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what makes a marriage last

Video: How Can We Protect Our Marriage?
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Marriages get into trouble when they are not protected.  And marriages that are recovering must protect the marriage, so that it can keep growing.  Marriages that are doing well STILL need to protect their relationship, in order to prevent problems.

This video can help you protect your marriage from problems, and help recover from problems, by helping you learn how to protect your relationship.

Save The Marriage Video: I Thought Everything Was OK! What Happened?
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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A marriage crisis can rear-end you!  You feel like you didn’t see it coming.  At least weekly, I hear from someone telling me that they knew their marriage was not going as well as they would like, but they thought it was temporary.  Maybe they expected that once the kids were grown, there would be time for the marriage.  Or perhaps they thought that once their jobs were secure, or they were promoted, or. . . .

Fact is, marriages can fall apart, and one or the other spouse doesn’t see it coming, making you wonder “can this marriage be saved?” or “can I save my marriage?”

Start by learning what happened in this video.

Video: Why Should I Save My Marriage?
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Another video to answer another common question:  “why should I save my marriage?”  Sometimes, we get discouraged, see no way to get things to change, and are ready to give up on saving a marriage.  But is that the right choice?  Are we making a wise choice when there are so many swirling emotions?

Explore the answer to the question of why you should (or should not) save your marriage!

Four “You’s” Could Save Your Marriage
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Just a couple weeks ago, one of my clients gave me a bit of business advice that’s been directly applicable to saving a marriage. I wanted to share it with you.

My client, who is a businessperson, was telling me that there are four important “you’s” that are crucial for a business. They are crucial for any relationship. And they can be used in your marriage, starting today.

Here are the four “you’s:”
1. “How are you?”
2. “What can I do for you?”
3. “Thank you.”
4. “I appreciate/love you.”

Those are the crucial four “you’s.” Do you see the power in them? Do you see how you could use them in your marriage? Do you see how those are not happening in your relationship?

What would happen, if you don’t already do this, to have a conversation in the evening about how your spouse is doing? I don’t mean the quick “how are you?” I mean really wondering how your spouse is doing. I mean sitting on the back porch and asking how your spouse is really doing. How often does this happen for you? If you’re like most people, especially with troubled relationship, that conversation did not happen.

Or, what about asking what you can do for your spouse? Oftentimes, when relationships get into trouble, couples instinctively stop doing for each other. In good times, you may ask about what your spouse might like, what you could do for him or her. But when things get tough, the question often falls by the wayside. We start thinking “if you don’t do for me, I won’t do for you.”

Yet that is exactly what might get the relationship moving forward. When one spouse makes some forward motion toward the other spouse, often he or she responds in a similar manner. It might not happen the first time, but that does not mean you don’t do it again. In fact, you keep doing this one. As long as it takes!

Or how about. “Thank you?” Again, when the relationship is not well, this is something that we often stop saying. In fact, we stop even noticing that our spouse is doing doing anything for us. That only compounds the problem. When we stop noticing, people stop acting. So, in addition to doing for your spouse, look for what your spouse is doing for you. Then thank him or her.

The final “you” is about letting your spouse know that you appreciate him or her. You may not be ready to use the word “love” at this point, but can you let your spouse know what you appreciate about him or her? When marriages get into trouble, one thing that happens is that we feel completely unappreciated. We start acting in ways that continue that. In other words, if I don’t feel appreciated, don’t do anything to be appreciated. So, this one is letting someone know that they are appreciated.

By letting someone know this, the other person might begin to act in more appreciative and appreciable ways. At the very least, he or she will know that you are noticing what he or she is doing.

Many marriages could be saved simply if the other person felt appreciated and loved. The four questions can easily move you in that direction. Make it your habit to use these questions.

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Marriage Is Tough
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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“Marriage shouldn’t be that hard.” That was the opening comment of my client this week. He was convinced that his marriage was doomed. He believe it was because his marriage had become difficult. He believed that this should not be the case.

