4 Tips to Turn Your Marriage Around & Save It in the New Year

We all know the statistics, divorce rates are pretty high to say the very least.

So let’s say you’ve been married for six months, or 60 years… And it’s stressful. It’s not fun. You may have fallen out of love.

What do you do, if you truly want to turn your marriage around in the new year?

Here are four key points to follow if you are interested in saving your marriage, not just survive it, but thrive in it.

If this is the year you’re going to save your marriage, you better start right now.

It’s amazing how fast time flies by, isn’t it?

So maybe you’ve been married for six months or 60 years, and when you think about your partner, or look at your partner today there just isn’t the physical attraction that used to be there.

There isn’t the emotional connection there used to be. You have slid apart, and nothing seems optimistic in regards to having the love you had before.

First, let me share this outrageously important information. As we age, the relationship shifts, matures, grows, or fades away.

But trying to recreate the intense love, that you had when you first met your partner, may be an absolute waste of time.

4 tips to save your relationship this year

Instead? Follow the four keys below on how to turn your marriage around now.

1. Stop thinking about the fact that all of your friends have fantastic marriages

It’s not true. I am working almost 30 years in the world of relationships, only about 20% of marriages in the United States are healthy. That means that 80% are not healthy.

You may be falling into the majority here, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, but the great news is you can turn it around, if you quit comparing your family and relationship,  imagining that everyone else has it so much better than you do.

2. Write down on a daily basis the things you appreciate about your partner

The list may be quite small, but here’s something interesting: when I give my clients this exercise to do at home, the first few days of attempting to find things that they still appreciate, like, or even love about their partner is a struggle.

But as they persist, they start to return to sessions with me filled with astonishment, that their partner still has some good traits, even though the marriage might be failing.

As you take just five minutes a day, to write down one or two or five traits about your partner that are positive, a shift begins to happen within the relationship.

3. Let go of the resentment that you hold against your partner

You’ve got to let go of every resentment you hold against your partner if you expect any improvement to happen at all!

For 30 years couples have contacted me, asking me to teach them the art of communication in love, so that they can save their marriage.

So many people have been misled into thinking that the problem in their relationships is their communication skills.

But the real problem? It’s resentments.

When we have resentments against our partner, I don’t care how intensely you’d like to save the marriage, it’s just not going to happen. You’ve got to let go of the resentment you have against your partner that may have happened 30 years ago or three months ago. Most people find this impossible to do on their own, so to turn your marriage around, reach out to a counselor or a life coach and ask them to help you learn how you can let go of your resentments against your partner starting today.

It may take several weeks or even months to let these resentments go, but it’s the only way your marriage has a chance of being turned around into something healthy and fulfilling once again.

4. Take out time for your partner

Take one day a week, even one hour during that day, to get together with your partner and to do something new, different, exciting.

It might be going to one of those “paint with wine“ courses… Or it could be a sporting event once a week… It could be bowling once a week… It could be taking dance lessons once a week… But there’s got to be some type of involvement on both of your parts, as a couple, doing new things that could actually add a lot of energy to the marriage.

Now, if you’re not willing to do any of the above or all of the above exercises in order to save your marriage, I would highly recommend working with the counselor and coming to the conclusion if you even want to stay in the relationship at all.

It’s an absolute waste of your life, and your partner’s life, if you’re not willing to do the work to turn your relationship around, but rather,  sit in the hell you’ve created and continue to blame, be a victim, and all the other things we do when we’re unhappy in life.

Check out this video about spending quality time with your partner:

Takeaway

I would rather see couples break up and divorce, than stay in crappy marriages and relationships. Unfortunately, most people don’t have the strength or the integrity to leave a marriage when it’s dead, they’d rather sit in it, sit in the cesspool that they’ve created, then be strong enough to stand up and say it’s Time to Move On and to re-create a new life with someone else.

Get off the fence, so the new year will either be the year that you resurrect the marriage or the year that you finally take control, admit that the marriage has failed, and move on peacefully into the future.

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David Essel, M.S. is the best selling author of 9 books, a counselor and master life coach and inspirational speaker whose work is endorsed by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy,... Read more Wayne Dyer, Kenny Loggins and Mark Victor Hansen. David accepts new clients monthly via Skype and phone sessions from anywhere. Read less

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When you and your partner talk about something important…

We listen with care — even hard talks feel safe and productive

We try to talk, but lately emotional closeness feels harder to reach

I want to be open, but part of me still guards my heart

Our discussions sometimes spiral or end unresolved

It’s hard to feel close because our physical intimacy hasn’t felt strong lately

We often see things differently about goals or priorities

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