Have you realized something seriously wrong with your marriage? Or your marital crisis has been remained unresolved for a long time? Do you fear that your marriage will keep falling? Depending on what action you are going to take during this critical time, you can bring your marriage to the brink of divorce or get your marriage back on track. And hence, when your marriage is falling apart, don’t let it run its course as long as you do not want to give up on the relationship. Instead, you should strive to make positive changes to move through this difficult stage; and there are many things that you can do to save the failing marriage even though you are the only one who wants to try.
And the following are 6 tips on what you can do to fix your marriage when it is falling apart:
(1) Work on self-improvement:
In your married life, if you are constantly troubled by unpleasant issues and thereby have no mood to do other things, your spouse can sense your mood, so probably his/her emotions will also be influenced more or less. Understandably, when your spouse is sensing you are in a bad mood, it is unreasonable for him/her to look happy in front of you. And if you are still doing exciting things in front of you at this time, you will be inclined to view him/her as that kind of person who likes to find pleasure in seeing people who make asses of themselves.
As explained above, the more you feel negative about yourself, the less willing your spouse is to spend time around you, and the more emotionally distant he/she is in the relationship. Remember, your constant negativity not only afflicts yourself but also bothers the person closest to you.
To understand this point, let’s look at an example: if you often drown your sorrows or worries in drink, your spouse must also feel bad and hence wear a woebegone look; yes, you can say that drinking is a thing that is fairly normal for people, so you are at liberty to do as you please; but such behavior itself potentially affects your spouse as well as your marriage, regardless of how you justify it. In this case, controlling your drinking can help bring clarity and positive energy back into your married life.
Thereby, to fix the relationship with your spouse by improving yourself, you need to pay particular attention to chronic sources of your negativity, rather than go on to ignore them.
(2) Place a high priority on your marriage:
When your marriage is falling apart, make sure to prioritize your marriage over all the stuff in your life. This point may sound a little unacceptable for you, because you have a strong belief that something is as important as marriage, such as your children, career, and intimate friends; but you have to be aware that those equally important things are bound to be affected greatly if your marriage continues to deteriorate. In other words, it is necessary to make your marriage a high priority during a marital crisis. Believe it or not, when your marriage thrives, your other affairs will be more likely to prosper although it seems that some of them bear no obvious relation to your marriage.
(3) Recognize the seriousness of some relationship problems:
Common causes of separation or divorce are seemingly known very well to almost all the couples; but when some serious relationship problems happen to a lot of couples, they shut their eyes to the plainest facts or refuse to admit those facts.
When your marriage is falling apart, you may have also already known there exist several stubborn problems in your marriage, maybe you have ever wanted to handle them but you failed; and what is worse, over time, those problems may have been taken for granted in your married life; due to numbness to those problems as well as blind optimism about them, they may have developed enough to threaten your marriage. The instance below can make this point clear.
For instance, numerous problematic couples live in a sexless marriage for a long time; no doubt, this kind of marriage life is a torment for both sides, but they still strive to maintain the marriage due to all kinds of reasons; unfortunately, many of them fail to survive in such unhealthy relationships finally. The lack of sexual intimacy is never a problem that happens overnight. In such cases, both parties must have early realized that something went wrong with their sex life, but from the beginning, they didn’t perceive that the problem was pushing them towards separation or divorce, and they let it run its course, or they did not make enough efforts to improve it.
Back to you: as long as you realize the seriousness of a stubborn relationship problem, you should be patient and determined to address it; even if you have no idea how to fix it, you might actively seek help from marriage therapists or experienced people, the odds are that you still could cope with it in time.
(4) Don’t expect to change your spouse significantly:
When your marriage is falling apart, your negative emotions may cause you to react in a certain way that forces your spouse to change for you. But probably your spouse is not willing to change according to your requirement; after all, his/her significant change needs to come from within rather than come from an external force.
Therefore, you are supposed to stop attempting to change your spouse; instead, you might save the time and spend it on doing other things that can be beneficial to your relationship, such as focusing on self-improvement and seeking help.
(5) Increase the investment of your time and efforts:
If you are unwilling to spend a bit more time every day working on your relationship, it is difficult to see that your marriage will get better significantly. Putting your marriage life back in order is bound to be a long haul, especially when your marriage is falling apart. Hence, you must be mentally prepared to invest enough energy and time into your relationship; the required investment can probably be bigger than what you imagine. In short, as long as you want to change your spouse’s mind about where the relationship will go, you have to let him/her feel that you are determined to make continuous efforts to improve yourself as well as the relationship with him/her.
And as you keep putting your efforts somewhere every day, you will experience fewer and fewer difficulties in doing it no matter how tough it is. For example, you may have gotten used to spending 2 hours watching TV every day, but now you have changed the habit by devoting half of the time to the interaction with your spouse, such as chatting with your spouse, playing sports together, and cooking together; in doing so, it is conducive to enhancing the connection with your spouse.
(6) Don’t attempt to do an astounding feat, and ensure consistency in your work:
You should not expect your marriage to thrive again by making dramatic changes deliberately. And you do not have to convince your spouse of your commitment to improving the relationship in this way, and on the contrary, this way is often ineffective and even counter-productive; if you were your spouse, would you believe in your spouse’s sincerity when he/she was doing so for you? Hence, to keep your marriage alive, you have to engage in daily behavior that helps maintain and improve the health status of your relationship. Remember, you do not have to want marital happiness with vigor and vitality, and mostly it just comes quietly as you consistently work on maintaining and improving the marriage.
The final word:
If you choose to do nothing to deal with the marriage that is deteriorating, the relationship will only continue to deteriorate. Remember that nothing can stand still, and your relationship is also changing constantly. And a lot of your actions and reactions can either improve your relationship or make your relationship worse, but you may have not realized them in time.
You must recognize the fact – Marriage is such a blessing, but it can also break your heart inevitably at some point; anyway, when your marriage is falling apart, you should learn to deal with it in a constructive way. Last but not least, don’t rush to the conclusion that your marriage has broken down irretrievably; most of the time, you can still take many steps to fix the marriage, regardless of whether your spouse is willing to work together with you.
If you want to get more advice about how to save your unhappy marriage, you might go on to watch the video below follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience in helping married couples get through tough times and maintain happy marriages:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
What to do when your spouse wants to leave you – Save your marriage.
How to stop divorce and save your marriage – 7 marriage saving tips.
What not to do when your spouse wants out – Save the marriage.
Should you divorce your spouse – Top reasons for divorce.
How to survive in a sexless marriage – Is a sexless relationship doomed?