I had to chuckle. Marriage is the most intense relationship that any two adults will have in their life. There’s no way around it. Two people living together that intensely, making decisions together, having sex together, making decisions together, and doing everything else that married couple do are going to have difficulties. No way around it.

I turned to him and said “why do you say that?” He told me he just figured that marriages should just work. They shouldn’t be hard work, and when there are problems, they should just be able to be solved instantly. Now, I don’t generally laugh at my client, but it was all I could do to hold back the laughter, and only let out a chuckle. “You have got to be kidding,” I said. “Marriage is tough, whether it is in good times or bad, marriage is tough.”

I continued on for a second, “every single marriage has problems, the question is whether you work through them out or not. It is not a question of whether you will have problems.” You see, I really believe that every marriage is destined to have difficulty. That is just the way it is. Statistically speaking, half of those couples will choose not to work on their problems. About half will find a way to deal with the problems. That does not mean that there were no problems, only that they discovered how to deal with the problem.

“Come with me,” I said my client. I walked my client to the window. We looked out onto the parking lot. I pointed to car and said “is that yours?” “Yes,” he said, “that’s my car. Looks pretty nice doesn’t it?” I had to admit, it with a pretty nice car. It looked like it was well taken care of. I asked, “did you just grab the car, or did you do some research? Did you, when you were getting ready to buy it, maybe buy a car magazine? Did you look up the price on the Internet, maybe even did you research on what other people thought about the car?”

“Yes, I sure did! I spent months looking at my options. I probably went to the dealer like 10 times.” He chuckled, “my wife was tired of hearing about that car.” So then I asked, “have you had any problems with the car?” My client thought for a second. “Well, yes. It made some funny noises.”

“What did you do?” I asked. He responded, “first, I looked it up on the Internet. Then, I bought a book about the model of car I had. I found out that it was a fairly common problem, and it only needed a little bit of tightening of a couple of bolts to stop it.” I continued, “and did you do it yourself? Or did you take it to the dealer?”

“I took it to the dealer. They are the experts on this.” “So, you didn’t sell the car?” I pushed him. “No. It was just a little problem.” I pushed a little harder, “I’ll bet you would have had bigger problems if you hadn’t fixed it, and let it go on and on.”

“Probably so… Doc, is this about my car or about my marriage?” He had me. He knew I was really talking about his marriage. “How long have you been having problems?” I asked. He thought for a second, then said, “probably four or five years. But we had some of the same problems even before we got married.”

“Did you get a book about marriage? Did you talk to a therapist? Did you go to a seminar? Did you do anything that might address the issues?” I asked. I knew I had him. Just like most people, he had a problem in his relationship, but he didn’t seek good advice. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only people he talked to were his drinking buddies. Not the best place to go for marriage advice.

Marriage is tough. It’s tough because it requires us to set ourselves and our ego aside for the betterment of both of us. In other words, we have to get outside of ourselves, and look at the greater good of both people. That does not mean that one person has to give up everything. But it does mean that it takes looking at the good of the relationship when making decisions.

Someone once said, “You can either be right. Or you can be happy, but you can’t be both.” This is especially true in marriage. If you insist on being right, you both will be miserable. Choose to be happy. And when there is a problem, recognize that is normal, then seek out some help in resolving it.

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Why Do We Drive Each Other Crazy?
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Yesterday, I had the opportunity of talking with a couple that I may never see again. The reason I will never see them again is because they are not ready to make a change.

You see, they were caught in “ME mode.”What I mean by that is they were not even able to see outside of themselves. They were not able to see how they were getting in the way of the relationship. Each one pointing the finger at the other. In fact, every conversation quickly went back to “what’s wrong with you.”

I couldn’t see how they could make any changes because they were so caught up in seeing why the other person was wrong. They were never able to see why they were wrong. What a catastrophe! I couldn’t believe that we couldn’t go even 30 seconds without one pointing the finger at the other end telling me how right he or she was and how wrong the other person was!

You see, even therapist get frustrated sometimes! I played referee for an entire hour! At the end of the time, I suggested that each one needed to decide whether they wanted to really make any changes, or just point out the faults of the other person.

