What should I do to save my marriage today?

When trying to save a marriage, it's always difficult to figure out how you found yourself in this situation to begin with. When we were young we all had an image of the idyllic marriage we would like to have.

Maybe for a while at the start of your relationship, you thought you had it. However over time you've probably started to hear things from your spouse such as:

• I need some space
• Can you leave me alone!
• I feel like we've drifted apart
• I don't see a future with us anymore etc

And probably wondered how they came from the same mouth that promised to love you "till death us do part".

The positive news however is that it is possible to save a marriage that's in difficulty. Even having been told things like the above, if you know the correct things to do, you can make your spouse fall in love with you again.

6 Steps To Putting A Marriage In Recovery Mode

I want to go through here a number of key areas you will have to develop in order to get a marriage back on track.

1. Examination: First and foremost you must find out exactly what's causing your marriage problems. You have to see how you are fitting into your spouse mental image of what they want in a partner and in a relationship. This is called matching a persons lovemap and I go into detail on it in my book "How To Make Anyone Fall In Love With You Using Psychology".

2. Patience: Your marriage didn't collapse over night; neither will it recover over night. Marriage is a long-term investment so be prepared to work it out over an extended amount of time so as to make sure you get it right.

3. View of the future: You'll have to establish a mental picture of where you want your relationship to go from here. You have to picture what needs to be different from now in order to achieve that goal. This will act like a road map, which you can refer to, to see if you’re on the right track. If you find you have to compromise too much, from this picture of how you would like the relationship to be, you know you're in trouble.

4. Control your behaviour: Whether the marriage problems are because of your spouse’s behaviour, your behaviour or a combination of both, you only have control of your behaviour. Consequently, you'll want to make sure that you're not adding to the problem. If you have an argument with your partner, let them have their say without shouting over them. The reality is you'll want to make sure they tell you exactly what’s on their mind so you can then do something to actually improve upon the situation.

5. Compromise: It's part and parcel of marriage. It's impossible for two people to come together and share their life with making compromise. Make sure the compromise is equal or near equal on both sides and that your partner doesn't feel they have had to over compromise to meet you on things. Having to over compromise will in time cause resentment in the individual having to do it. If it's you however, that has to do all the compromising; it's probably due to a personality problem on your spouses’ side, which will have to be examined by a relationship counsellor.

6. Relationship counselling: Unfortunately most people see relationship counselling as a last ditch effort sort of thing to save a marriage. In reality, counselling should ideally be sought early on when difficulties are experienced in the marriage. This gives the counselling the maximum chance of success. It's true that the longer you leave it to go to counselling, the harder it is to save the marriage. However the fact remains that it's the best chance to get to the root cause of the marriage problem and offer appropriate solutions.

Final thought on saving a marriage quickly

Some of the above topics are broad in nature as it's difficult to cover the entire topic of saving a marriage in the confines of one article.

However, they're the key areas that must be developed to save a marriage. I go into each in detail in my book "How To Make Anyone Fall In Love With You Using Psychology".