What Can I Do to Save My Marriage - 5 Tips

Are you asking yourself this question: "What can I do to save my marriage?" Then the following tips will be of benefit to you in solving your problems and preventing your marriage from heading to divorce.
The first step is to set outside a period of reflection. This is the time for you to stop worrying but to think and map out a plan on how to solve your marriage problems. In doing this, you have be sincere with yourself because you have to examine yourself thoroughly on what role you played that have might lead to or contributed to the present situation in your marriage.
The next step is to involve your spouse. Find out what they think of the situation and what they think is the preferred or possible solution. If you and your spouse are lucky, you may arrive to suitable and sustainable solution, to your marriage problems. But if the reverse is the case, you have to proceed to the next step.
This step implores you to involve third party and are close to both you and your partner. You have to involve people who you are sure have your interest and your happiness at heart. These may include your parents, close relatives, and friends. These people will serve as mediators between you and your spouse, in finding a lasting solution to your problems by offering a valuable advice.
If the above step, do not solve your predicaments, you can then opt for a marriage counseling service, this means inviting a distant third party to your affairs. But if you are going for a marriage counseling center, you should choose the christen marriage counseling outfit ahead of the secular ones. This Christian marriage counseling program will help in serving your marriage and more importantly will also make your marriage stronger. It will also help in drawing you and your partner closer to God. Another advice why I said you should opt for the Christian marriage center is that, it is less expensive when compared to the secular counseling outfits, in fact the Christian counselors will serve you nothing and their services are absolutely free because they see it as part of their service to humanity and God Almighty.
Another alternative to seeking the marriage counseling program in saving your marriage is to consult one of the many books that are available online. This can actually be a breakthrough choice for a lot of couples because it makes you and your partner to go on your own pace. All most all of these online books provide an easy step by step guidance on how to save your marriage and build a happy and peaceful home.
The process of saving your marriage from heading to a divorce starts with you doing a proper self examination and reflection, taking the ideas and opinions of your partner into consideration and seeking help from outside source either from close relatives or marriage counseling services.

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Marriage Counseling - What Do Husbands Really Want in a Wife?

Because many men do not discuss feelings as easily as most women do, wives are often shocked when their husband actually voices his desire to separate or divorce. They might have suspected that their spouse wasn't entirely happy, but they didn't think he'd ever be the one to end the marriage.
Sometimes the husband can't give a specific answer as to why he feels the way he does. He just finally gets to the point where he can't continue living the way he is. Sometimes, these feelings are brought to a head by the awareness that he's getting older and life is passing him by. Or the feelings of
discontent can be activated when another female finds him attractive and makes a play for him.
In couples marriage counseling sessions, typical questions asked are "What does he want from me that I'm not giving him?" "How can I be interested in sex when I'm exhausted from everything I do for our three kids every day?" "We've made it through some really tough times and I thought things were getting better, so why would he leave now?" All of these questions and many others haunt the surprised wives.
To better understand what husbands want, let's look at some of the priorities men have shared with me in marriage counseling sessions:
1. Men want to be appreciated for what they contribute to the marriage and family. They don't want to be taken for granted. Some men have said, "I feel like she only values my paycheck and if I weren't here anymore, she'd be fine with that." Everyone likes to feel appreciated, and husbands are no exception.
It's easy to focus on what a spouse isn't doing, especially if a husband and wife are disagreeing about how much each should help with the kids or around the house. The wise wife will express appreciation for what her husband is currently doing and for the positive qualities he brings to the marriage, even while discussions continue about things she'd like to see done differently in the future.
2. Husbands enjoy seeing their wives smile and laugh, and they find smiles and laughter appealing. They do enjoy having their wives appreciate their jokes or stories, but they also like to see their wives just looking happy in general. This doesn't mean going around with a fake grin and pretending everything is fine when it isn't. But it does mean keeping a sense of humor in spite of problems and being able to shut the door on worries temporarily when you have some "down time" with your spouse.
3. Husbands want to feel that their wives really care about their welfare and about them on a deep level. They want their wife to spend time with them, to be concerned about their health, happiness, and well-being.
Especially as men age, the feeling that a spouse doesn't really care about them cuts deeply, even if the husband never shows that he's hurt by the lack of affection and caring. They don't want to feel that the kids always come first and that their preferences and needs are overlooked.
In numerous homes, this dynamic is what gets off balance and leads to serious relationship problems. The wife thinks she's doing what's best by putting the kids' needs first, not realizing that the husband is as hurt as he is by this.
4. Husbands want private time with their wives--not just for sex, although that's important--but also to do activities together on their own. This is where making time for a "date night out" every week or so is important. Then the husband and wife can see a movie they want to see, uninterrupted by the kids, or have a peaceful meal at a restaurant. They can go bowling or dancing or get together with friends and keep their identity as an adult couple, not just as parents.
I have seen couples in counseling through the years who have decided not to ever leave their kids with a babysitter or go out on their own. This is always a red flag to me of an unwise course of action in the marriage. A heightened sense of passion between spouses is helped by time alone, "date time," private time, time for the important part of the relationship that exists beyond the kids to be strengthened and nurtured.
5. Husbands want a satisfying sex life. You knew we'd eventually get to sex, didn't you? So here it is. A marriage without a passionate sex life is lacking a key ingredient that wives all too often underestimate. And the reality is that a husband who does not have a satisfying sexual relationship with his wife is much more vulnerable to becoming involved with someone else.
Yes, I know there are couples who over time stop having sex and yet both partners choose to stay in the marriage, but in many cases, there's a resulting sense of resignation and dullness in the marriage. The fire or passionate spark that helps a couple to stay together is missing, so there's often a lack of "life" or energy in the relationship.
Wives can argue until they're blue in the face that sex shouldn't mean so much to husbands, but the reality is that it usually does have a high priority on the husband's list. Why? Because it feels good, because it makes him feel attractive and desired, because it enhances satisfaction with the marriage, because it can help the husband to feel closer and more connected to his wife, and because it relieves stress.
Use these five areas above to open discussion with your husband about how he feels in the marriage and whether his needs are being met. After all, that's one of the keys to marriage success--opening the communication door so that each spouse can share from his or her viewpoint and feel heard by the partner.

