Hello, friends! Today’s article is about the 4 ways to fight for your marriage and keep it alive for years.
When your marriage falls apart, it can be difficult to decide which path to take. Many psychologists advise getting rid of the marriage partner. Others give advice on the safety of the marriage relationship. What are you leaning towards? Are you wondering how to fight for your marriage or restore a broken marriage? If so, you’ve come to the right place.
Because my wife and I hate divorce and saved our marriage. Therefore, we know from our own experience what needs to be done to save it. We believe in the possibility of maintaining a marriage when there is such a desire.
We are convinced that when you know which direction to work, most family problems can be solved, even if your husband or wife is not yet contributing to it. For people willing to fight for marriage, there are some tips to help women and men keep their marriage alive. We have benefited from these tips and will be helpful to anyone interested in keeping their marriages alive.
Today I am offering up four ways to fight for your marriage. Now the first way is:
1. Keeping your relationship safe.
Now, I know that sounds kind of silly. But what I’m talking about is keeping it emotionally safe. So that you and your spouse feel free to talk to one and another About things that make you feel vulnerable and things that you are scared about. And that you feel okay opening up and bringing up anything.
And one of the techniques that I actually use and you can look this up, and this is something that many therapists use is called the speaker-listener technique. I call it the Floor. And it has certain rules, and you can see how this will help keep you and your spouse more safe.
Now the first is the rules for the person speaking. Speak for yourself, don’t mind reading. Only speak about yourself, keep your statements brief. Don’t go on and on and on, and stop and let the listener paraphrase.
Now the rules for the listener, whoever is listening at that time. Focus on the speaker’s message, this isn’t a rebuttal. You’re not going to paraphrase and say, ‘But. You know, that was wrong because I was there. And you…’
That’s not what this is about. And by doing this, we slow down the communication process. Allow it to be safer. Allow each person to feel heard. And then we can have a safe conversation, and we can talk about anything. It can keep our relationship more communicative, overall, and safer.
2. Be responsible for your side of the road.
The second way to fight for your marriage is to be responsible for your side of the road. I say this to clients all of the time. And in any kind of conflict or relationship, we are only responsible for our side of the road. Whatever the other person does, isn’t something we can control. We can only control what we do.
And so in those moments when we feel triggered. When they have done that thing that has been driving us crazy for years. Or when they have lashed out and we just want to scream, yell, call names and say all sorts of things. Take a breath. Remember that you are responsible. You’re taking responsibility for your side of the road.
That means that I am going to make the choice to do the most constructive thing. Not destructive, but constructive. And obviously, that can change from situation to situation, but I’m going to breathe. I’m going to take a second, and I’m going to be gentle with them, or I’m going to slow down. I’m going to say, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have raised my voice. Give me five minutes and let’s come back to this. Whatever we think will be the most constructive in them moment, we’re going to try to do it.
Then the second part of this, Is something that I actually need to work on myself. And I’m sure everybody does, Is recognizing and expressing our filters. Now, what’s a filter? A filter can be anything from our mood. Maybe we had a really crap day, everything’s just been shit, and we’re feeling bad. Maybe our boss yelled at us.
It’s distraction, we’re distracted, we can’t really focus. And so the filter includes:
1. Beliefs and expectations.
This is one that’s really important. What are your beliefs around a scenario? Do you think they are doing something because secretly they really want you to be upset? You might want to talk about that. What are your expectations? What do you expect of your spouse that maybe you have never verbalized because you have assumed that they have the same expectations of themselves. And that just may not be true.
2. Self-protection
We all know that we hate feeling vulnerable. We don’t want anybody to know we can put ourselves out there and we can be really hurt. And so we act in certain ways in order to protect ourselves. Like-kind of becoming pufferfish and shooting out your spines to protect yourself. We have to recognize when we are doing that.
3. Differences in style.
And lastly, Differences in style. People talk all of the time about how different men and women are, but really it’s just people. People are different. Some people prefer to talk everything out. Some people prefer to argue it out, while others argue and they don’t think of it even as a fight.
Everyone has a different communication style. A different relationship style. We each need to take time to recognize what our own filters are. And when we know that we have a lot going on in our filters, we need to find time and space to tell our spouse.
If I’m really short and cold with you, it’s because I had a guy cut me off on the way home. My boss had yelled at me, and I got home to this nasty email from my friend.’ ‘So I’m sorry.’ We need to be able to speak about those things because that in and of itself will probably stop most fights.
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3. Nurture and reaffirm your commitment to a future with them
Now the third way to fight for your marriage, Is to nurture and reaffirm your commitment to your spouse and your future together. I know that sounds simple Like, ‘Well I married them, don’t they know I’m going to be there forever.’ ‘That’s what this is. We’re in it together.’ But you would be surprised how many people will say things to their spouse that does the opposite of this. Things like, ‘Well when I’m on wife number two, I won’t have to deal with this.’ Or ‘Maybe I just married the wrong person.’ ‘Maybe we’re not a good fit. Maybe we should just get a divorce.
Anything mentioning a lack of future with that person can be detrimental to a relationship. It can be really hurtful, and there are a lot of things that we can do to reaffirm i. To nurture this commitment to our spouse. And one of the things that we can avoid, And I guess I shouldn’t have said avoid but something that we can stop doing is avoidance and withdrawal.
Now those are two separate things. Avoidance, they avoid the conversation altogether. ‘I don’t want to, la la la la la, I don’t want to talk about it.’ Withdraw, they will start the conversation, and then they run away. Promptly leave or walk into the back room, go get into the car, anything like that.
Now the main reason that people do this. And I’m not saying that this is a bad trait, I’m just telling us to recognize what this can create in our relationships, and what this can do to our spouse and their belief in our commitment to them.
Now, people avoid the ones that don’t want to talk. It’s because they don’t even want the conflict. They don’t want to fight. And the same with the withdrawal, they think that they can get into the conversation and we will have a good discussion about this. But then once it starts to get heated, they have to leave. So both types of people just don’t like conflict, they don’t like to fight.
And so the way that we can help this along is to start conversations and discussions slowly with compassion. And I know that can be hard but sometimes it’s breathing. it’s knowing that you’re going to have to be upset for an extra ten minutes while you wait for your spouse to get home. You wait for them to unpack their things and to get settled, where you know that they are kind of comfortable, and you start slowly.
You know, ‘Today I was upset and I just really wanted to talk to you about something.’ That can be very different from the second they walk in the door, ‘How could you… I can’t believe you… You’ve made this day so terrible, blah blah blah.’ You can see how one starts a conversation in hopes of a resolution, and the other one is just starting a fight.
And if we start fights, we can never actually get our points across because I’m sure everybody, Every person in this world can recognize that when we fight, we don’t hear the other person most of the time. We’re too busy yelling and being angry and lashing out. We don’t even have time to listen to them.
And the last thing I want to mention about this, Is no name-calling or put-downs. That really will help nurture and reaffirm the fact that you’re committed to the person that you are with and you are planning a future with them.
4. Be gentle and speak with humility.
The fourth and final way to fight for your marriage is to work to always be gentle and speak with humility. Now I know that’s really hard, I know that’s asking a lot, and it can be really hard. Especially when we are triggered and someone has been mean and something has happened and we’ve had a really bad day.
But this can help our relationships in general, spouses, friendships, family relationships, anything like that. This can help so much because when we are gentle with people when we understand what they’ve been going through. And maybe they had a hard day, maybe they are stressed out too. We can be so gentle with them that they feel okay, and then it feels safe, and then we can actually start communicating.
And when we open conversation and we work with humility, then it makes it easier for people to hear us. And for us to get our points across, and for everyone to feel heard and understood.
Now, I made some notes about ways that we can put this into action and things that we can do to fight to be gentle and to show humility. And one of them is like, maybe waiting to deal with triggering events until the initial shock has subsided.
Now that one is key for me because if something happens, I could fly off the handle really quickly in my mind. But if I wait, If I get like thirty minutes of downtime where I can just think about it and I can process it and I can breathe. The chances of me lashing out have gone down by like 80%. Sometimes, it’s good to take a little time from each other when things have gotten heated really quickly and come back to it. It’s okay to come back to a conversation.
And another thing is expressing your filters as I said before. So that they know what’s going on with you so that they can act accordingly and hopefully be gentle with you as well.
And the final thing and this is honestly the most important thing, is putting your relationship needs ahead of your individual needs. Sure you want to win that fight, sure you want to be ‘right’. You want to get your point across, you want them to have it. But what does your relationship need? Because that has to be more important to you than your individual needs, In order to make a loving marriage continue to work.
And relationships in general are work, right. But we can do it. It’s one of these things that can feel so overwhelming but if we just start little by little changing the way that we respond, we give ourselves time, we start noticing when we’ve had a bad day that we are short-tempered and we start speaking up about that.
And so there are ways that we can make it easier. And it’s one step at a time, it’s not black and white. We’re just making small steps towards a healthier relationship and a healthier marriage because we can all have that and we all deserve that. It’s just one step at a time.
Those were the top 4 ways to fight for your marriage and keep it alive for years. Don’t forget to share this article with your friends and family.
Read more: Signs Of A Narcissistic Husband
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