Many marriages are still struggling in the pandemic. Some are locked in conflict, and many have the opposite problem. They are afraid of conflict. Afraid to the point of stagnation. If you are noticing that your marriage is not what you wanted it to be here are 9 steps to save your marriage with 21 inspirational quotes peppered throughout.
Step1: Be Patient
While it is easy to skip into dismay, certain that things will never turn around, DONT! Equally easy is looking the other way while your marriage slowly crumbles. The harder road is patience. Your marriage has deteriorated over time, it will take time to heal it.
- Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Patience will allow you mental space. Space to let go of the small slights. Let go of short-term expectations. Lean into the faith and confidence with which you founded the marriage. Trust the process.
- “God has perfect timing; never early, never late. It takes a little patience and it takes a lot of faith but it’s worth the wait.” Anonymous
Faith
One of the best places to begin is with faith. Faith on its own will not take you through the journey. Repairing a listing marriage will take time and patience. It will take energy, your energy. You will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the beginning. It is imperative that you are prepared. That you are charging your own battery constantly so that you have what you need for the journey ahead.
Step 2: Charge Your Own Battery
Neglecting ourselves for the sake of others is a misplaced ethic. This ethic has no value in the long run, particularly when personally taking on the resurrection of a marriage. Charging your own battery begins with giving yourself the very thing you felt was missing from your marriage, love!
- Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world -Lucille Ball.
Loving Yourself
Loving yourself is more than looking in the mirror and saying “I love you”. That is not a bad place to start though. You might be amazed at how uncomfortable that will feel the first time you do it. Loving yourself looks like taking care of your body, emotions, spirit, and intellect. It looks like nurturing your values and your own sense of mission. When you nurture yourself, you will be energized and in touch with all of who you are.
- Be who you are and say how you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.-Dr. Seuss
There is power in caring for self. The power of being who you are. There is power in saying exactly what you feel. The power of self-acceptance. To see clearly and with seeing clearly create a road map.
Step 3: Create a Vision:
Future vision is the basis for motivation and power. Having a vision for the future allows you to disregard the behaviors and remarks that are out of alignment with the compelling future you are moving towards. Creating a vision for your marriage will literally pull you towards it.
- “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”― Audre Lorde
On its own, fear is the mind-killer. Fear informs us when combined with intellect. Fear tells us when there is possible danger. It gives us the information we can act on when we evaluate it through the lens of our rational mind.
It is possible that our vision will shift and change with circumstances. This is no reflection of our commitment. It is simply embracing the reality that has been revealed in acting on our vision.
- “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”― Bruce Lee
Visions Can Shift
The goal or vision is reshaped as we evolve and grow with the steps we take. Every step forward is a revelation, a self-revelation. A revelation of the other person. When we truly love the other and ourselves, we relinquish the “position” that informed us earlier and embrace the values beneath the position. We move and shift without compromising what is really important to us. We embrace humility abandoning our own self-righteousness.
- “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”― Timothy Keller
Clarity of values, combined with humility, love, and the goal will give us the flexibility to shift and change without compromising on what is most important to us. It allows us to begin to truly understand the other person in the equation.
Step 4: Have Empathy
Empathy has roots in vulnerability. Vulnerability means taking a risk. The risk that it might not work out. That we might not get “there”. Coupled with that vulnerability is also hope. There is no moving forward without risk and there is no risk worth taking without hope.
- Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.-BRENÉ BROWN
Vulnerability opens so many doors! In vulnerability, we not only grow in spirit and our sense of purpose, but we take the lead in our own lives.
- Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives – OPRAH WINFREY
Leadership is all about connection to others. In order to lead in our marriage, to take our partner and ourselves to that place we envision, we connect with them in empathy and compassion.
Step 5: Taking the Lead in Utilizing 9 Steps to Save Your Marriage
Using empathy to lead allows us to connect and inspire. At first, our partner may be dubious. Trust is not won in a day. By consistently connecting with our partner, and proving we see who they are, we rebuild trust and catch their attention.
