Despite the tremendous pain that results from in those who go ahead with it, the trend in our day is to accept divorce as normal as getting married.
But at LONGEVITY the “D” word is abnormal, unacceptable and abhorrent.
Divorce weakens the fabric of a healthy society. Children pay the price emotionally and academically. Individuals entering marriage for the second time are 65 % more likely to divorce again. The pain that two wonderful people who originally found each other and committed their lives to one purpose find they are now in a devilish battle, pushed by fear and stress, fighting for their individual lives, instead of each other and their children. Who also hired the best lawyers they can afford, to attack with all their might, the one whom they have loved with all their heart (not too long ago),
Isn’t it a crazy irony?
But the threat of divorce, almost every time, is merely only a cry for help. Many good people who no longer can stand the pressure of a malfunctioning marriage, erroneously make the mistake, to get divorced without giving something so special, the chance it deserves.
Of course, many couples who remain remarried, are unhappy and have missed the plot altogether. I also do not recommend that you stay together, for the sake of your children alone. I recommend you work on making your marriage so wonderful, through correct knowledge, that the idea of splitting up would be off the radar.
Very few couples know how to have a marriage -hallmarked by longevity and joy.
Remember, your marriage, children, family, and testimony to society are worth every effort you can possibly make to fight for and to protect it.
THE WEDDING RING, THEN THE SUFFERING
Marriage is not a setup for suffering and failure. It is a setup for stability and satisfaction.
You say to me Shan, “…you don’t know the half of what I have to deal with.”
Let me tell you something,
…as frustrating and as confusing your particular situation may be, and as close to the brink of breaking up your family you may be, there is a truth that I know, and I need you to know it too. The investment it requires to transform your marriage into everything you ever dreamt, is much less of an ordeal than you think.
The issues you think are crippling and killing your marriage are actually solvable.
SOLUTIONS EXIST
If you take the right actions, your marriage can take a turn in the right direction.
You will get what you want if you know what you want. When you know what to do (knowledge) and if you do what you know (wisdom), you can change your relational status. It does not require you to be an expert.
The most complicated problems require the most simple solutions. The hope and help you need exist within your marriage, all you have to do is to learn to look for it. It takes love and commitment that makes a marriage resilient and fun.
Your emotional connection and spiritual intimacy are another two treasures you must cherish and protect.
Which means the conditions for success can be created by you, off-course when you know how.
FOUR STEPS OUT OF A MARRIAGE CRISES
1. Decide you will have the best marriage on earth
Put on the war boots of enthusiasm and do what you need to do, to improve your marriage.
Be as determined as the ant. An ant can withstand pressures up to 5,000 times greater than its own body weight. It is astonishing once you discover how much marital pressure you are able to carry and more importantly – overcome!
But, it will require determination.
Determination,
is the underlying principle of success in every area of life -including marriage.
Determined couples do not bent and break over common or uncommon marital pressure.
You cannot succeed without determination and you cannot fail if you have.
Discouragement,
easily settle in when you identify your marriage to the alarming decline of marital success and the increase of divorce in the world. Consequentially, this causes people give up, and giving up is the step before failure.
Giving up is the final step for a conflicted marriage simply because there is no more effort to look for solutions, even when solutions are staring you in the face.
Couples give up much too easily. How can you possibly succeed if you don’t try?
Don’t give you!
2. Discover the laws that make marriage successful
Learn the “laws” of marital bliss and focus on them.
If you don’t have a silhouette of what a healthy marriage looks like, you don’t have a standard to follow?
How can you succeed if you don’t know what you are working towards?
Couples don’t divorce because of a lack of love, but a lack of knowledge. The divorce rate would drastically reduce from 60% to 2% if couples paid more attention to marital education.
The success of your marriage does not depend only upon your love for each other, but upon your knowledge and effort which makes all the difference, not the statistics!
3. Be aware of marriage landmines
Expecting marriage not to have conflict or stressors, is the same as expecting the sea to have waves.
The idea of marriage is not to fight the waves (shipwreck). The idea of marriage is to learn how to surf the waves or to stay on top of it.
You can avoid trouble when you know what it looks like.
Ignorance concerning marital landmines, confirms why couples keep banging their heads against the same wall, sometimes fooled by different wallpaper.
But, when a couple becomes aware of marital landmines and stressors and
learn
how to approach them or avoid them by developing effective communication and conflict resolution skills, they can turn their marriage in a positive direction.
Refer to my blog: Overcoming the Top Three Marriage Landmines
4. Proactively invest in your marriage
Paint a marriage-success-silhouette and begin painting.
All healthy marriages are marked by two distinct qualities, connection, and intimacy. In my coaching practice, I help couples learn how to connect (reconnect) emotionally and how to protect intimacy.
Emotional connection deals with the natural alignment of vision, values, and goals. Intimacy is beyond sex. The greater the spiritual harmony the greater the marital intimacy. Couples who build on these two levels change the landscape of the love.
