Work, family and social commitments weigh heavily on married couples today creating relationships that drift further and further apart until an inevitable divorce. According to Pamela Haag, author of “Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules,” in the United States up to 60 percent of divorces are “low-conflict” marriages, referencing a study by marriage researcher Paul Amato. The most common perception is that marriages fail due to “high-conflict” issues such as abuse, addiction and infidelity; however, Haag says, “There are a lot of marriages of quiet desperation that just drag on and on until they end in divorce.”
Marriage, like most relationships, requires care and attention to flourish. Like a garden if the soil isn’t tilled, fertilized, weeded, watered and cared for; it will be overtaken by weeds, thirst and eventually dry up and die. Marriage, like the garden, doesn’t die overnight; it is slow process simply because attention wasn’t paid to care for it.
There are some typical snares that marriages can step into leading to a dangerous slippery slope until the relationship fails. For example, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune by Heidi Stevens, “Till tedium do us part,” “There are common traps that couples fall into,” says Fran Cohen Praver, clinical psychologist and author of “The New Science of Love: How Understanding Your Brain’s Wiring Can Help Rekindle Your Relationship.” “Unequal power. The blame game — a disastrous war that no one wins. Self-fulfilling prophesies where this negative fortunetelling goes on between people. There’s something about yourself that you don’t like so you disconnect it from your conscious, split it off and project it onto the other person.”
How to reconnect
On the positive side, with a little work and attention most experts find that “low-conflict” issues can be overcome. The “high-conflict” marriages face addictions to overcome, affairs to forgive and crushing debt to conquer. Whereas, “low-conflict” marriages tend to be based on lack of communication, attention and focused time for each other.
Marriage counseling can help create the channels of communication and help couples let go of resentments. Counseling can also help couples set boundaries when a negative pattern begins to emerge. Recognize patterns before conflicts emerge and using coping techniques like taking a walk or a run to burn the negative energy before the conflict triggers can help immensely.
Reconnecting with new interests can also help spark the flame while spending much needed time together. Activities like ballroom dancing can help couples find their sexy sides. Enticing each other through movements in synchronization can be very arousing and intimate.
The trick is to set time aside for each other. Focus on the positive qualities and the reasons why you fell in love and married in the first place, while minimizing focus on irritations. Marriage is like a garden, it needs daily nourishment and tending with the ingredients of understanding, fertilized with affection and filled with large quantities of love.
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