One of the things I hear as soon as people discover I work with couples is,
"Jim,
what is the one thing I can do to make my marriage better?
You got to have a one-line right? There's a pill. There's something." Well,
of course, I just give the statement that I was taught by my mentor, Dr. Beam,
which is, "well, if you want your marriage to be great,
you got to stop doing the things that make it bad and start doing the things
that make it better." There you go end of video. No,
there's too much speculation that comes into that.
Too many opportunities for craziness. The truth in there is,
I can't tell you for your situation three things,
five things,
a million things that's going to make your relationship better based on your
interpretation of it. In fact,
a couple decides what works in their relationship based on how they view the
other person's actions. What I can tell you is across the board,
they did a 25-year literature review by Dr. John Gottman.
One of the things he did was pull everything written on relationships,
everything written on marriage, and he pulled those in and he said,
"why are people divorcing?" After they brought the accumulation of
material in what they discovered is there were three things that were very
apparent that led to divorce and they were: I don't feel you love me.
I don't feel you liked me. I don't feel you respect me.
You will notice there's one word that is completely connected to
all of those and it really is the source of this.
That is feel feelings they're different. They're difficult.
What I mean by that is feelings may have rational type of input
that move you to a direction. Once we get into our emotion,
there's seldom anything rational about it. So,
when I think about what's happening in a couple's life,
or when I think about what's happening in a couples relationship,
one of the things I want to look at is that interaction.
Here's a few things you can keep in mind when you think about,
"what can I do to make my marriage better?
Are what's most important in my marriage." Number one is make sure
your spouse understands that you love them.
That's not just in your words or even in gifts,
but they have to have a general understanding,
meaning that you love them as a human being.
Not necessarily you love what they do for you or how they look, but
as a person, you love them.
Typically that's processed through the eyes of acceptance.
See if I come to you and I'm having a difficult time and you support me,
even if you don't agree with it,
but you support my emotion in it and that acceptance is there.
I can kind of feel like you must care for me. You must love me.
As a result of that, I'm likely to build more intimacy.
If I don't have that emotional connection,
I don't feel like you love me because of resistance or lack of acceptance,
then I'm going to withdrawal. So being accepting, being available,
it doesn't mean agreeing with everything,
but it means I'm not going to attack you or hurt you when you do share something
with me that might be painful.
The second thing I'd like you to look at is that in a relationship,
one of the things is most important is that people know you like them.
You probably heard people say,
you maybe have said it to your son or daughter as a teenager, "You know what?
I love you,
but I don't like you right now." I can't think of how many times my wife has
said it to me. In fact,
I think I've said it to myself in the mirror a few times.
But being liked matters. It tends to connect to the thought of,
we have good times together.
You can love someone and not enjoy your time with them,
but to love someone and like them signifies the interactions we
have. The interactions we are having are enjoyable.
They pull me towards you. They increased my passion to be with you.
It's not just that you love me, but that I feel like you like me too.
We're buds, we're friends. We get along. There's not a sense of disgust.
Those two things are very important. Here's the thing we know, you can love me,
you can like me,
but I may be looking at your behavior and listening to your words and
thinking,
"but you don't respect me." Respect can be a big deal for a lot of people.
I think everybody wants to be respected.
Some people it's a higher demand than others. Some it's a lower,
but to think to yourself,
"this person doesn't respect me." Actually put yourself in a place of,
I'm not valuable. If I was valuable, you would honor what I say.
You would hear what I say. If I said, "I want this," you would help you with it.
If I said, "I don't want this," you wouldn't push it upon me.
This is probably where a lot of couples go awry is they
stopped with the respect.
That leads to "I don't think you like me" to eventually "I don't think you love
me." Respect is key, but here's the big thing about respect.
I can't determine what you decide is respect for you.
I might think it's disrespectful to interrupt someone. Of course,
if you ever joined my family when I was a kid,
you would realize that interruption is a required skill in that family to get
anything done.
But just because interrupting seems rude to me,
it may not be rude to many people around me. So,
I can't just say that event or act is rude or disrespectful.
What I have to look at is how is the person I'm speaking to
interpreting what I am saying? So it is very possible. In fact,
highly probable, you may be working hard trying to demonstrate respect,
but you're not demonstrating it in a manner in which your spouse recognizes it.
So now both of you are frustrated and where's that going to lead to?
It's not going to lead to roses, I can promise you.
What you really want to be able to do at that time is evaluate,
discover how does my spouse perceive respect and
how is my behavior either validating that or pushing it aside of it's not
worth it? We all want to be loved, liked, and respected.
If you can do that in a marriage, you'll eliminate a lot of the other stuff.
It's just determining, how does your spouse see love?
How do they interpret like? How do they interpret respect?
That's going to be on the perspective of your behavior.
I would encourage you to stay focused on this.
Now there's a lot of ways you can do this. Number one,
we have a smart-contact toolkit. In the smart-contact toolkit,
it tells you of different variables and situations and ways that you
can avoid getting into the disrespect cycle in
conversation.
It keeps you away from pitfalls and puts you on the path to a better
relationship, if you can follow them. I'd encourage you to check that out.
Of course,
we have a full course with Save My Marriage and that's going to cover a huge
spectrum of things.
If you're interested in any of these or some of our other tools,
give us a call here at Marriage Helper, or follow us and check us out online,
www.MarriageHelper.com.
We have some areas you can click on. You can sign up for stuff.
You can get a representative to call you,
or check us out on YouTube at Marriage Helper.
I promise you we're here to help you reach your vision and goal for your
relationship. Take care.