Abraham Lee

Save Your Marriage: Overcoming Hindrances to Save Your Marriage



Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2007

by

What hinders a marriage from being healed? What obstacles stand in the way of saving your marriage? In my many years of helping couples save their marriages, I have discovered several major stumbling blocks that disrupt the marriage-saving process. The good news is that most of these obstacles are within your control to overcome. Removing these hindrances is half the battle won in saving your marriage.

Some of the biggest hindrances that impede the effort of saving your marriage are:

  • Pride
    • This is the fundamental character flaw that breaks marriages up. Where there is pride, there is reluctance to admit mistakes, ask for forgiveness and rectify wrongs done. Never allow your personal pride to make you become pushy or stubborn towards your partner or stop you from doing what is right. It is pride that causes you not to make the first move to reconcile with your partner. It is pride that causes you to bully your wife. It is pride that causes you to take advantage of your husband for your own means. Humility is the antidote for pride so be humble when dealing with your partner.

  • Wrong thinking
    • What is the worst wrong thinking that you can have towards your partner? It is the thinking that he or she will never change (for the better). That kind of thinking leads to defeatism and paralyzes you from doing anything constructive to save your marriage. You will merely live from day-to-day with the thinking that things will always be the way it is so you just have to live with it. Optimism and having hope is needed to counteract wrong thinking. Many marriages much worse than yours have not only survived but flourished. Why not yours?

  • Unwarranted disclosure
    • While it is sometimes necessary to get help from others, it is important that it is done in the correct way. Recently, I was listening to the radio where a talk show was going on. The radio talk show host called for listeners to phone in and give their response to this question, "Is it right for you to disclose your marital problems to someone else such as a close friend or sibling or parent without your partner's knowledge or consent?" A large majority of listeners called in and said, "No". I agree. If you need to pour out your marital problems to someone else, it must either be in the presence of your partner or with his or her knowledge and consent.

    There are some things which are meant to be private between husband and wife. If you disclose it to members of your family for example, you would drive a wedge into the relationship between your spouse and them. Your spouse may no longer trust them or wish to be close to them and vice versa. These ill-feelings would eventually spill over into the relationship between your spouse and you.

  • Wrong focus
    • It is a principle in psychology that whatever you focus on expands in your mind. If you focus on what is good, acceptable and noble, these things will expand in your mind. You will perceive them as large and strong. The reverse is also true. Negative things will seem larger than life to you when you give undue focus to them.

    In your marriage relationship, you can choose to either focus on what is positive about your partner or what is negative. Whatever you focus on will become huge to you eventually. I know a wife who constantly complained about her husband watching television every night until a friend reminded her to be thankful that her husband did not do other things such as womanize or go partying or get drunk at nights. When her focus changed from what was her husband's small negative trait to her husband's positive trait, her perspective of her husband changed also. This substantially reduced her nagging at him and their marriage improved.

  • Wrong strategy
    • If you are trying to save your marriage by doing nothing except discussing the problems you have with one another, you are implementing the wrong strategy. The more important thing is to discuss how you can please one another, how to meet each other's emotional needs and how to get along well with each other. Once these aspects are sorted out, the problems you have with one another gradually disappears.

    Conclusion

    This brief article highlights five main hindrances to saving your marriage. Overcoming these hindrances is self-explanatory. However although it is pretty straightforward, it is by no means easy. It requires the cooperation of both partners to overcome these hindrances. Share with one another your thoughts about each of the above hindrances. Be honest and open about how you feel and think about one another. Through such communication, you will be able to help each other change to become marriage partners who are best friends with one another. This is a sure step towards saving your marriage. 

    This Article has been viewed 902 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
    No comments yet.
    We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.