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Strategies for a Happy Marriage

Strategies that work to build a happy marriage can be applied to other relationships. Experiment with the ideas presented in this article and see how you can modify them to make them work for you.

Honour the Beginnings

Stop and Reflect

What drew you to your partner in the first place?
What early experiences forged your relationship?
What qualities and characteristics did he bring out in you?
What qualities and characteristics did you bring out in him?

Revisit these experiences, see them clearly in your mind and relive them and experience the feelings those early experiences evoked, as if for the first time.

Acknowledge and appreciate your partner’s:

Overall strengths
The good things he brought out in you and you in him and
The feelings this relationship evoked in you.

Allow your mind to create a composite image of your early relationship – one that, when you think about it, will re-create for you the feelings you felt then. What’s important to you in this picture?

What are your shared values?

Create an image and build a shrine to your marriage and the values it represents for you.
Give expression to this image – journal, draw or paint a picture, find a photograph etc. and put it in a special place – a sacred place you create to honour the things that sustain and nourish you.
Now that you have identified and created an image that expresses the initial spark and roots of your relationship fast forward and create an image for your latter years together by considering the question What kind of a marriage do you want to create?

Dream the Future

What does your ideal life together look like?

Recognize where in this vision you are giving expression to your shared values.
Create a vision of your ideal future together.
Using all your senses, make it as real as possible in your mind.
Share your vision with your partner and, where possible, create a shared vision for your future.
Make it real – give it expression through your journal, by painting a picture, creating a collage or some other artistic expression, and
Place it in your sacred space where you can meditate on it on a daily basis.

Managing the Present

With a clear picture of the past and ideal future, you now have a way of managing your marriage in the present. When things are out of whack Stop, Look and Listen and re-align yourself and your relationship with your picture of your past and your ideal future.

Honour your vision and make a practice of:

Recognizing and celebrating each other’s strengths
Acknowledging and affirming your shared values in action
Setting boundaries and clarifying your terms and conditions (even door mats have edges)
Respecting and honouring each other’s roles and contributions
Enabling each other’s personal and professional growth
Celebrating developments to enhance mutual trust and intimacy.

Inspiration

The first duty of love is to listen. Paul Tillich

To love and to the knowledge that we are shaped and fashioned by that which we love. Goethe

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a

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