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How to Sustain a Loving Marriage

With nearly one in every two marriages ending in divorce, concerned spouses want to know what they can do to increase the odds of their marriage surviving. How to have a successful marriage remains one of the most popular topics for magazine articles, books, television talk shows, and discussions between friends.
Most people enter marriage with many unvoiced expectations of the other partner and about what it means to be married. A wife may think that her husband doesn't love her if he doesn't remember to give her a gift on the anniversary date of when they met. A husband may feel unloved when his wife is too busy to sit by him when he's watching his favorite television shows.
In reality, these behaviors may have nothing at all to do with whether love is present in the marriage or not. As an anonymous author stated, "Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you the best way they know how."
If you have definite expectations and you also happen to be a "historian," the stage is set for a lengthy listing of all of your partner's faults whenever you are upset. The current problems never get resolved because of all the "baggage" from the past that is brought into the dispute. The cataloging of past wrongs distracts you from the present issues, adds confusion, and can feel overwhelming.
"One of the keys to happiness," observed Rita Mae Brown, "is a bad memory." Of course, if important issues have been buried in the relationship and never addressed, it is important to do so, and this is often best accomplished with the help of a marriage counselor.
Once you begin lying or covering up, no matter how minor it is, you are hurting your relationship. It is easy to rationalize to yourself that a "little white lie" is for the other person's good, but when you stop being completely honest, you are affecting the quality of the intimacy in the marriage.
Telling lies requires energy to remember what you have said, to whom, and when. Often, one lie seems to lead to another as you keep trying to cover yourself. If the truth comes out later, then trust is damaged.
A story is told about a wife hitting her husband on the head with a frying pan. "What's that for?" he asks. She replies, "That was for the piece of paper in your pants pocket with the name Mary Lou written on it." After he responds that Mary Lou was the name of one of the horses he had bet on recently, she apologizes.
Three days later when he's again sitting in his chair reading, she knocks him out cold with the frying pan. When he comes to, he asks, "What the heck was that for?" She responds, "Your horse phoned." The only way to preserve trust in marriage is to commit to being totally and completely honest at all times, even when it is difficult and uncomfortable to tell the truth.
In successful marriages, spouses honor the natural rhythms and cycles of the relationship, knowing that at certain times, they will feel closer to each other, and that at other times, there will be more distance in their dance of intimacy. They experience the truth of the words by Mignon McLaughlin, "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." There is total commitment in every way to the marriage and to the other partner, and preserving the romance is a priority for both.
Partners in successful, loving marriages want the best for the other partner and want to be supportive of that person's needs, dreams, and goals. They want to show their love and appreciation for the other person in as many ways as they possibly can.
Even when they disagree or have substantial conflict, they want to do everything they can to protect the quality of the intimacy and the fabric of the relationship. They know that everything they say and everything they do has an important impact on the relationship.
Marriage provides an opportunity for you to reach inside yourself and to locate your places of deepest wounding that need healing. Everyone has defenses, ways of shutting down or shutting others out when they feel hurt, angry, or fearful. These defenses can block your ability to experience deep intimacy with another.
According to the poet Rumi, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." As always, the road to self-growth and emotional health leads to examining your own behavior and how you need to change, instead of focusing on how your partner should change.
There is no escape from doing your own inner work during the course of the marriage. To make real headway toward creating a loving marriage, focus on how you can be more loving and how you need to grow, instead of being distracted by what you perceive your partner's faults to be.