Sadly, this couple could probably fix their marriage with little effort… IF they were willing to see that each one had fault. I just needed a little room. I didn’t need any major changes. All that needed to happen was for one or the other to decide that it was not just the other person’s fault.

So why do we drive each other crazy? Why are marriages so difficult? Because we are rarely honest with our spouse. More than that, we are rarely honest with ourselves. Over time, everyone of us builds up resentments. Over time, few of us share our resentments. Each one may be very small, but if you add them up, you’ve created a tinderbox that leads to marital distress, frustration, and ignited of anger.

I am not suggesting that we have to tell our spouse everything that is on our mind. In fact, that would be quite destructive to the relationship. However, we often refuse to even tell the few things that could make a real difference in our marriage. In this case, the man simply wanted to feel like he was liked. Oddly, his wife did like him. She just didn’t express it in ways that he recognized. Tragic!

For her side, she kept waiting for him to tell her exactly what he was upset about. Why didn’t he? Because in his family, the rule of thumb was to not fight, not argue, and not tell what you wanted. Her family? They fought it out, argued it out, and told you exactly what they wanted.

Two different families, two different roles. And spouses the didn’t talk about it. In fact, didn’t even recognize it. Now, a marriage is about to end because both people think they are correct, and are definite that the other is wrong.

My advice? First, couples need to get in the habit of talking about the little difficulties. We wait until they build up, they suddenly become very personal, very painful, and almost always intractable.

Second, we humans are a lot like animals. At least in how we train each other. If behavior gives us something that we want, we keep doing it! For example, my dog is one big Labrador retriever. His head can easily rest on our table. Every now and then, my son lets a piece of cereal fall out of his bowl and onto his placemat. It only took a couple of times for my dog to realize that he got a treat as soon as my son left the table. Now, it is very hard to keep my dog away from the table.

When we humans get rewarded for “bad behavior,” in other words, when our painful actions towards others gets rewarded, we tend to repeat the behavior, even if it hurts the other person. In fact, we often fail to see that it hurts the other person.

Couples train each other in what behavior works and what behavior doesn’t work. Be careful in how you train your spouse. For example, with the couple I saw yesterday, when she pouted, he came to the rescue. But the difference between pouting and looking angry is very slight. Over time, her pout began to look like anger to him. From then on, she was pouting for attention, and he was feeling rejected.

Would either believe me if I told them about this? After about an hour of trying to convince them, I can tell you that neither one will believe what I’m saying. They have already made up their minds.

Third, one thing that is often missing in a marriage is our attempt to not just understand but to accept our spouse. All of us have our faults, and when we forget that, our spouse has a hard time living up to our expectations. Suddenly, all we can see are their faults.

So, the threat is in expecting perfection in our spouse, or seeing only fault. So here’s the conundrum: we want to be accepted for who we are, but we have a hard time offering that to our spouse. “ME mode”is probably the most destructive pattern in any marriage. When we get caught up in ourselves, we forget the other. Marriage is all about WE. Remember that, and you have increased the likelihood of success in your marriage a hundredfold.

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
A Personal Note: 20 Years Of Marriage!
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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I have to pause and make a personal comment. You see, on August 13th, my wife and I celebrated 20 years of marriage! I tease that it was one hot day when we got married. It was in the mountains, but we really didn’t expect 90-some degrees, and since the stain-glass windows matched the bridesmaid’s dresses (hey, it was the ’80’s!), they were closed. . . many people thought I was tearful through the service as my father handed my a handkerchief. Actually, I was wiping sweat away!

Anyway, I was just thinking about those 20 years and the changes they have brought! We have two wonderful children, lots of experiences, and a great marriage. Some folks might say “oh, sure, you are a marriage expert.” But trust me when I say that your own marriage is a whole different creature than someone who is coming to you for help.

