A marriage is a partnership. It’s a team comprised of two players: you and your wife.
So naturally, you’d think in order to save your marriage, you both need to contribute. Here’s the thing. You can’t force your wife to change.
You can’t force her to go to couples therapy, or to spend more time with you, or to open up about what she most wants in the relationship. You can plead. You can beg. But you won’t see results.
The only person whose behavior you can control is your own.
How To Save Your Marriage
If you really want to know how to save your marriage, you have to look inward. Making positive changes in yourself and becoming a relationship model is what she needs to see to even entertain the idea of making changes herself.
Changing Daily Habits
To me, if someone needs to explain why a painting is incredible, it’s not good art.
The same applies to a good husband. If you need to explain why you’re an amazing husband, she likely won’t buy it. She’s around you all the time. She knows who you are, she sees the patterns, knows how you treat yourself and those around you. Whispering in her ear isn’t going to change her mind.
What will change her mind is a bonafide change, and it all starts with your daily habits.
It’s possible that your wife has fallen out of love with you because you’ve been operating in peasant mode.
Ya see you used to be this active and ambitious guy, but nowadays you spend most of your time indoors, binge-watching series, and have become a bit of a loaf.
To really see how far you’ve fallen off, ask yourself how you’ve changed since you met your wife.
It may shock you to come to the realization that you’re a completely different person than you were years ago.
But look, if humans can change for the worse you can also change for the better.
To create this change, you’ll need to invest in daily habits that will turn you into the man your wife fell in love with.
Maybe that means rekindling your inner ambition or becoming more social. Maybe it means working out again, regaining your energy, or becoming the romantic man who used to sweep her off her feet.
Create and stick to habits you practice on a daily basis to slowly become the man you once were.
Replace Negative Behavior
Just because you’re forming healthy habits doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing away with the bad ones.
Maybe you still work late, prioritize work over your wife and family, or aren’t present enough when around family.
Part of learning how to save your marriage is identifying the negative traits that jeopardize your marriage. Now, again, it’s possible your wife won’t help you identify these traits. Maybe she’s not ready for a sit-down conversion – and hey, maybe you’re not either.
But take some time to look back at your relationship. Plot out when the relationship started going downhill. Look back to that time and list out the ways in which you two changed. If you’re serious about changing, you need to put in the work to look negative traits in the face, call them out for what they are, and address them.
Attachment Style
Do you know your attachment style?
Attachment styles are developed in our childhood and determine how we interact with friends and loved ones.
There are three attachment styles:
- Secure – healthy attachment style that allows individuals to easily connect with one another
- Avoidant – characterized by a fear of deep attachment
- Anxious – a desire to constantly seek out validation from those around them
If your attachment style is avoidant or anxious, you need to take steps to address it. The good thing is, attachment styles are not hard coded. Just because you had a childhood where love was hard to come by doesn’t mean you can’t go on to develop a secure attachment style.
But this isn’t something you can simply manifest. Changing deeply ingrained habits takes time and effort. We can show you how to start building a healthier relationship with your wife by changing your attachment style.
Become A Supercommunicator
Right now, your wife might not be interested in having a conversation with you. Chances are she won’t be until she sees that you’re making an effort to change. Once you begin to replace negative habits with good ones and work on your attachment style, her interest will be piqued.
She’ll want to know if you’ve made a genuine change or if these are just short-term superficial changes to get back into her good graces.
Once she is willing to talk, it’s time for you to show her how amazing of a communicator you really are.
Before potentially opening a can of worms, set the tone by asking her if she had time to talk about the relationship. Tell her you’re on a fact-finding mission and want to do nothing more than hear her out. Choose a safe and calm space where you two can talk (read; she talks, you listen).
When she does talk, even if you disagree or feel the desire to defend yourself, keep your mouth shut. The moment you fight back is the moment she blames herself for ever thinking you could change.
Sit tight and actively listen. If you don’t understand her points, ask follow-up questions. Be empathetic and assure her that you are listening and that you want the best for the relationship.
Only once you intimately understand why she has fallen out of love can you really work to save the marriage.
Heal Together
Once you’ve shown her that you’ve changed and have made strides to understand where she’s coming from and why she felt discontented with the relationship, she’s probably going to give you another chance.
Here’s how to make the most of it.
For one, continue to work on yourself. This is a lifelong process. Continue to cultivate the positive habits you’ve been working on.
But now that you and your partner are spending more time with each other, it’s time to create habits that you both can partake in. Let’s call them rituals of connection. These are daily or weekly rituals that you two set aside for each other. During these rituals the only thing I want you to focus on is each other.
Maybe a daily ritual is eating dinner together. Or maybe you two take your dog for a walk after work. Maybe you hit the gym together or go kayaking every Wednesday.
It doesn’t matter what you do so long as you do it together and are 100% focused on one another. The only effective way to make her fall back in love with you is to spend quality time together.
If you want to save your marriage you’re going to have to take the first step, and the second, and the third. You can’t wait for your wife to be proactive. You are the only person whose behavior you’re in control of. Focus on yourself and everything else will fall into place. Build positive habits, address negative ones, and work on your communication skills.
Slowly but surely, you’ll notice the changes – and so will your partner.
When she does give you another chance, keep building those positive habits while spending more quality time with your partner.
If you want a more concrete blueprint of how to save your marriage, give us a ring so we can talk about where your relationship is at and how we can help you rekindle the flame.
