How To Start Communicating In A Passionless Marriage
Marriages are no more made in heaven then anything else that involves human relationships. More than half of all marriages end up in divorce, and a good portion of the other half that do stay together are not dramatically happy, they simply stay together often for the sake of the children or else to avoid having to pay out fortunes in divorce payments and alimony; whilst secretly crying out in their heads for someone to help save my marriage. Now, whilst all of what I've said is true, you shouldn't despair, or somehow feel that marriage is a bad idea, or a lost cause. Quite the contrary is true. It is simply that most people approach marriage in the wrong way. What they really need to first do is help to save their own marriages by being proactive, and I will discuss one great tactic to start doing that in this article.
It is easy to get on the slippery slope to breakup in a marriage. You are no longer seeing your partner in the same passionate light that you once did. Instead, they are a grumbling partner. And pretty soon you start losing attraction for them, but wonder how the hell that happened when you used to love them so much. Answer me this. Is it any wonder if you only talk to them about politics or your problems with your boss? Problem vibes do not make sparky marriages and the sooner you realise that, the sooner you can work on getting things working properly.
So, how can you go about getting your marriage back on track? How can you pull off something that seems like nothing short of a minor miracle to couples who may have been arguing and bickering constantly. One thing that you can immediately do is to sit down with your partner and each write down a list of what initially attracted you to the other person. Now, depending on the stage of the breakdown in your relationship, your partner may or may not be willing to do this. If not then you will have to try something else, but do your best to get them to agree as this is a very heartfelt exercise to commence with reconstructing your relationship and learning how to save marriage that you may have thought was gone for good.
What the exercise in this article and the ones in books like 1000 questions for couples does, is to recognise that simply by answering questions, or imagining that earlier time in your head, you can evoke what is called a 'state change' in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). This is where your mood changes suddenly, and in the case of these questions, hopefully for the better. If you were in a miserable mood, but then someone knocked on the door and told you that you had won the lottery. The next five seconds would be an example of how quickly a state change can happen in your mood. In short it is designed to improve communications between you, and in so doing improve your marriage. That is what the book and the attraction exercise are all about.
Marriage counsellors will usually be very adept at helping couples struggling through these times. Whether it is a Christian marriage or any other, there are places and people you can go to that will help you and the one you love get through this. Marriage can change people, so sitting down and taking a good hard look at yourself, and seeing where you have changed can be a good first step. Finding your old self can be a difficult task, especially after you consider all the things you have been through over the time when the marriage was not going well. If you do the exercise I suggested as a first action then you will be able to notice the glimmer of sunshine that focusing on good times brings. It is only the first step on what may be a longer journey. But at least it marks a new start to an effort to improve your marriage.
Filed under Marriage Issues by on May 9th, 2010. 
