If You Want A Happier Marriage, It's Time To Memorize These 3 Essential Truths
Here's the recipe for domestic bliss.
Rido | Canva Despite pessimistic rants stating that it’s an impossible feat, enduring love can be your reality. It boils down to a combination of three key components and your ultimate ability to master them.
Rejoice in this exciting news but roll up your sleeves and get ready to do the hard work, because nothing worth having comes easy.
Daily, you are bombarded by a litany of partner possibilities, existing to tempt and tantalize, questioning, testing, and challenging the very foundation of your relationship.
Flirtation, glances, and smiles shoot like rapid fire. Only the most dedicated few will make it through this gauntlet, to return to the safety and pleasure of lifelong love. Interested in becoming one of the successful ones?
If you want a happier marriage, it's time to memorize these 3 essential truths:
1. Express appreciation
No person in the world can argue the power of outward appreciation. It’s not enough to think about it. Your partner has to hear it, by whatever means are most effective for them.
By acknowledging who your mate is and what they brings to the table, it creates an internal desire for them to keep offering up their best selves because they are perpetually being rewarded for their efforts.
Showing appreciation to your partner has been proven by research to increase positive feelings between couples, and even higher levels of oxytocin.
How to do it: First, think about the specific, little things you love about your special person and start developing ideas about how to convey it to them.
Will it be through verbal expression? Handwritten notes or sweet texts? Small tokens of affection? Start getting creative. A little goes a long way.
2. Illustrate respect
When you illustrate respect, every decision you make creates the opportunity for a bonding moment. As a result, you act out powerful and successful strategies for maintaining your strength as a couple.
You listen to their opinion, communicate when you’re having issues, avoid the attractive co-worker that could become a stumbling block in your relationship, and continually try to put their needs above your own.
Bottom line: By showing respect, you demonstrate that your loved one is of the greatest value in your life, and who doesn’t want to feel treasured this way?
Studies from the University of California-Davis say respect is essential for a successful committed relationship.
Need further proof of just how vital this key is, to a long-term relationship? Ask yourself what you would be willing to do for your mate if they made you feel this special. Or better yet, what wouldn’t you be willing to do? Enough said.
How to do it: If the above concept is new to you, start working on developing the following paradigm: “If it’s important to my partner, it’s important to me.” Instantly, your choices, reactions, and actions change for the better.
3. Desire your partner
One of our most basic, human needs is to feel wanted; to truly feel like a woman (or man) and to be with someone that conveys physical and emotional interest. You desire to be shown that you are seen as someone more than the housekeeper, the caregiver, the bill payer, etc.
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Never forget that “desire” takes on many forms and every single one is as necessary as the other. Mates desire touch (intimate AND non-intimate), conversation, connection, and the sense that you are found interesting, fun, funny, and worthy of someone’s attention.
How to do it: Take an honest look at the current state of your relationship and ponder how you would be graded on your ability to make your companion feel desired.
Room for improvement? Ask your special someone what you are doing right (so you can keep doing more of it) and what you could be doing differently, that would resonate with them.
The answers can potentially open up a powerful conversation that leads you down the path to mutual satisfaction. Now that you have the three keys to lifelong love, isn’t it time you took them for a test drive?
Allison Cohen, M.A., MFT, is a licensed marriage family therapist who helps her clients find long-lasting love, with themselves and others.