The fact is, all marriages go through difficult times. It’s how each party sees these difficult times that helps them either stay together or get a divorce.
If you want to stay together you need to know what people do to essentially press the restart button to refresh their marriage.
One thing to educate yourself about is the marriage cycle or the stages of marriage.
- Newly Weds Years – Up to 5 Years
- Middle Years – Up to 25 Years
- Later Years – Over 25 Years
The newly wed years which usually lasts for about five years is often thought of as the period of romance.
While the middle years are often the time couples have children and end up being years of disillusionment and disappointment, and once you make it through that, the later years which usually start after about 26 years of marriage are the years of mature love.
Often, these years can be mixed up a bit depending on how soon you have kids in the marriage. Finally, if you want to fix your marriage at any stage consider the following.
Spend Time Apart
Depending on the issue at hand, you might want to spend some time apart, but with strict rules and boundaries. For example, don’t go on dates, or be with other people. Instead, spend the time apart doing things to improve your mind, body and spirit. You can live in the same house to accomplish this, which might be good if you have kids.
Get Counseling
Some people do better when they get some sort of counseling. If you hire a counselor be sure to hire one that knows you want to restart your marriage and not get a divorce. If a counselor has specific experience with this type of counseling, that’s even better for you and your spouse because you’ll benefit from their experience and knowledge.
Hire A Life Coach
Another type of help you can get is a life coach that specializes in divorce or marriage coaching. If you find a coach that is interested in helping you save your marriage sometimes they will only work with one of you, but some coaches will work with both spouses. Typically, they’ll want to meet with you together and separately just like the counselor might.
Remember The Positive Let Go Of Everything Else
As you go through everything, it’s important to try to let go of negativity and let the positive aspects of your relationship and your lives take center stage. When you place too much focus on negativity, you bring out more negativity. If you focus on positivity, you’ll bring out more positive feelings each day.
It might sound kind of like “The Secret” but it does work. Don’t give too much acknowledgement to negativity and you’ll find that you feel more positive. Keep a positivity journal and you’ll see that within days you will feel more positive.
Forgive Past Transgressions & Don’t Bring Up Old Baggage
If you’re going to move on you cannot keep bringing up things that you have forgiven your spouse for. For example, if you have really forgiven your spouse for leaving the toilet seat up or even cheating, you cannot keep bringing up every single time you get into a fight.
Those old fights need to be left in the past and not brought up again. You cannot improve a marriage if your fights are circular in nature and always bring you back to things that were supposed to have been resolved.
Remember Why You Got Married
Take the time to go on a journey to the past. If you can repeat your first dates during the time you were falling in love. Recreate that journey while you rebuild your marriage. It can be easy to forget why you even liked each other, much less that you were in love.
Marriages have a cycle that is quite predictable, and if you understand that cycle you can overcome almost any issues that arise. Set up a date for at least once a week that will repeat some of your most memorable dates.
Understand You Only Control Yourself
One of the hardest things to understand in a marriage (and really any relationship) is that you only have control over yourself. You cannot control what anyone else does, thinks or feels. You can’t even control how you feel about something.
You certainly cannot control much of what happens to you in this world. But, you can control how you react to the things that happen to you. Practice understanding that so that you can back off and not even try to manipulate and control your spouse.
Pick A Date
During the process it’s important that an ending point is chosen where you both need to make a decision. The best way to do it is Sex in the City Style. If you’ve not seen it, watch the scene called the Brooklyn Bridge Scene where the characters, Miranda and Steve are to meet on this certain date if they want to put the past in the past and get back together fresh and new.
The rules where that they spent a certain number of days totally apart after completing their therapy, and if they wanted to get back together, without calling or anything they are to meet in the middle of that bridge. The point is that you both experience fear that the other won’t show up, which will help you realize how petty hanging on to the negativity of the past is.
As you go through each stage of your marriage, remember the fun times, remember the good, let go of the past and failures. After all, you’re not perfect either. You want your spouse to let go of what you’ve done to harm the marriage, so you must do the same thing for them. Remember why you love the person instead of everything else and you’ll have a long and happy
