Three Easy Tips to Help Build a Happy Marriage

It is part of the popular culture to make fun of how poorly marriages work. If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve heard people complain about their spouses, I’d be an obscenely wealthy woman. Sometimes comments are made in jest, but usually, they’re tinged with a degree of hopelessness and suffering.

This does not need to be the case. My husband and I have been married for over twelve years. The first several years were difficult. But then, we searched for experts in marriage from which to learn. Since that time, our marriage has flowered into a powerful, harmonious partnership. Today, we’re more in love than ever and we’re enjoying the fruits of our labor in creating a great marriage.

Here are several tips to help you build a happy marriage. I hope they will help you as much as they helped us. Before you go on, here’s a hint about this information: Let it sink in. The things we’ve learned are powerful and become more so the more you work with them. Let them slowly re-train you to think about your marriage differently.

Tip #1 to Build a Happy Marriage: Grow Personally – Weren’t we suppose to be talking about marriage? Yes, we were. But a happy marriage begins with happy people. Many people aren’t happy in their lives and they expect a marriage to make them happy. This is not a healthy expectation. Marriage cannot make an unhappy person happy. It just can’t. And the more we rely on marriage to do that, the more we’ll destroy our marriage with unrealistic expectations.

Each spouse in a marriage needs to take on living a happy life and bringing happiness to the marriage. The best way to do this is to take on growing as a person. I’ve found that usually, one spouse takes this one first, then the other follows. If you’re the one to start the ball rolling in this arena, don’t complain. Someone has to start, it might as well be you. Another time, your spouse will initiate the positive action.

Begin by improving an aspect of your life that is important to you, then go on to whatever is next. Soon, you’ll find that your spouse is inspired to do the same thing.

Tip #2 to Build a Happy Marriage – Realize that You Don’t Need Your Spouse – What? Am I crazy? No. I’m not crazy. You don’t need one another. You already have all that you need. The silly saying of “you complete me” gives off the wrong impression. We’re each complete. Can you imagine what a setup this “you complete me” expectation is for a marriage? This often puts one spouse into the position of neediness and the other spouse in a position of obligation. Powerful marriages are built on something other than the needy/obligated model.

Any strong marriage, that takes on the proportions of true partnership, must go through a phase where each spouse realizes that they are strong people, able of creating a great life for themselves. This puts the marriage into the context of something that we freely choose to do, rather than a net that we’re caught up in. When we realize this, we become more responsible for creating our marriage. When this occurs, we’re generous, forgiving, and compassionate because we choose to be in the relationship.

Tip #3 to Build a Happy Marriage – Be Disciplined About What You Think About – Most of us carry around our worries and concerns so that they are foremost in our minds at all times. When this is the case, days can go by when we don’t even notice our spouse at more than a superficial level. When this happens, people remark that they become roommates with their spouse and they don’t love each other any more. This is not because they really don’t love one another, it is often because they haven’t put any concentrated effort into spending conscious time with each other.

Upon the advice of our marriage expert, my husband and I practiced putting aside our worries of the day each evening when we’d spend time together. At first, this was difficult and we found that there were certain issues that we couldn’t let go of. When this was the case, we’d have to deal with those issues in a timely manner and then, we could go back to really enjoying our time together.

As we got better, it became natural for us to enjoy each other’s company. We made it a point to spend time developing our relationship and creating a strong marriage, rather than relying on simply living in the same house to keep us together.