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Arranged Marriages: More Successful or Have Same Success Rate As Love Marriages?

Is it true that ARRANGED marriages have higher SUCCESS rate than LOVE marriages?
Marriage not only defines the social reunion between a man and a woman but also the reintegration between two families. Most western societies tend to deride arrange marriages as backward, uncivilized, primitive, and are thought as business arrangements made in order to join families for economic and social status reasons.
India is a country where many different religions dwell and a country where arranged marriages are more prevalent. Majority of the country lives in its villages where traditions are strong and because of this traditions which are still alive, marriages that are arranged are thought as being more successful than love marriages as they tend to take place in societies and cultures with strong sense of values of marriage.
It is true that when you think of arranged marriage, you imagine that how can someone agree to spend their life with a complete stranger...how is going to work? But, despite of what assumptions people have about arranged marriages they do tend to have a higher success rate. The reason being, in this type of marriages the primary emphasis is NOT on love, sex, and physical beauty but because the spouses get to know each other on primary level first, looking beyond trivial issues as beauty or lack thereof. The couples have much more common in terms of religion, background, culture, caste, and social status which is very important in establishing a strong foundation.
After living in India for 18 years and growing up in a joint family, seeing how successful the relationship of my parents and my other family members has been, I have been a strong believer of arranged marriages. In my point of view, it's the traditions that people follow in India is what has kept the belief of arranged marriages alive. These traditions are not only important in laying a strong foundation for arrange marriages, but they also are major contributing factor in bringing two families together and making a stronger bond not only between the couple but also the family members.
On other hand, love marriages focus more on and give greater importance on physical aspect of relationships, and thus are obsessed with love, beauty, etc. Physical attraction is important in any relationship but it is not the only thing, as giving importance to physical attraction which soon wears off, then there will be nothing left to build upon. Moreover, in love marriages the couple wants more independence and freedom which can be a factor resulting in the couple drifting apart from their relatives and other family members. Attending family functions and following certain traditions that demand your presence can be an important contributor in successful marriage.
Furthermore, arranged marriages are based on facts (TRUTH behind LOVE), integrity, ambition, humility, and generosity. The thought of just thinking about humiliation of herself and the family for an Indian woman is devastating. That is the reason why when in arranged marriage, when the couple begins to discover each other, they will try hard to make it work. And when the arranged couples really DO learn to love each other, it results most often in a life- long lasting; permanent arrangement and will rarely end up in DIVORCE.
Arrange marriages are likely to be more successful compared to love marriages because while physical charms are transient, companionship born from common ties lasts forever. The truth is that, you can LEARN TO LOVE anyone you want to, and to LOVE or not is YOUR decision.

Charmi Patel is a home business author, student, and an EMT.
She believes that arrange marriages are more prevalent in lot of countries, especially India. Also, she wants to share that one important factor that serves a a necessity in making marriage more successful is Education. She thinks that education is a vital element in making one's life successful. She wants to share with everyone how important education is in today's society and that no one should be deprived of education.
You can find out more about the importance of Education at: http://choosingtherightcareerforyou.blogspot.com/