It's a scary statistic: almost as many marriages end in divorce as end happily. So if you're using internet dating to find the love of your life, you have more to worry about than simply finding the right person. You also have to worry about keeping the relationship together once it begins. I recently spoke to three couples who have been married 25 years or more. And they gave me incredible insights into what makes for a successful relationship. What follows are the eleven fundamentals that our three couples believe have been the most important in the success of their marriages.
1. Agree to Disagree Going into a relationship, you can never expect things to be perfect. You won't always agree about the big things or the little ones, and sometimes you'll be furious with one another. If you try to change the things that you disagree with in your husband or wife, you'll fail. Instead, recognize your differences and be honest with each other.
2. Put Trust First Every husband and every wife is not necessarily faithful. But when you enter into a marriage with somebody, you need to make the decision to trust them. Rather than getting paranoid about your relationship and listening to rumors or going through his or her email, talk to your partner. It's important to trust your partner more than you trust the gossip or comments of the people around you.
3. Never Forget to Talk Two of the biggest causes of a failed marriage are conflicts about sex and about money. If they're not discussed out in the open, these two issues (and others) can end a marriage. Even if it's a sticky subject (or an embarrassing one), you always have to talk to your spouse. If you let communication slide, the whole relationship might slide out from under you.
4. Put Your Spouse First When making plans or taking action, be sure to think of your spouse first. While you may have the priorities of kids and careers to think of as well, couples who put each other first tend to have happier marriages. Remembering your priorities helps you remember not to take one another for granted.
5. Don't Forget to See Each Other When you're caught up in your kids' lives, renovating the bathroom, and paying the bills, it's all too easy to stop seeing your spouse as a lover and start seeing them as a kind of co-worker. Just because you work together to build and sustain your life doesn't mean your relationship has changed. Look at your spouse as your lover and friend; not as your work colleague.
6. Learn to Say Sorry And do it often. In a marriage, both you and your spouse will make mistakes sometimes. Being able to say your sorry can do a lot to prevent small mistakes from turning into large problems.
7. Make a Choice to be Together Just like an addict making a daily commitment to stay sober, you need to make a daily commitment to your relationship. Marriages will always be work, but making a daily decision to be with your spouse is a great way to reaffirm the value of your marriage. Acknowledge that it's hard... and then acknowledge that it's worth the effort.
8. Put Togetherness First Sometimes you have big responsibilities that are calling your name. Evaluating your stock portfolio or doing the dishes or mending the broken toaster. But you need to always be willing to put those things aside to spend quality time with your spouse. If you have a list of things to do and your husband or wife wants you to walk with them to the park, set your list aside and take the walk instead. Your responsibilities can wait for your relationship; don't do things the wrong way around.
9. Like Each Other When you've been married a long time, it can be easy to look past what you like about your spouse and focus on his or her flaws. But taking the time to remember and reaffirm what you like about your spouse will feed your love instead of taking away from it.
10. Make Couple Time With kids and careers and a hundred thousand responsibilities, it can be hard to set time apart for each other. When you have important things to do, couple time might not seem like a priority. But it should be. Spending time talking and being together as a couple --just like you did before careers and kids got in the way-- is important for strengthening your bond and your marriage.
11. Feed Your Marriage And what does a marriage need as food? Affection. Feed your love and your closeness with plenty of touches and kisses and words of affection. If your marriage isn't fed, it may wither and die without you even noticing.
