3 Little Ways to Mess Up Any Marriage

Are you doing them?

Where do we get our relationships skills?  Who teaches us how to have a passionate, loving, committed marriage?  Were your parents a good example of how to create an extraordinary relationship?  If you didn’t have a good role model, who did you learn from?

If you’re like most couples today, you are just winging it, and it’s not working.  There is no plan to make it better, and there is no clear understanding of what your partner needs, nor how they communicate.    Maybe you even stopped trying to figure them out because they haven’t done much for you lately.

Here’s a dose of reality:  About 50% of first marriages end in divorce, over 60% of second marriages, and over 70% of third marriages all end in divorce.  Why?  You already know the answer.

So, marriage sucks, and now people want to just live together.  Here’s an interesting fact:  Within the first 5 years, 45% of live-in couples have gone their separate ways.  So much for the idea of just living together in loving bliss, because that’s not working either.

The hard truth is that most couples don’t know how to make a relationship thrive.  Based on my relationship repair work over the last several years, here are the

3 Little Mistakes That Mess Up Any Marriage:

1.  Showing Little Appreciation-  It’s very clear that men feel unappreciated by their women.  It is by far their largest complaint.  They feel unrecognized for all the hard work that they do to provide for the family and it builds into a grumbling resentment over time.  When men feel unappreciated, it becomes much easier for their attention to go where they are appreciated.

Women also feel unappreciated, but it’s different. Most women feel that they struggle for attention from their partner which is an aspect of appreciation.  When they are communicating to their man, and he is distracted by watching TV, on the computer, or working on something, and not paying full attention it reduces trust and respect.  When trust and respect start to disappear, attraction is reduced.

2Misunderstanding Communication –Men and women have different communication styles, and it leads to challenges.  Men typically communicate in short direct ways, while women weave in more details and longer flowing volumes of communication.  Men can have a short attentions span and be asking themselves “what’s the point?”, when listening to their woman talk about something on her mind.  While women know they have a point that they are getting across perfectly clearly.  Unfortunately they are not talking to another woman who would normally get it.  So men get frustrated particularly because they want to fix everything, (huge mistake) and pay less attention, which leads to a loss of attraction, trust and respect.

3.  Assuming Bad Intentions- Everyone makes mistakes, but the real challenges come when one partner believes that the other did something wrong intentionally.  For example: “I’m working my ass off and she only cares that there is money for her to spend, she doesn’t care about me.”. or “I’ve seen the way he looks at other women, he doesn’t care about me”.  I had a situation recently where a woman called her husband “lazy”.   He didn’t take it particularly well understandably, but when we dug into the real reason for the comment, it had nothing to do with him.  It was just a comment that came from frustration about something else.  When we assume that a partner intended to hurt us, or doesn’t care, or is not interested, it often leads to bitterness and resentment.

What are you doing that is hurting your relationship?  What do you not know that you are doing that is eroding trust and respect?  How are you ruining the attraction that your partner has for you?

In my experience, most challenges can be resolved relatively quickly when couples learn new strategies that actually work to create loving, passionate committed marriages.  If you are interested in learning how you might repair your relationship, and completely shift your marriage, email jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  The stakes are incredibly high, and affect the financial and emotional health of both partners, the children, and extended family. The greatest gift you that could give your children is the model of successful, committed, loving relationship.  It’s also exactly what you deserve.

May 3, 2012
Contact us

Jeff Forte CSIC CME
PEAK Results Coaching
2389 Main St. Glastonbury, CT 06033

860-633-8555

jeff@peakresultscoaching.com

Join the PEAK Results Inner Circle

Get access to the most up to date life changing wisdom.
Take the peak performance mindset into every area of your life.
Subscribe! And get The 50 Rules for Healthy, and Successful Living today.

You have Successfully Subscribed!