Having been married in the past, I wanted to write some lessons learned from my experience that may help you. Some of these may be known – some may be new. It’s up to you to see how you want to use these and judge for yourself.
We hear from the relationship pundits that it is a combination of elements such as mutual understanding, morals, respect, communication, compromise, and common expectations the helps married couples extend from being in a short-term relationship to one that lasts a life time. It’s true that these elements are what are needed to go into a relationship but sustaining a relationship is another ball game.
We all know that relationships take a ton of hard work – but putting in all the hard work and getting no results can be a bummer. Any constraint or feeling of being shackled and taken to prison will doom your relationship as you will be continuously struggling to free yourself. In the end, relationships need to be organic, natural, drama-less, non-materialistic, and free from superficiality.
Here are my top 10 lessons learned from my marriage – in no particular order. These are things to avoid doing to make your marriage survive and thrive:
- Stop competing with one another. If you turn a relationship into a competitive game, both of you will come out losers. For example, there is no competition in terms of who can out cook, out clean, or out parent one another. You are both part of a team and playing with each other, not against one another. It’s not competition, but collaboration that you need to execute.
- Control the amount of comparisons you are making and taking in. As a couple, one of you will do one thing better than the other such as cook, financial road-mapping, vacation planning, etc. There will be cases where both you may do things just as terribly as the other. There will also be judgements placed on you by siblings and parents where you will be criticized on how you look, how you behave, how you talk. You have to learn to filter all the noise and not drink the poison from others. The worst thing you can do is turn your love into hatred, not just toward others, but one another.
- Make space and time your best friends. As a couple, you can’t possibly do everything together. Guys will need a guy’s night out – and same with girls. Likewise, you can’t do common random chores together such as shopping, buying groceries, laundry, washing dishes, etc. You both need to create space to do things separately so the quality of the time spent together is high. You also need to create space between yourself as a couple and others. This is the fine dance of relationship building.
- Realize that detachment is not just natural, it’s vital for personal growth. There will be times when you both will be sick of being around each other. You may get bored with each others’ company. Communication will get dull and repetitive. Sex may drag. Some men will need to cave and some women will need to shop. Remember you both are whole only by contract or religious decree, but the truth is you are both individuals. So enjoy personal time and space as well.
- Not all things are created equal, so stop keeping score on the team. Score-keeping is allowed when you are trying to win a game, but marriage is not a game. If one person does the laundry, don’t keep track and make sure the other does the dishes or some other random chore to make it a perfect 50-50 split. One person will always do more than another. This is what happens in team environments – someone will sadly do more work than another. This is probably where deep understanding of living together needs to kick in. The truth is one person will probably do more than another in random chores, upkeep, and especially when it comes to raising children, so just make this fact known between each other and help one another.
- People management is critical for managing your sanity. How close you live to the parents, in-laws, siblings and other family members will have an impact to the relationship. We all need space and managing people is critical to this – not to mention the space between the amount of time you meet up with family. Couples can’t possible hover around family all the time. Bear in mind that spouses can’t break relationships with those they spend their time with in the past – their parents, sibling and close friends. Everyone needs their own time and space with each and one another. You have to learn to manage everyone around you.
- Observe moments of non-verbal communication. When you are talking to your partner, observe their reaction. Are they welcoming, hurt, congenial, confrontational, etc.? Now put yourself in their shoes. How are you reacting when they are talking? Are you calm and cool or getting agitated? Partners want to know they can communicate to their spouse without any discomfort or feeling of anxiety. Remember, a lot of communication you do as a couple will be non-verbal. How you smile at each other, hold each other, and react to one another without talking is one of the way of dictating the strength of the relationship.
- Don’t ever make one another feel guilty. We get angry at each other for some specific reasons but we also get angry for no reason whatsoever. The latter is driven by some circumstance impacting you outside of the relationship and not by your partner – yet we make them feel guilty for wrongdoings. We make our partner feel guilty for missing key milestones in the relationship, the family picnic, or for working late to meet a critical deadline. This needs to stop. The feeling of guilt at any time in the relationship is the path to ostracize one another and will likely lead to parting of ways.
- Respect goes beyond just how you treat one another. Respect is reflected from how those closest to you – such as parents, siblings, aunts, friends treat your spouse as well. If you walk over your spouse and let your sibling or friend do the same, it is going to endanger the relationship.
- Your gut speaks louder than words. This is probably one of the most important points to sustain any relationship. What your gut says is the truth – not what other people want. Getting into a relationship is what is driven by your internal instincts, not external needs and wants of those around you. It funny how the conscience is designed, but protection of one’s identity is at the forefront of this phenomenon – and if it is endangered, your gut will know – and you better listen.