Do you find yourself ever wishing your relationship was just a little bit better, but not finding your spouse willing to work on it with you. Or your spouse doesn’t think anything is wrong with the relationship as it is? Here are my top four tips that you can implement today without the help of your spouse.
1. Rewrite the Relationship Headline
If you had to write a newspaper article about your current relationship what would be your headline? Maybe it sounds something like “spouse addicted to work, video games, or phone while other spouse keeps house and relationship going.”
What kind of story does that tell about your relationship? Is it one that you like and feels good to you? Does this headline (aka thought) make you feel positively towards your relationship. If not how might you change the headline to your advantage. Some ideas may be: Spouse does all it takes to provide for family, so I can be a stay-at-home parent. Couple learning how to balance free time, so everyone gets the rest they need.
See how these headlines leave room growth, understanding, and change. These may be more useful to think about your marriage. Only you will know how different headlines make you feel and if they are believable to you.
2. Evaluate Your Relationship Expectations
What are you expecting in your relationship. Are those expectations being met? If not is this idea of what a marriage should be a big enough deal to you to be miserable over? For example, I had an expectation that my husband would love to do yard work with me. That is not the case in my relationship. I do most of the yard work on my own or with the kids.
Do I want to be miserable over this expectation? I’ve decided not really. Yes it would be nice to do yard work together, but it doesn’t happen that way. I don’t want to cause fights over this. I’d rather do the yard work (or I could hire it out) and spend time together in a setting we both enjoy.
But if I didn’t take the time to realize that was even the cause of some of our contention, then I’m allowing it to cause a rift in our marriage. But I intentionally decided it wasn’t that important. What I choose to think instead is if I have the yardwork done, then he can spend his time taking me on a date instead. I would much rather go on a date together than do yardwork together. So its a win for both of us.
3. Take Care of Your Own Needs in a Relationship
What I’m not saying is that your desires don’t matter. We all have desires and those don’t go away because we are in a relationship. Maybe that desire is to go Christmas shopping with hot chocolate together and both enjoy it.
But your husband isn’t into shopping. He might go, but it is obvious that he doesn’t enjoy it. Does that mean your desires don’t matter? Or do his desires not matter? These can be tricky to navigate.
Is there a way you can meet your own desires? For me, I started doing this magical Christmas shopping with a friend instead. We go out and get yummy cocoa from the coffee shop and shop together. We both enjoy it and my husband didn’t have to go.
Your spouse doesn’t have to meet your every desire and you don’t have to meet theirs. What if we both met our own desires.
4. Just be Here to Love Your Spouse
If we met our own desires then we could just show up with the sole purpose of loving our spouse. What do I want to do today to love my spouse? Sometimes that may be going to do the thing your spouse wants to do that you don’t want to do. Other times that may be being honest and saying no thanks that doesn’t work for me.
But when you aren’t waiting on your spouse to make you happy. (Which they can’t do anyways.) Then you can just be there to love each other. This space has so much more room for each other.
Sometimes we can’t see where we are getting in our own way. That’s where the help of a life coach comes in handy. She/he will help you examine what is going on in your brain, so you decide if it is helping your relationship or hindering it. If you would like to talk about your relationship, sign up for a FREE 30 Minute Discovery Call. No obligations to buy anything, just a little help with your life.
Until Next Time
-Keira
