Here are more tips for improving your marriage—living life together. Couples don’t have to live life like they are are “two ships passing in the night”.
In couples counseling, we help couples get to the heart of their relationships. Past trauma, infidelity, resentment, and poor communication can all lead to the crumbling of a meaningful relationship. When you employ a counselor to assist you in saving one of the most important relationships, you will learn how to strengthen your friendship within your relationship, establish healthy boundaries, improve communication, and manage conflict in positive ways.
Here are more ways you can improve your marriage or relationship today! It’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s a great start for anyone who wants to learn to be a better partner to their spouse. (If you missed Part 1 of this series, here is the link to that post.)
Learning to Love Yourself
We can’t truly and deeply love another unless we love ourselves first.
Knowing what gives you (yourself) joy, what makes you sad, mad, etc. will help you empathize and display compassion when others feel. Then learning to communicate those feelings helps the other person understand you more. Self-awareness and vulnerability is a great gift you can give to yourself.
Next in the topic of loving yourself, is changing your inner dialogue. This is simply how do you speak to yourself? Calling yourself an idiot or a failure isn’t self love. Treat yourself how you want to be treated. Practicing saying positive affirmations to yourself everyday and throughout the day is a powerful way to change your inner dialogue. Some examples are: ‘I am enough’, ‘I deserve good things’, ‘I deserve to be happy’, ‘I am capable’. Also, see “Daily Positive Self-Talk” in our Instagram Stories for some more great examples.
Finally, loving yourself also includes taking care of yourself—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. Good hygiene, good health, taking time off for yourself—by yourself, doing self-care activities that make you feel good or give you joy, joining a Bible study group, meeting up with friends, taking a class to better yourself, and having a healthy friend group are all great ways to take care of YOU.
Start Your Own Healing Journey
Starting your own healing journey goes hand-in-hand with loving yourself. But, oftentimes we don’t know where to begin, we have trouble sticking to healthy routines, or we need someone to help keep us accountable. This is where a very honest and humble friend comes in. And if you don’t have a person like this in your life, then a counselor is a great place to start. A counselor is sometimes a better choice because they don’t necessarily have the same emotional connection as a friend does that keeps them from being completely honest with you.
Spouses often sign up their partner for marriage counseling or individual counseling wanting the other person to be fixed. But, sometimes they are faced with great pushback. The other person may refuse to go to counseling, doesn’t participate during the sessions, or doesn’t work on their part of the relationship issues. So what do you do? Well, the best thing to do is to go to counseling on your own. Seek your own healing, start learning coping skills and communication skills that will help you deal with stressful situations and people. We OFTEN see that once a person does this, the partner will start seeing positive results and will sign up for their own therapy sessions or be willing to go to couples therapy after all.
Take Ownership of the Role You Play in Your Relationship and Family
In marriage, people often get caught up in what the other person is doing wrong and fail to see their own blunders. Instead of pointing fingers, take ownership in the role you play in how the relationship is going. Evaluate your own behaviors. Ask yourself: ‘Am I being fair?’, ‘Am I appropriately expressing my feelings and needs?’, ‘Am I exhibiting mature behaviors’, ‘Am I speaking to my partner in a way that I would want to be spoken to?’.
Not sure what the roles in your household “should” be? Well, the secret to defining roles is communicating what needs to be done and how are you as a team are going to get them done? Honestly look at your strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. Then discuss them with your partner and come up with a plan and mutual understanding. This works much better than just writing a to-do list for your partner.
Lead by Example
Leading by example is just that. Don’t like your partner or kids spending too much time on electronics? Evaluate how you spend your spare time. Do you need to cut back on how much time you spend on electronics? Adjust or make changes in yourself, then if things still aren't right, communicate your feelings and needs to your loved ones. Electronics is just a typical example that comes up in therapy, but the same principles can be applied in other ways as well, such as chores, drinking too much or too often, not spending enough time with the kids, etc.
Leading by example is also important in how we communicate with each other verbally and non-verbally. A perfect example to this is a father coming in to counseling because he feels like an outsider in his own home. Wife won’t talk much, kids won’t talk much, no one wants to spend time with him, he finds himself alone on the couch drinking beer night after night, and either going to bed before or way after everyone else in the house. So, what’s being communicated here? Nothing and everything. He feels unloved, unappreciated, sad, and angry. So in turn ‘what does he do?’. He turns to unhealthy routines, self-loathing, and isolation. He’s started a cycle and the family starts doing the same—turning to unhealthy routines, isolating or unintentionally isolating the father, and resentment builds.
So, the tip here is to start leading by verbally and maturely communicating your feelings and needs. Next, start asking your partner or kids questions and find out who they are, what they like, what they don’t like (explore their feelings and their needs). Then, get involved—start participating in the things that make your household function properly. Yes, it may feel weird, uncomfortable, or like it’s not your thing, but do it anyway. You might actually start liking it. Need some examples? Cook with your spouse, clean up the kitchen after your spouse has been cooking all evening, participate in and learn bedtime routines, hang out in the same room as your wife or kids (even if you guys aren’t talking, presence is the key), get ready for bed and go to bed at the same time as your spouse, offer to go to the grocery store with your spouse. The list is endless. The point is to start doing life with each other and showing your kids (if you have kids) how to do life with others.
Final Thoughts
These tips are just a few of many things that may lead to a more meaningful and intimate relationship with your partner. I encourage everyone to make an intentional effort to incorporate these tips into your daily lives.
Sometimes even these small steps are difficult. If you find yourself in this position, reach out to a counselor for help. At Harvest Counseling & Wellness, we approach couples counseling using many different techniques including Prepare and Enrich Premarital Counseling, Gottman Method, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Solution-Foused Brief Therapy, Christian Counseling, and more.
ARE YOU SEEKING HELP WITH IMPROVING YOUR MARRIAGE?
Harvest Counseling & Wellness is a mental health counseling practice in Argyle, Texas. We provide therapy for couples, individuals, and families who are struggling with issues related to anxiety, depression, abuse, and grief due to damaged relationships. Our office is located near Denton, Highland Village, Flower Mound, Lantana, Roanoke, and Justin. If you are looking for a therapist in Denton or surrounding areas, contact us today for a complimentary phone consultation, 940-294-7061.
