Making our marriage work

Until death do us part. Yikes. It's intimidating, scary and overwhelming if you really think about it. Why do marriages fall apart? Marriages crumble everyday. It's the most time intensive and difficult commitment you can ever make. I'm no social scientist, but I am an observationist (not a word, but it really sounds like it should be). I believe there are some fundamental breakdowns that happen in a family.

1. A lack of financial education. Financial trouble is the number 2 cause for divorce. We saw two recessions in 7 years.  Baby Boomers and GenX don't know how to handle their finances as a whole. The strain becomes too much on a marriage.

2. Divorce is acceptable. It used to not be. Marriage has always been tough, but people used to be so scared of their own reputations that they would stick it out (unhappily). 

3. Unrealistic expectations from the beginning. You don't discover all of your partner's faults until you get married. If you go in thinking "happily ever after" then you're in for a shock that you may not recover from. 

4. Communication is regarded as the number one cause of divorce. When there's a problem, we have to know how to communicate our feelings to our spouse. Men often find this to be hard sometimes. For me, I prefer to get over things internally. That doesn't help. 

5. We all want to be victims. If you read my past post on Success Principles, then you know that we typically find it easier to blame others for our problems instead of taking responsibility for our own lives. Something in a marriage isn't working. We blame the other person, make ourselves the victim and then an out-of-control spiral begins.

There are many others such as sex and addictions. Cheating has become third (used to be one) in the list of reasons. But, I believe that cheating is the result of other issues. Happily married people don't usually cheat.

I'm not saying people are bad for getting a divorce. I'm not saying that every divorce is bad, either. I'm just pointing out issues that do cause divorce. 

So, what's our game plan? How do we plan on staying married forever? Obviously it's paying attention to the above and realizing that no marriage, including our own, is invincible from temptation. We have to stay vigilant. 

But, if we had to sum it all up into one rule. One standard that we have to follow. That would be putting each other first in every way. 

If my goal is to make her happy and meet her needs and her goal is to do the same then we'll make it. It might be a huge deal like a lifestyle change or something small like helping more around the house. That's where marriages fall apart. Spouse's start putting other things first, and it's usually themselves. 

We plan on making it.