Grow Your Marriage

You either grow your marriage or weaken it: all the time you and your spouse either grow apart, weakening your marriage, or grow together, making it strong. For you and your spouse to grow your marriage, both must share with each other preferences, opinions and ideas. Getting to know someone truly, inside and out, takes effort. If you put no effort into your marriage, you're not maintaining it, you're letting it deteriorate and you are growing apart. A marriage that grows together is one where both individuals make an effort to find out what is going on inside their spouse's head. They appreciate, understand, and respect that information.

When both partners don't communicate or share life changes, they can wake up one day and find themselves sleeping next to a stranger. You didn't marry your partner to get a carbon copy of yourself. Chances are that the differences between you and your partner sparked your interest and made each one of you fascinating to the other. If he's artistic and you're analytic, or you're impulsive and he's rational, you are likely to be complementary personality types who bring out the best in each other. The question is whether those differences are enough to break your marriage apart or just right to add the spice to grow your marriage.

You don't remain the same person that your spouse met. But spouses can be resistant to changes in their partner, because they see it as a sign that their partner is dissatisfied with things as they are. When one partner suggests a change, the other partner often feels indirectly criticized, thinking that the other person means that status quo is not good enough. Reassuring your partner is essential during this tough time. Changes are frightening, but when there is communication, honesty, and willingness to compromise at every step of the way, change can be an enormously positive thing, allowing you to grow your marriage. Any change that can be undertaken mutually is better than a change that can only be undertaken individually.

It doesn't mean that neither of you ever changes. It doesn't mean you're thinking alike, or avoiding conflicts, or not having disagreements. Growth, by definition, is change. A healthy, lasting marriage is one in which both people mature and change their ideas, perspectives and plans. You will grow your marriage when you share those changes openly and honestly with your spouse as they occur.

In more fundamental areas, like your values, goals, and vision boardfor your marriage perhaps you have major incompatibilities that make it difficult to grow your marriage. If you and your partner differ significantly in your upbringing, the importance you place on family, and your need for and ability to express physical affection, you may have a more difficult time accepting and negotiating your differences. This is why cross-cultural relationships can be so challenging. If your partner is from a significantly different culture from your own, you will need to be extremely open, understanding, and flexible in how you approach resolving marital issues.

If you are at the point in your marriage where you think that you and your partner are unable to resolves differences between you and you find it impossible to grow your marriage, it is worthwhile to invest in a marriage counselor. Counseling is much cheaper than a divorce and provides a neutral environment where both partners feel comfortable opening up and examining their true feelings.

You are thinking, perhaps, that marriage counselors are far too expensive for you. That's not so! You can get low-cost, easily affordable and excellent advice as well as personal training, through the Internet, from first-class, professional marriage counselors who have many years of experience and law of success,. You will find a group of men and women that can solve even the toughest kind of differences and allow you to grow your marriage.

You can find excellent low-cost professional advice, including a free six-part course on solving marriage problems at: grow your marriage.

William Grigsby, a retired multinational corp. executive, is now a consultant and writer.

John F