- A leader’s attitude is caught by his or her followers more quickly than his or her actions.-John C. Maxwell
No doubt your marriage has had its share of broken promises. It’s a share of things said and not done. All marriages have this experience. Recovering from this state demands actions in alignment with words. In alignment with the vows that are at the root of the marriage. Actions combined with feeling will win the day.
Step 6: Engage Your partner
You have demonstrated your love and commitment through action. Your partner sees that this is for real. They still doubt, they still have their “stuff” to work through. Now they are ready to start the work. To come together. Inspire them with your vision. Enroll them in working together with you.
- “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford
Work together in baby steps. Keep their interest. Show them that you are for real. Yes, they will slip into negativity, and the more stalwart you are in your commitment, the less often that will happen offer time. Start creating a shared vision, something simple to start out with that you can work towards and celebrate when you get there together.
- Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. -Andrew Carnegie
Small successes are the fuel for forward motion. Make sure that you celebrate every win no matter how small it may seem. Do this and the spark of fre4indship will be renewed.
Step 7: Renew your Friendship
The strongest relationships are based on friendship. Explore what friendship means to you personally. Get really clear on what it means to be a friend and what you expect from a friend.
- “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” — Muhammad Ali
Loving relationships are all about uplifting one another. Friends are clear on how to do this. That being a “Yes” Man or woman will not be to the benefit of the other person or the relationship.
- “Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.” — Thomas J. Watson
Friend & Partner
Having a friend and partner who is willing to tell you the hard truth is one of the greatest gifts in life. While everyone else might be willing to make you feel good about yourself rather than help you grow, your partner is there to help you see your defects and grow through them. The trick is to do this in a way that minimizes the pain and maximizes the opportunity.
- “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buechner
The feeling with which you deliver the truth has a tremendous impact on how it is received. Deliver it in anger and it likely will be rejected. Deliver it with love and compassion and it will be better received and acted on. Leaving your partner with the feeling that you are there for them is what will work best for you and them.
- “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Walter Winchell
Your partner may be rude, angry, or even emotionally abusive in tone. As long as their tone is not habitual or pathological, hanging in there as they move through their ugly spaces will go a long way to healing. They will need to own their anger and make it right for this to be true.
Make no mistake, hanging in for abuse is not an act of love. When your partner is consistently abusive, it’s time to leave. The goal is to rekindle love, not allow yourself to be bombarded with abuse.
Step 8: Rekindle Love
- Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing, and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.— Ann Landers
You have toughed it out together through the good and the bad. Your friendship is not only intact but validated. Knowing that this is love is more than just how you feel about the other person. It is more than simply the words that you say. It is about how you feel about yourself in their presence.
- “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”— Roy Croft
In Love Vs. Mature Love
Remember when you were in love? How did you feel about yourself when you were with them? You ALWAYS wanted to be with them, to roll in that feeling. Unlike “in love”, mature love allows you to have that feeling AND a life. Mature love teaches us that love is a verb, it’s a muscle that we exercise.
- “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”— Eleanor Roosevelt
Love also means the possibility of hurt, of pain. That is when we need to exercise it the most. Our partner inadvertently does or says something that touches a tender spot in us. The first feeling is pain and maybe anger. Our First action is to speak about it from a place of love. This takes effort and vulnerability AND it opens the door to intimacy.
Step 9: Develop intimacy
Intimacy will only grow in an environment of caring communication, trust, and empathy. Trust and empathy demand emotional honesty.
- Real intimacy is only possible to the degree that we can be honest about what we are doing and feeling. — Joyce Brothers
When we are transparent about what we do and why we foster intimacy. When we are caring and honest in our communication we engender trust.
Intimacy begins emotionally. It is a feeling of safety and care between two people. A desire to be closer in every way that can lead to spiritual and physical union.
- They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Follow the 9 steps to save your marriage and you will get positive results guaranteed! If you feel like you need a little help with this, we have programs for men as well as couples programs that get phenomenal results. Feel free to schedule a free strategy call!