Love Help

Marriage Advice - Saving the Relationship From Divorce or Separation

Marriage is tough. It's a living, breathing entity that needs to be fed, watered, and cared for or it will certainly die. A good marriage also leaves room to grow - for both parties - and a margin for error and forgiveness. And while most people will get married at one time or another during their lifetime, almost half of them will end up getting divorced.

In a marriage, problems are common. There isn't a couple out there who hasn't had their fair share of fights, arguments, and disagreements.

And you know what? That's okay. This is the standard fare for any relationship, but especially for marriage, and you shouldn't feel badly about having these issues.

The commitment you make when choosing a husband or wife is deeper than any other commitment you'll make during your entire lifetime, with the exception of having children. You share everything to do with your life during marriage; from waking up next to that person to going to bed next to them, and everything in between.

This sometimes makes it tough to get along with each other. In being around each other so much you'll share everything together - joy and accomplishment as well as anger and sorrow. Space will sometimes be needed. Personalities will clash. It's the inevitable by-product of constant closeness.

They say it takes effort to make marriage work, but that's not entirely true. The best marriages are sometimes effortless - two people who love each other learn to grow around each other's needs; they learn to support and maintain each other despite differences in opinion, and they work through problems rather than side against each other on them.

With all this in mind, examine your marriage. Understand what the problems are, or at least, attempt to understand. Do this honestly, and do it from an outside point of view. Because once you can identify with your partner's issues? You can begin working on them... and they can be begin working on yours, as well.

Staying Married When One Person Wants Out of the Relationship

Getting married too young - we've all seen it happen. Getting married too soon - that happens too. Whatever the case, when one person wants to stay married and the other does not? It can be an almost insurmountable problem.

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years."   - Simone Signoret

The first thing to realize is you can't make your spouse stay with you if he or she wants to go. No matter what the reason, there's no stopping someone who's mind is already set on being elsewhere. Marriage isn't about keeping someone down, or trapping them to maintain their love for you. Believe it or not, a big part of any successful marriage is FREEDOM.

This obviously doesn't mean you should allow your spouse the freedom to walk all over you, or do whatever they want to do to the detriment of your marriage. But it does mean you can't be overbearing, jealous, controlling, or any of those things if you want to maintain a healthy married relationship. None of those traits will keep your partner from leaving or straying, and in fact, they can actually accelerate the process of separation or divorce.

Finding the Time For Your Spouse - Reconnecting During Marriage

Most marital problems stem from the same basic premise; you're not spending enough time together. One or even both partners can feel this way, and over time, it can lead to a total disconnect.

The good news is that those strong feelings and emotions that initially drove you as a couple as all still there. But most of the time? They're just buried.

These connections can get buried beneath work. They get shoved aside by school, and the constant requirements of children.

They also get buried by financial worries, health issues, and just about anything else that distracts you from being with each other as a couple, the way you always used to be when you the relationship first started.

It's almost funny to note that married couples spend less time with each other than when they were single or engaged. They might still be 'around' each other, but they're not sitting together, talking together, or even getting together sexually as much as they used to. The culprit is always time and schedule. To run and keep a household, two different people might be on two different timetables, leaving lots of room for work and chores but little room for time as a family.

One solid tip for spending more time together is this: get on the same sleep schedule. These days it's not uncommon for a husband and wife to go to bed within several hours of each other, as one usually stays up and the other is too tired to continue.

The best thing to do is meet in the middle: agree upon a time you can both go to bed, even if you're not completely tired and stay up talking, reconnecting, or jumping eachother sexually. In time, your sleep-cycles will synch up and you'll both be on the same page, giving yourselves more of an opportunity for time alone.

Dealing With Financial Problems During Marriage

Today's economy is worse than ever, causing more and more couples the added stress of financial difficulties. Even with two people working full time jobs, it's getting increasingly hard to keep up with a mortgage, car payments, children, and all the bills that come with the cost of living.

The one thing you need to do right away however, is keep your marriage separate when it comes to financial woes. Whether or not you love and care for your husband or wife should have no bearing upon how much money you have (or don't have).

Fights over money are a common marriage problem, and there's not much you can do to avoid them. It's how you handle these disagreements however, that needs to be taken carefully into consideration. Even if you believe your spouse may be part of the problem when it comes to spending money, coming at them in a confrontational way will only make things worse.

Instead, you need to both remain calm, sit down, and approach money problems as a team. There are lots of great resources online you can look at together when it comes to planning out a budget or consoldating debt. Check up on all your options, decide where you'll be cutting back, and work on creating a plan of action to alleviate financial problems even if you can't fully eliminate them.

The worst thing you can do is bring up money problems and throw them in your partner's face, time and time again, without even offering a solution. And to make things work, any solution you come up with needs to be done together. Solidarity towards finances is extremely important, not only to give you a sense of working together but also so you're both on the same page, moneywise, when it comes to the marriage.

Cheating: How to Handle an Affair and Still Keep the Marriage Together

Infidelity - it's the destroyer of many of marriage, and it's one of the top reasons couples split up. Yet you'd be surprised to know that most couples try to stay together - or at least make an attempt at patching things up - after one or both parties were caught cheating.

Getting over an affair is one of the most difficult marriage obstacles you'll ever face. Whether your partner cheated on you and you're trying to forgive them, or you're the one who strayed... either way, the road to reconciliation is a VERY uphill climb once one person has betrayed the trust of the other.

That said, cheating can be overcome. Affairs can be forgiven, and a marriage can last and even flourish in the years to come. The requirements for such a scenario are many, but the good news is that everything can be done in steps, over a longer period of time.

Check out the articles listed below, for more specific help with cheating during a marriage. Learn how you can both forgive, forget, and learn to trust each other as a couple again even after infidelity threatens to destroy you as husband and wife:

Cheating is something you either get past of your don't: there's really no half-assing it. So either you choose to forgive your lover for cheating (or they forgive you), or you move on with your life and find someone else. There's no third option, because "trying" to forgive someone means you'll only be thinking about the cheating again and again, rehashing it and bringing it up whenever your'e angry, until finally you end up chasing your partner away. If you're still talking about what happened months or years down the line, your marriage just can't be expected to survive an affair.

Where to Go For More Marriage Help and Advice

Communication, patience, flexibility... in the end, these things will always help alleviate marital problems and get you both back on track to a successful partnership. Still, there are times when you need more specific advice on how to stay together when your marriage seems to be falling apart.

Separation is another issue entirely, and if not handled correctly can affect your spouse, your children, and also your family. While some separations can be times for reflection as you work together on problems, others are nothing more than waypoints on the long journey to divorce.

Find out how to avoid separation, or get back together with your spouse after you've separated as a couple. There are adjustments you can make to your marriage that will make things easier for the both of you to get along, reorganize things, and most important of all, reform as a team.

More great marriage advice can be found below: