If you are having trouble with your marriage, you are not alone. Every marriage has its ups and downs. These problems could range from simple misunderstandings to larger concerns.
Many issues of marriage are due to personal problems that one or both spouses may be going through (such as losing a parent), more traditional problems between the couple themselves (such as the couple losing touch with each other because they are too busy with children, jobs, and other responsibilities), and sometimes even outside influences (such as money problems due to a lost job). Many times in this modern and complex society, the problems with a person's marriage are a combination of all three types of problems.
Moreover, marriages change over the years as both you and your spouse evolve. As the years go by, you both will go through your individual ups and downs as well and these individual changes can affect your relationship with each other. These changes are normal and expected in any long term relationship.
Nevertheless, if you feel that the issues of your marriage are more serious than the regular ups and downs associated with a long term relationship, do not despair. There is hope; even for the most dysfunctional of marriages. There are numerous solutions that may work for your marriage, including therapy, setting time aside for each other and yourselves as individuals, and even simply taking up hobby. Many marriages have been saved with combinations of the solutions that will be discussed here.
Saving your marriage is not just about ensuring that you and your spouse get along well with each other. It is also about taking care of yourselves as individuals as well. It is vital that you take care of and nurture yourselves as well. For this reason, many couples find that participating in both couple's therapy as well as individual therapy is the best route to working through their marital problems.
There are numerous keys to a good relationship. These keys include fostering honest and clear communication between you and your spouse, being open and understanding with your spouse, thinking before speaking, and always making time for each other and yourselves. The solutions discussed here will enable you to start implementing these keys in your marriage and will help to set your marriage back on the right track.
The most important step you can take to save your marriage is to have hope. Have a positive attitude and know that your marriage will be fine. Once you have this positive outlook, every other problem you and your spouse will have to surmount will seem a lot smaller than it did before.
As stated above, there are numerous reasons for a marriage between two people to become rocky – even the marriage between two people who are still very much in love. This is because relationships are not just based on interactions between the two people involved, but instead are almost like living and breathing entities of their own that interact with the people and environment around them. For example, though you and your husband may love each other with all your hearts, the fact that your mother despises your husband will strain your relationship, especially if you are close to your mother.
No matter what kinds of metaphorical barriers you and your spouse put around you and your personal relationship with each other, your relationship will be affected by the outside world. This may be in the form of money problems due to a lost job, less time spent together because of other responsibilities, and many others as well.
Individual problems may affect your marriage as well. If you are depressed because of the loss of a loved one or any other reason, for example, your relationship with your spouse will be affected by this. If you do not have time for yourself, you will not be able to make time for your spouse either. Besides the outside influences, there are also the more traditional problems that occur between couples. These include stress put on the marriage because of children, loss of communication because you have fallen into a routine and have stopped working at your marriage, and many others. Though these traditional couple problems are usually the “final straw that breaks the camel's back” so to speak, and makes you to realize that there is in fact a problem between you, these are usually caused by underlying problems like those discussed above.
For example, if you and your spouse are no longer communicating or spending time together, there will be an underlying cause for that. Perhaps one of you is suffering from depression and no longer wants to speak to anyone about your feelings, let alone your spouse. Or perhaps one of you is worried about losing your job and is now working extra-long hours to ensure your job security and no longer has time to spend with the other.
Though you may feel that your relationship's problems are fully unique to you and your spouse, you will be surprised to find the commonalities between your personal relationship issues and those discussed here. Regardless of the uniqueness of your issues, they will be able to be boiled down to one of, or a combination of, the various three types of problems that result in a rocky marriage: outside influences, individual problems, and the most traditional couple’s problems.
Individual Problems
There are numerous individual problems that can cause issues in your relationship to your spouse. These problems can come in many forms. The most common of individual problems that result in issues in one's marriage usually have to do with emotions and feelings. Many times a spouse will become depressed and will stop communicating to the other spouse, resulting in marriage issue, even though the reason for that person becoming depressed has nothing to do with the other person.
Many times these emotional individual problems have something to do with one's self esteem. When one's self-esteem gets low enough, they will start relating differently to those around them and cause rifts between themselves and their loved ones. Usually these emotional individual problems that affect one's self-esteem have something to do with how one feels about one's appearance. Many times, for example, women will begin to have low self-esteem regarding their looks and weight, especially if they just recently had children. In fact, most often these emotional individual problems affect women more than men, simply because women are more sensitive to their emotions.
There are individual problems that will affect men more than women, however. For instance, believe it or not, men are actually more prone to depression resulting from lack of work or other employment. This is because men see themselves as the providers in the family and when they are unable to provide for their families, they feel that they are not living up to their potential and will become depressed. Often times this depression is a worsening cycle, because the worse the man feels about not providing, the even less likely it is that he will be able to find a good job and stick with it. What makes a man's individual depression even worse is that he will usually not open up to his wife or anyone else about how he is feeling, which results in his feeling even lonelier and depressed.
There are many other causes of individual depression and other individual problems. Some of these causes include the loss of a family member or other loved one, the loss of a child, and even the loss of an animal. All of these losses will affect the relationship between a husband and wife – especially the loss of one of their children.