I firmly believe that 100% of marriages have difficulties. It is just the nature of being so intimately connected with someone else. You can’t go through too much life that closely connected without having conflicts and difficulties. But we have a commitment to get through those tough times. Marriage is about savoring the good times and working through the tough times, as a team.

Just the other day, we had a disagreement. During a lull in our discussion, my wife went downstairs. I soon followed, just to get another point on my side of the debate column. In the midst of my “making my point,” my wife looked at me and said, “look, we are in this for the long-haul. We have to work it out, and this doesn’t seem to be helping.” I agreed.

Several people have made this point, “you can be right or you can be happy, but you can’t be both.” When we opt for “right,” we end up in arguments that are rarely productive and usually about fairly trivial issues.

Marriage certainly is a challenge, but marriage is a challenge that leads to growth and change. It is like building muscle. If we don’t challenge our muscles, we don’t build any strength. When we opt to work through our struggles, we strengthen our marriage.

So here we are, twenty years later! Strange how we arbitrarily choose certain years as representative of mileposts in life. Twenty years is one of those years. But you see, I think a marriage is built day-by-day. Couples decide to work together each day, which add up to weeks, which add up to months, which add up to years.

In those years, we have been through financial struggles, professional struggles, transitions from graduate students to professionals, from childless to parents, had some health struggles, and more than our share of joys in all those areas. And through it all, what I am most thankful for is that I knew I had someone on my side, and I was on someone’s side. I am always aware of how much better it is to face the world together than alone.

My wife has supported me in many ventures, some that worked and others that failed. I have tried to do the same. My wife has loved me whether I was sick or well (and I am not fun to love when I am sick!). I have tried to do the same. Through it all, we are a team, and for that, I am most thankful!

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .
Valentine’s Day Message: Why Marriages Last
 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
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Very frequently, I am asked by individuals, couples, even the press, “what makes a marriage last?” I chuckle a little because the answer is so simple (simple is NOT the same as easy).

But before I tell you the secret, I am aware that we are quickly approaching Valentine’s Day. At least in the United States, this holiday has become a retailer’s dream (and many an individual’s nightmare!). We have woven this whole ideal of romance into the fabric of this day.

Do you know who Valentine was? The facts are a little sketchy, but the theory is that it started with a Roman celebration where a lottery was held, matching girls and boys together for the duration of the celebration. Some of these became marriages. That celebration was, evidently, around mid-February, probably on the 14th.

Then enter Emperor Claudius. Claudius outlawed marriage, so that the young men eligible to be soldiers would not be encumbered by marriage. But a Catholic priest, Valentine, continued to perform marriages. He defied the emperor to honor love.

This led to his imprisonment and beheading. So his martyrdom was celebrated on February 14th, partly to overtake the Pagan celebration by honoring love in Christian terms.

Valentine was quite the counter-cultural! He refused to allow an emperor to prevent the union of two people who wanted to be together. And we have managed to bring back only the romantic, sexualized nature of relationships in our current celebrations!

So, that is the apparent history of Valentine’s Day, which leads me to the secret of a lasting marriage. You see, we have taken this holiday and made romance the cake, not the icing on the cake.

The secret to a lasting marriage? Two people who choose to stay married. That’s it. Marriages that last don’t necessarily have less conflict, more sex, more money, less anger, or anything else we assume. Marriages that last do so because each person makes a daily decision to stay married.

The commitment to the marriage, then, is the cake! From that commitment, a couple decides to work through difficulties. And since there is a commitment, a couple realizes they must come to some solution to the problems that arise in any marriage. Their solution just does not involve dissolution of the marriage!

When there is commitment, the cake, then romance really is the icing on the cake! It is not that romance and romantic feelings are unimportant. They just should not lead us into believing that their absence means a marriage is over.

Every marriage, successful or not, has times when passion wanes. That is the natural pattern of relationships. But those that share a commitment end up carrying the day when the passion is not the glue of the relationship.

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, and commit to commitment in your marriage!

If you need tools to help you get to the icing on the cake, grab my ebook!

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling relationship ebook, Save The Marriage. It is available at http://www.savethemarriage.com .