change normally gets started with just one person who wishes to see a change. Realize that taking responsibility is not the same as taking the blame (see above).
Instead, blame is indicating "regardless of who is at fault, there are many things I can do in different ways, and I am going to do them." What buttons do you make it possible for your partner to push? What buttons do you push with your partner? Decide not to allow those buttons to be pushed and stop pushing the buttons.
What amazes me in my counselling is that everyone understands everything that they should be doing or not doing. However it is not easy to move in that direction. Don't be caught in that. Make a decision that you will take action.
The big difference between blame and responsibility is this: if I am in a burning building, I can stand around trying to figure out who started the fire, exactly why it has spread so rapidly, and also who I'm likely to sue as soon as it is over (blame), or I can get myself and anybody I can out of that building (taking responsibility). Whenever a marriage is in trouble, the home is on fire. Just how will you take action to rescue your relationship?
3) Get resources from experts. If other people have been helped, you can be, as well. Experts that have a good deal more perspective and experience are able to be a tremendous support in these types of circumstances. Do your background work and divide the useless from the useful, then take advantage of the useful.
You should not think that your predicament is so different from every other circumstance. I can tell you that after over twenty years of offering counseling, not too much new comes in my doors. Don't get me wrong; the story varies, but the dynamics are the same.
Remember what Albert Einstein said, "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." In other words, the thing that got you into dire straits will not get you out of difficulty. This calls for a whole different level of thinking. And that is what you receive from an outside expert, someone with a new point of view.
4) Take action. More harm is done simply by doing nothing at all than by taking a misstep. It is too easy to become paralyzed by your predicament. Therapists often talk about "analysis paralysis." This comes about when people get so caught up in their churning thought processes and attempts to "figure things out" that they never take action.
It is not sufficient to just understand what may be causing the problem. You must then act! On a daily basis, I get individuals coming into my office having the perception that as long as they can merely comprehend their predicament, it will take care of itself. That simply does not transpire. Resolution of the predicament requires action.
Will your marriage be preserved? If you follow my recommendations, you have got infinitely more opportunity for salvaging your marriage than if you do almost nothing. Marriage is one of those areas where it takes two to make it succeed, yet only one to seriously mess things up. You can only do your part, but many times, that is more than enough. Resolve never to ask the question but to begin to act.
Are you prepared to take action? Grab the best-selling resource on the web for salvaging marriages: Save The Marriage, Even If Only You Want It! You can find it at Save the Marriage.
