Friends and lovers

Learn to be a friend first and a spouse or a partner after that. Work on the friendship to create healthy marriage.

Are you so fed up with your marriage partner that you’re ready to call a divorce lawyer? Maybe you can’t think of one more way to fix your relationship. But you’re out of ideas. You’ve tried everything from yelling to giving each other the silent treatment. Perhaps you might even have tried couples therapy, not to mention an impromptu session with a psychic.

You now realize, however, that nothing has changed. Your marriage is just as hopeless now as it was a year ago. But, the truth is, you still want it to work.

Can your marriage be saved?
Experts say that most marriages fail because two people are mismatch in many ways. Being mismatched causes each of you to feel the other is not a good friend

But before you write a goodbye note or file papers, stop to consider if you can be friends with your mate.

Think about ways to build common ground. Ask, yourself, “It is possible to find or create areas we feel matched in?”

You should try downplaying the areas you’re mismatched in. Stop focusing on those. Focusing on what isn’t working will make you feel you’re married to your worst enemy.

No one can really work on a marriage relationship. Instead, they must work on basic friendship. To find common threads of interest, start small and keep building.

A couple started with listing 10 things they had in common to revive their friendship. They are focusing on doing small things together such as watching the evening news, checking out travel films at the library just so they have something upbeat to talk about. They also make an effort to avoid hot topics that result in heated debates.

You should try downplaying the areas you are mismatched in. Focusing on what isn’t working will make you feel you’re married to your worst enemy

Learning to become a good friend to your spouse means taking charge. You can’t allow other people or problem to erode your basic friendship.

“My husband and I had to many debates,” says a psychologist Joy. “Before long, our friendship was gone and we divorced. “I’m in a second marriage now,” she adds. “It’s working because we work on the friendship and don’t debate!”

Joy says her second husband is not superior in any way to her first husband. “It’s just that I’ve paid more attention the second time around,” she insists. “I don’t neglect the friendship part of marriage, even if I have to drive to my husband’s office to take dinner for the two of us.”

The reason any marriage survives half-decently is that couples finds more things to agree than disagree.
The trick is to ‘match’ up goals, plans, and dreams to those parts of the spouse’s personality that support their own vision of happiness.

Making a marriage work means figuring out up side to everything. There are advantages to almost any situation imaginable.

“My wife had a car accident last year,” says an associate of ours we’ll call Henry. “The two of us got a lot of reading done well she recuperated. We grew closer during all of this because she and I tried to read many of the same books.”

Friendship means helping the other person feel good as much as possible.

Ask yourself, “How good can I make my mate feel? How can I explain to my mate the good feelings I need in return?”

If you can make good feeling flow, you are having true friendship.

These tips can help: