Should I Stay or Should I Go?
These days everything seems to cause marital trouble and some couples just call it quits. But before you toss out your relationship like an old piece of furniture, try these 8 Positive Tips To Repair An Unhappy Relationship. Before you know it, you’ll be wondering how quickly you’ll cuddle your sweetheart again!
If you’re married and the marriage isn’t going as you had planned, you’re probably wondering whether you should stay or go.
Believe it or not, deciding when to separate and when to divorce takes just as much thought and planning as your wedding did! The urge to take flight may be hard to resist, but before you take off remember, there are things you can do to help make the decision to stay or go easier.
What Causes Marital Trouble?
Unfortunately just about everything does!
Today’s married couples want to leave their relationships for reasons that revolve around incompatibility, or sex, or finances, or drugs or alcohol, or fear, or adultery, or a job transfer, or jealousy, or in-laws, or age, or simply because they’ve fallen out of love. They even leave because of the way someone leaves the toilet seat!
In a recent AOL survey of marriage, more than one-third of the women polled said that, if they had to do it all over again, they wouldn’t marry their current husbands and almost three-quarters said that they fantasized about other men.
While 80% of the female respondents believed in soul mates, only 52% thought that they had found theirs. These results even startled the survey organizers!
It’s a commonly accepted statistic that, in the United States, about half of all marriages breakdown and about 80% of those breakdown due to irreconcilable differences. When the couple marries young, the statistics are dramatically higher.
When partners marry under the age of 25, almost 40% of these marriages break down compared to 25% for people that marry older (which is why so many marriage experts say that age is a significant factor in divorce and you should wait until at least 30 years old before getting married), and about two-thirds of the divorces in the United States are initiated by women.
How Do You Make The Decision To Stay Or Go?
When your relationship is more like an episode of Survivor than 7th Heaven, the temptation is to flee, and this is exactly how many people manage unfulfilling relationships. And sometimes leaving the relationship is the right answer for everyone concerned.
If your relationship is abusive – emotionally, physically or psychologically – you should have a plan in place that enables you (and your children if you have them) to make a rapid exit. Talk to your doctor, local social workers or do an Internet search for information about where you can get help.
If children are involved, and abuse is not a factor, you must take extra care to ensure that you have put their needs first.
Children need security, and to know that both parents love them and will remain active nurturers and protectors in their lives if a separation or divorce occurs.
Separation or divorce can be extremely traumatic and distressing for children and you should exhaust every opportunity to get the relationship back on track before simply walking away.
But what do you do if your relationship is not abusive? How do you make the decision to stay or go?
People separate for a variety of reasons, but if you’ve made the commitment to one another, you should be sure that you’re making the right decision if you’re thinking of leaving. The grass is not always greener on the other side.
You can start by writing down your values, goals, aspirations, life directions, beliefs and preferences – and then write down your partner’s as well. Then you can compare the two lists.
Are you compatible? Is there the chance that you can support either other’s aspirations or goals? Does your partner seek the same things as you?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you might have a chance of saving your relationship because you have some common ground.
From here, you both need to commit to working on the relationship to try to make it even stronger. This means opening up and talking to one another – and listening to one another - so that you are aware of the problems facing you.
You both might need to change your attitudes towards each other and commit to work together to resolve the issues in your relationship. You can try to do this on your own, or seek help from a trained family therapist of church minister.
Until you try, though, you’ll never know and you might find that instead of separating or divorcing, you’ll be wondering how soon until you’ll be back in the arms of your sweetie!
8 Positive Tips To Repair An Unhappy Relationship
If you think that there is the chance to save your relationship, adopt a positive attitude (as hard as it seems right now) and try changing your own behavior as a first step. Once your attitude and behavior towards the relationship changes, you might just see a change in your partner too.
1. Practice being kind, attentive, patient, honest, funny, flexible, gracious, available and intimate towards each other. Learn to improve communication and listen to and respect each other’s views. Few things are as unproductive as bringing up and rehashing events that have already taken place that cannot be changed.
2. When you’re angry, upset, frustrated or disappointed it can be tempting to play games with one another or seek revenge for things that have happened. Try hard not to. You need to be mature about your relationships and this is especially true if children are involved.
3. Don’t play the victim. Victims blame the other person for all their own problems “it’s your entire fault that my life is so awful right now” and while your friends and family will support you for awhile, most people have no respect for victims if they continue to wallow in their own self-pity.
4. Don’t play the martyr either. A martyr sacrifices and suffers for the sake of principle – then makes sure that everyone else knows about it. “I’d really like to help you by washing all your clothes and folding them into a neat stack, but I’m so busy trying to get your three children ready for school that I simply don’t have time”. Martyrs make sure that their burdens are bigger than their partners – and it’s a pointless competition. Martyrdom in relationships is just another way of wallowing in your disappointment and self-pity, and the couples that play this game end up spending most of their time bickering with one another.
5. If you argue, avoid launching into personal attacks. These simply make the other person feel defensive, and back them into a corner where they either shut down to what you are trying to say or fight back with equally hurtful comments.
6. Don’t let in-laws or other people around you meddle or interfere in your relationship. Whether their intentions are good or bad, interference will not be helpful to your situation. You need objective and supportive advice – but the people around you will have subjective opinions and will tend to lean or have some bias towards one of the partners involved. The other partner may well feel resentful towards the in-laws and this could escalate problems even more. Don’t ask mutual friends to become involved.
7. Keep your confidantes to a very small number and make sure that they are people you really trust. You don’t want them telling everyone else about what’s going on in your lives, and the more people you tell about your problems, the more uncomfortable you’ll be (and the more silly you’ll look) if you resolve your differences, reconcile and forge forward.
8. If you have children, organize a night where the two of you regularly get a babysitter and head out for the evening for a meal or to see a movie. Try to bring in some romance. Also, work on trying to be consistent with your children since differences in how people parent tends to cause significant friction in relationships.
This next step needs you to remain focused on each other and strengthening your bond. Remember to acknowledge and appreciate each other, say and do nice things for each other, and celebrate important dates together.
It is a time for working hard at breaking old habits, for example, rather than automatically rolling over to sleep at opposite ends of the bed, try instead to use bedtime as an opportunity to talk or to cuddle up together.
Stay or go? Final Thoughts
Of course, none of these tips are guaranteed to save your relationship but if you have some shared values and goals then it is worth the investment of your time and effort to find out if they can help. And a lot of what you can do doesn’t cost you a dime!
You can also seek out the help of a family therapist. Many therapists now have websites that explain what services they offer and their different areas of expertise. You should also be able to see how much it costs.
To find a good therapist, you can ask amongst your friends and family for a recommendation (you might be surprised how many people you know have seen a therapist) or ask your doctor who might know the local therapists.
You can attend counseling on your own or as a couple if you’re partner is unwilling or threatened by the counseling process.
If, after all this effort, you find out that your relationship is still not working out, at least you’ll know you can hold your head high since you’ve done everything you can possibly do to resolve your differences.
If it turns out that you do walk away, you can do so without thinking you short-changed the relationship, your partner or children, or feeling any regret or carrying the burden of a guilty conscience.
Fiona Mackenzie is the author of How To Know: When To Separate, a practical eBook that deals with the relationship topic of how to know when it is over. How To Know: When To Separate includes tips, strategies and techniques used by the author to manage the end of her relationship and learn how to be happy once more.
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