It’s not often that I re-post another article…after all, this is MY blog and advice and commentary about my 21 years of marriage. You’ve read about how love and sex is a comedy, tragedy and love story all in one. However, after reading Alisa’s post (http://projecthappilyeverafter.com) I can tell you that she has the “right stuff” when it comes to communication and relationships. She is a gifted author and definitely worth the read.
YOUR relationship has the potential to become whatever you want it to be!
Your DECISION can be much more important than your history or circumstances. Take charge of what you really want and just decide to stay married, act married, and become the man of her dreams. After YOU take charge of that decision, chances are VERY high that she will become the MILF of your dreams and the relationship everyone envies. Here is Alisa’s most recent post, below:
Many people ask me how I found the motivation to work on my marriage when so much was going wrong. Most of the people who ask this are entrenched in the Planning The Funeral stage of marital discontent—what I sometimes refer to as mile 20 of the marriage marathon. Their sex life is either non-existent or unfulfilling. They don’t have conversations. When they go out to dinner together, there’s silence. When they do talk, they fight. And when they fight, the rarely if ever reach a resolution.
As a result, they console themselves by imagining what their lives would be like if their partners would conveniently drop dead.
Yeah, I’ve been there.
So how did I find the courage to work on my marriage when everything seemed so hopeless?
The courage came from a deep place. It was an act of faith. It will be an act of faith for you, too. In the beginning, you won’t know for sure whether or not your marriage project will work. So you must decide to work on your marriage for reasons that go beyond the finish line. You do it for your self, because:
1. You need to know—without a doubt—that your marriage is or is not worth saving. The only way to know for sure? Try to save your marriage and see if you make any improvement. At the beginning of your marriage project, rate your marriage on a scale of 1 (I wish he would just drop dead) to 10 (I am so glad I married him!) Four months later, rate it again. If your rating went up? Your marriage has potential. If it stayed the same or went down? It’s probably not worth saving. Sure, you’d rather have the ease of posing the Is My Marriage Worth Saving? to a Magic 8 Ball, but I’m pretty sure my method—while more time-consuming—is much more reliable. It allows you to walk away from your marriage (if it comes to that) without a shred of guilt, because you tried everything and everything did not work.
2. You need to work on you. Your bad marriage is not entirely your spouse’s fault. You are a part of the problem. A bad marriage is caused by the chemistry between two people. One person doesn’t ask for what she wants, which allows the other person to get away with whatever he wants. One person is controlling, which allows the other person to never stick her neck out and make a decision. Usually, the thing about your partner that you most hate is the thing that will make you feel most incomplete if you split up. Working on your marriage will force you to work on yourself, so you’ll become more assertive, learn how to communicate, evolve into a better listener, and more. So even if you do eventually split up, you’ll still be better off, because you’ll be a more complete person.
But you need more than that, right? You want a guarantee. You want to know that it will work. I just can’t give you that. What I can tell you is this: Not a day goes by that I don’t feel downright grateful that my husband is still in my life. Slightly more than two years ago? Not a day went by that I didn’t think about how much better off I would be if my husband were no longer in my life.
Today, when I’m irritated with my husband, I tell him. I’ve learned how to talk about such issues in a way that does not make him defensive, and he’s learned how to listen and respond. Whenever something bothers me about my marriage, I’ve learned to see if as a problem, one that my husband and I can solve together.
I’ve also learned to recognize grumpiness for what it is: grumpiness. I’m not as quick to go to the He Doesn’t Love Me Place when my husband is having a hunger emergency and accidentally bites my head off because I can’t seem to find the restaurant we’re looking for. No, I’m much more likely to think, “That big brat is having a hunger emergency. I better find the restaurant before he completely implodes.” And once he’s shoveled some food into himself, I say, “Are you still mad at me?” He says, “God no. I’m so sorry” and that’s that.
My husband makes my latte for me every morning, not because I can’t make one for myself, but because he knows I like it when he makes my latte. It makes me feel loved. And I make sure to Atta Boy him whenever he does something around the house for the same reason. Even when he does something small, like buy me a gift for no reason, I am sure to let him know I appreciate the gesture.
Our sex life? My husband recently told me that he’d like to do it every other day. As he said it, though, he acknowledged that he didn’t think it was really possible. And instead of feeling put upon, I thought, “I would really love to make that wish come true, because I really do love this guy.” And this week? I have. He’s floored. I’m not the wife he knows, but he certainly likes the new me.
Your marriage might get to this place some day, too. It won’t happen overnight. It won’t happen linearly, either. You’ll continually take two steps forward and one step back. But if you continue to grow and change together (your partner has to be willing to work at it, too), you can get to this place, too.
-Alisa Bowman
http://projecthappilyeverafter.com
For more advice and tips on marriage, love, sex, and getting YOUR wife to be understanding, fun, sexy and hot, visit http://makeyourwifehot.comand become a regular reader of my blog.