How To Save Your Marriage

Each year in America alone, nearly 1 million marriages end in
divorce. This is an incredible number! That would be as if all the
citizens of Houston Texas were divorced (each divorce leaves 2
people).

The question is how many of those marriages could be saved.
Unfortunately, that is an invisible number. If your marriage
stays together, it is hard to find in the statistics. As Marian
Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears
washed off.

Can your marriage be saved? If I could answer that, I would be
a wealthy man. I can tell you that if your marriage is in trouble
and you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed. If you do
something, there is a much better chance that your marriage will
be saved.

And I can tell you, in four simple steps what you can do to save
your marriage. You can start right now. But you must
understand that I said "simple." That is not the same as
"easy." These steps are not easy. They do, however, give you
a path that you must follow if you want to change the destiny of
a marriage in trouble.

Here are the 4 steps:

1) Quit the blame game. Stop blaming your spouse and stop
blaming yourself. This is the first step because marriages get
frozen into a pattern of blame that immobilizes any prospect of
progress. Instead, the momentum gets dragged down and
down.

Blame is our way of avoiding seeing ourselves clearly. It is much
easier to point the finger somewhere and say "It's their fault."
But in marriage, you can just as easily turn that pointing finger
on yourself and place the blame there, saying "it's all my fault."

Unfortunately, blame feels good in the short-term, but in the
long-term, it prevents any shift or change. So, even if you can
make a long list of why you or your spouse should be blamed,
forget it. Even if that list is factual, it will not help you put your
marriage back together. Blame is the fuel of divorces.

2) Take responsibility. Decide you can do something. Change
always begins with one person who wants to see a change.
Understand that taking responsibility is not the same as taking
the blame (see above).

Instead, blame is saying "regardless of who is at fault, there are
some things I can do differently, and I am going to do them."
What buttons do you allow your spouse to push? What buttons
do you push with your spouse? Decide not to allow those
buttons to be pushed and stop pushing the buttons.

What amazes me in my counseling is that everyone knows what
they should be doing or not doing. But it is difficult to move in
that direction. Don't be caught in that. Decide that you will take
action.

The difference between blame and responsibility is this: if I am
in a burning building, I can stand around trying to figure out
who started the blaze, why it has spread so quickly, and who I
am going to sue when it is over (blame), or I can get myself and
anyone else I can out of that building (taking responsibility).
When a marriage is in trouble, the house is on fire. How will you
take action to save the marriage?

3) Get resources from experts. If others have been helped, you
can be, too. Experts with a great deal more perspective and
experience can be a real help in these situations. Do your
research and divide the useless from the useful, then take
advantage of the useful.

Don't assume that your situation is so different from every other
situation. I can tell you that after 20-some years of providing
therapy, not too much new comes through my doors. Don't get
me wrong; the story changes, but the dynamics are the same.

Remember what Albert Einstein said, "The significant problems
we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with
which we created them." In other words, what got you into
trouble will not get you out of trouble. That requires a whole
new level of thinking. And that is what you get from an outside
expert, someone with a fresh perspective.

4) Take action. More damage is done by doing nothing by
taking a misstep. It is too easy to get paralyzed by the
situation. Therapists often talk about "analysis paralysis." This
occurs when people get so caught up in their churning thoughts
and attempts to "figure things out" that they never take action.

It is not enough to simply understand what is causing the
problem. You must then act! On a daily basis, I find people
coming to my office with the belief that if they can just
understand their problem, it will resolve itself. That simply does
not happen. Resolution of the situation takes action.

Will your marriage be saved? If you follow my suggestions, you
have infinitely more opportunity for saving your marriage than if
you do nothing. Marriage is one of those places where it takes
two to make it work, but only one to really mess things up. You
can only do your part, but many times, that is enough. Resolve
not to ask the question but to begin to act.

**Dr. Baucom is an expert in saving marriages. He is the author of Save The Marriage, a resource that has helped over 48,500 couples to save their marriage.

Are you ready to take action? Grab the best-selling resource on the internet for saving marriages: Save The Marriage, Even If Only You Want It! You can find it at http://www.SaveTheMarriage.com