To Save Your Marriage, Stop Talking!
Written by Roy Anderson on July 4th, 2009 in Self Development.
It may seem counter-intuitive to say that in order to save your marriage you need to stop talking to your partner, but this could in fact be the very thing that allows some couples to move beyond their problems and return to happiness together.
Most couples who are having difficulties turn to a therapist or counselor of some sort, seeking intervention to steer them through to happier times. While this does work for some people, others find themselves filling out divorce papers before they even finish their pre-paid sessions.
So, what makes the difference here between couples that can essentially talk out their problems and others that cannot?
If you want to turn talk time into a rekindled marriage, you have to understand at some point that the actual talking is not what heals a marriage. What will ultimately save a relationship is both people being able to really listen to one another and then take deliberate steps outside of talk time to make things better for one another.
Talk that does not lead to action is not enough. Sessions that include two closed-off, bitter people sitting with arms crossed tight waiting for their chance to rip the other person apart or cry about how they have been hurt and betrayed will lead nowhere good. It can’t do any good because everyone is talking but no one is listening.
If you are going to try to talk things out, pay attention to what happens after each session. There will always be some sort of action at every moment of every day, and it’s the action after a talk session that will ultimately determine your chances of really working things out. If you both storm to opposite corners or have a huge screaming match, chances are low of coming out successful.
The key is to go away from a talk session really having heard what the other person said, valuing their opinions and feelings, and ready to take action to make things better. Most couples do not need to spend long lengths of time in a therapist’s office or screaming at one another at home. They just need one big honest heart-to-heart and a committed attitude to at least try something every single day afterward to make things better.
Instead of storming out of such a session with anger, you should storm out thinking of ways to make things better. Then take action! It’s what you ultimately do, not say, that is going to eventually save your marriage or allow it to self-destruct and erode even further.
