Married people are happier than single people for many, many reasons. But, it is important to focus on ways to build a happy marriage with your partner.
In a healthy, functioning marriage, you’ll live longer, lower your chance of depression, and handle stress better. Married people are in a better place financially as well. You can save on everything from your taxes to health insurance and even by having joint ownership car insurance.
After just that short list of marriage’s advantages, who wouldn’t want a happy marriage? You can build a successful one and how to keep it that way when life gets in the way.
What is a happy marriage? It’s more than romantic love, and it’s more than great sex. And it’s more than being financially secure. Let’s look at the keys to having a happy marriage, and how couples headed to the altar can help ensure they aren’t then headed to divorce court after a few years. We can help you build a happy marriage with your partner.
The Keys to a Happy Marriage
This list sounds simple, but not all of these come easy…especially after the honeymoon phase of marriage.
The biggie and perhaps easiest key is love. but there’s a whole slew of other vital parts of a happy marriage too. For example, you need:
- Commitment
- Trust
- Time together
- Attention
- Good communication
- Partnership
- Patience
- Openness and honesty
- Respect
- Consideration
- Generosity
- Willingness and ability to compromise
- Constructive management of disagreements
- Perspective and, willingness to see another’s viewpoint
- The ability to forgive
And don’t forget fun! Having fun and laughing with your partner always increases the happiness levels of your relationship.
When you’re in a happy marriage, you feel physically and emotionally safe with your partner, you can handle conflicts constructively, you feel good about how you split responsibilities, you have regular and satisfying sex, and you feel grateful for your partner. All of these benefits come when you are able to build a happy marriage.
Click the button below to connect with a therapist who can help you and your partner connect again!
What to Discuss Before Marriage
A smart way to build the foundation for a happy marriage is to enter the union with eyes wide open, and remember to take off your rose-colored glasses. Before you make a lifetime commitment, you should know your life partner’s goals, values, and dreams.
Share with each other what you think about having and raising children, what your financial situation is and what you want it to be, what you’re planning to achieve in your careers, and what role your faith will play in your marriage.
You don’t have to agree wholeheartedly on every topic, but if you deviate too far from each other on too many issues, you should discover that before you enter a marriage and then find out that you can’t be on the same team.
Challenges to a Happy Marriage
A couple can score high on all of the attributes for a happy marriage and be on the same page during their pre-marital talks, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Some adjustments are harder than others, and different partners’ reactions to them can cause deep cracks in the foundation of a solid marriage.
It’s usually easier to make time for each other early in your marriage. But increasing responsibilities can cause you to reprioritize your marriage. The time you each need to take in advancing your career and raising children can leave you exhausted and tired.
And even though you may want to, there may be times when you just don’t have the energy to make time to invest in your marriage. There’s too much “adulting” to do to focus a moment on just the two of you.
Another thing that can be challenging to a happy marriage is how you and your partner were raised. You may be getting along swimmingly, but if you endured childhood trauma or dysfunction, the onset of a baby or a major stressor could trigger the same behavior you witnessed in one or both of your parents.
You often hear parents joking that they’re starting to sound just like their own mother or father, and it’s true. For better or worse, parents are powerful role models that do affect your marriage.
Wisdom Within Counseling has therapists ready to help you and your partner build a happy marriage! To get started, click the button below for a free phone consult!
How to Build a Happy Marriage
Everyone’s familiar with a reboot. In tech terms, it’s what you do when you restart your computer or your phone if something is working slow or improperly; in entertainment, it’s returning to a franchise’s origins and beginning again.
So it’s an apt term for taking the next step when you feel closed off or shut down in your marriage. In fact, Wisdom Within Counseling, which provides counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, even features a Marriage Reboot Package.
The cleverly titled therapy is for couples who want to go beyond the traditional therapy of simply talking about their problems. This out-of-the-box approach shows partners how to reignite that spark of intimacy, connection, and playfulness with mind-body therapies using creative art, yoga, music, and enjoying nature.
The marriage counseling in Mystic, Connecticut, also takes into account other rebuilding tips, and here are a few of them, courtesy of trained professionals.
Be Recommitted
Make an honest decision to rebuild your marriage. Don’t stay together for the sake of the children or because of the expectations of your family — which can do more harm than good, as I can personally attest to with my own parents.
You both need to decide what’s true for you, and if you want to invest in creating a healthy, happy union by letting go of the past and moving into the future. Otherwise, you won’t have the ability to fully participate in restoring trust.
Be a Good Listener
Focus on each other’s feelings. This will help especially when you’re in disagreement, as it will slow down the conversation so you can each talk calmly. Paying attention to just your own feelings can cause you to feel overwhelmed and often can lead to yelling at each other, in turn just escalating the conflict.
That escalated conflict puts you in stress mode, so you’re not thinking clearly, and one or both of you may say or do something that could cause trauma. And it may make you not want to share your feelings anymore. Conflict, yelling, and angry outbursts also make it difficult to have fun in your marriage.
All of that puts you in danger of relapsing into that vicious cycle of negative disconnect.
Be Complimentary
Be your spouse’s champion. Notice the good in them. Many times a marriage in need of rebuilding will focus on negative qualities, but focusing on the positive can make a huge difference. It also helps to refocus from negative to positive when you’re talking to your family and friends about your spouse.
Tell them you love them, tell them how much you appreciate the little things they do for you every day, and support their passions. It will give them a boost, and it will enhance your connection.
Be Patient
Just as marriage has a honeymoon phase, so does relationship therapy and repair. Many couples make such great early progress that they place their expectations too high that their problems are solved. That only makes things harder when normal life triggers a stressor in which you feel you’ve relapsed back into old patterns.
For example, if your partner enjoys a hobby that’s separate from you, and you’re still having a challenge finding your specific stress outlet, you may feel unsupported or start having anxiety about the time your partner is away from you.
Realize your residual feelings are normal, and that it’s healthy for each of you to have your own identity outside of the couple unit.
But if you’re the one having trouble finding that balance between independence and connectedness, don’t be shy in pursuing additional counseling for yourself, such as attending anxiety counseling in East Lyme, Ct.
To get connected to your specialized couple’s therapist, click the button below to schedule a free phone consult!
Invest the Time to Be Happy
Now that you’ve learned there are plenty of ways to help you and your partner create the marriage you want, enjoy living a realistic version of happily ever after and all the benefits of being married including car insurance discounts. A happy marriage doesn’t just happen by itself, but the result is well worth the effort.
Karen Condor writes and researches for the car insurance comparison site, CarInsuranceComparison.com. She studied communications and has successfully participated in marriage counseling and anxiety counseling.
