Are you guilty of one or more of these “crimes” in your marriage? The crime of indifference, parallel living, failure to communicate or killing passion are crimes we often commit in our marriage.

All is not lost, with a little effort and changes in thinking; you won’t be spending time in the “Crimes Against Marriage” prison. Read on and you’ll be paroled from your prison sentence in no time at all.

The Crime of Indifference

As we become busier each day with the needs of our children, our employer, our community, it’s easy to put the needs of our spouse on the back burner. After all, they know we love them…right?

By not keeping the needs of our spouse on the front burner, it breeds a feeling of indifference and lack of caring.

How do you overcome the indifference routine that you’ve fallen into? By daily acts of kindness, letting your spouse know you are thinking of them throughout the day.

Never leave the house without a deep and passionate kiss for your sweetheart…give them a little passion to remember you by for the rest of the day. With the advent of e-mail, it’s extremely easy to take 30 seconds to send a note of caring, sensitivity and even enticement.

Also set aside time to have a weekly date night so your relationship can continue to grow.

The Crime of Parallel Living

What is parallel living? Parallel living is a husband and wife co-existing in the same house, but rarely interacting with each other. Although this is part of the indifference problem, it goes a step further where you live almost two separate lives in lines that are parallel and rarely cross each other’s paths.

You are roommates who are polite to one another, but far from passionate and only see each other in passing.

This crime is a little more difficult to overcome because it usually includes schedules that make it difficult to interact. To overcome this “crime” there will be a need for both to sacrifice some of the activities they engage in that keep them in a parallel life.

This may include reducing the number of extracurricular activities of the children…in reality do they really need to be playing on various sports leagues year round, taking dance, gymnastics, karate, piano and a whole myriad of other activities to “enrich’ their childhood?

What a lot of kids need is some time to play, climb trees, and be kids. Many families are stretched to breaking points in activities for their children and never have time to be a family or husband and wife.

In reality, it’s very easy to have each child choose one or two activities they want to participate in a year. You might be surprised how eager they are to reduce their schedule as well.

The tougher things to streamline will be the activities that you and your spouse participate in each week.

There are many noble and important causes to lend our talents, skills and efforts toward. However, life is a marathon and we need to pace ourselves to get to the end, so it’s important to say no to a few of the causes, and focus on just one at a time.

As you evolve through each season of life, your focus may move from PTA to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to Meals on Wheels. Remember, if you are the President of the PTA, it’s difficult to also be the Team Mom, Cub Scout Den Leader, be on an adult softball league and ever hope to see your spouse.

As you and your spouse strive to streamline a bit, you might find some activities that you could do together that would steer your lives back to the same lane rather than parallel living.

As you streamline your life, there is more time to rediscover your spouse and spend time with them.

The Crime of Failure To Communicate

Have you ever had a discussion with your spouse and when you are done, they have a confused look on their face like you we speaking some foreign language?

Sometimes it’s due to the fact that we are doing some other activity as we are talking to them and aren’t focusing on communicating well.

Other times we have been so heavily involved in what we’re talking about, that we leave out key elements of information as we are explaining the situation to our spouse. It’s like talking in shorthand, and they don’t know the code.

Anytime you are communicating with anyone, but especially with those you love, it’s important to take the time and effort to focus on your discussion.

This tells them that they are important enough to you that you will set aside other distractions, and that you want them to understand the message you are trying to convey.

The Crime of Killing Passion

Nancy J. Wasson, Ph.D., is co-author of “Keep Your Marriage: What to Do When Your Spouse Says “I don’t love you anymore!” has written a wonderful tongue in cheek article that helps bring this into perspective.

You’ll find it on our web site in our Department under “Sex”. The article is titled, “Twelve Ways to Make Your Spouse Dislike Sex”. You’ll glean some interesting insights as you read this article.

All kidding aside, we need to avoid the behaviors that will bring passion in our marriage to a screeching halt.

There are times when you may not be in a romantic mood, but that doesn’t mean you can’t show passion to your spouse.

Whether it’s a passionate good-bye kiss or a tender touch, this conveys your love and passion for your spouse and doesn’t necessarily mean you will be jumping into bed with them in the next 30 minutes.

Passion is defined as a strong feeling or emotion. For us to have strong feelings or emotions about our spouse, they need to be the focus of our life…our life’s passion.

We know their thoughts, feelings, successes, failures, fears and joys. The interesting thing about passion is we feel what they feel if they are our passion. As we allow passion to live in our marriage, our daily interactions as well as our intimate moments will be more full and alive.

As we strive to avoid committing these 5 crimes against our marriage, we will find greater joy and happiness in not only our marriage, but in all of our life endeavors.

About the Author
Beth Young is the Senior Editor of the leading marriage advise web site, MarriageAdvise.com. To download your free ebook titled, “101 Marriage Secrets” visit http://www.MarrigeAdvice.com.

Article source:
The Crimes We Commit Against Our Marriages

It seems unlikely that anyone could improve his or her marriage in one evening. Well read on! Any positive step in the right direction is an improvement that will continue as long as the efforts continue to be made.

As our recent MarriageAdvice.com poll showed, more than 40% of our 207 respondents identified that the single biggest frustration in their marriage was that their husbands “Didn’t Communicate Enough”.

Below is a 8-step process to insure that both partners are communicating well.

Step #1 – Decide To Communicate

There are really only two options when it comes to communicating…either you do it or your don’t. It’s better to try and communicate and fumble around a bit than ignore the problem until it explodes like a pent up volcano.

The wise spouse will work to resolve and discuss their feelings before the lava of scalding words overflows.

Part of deciding to communicate will include setting aside a time each week to discuss family needs and concerns. This would also be a good time to resolve any minor conflicts that have arisen during the week but weren’t fully taken care of previously.

Step #2 – Choose A Good Time

If a more heated conflict occurs, it’s important to find the right time to discuss the matter. Waiting for your scheduled night for communicating would not be the best idea; however, taking a little time to give both partners time to cool off is important as well.

Working to resolve a big conflict should wait until a time when both parties are not wrung out, angry, tire, or hungry. Your physical state directly impacts your mental state and your ability to work through problems in a rational manner.

Additionally, as we allow ourselves time to calm down, we are better able to carefully think about what is really bothering us besides this specific event. In many cases, the topic of the current disagreement may not be the real problem.

As we take time to ponder and look for the root of the problem, we are better able to expand our vision to the whole picture and not just have tunnel vision of the current problem at hand. Keep in mind, it may just be we’ve had a bad day and this problem was the last straw.

It’s much easier to resolve a problem when we have a better perspective of what is really going on inside of our head and heart.

Step #3 – Neutralize Defenses

Before you have a deep discussion on something that is bothering you, consider two things. First, your spouse will be more receptive to the discussion if you reinforce your love, and express appreciation and confidence in their many attributes.

Second, you choose if you will be irritated or angry, so you need to express yourself in a away that acknowledges your responsibility for your feelings. “You make me so mad!” Really is a false statement because you have allowed yourself to become mad.

However,if you said, “When you make fun of me in front of our friends, it embarrasses me and I feel angry and frustrated,” you would be giving a very accurate statement about what has happened to you. Invite your spouse to help you solve this problem you are having, then they become part of the solution, not the problem.

Step #4 – Use Humor

Like they say, “laughter is the best medicine”. It’s true, physiologically, it relieves stress, and mentally it gives you a time out to relax. You will find that the longer you have been married, the more you have to laugh about.

Many things that were painful or frustrating at the time can be viewed with great humor years later.

Creating code words from some of these humorous events will help relieve tensions when a similar event threatens to evolve.

When either my husband or I say something that is insensitive to the work effort done by the other, all we have to say is “I hate kidney beans”, and the other one immediately realizes their actions are bordering on being insensitive.

It’s an easy way to control tense situations, prevent them from escalating and elicit a sincere, “I’m Sorry.”

A word of caution, be sensitive to the situation. There are times when humor is neither appropriate or too late in coming and will be viewed as sarcasm. Sarcasm has no place in true efforts to communicate.

Step #5 – Be Fair

Be careful when discussing sensitive issues and don’t fall into touchy subjects that you know will enflame the argument.

Looking for fair solutions may require compromising or acquiescing. Remember, you both need to give, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, to resolve conflicts.

Step #6 – Finding a Peaceful Stalemate

There are times when you need to just agree to disagree. You don’t always have to agree 100% with your spouse, so there are occasions when a peaceful stalemate would be appropriate. It is only a legitimate solution as long as it isn’t just putting off the blow up for another time.

A peaceful stalemate results in open discussion about your differences, why neither of you feel you can change at this time, and acceptance of each others differences.

Step #7 – Willingness to Change

When we truly feel loved, it gives us the freedom to risk changing and growing into a new and improved version of our old self.

As we nurture our marriage relationship, the love and acceptance we feel will be liberating as we make minor and sometimes major changes in whom we are.

Marriage is a wonderful opportunity to practice charity towards our spouse and provide a safe relationship where growth can occur.

Step #8 – Bolster Each Other

No matter what solution you have arrived at, it’s important to always express love and confidence in each other after a disagreement. As we show this love in days to come, it will be clear that no one is harboring ill feelings about the disagreement and that it was truly resolved.

When both partners feel loved and supported in their relationship after a disagreement, it’s easier to resolve future problems with love and respect.

By applying these communication steps, you have now discovered how you can change your marriage in one evening. It will take practice, but with time, you will discover that your marriage has improved more than ten-fold.

About the Author
Beth Young is the Senior Editor of the leading marriage advise web site, MarriageAdvise.com. To download your free ebook titled, “101 Marriage Secrets” visit http://www.MarrigeAdvice.com.

Article source:
How I Improved My Marriage Ten-Fold In One Evening