Most people wait until they think their situation is hopeless before they search for help and find me as a love and relationship coach. When I explain the skills it takes to rescue their relationship, they begin to relax…but many still worry they may not be able to learn these five steps fast enough to save their marriage. The good news is that it can be done!
Most important for you is to focus right now on how to turn your relationship around. The transformation of your marriage from done to “rewon” will be much easier and faster if you learn these skills before your partner leaves home. Please consider learning these steps now, before you need me as a certified mediator instead of a love and relationship coach.
Five steps to take in order to rescue a dying marriage
1. Rebuild trust
The first skill you need to learn is self-soothing, as supported by professor Joanne Wright, so you stop the common habit of complaining and bickering and make your home the haven it needs to be today. Your partner needs to remember why you married, so Stage 1 includes eliminating all disastrous behaviors. This allows your partner to walk through the front door expecting and enjoying a peaceful evening with you, which, for most people, is the entry point to love or to love again.
If you feel so triggered you can’t get to peace, please learn Brain-breathing today. This 5-minute video and 3-minute practice will change everything for you if you practice this every day until it becomes your go-to response to stress.
2. Giving empathy to your partner before saying what you want
Pics Five via Shutterstock
The second biggest error people make when they don’t want a divorce is believing that telling their partner what they need to do differently will be successful. If you and your partner are fighting or in a Cold War, you don’t have any leverage to make demands.
This is the Reconciliation Phase, and you need to become your most caring self and provide the empathy, compassion, and affection your partner needs as often as your partner needs it. That is the only way to move from this phase to a second Honeymoon.
Empathetic Listening means putting yourself in your partner’s head and doing your best to understand their feelings, as shown by research published in the International Journal of Listening. If you believe you love this person, now is not the time to be up in your head judging.
Emotional recognition requires you to acknowledge when a “message sent” by your spouse is a “message received” by you. So many partners complain they aren’t sufficiently heard or seen, and this is your opportunity to do both.
If you find listening to your partner without jumping in with your own opinions to be an agonizing experience, this is another time to use Brain-breathing. If, day after day, you dislike what you are hearing, it is time to ask if this is truly the right partner for the rest of your life. One of the big complaints from empty nesters is you’re together all the time and will also require a lot of listening.
Nonverbal Communication is a key aspect of empathy because our body language telegraphs how we feel. It may be tempting to roll your eyes in disgust or interrupt, yet these two habits cause so many divorces they aren’t worth it. A Mona Lisa smile and a loving gaze, on the other hand, help reconnection, and from that moment, love can grow.
3. Find sweet self-expression to always pay attention to your partner’s needs, not just your own
Compassionate responses are the most valuable of all empathetic responses because words have so much power.
Ask what your partner is feeling and needing. Is your partner feeling:
- Some version of scared: worried, concerned, nervous, anxious
- Some version of angry: upset, frustrated, furious, outraged
- Some version of sad: disappointed, hopeless, heartbroken
Once you clarify which of these feelings is closest, ask yourself, “What need isn’t being met that is the cause of my partner’s feelings?”
A study by Bodenmann, G. helps us understand how affection, appreciation, closeness, understanding, support, financial independence, and respect are some of the key needs that can trigger divorce unless you offer your partner empathy and work together to solve the issues.
Empathy example: Here is how to speak empathy, being sure to leave space for your partner to reply so you don’t look as if you’re waiting impatiently to chime in with your own opinion:
You can say: “Honey, I’m guessing that you’re feeling sad because things are stressful at work, right?”
Your partner replies, “Yes, I’m so sick and tired of the way my boss treats me!”
You say: “I hear you. You feel disappointed because you deserve respect, right?”
Your partner says, “ Exactly!”
That is the shift you’re looking for because it happens when someone feels heard. You may hear a lot more words, and you may need to provide a lot more empathy, guessing your partner’s feeling and a need and another feeling and a need.
4. Captivate your partner with a renewed passion that’s more exciting than before
JLco Julia Amaral via Shutterstock
Turning your thermostat and your magnetism way, way up is one essential key to the wind up to a second honeymoon or a lifelong love affair.
Maturitas Journal published research suggesting that for post-menopausal women, checking your hormone levels and considering safe options like bio-identical hormones can be the biggest game-changer because it gets you back in the game.
For men who have female partners who have lapsed into the sexual Ice Age, what are you learning to captivate her? Whether it’s flirtation, sex drive enhancements, or frank and compassionate communication, most men have no idea how to motivate and inspire their partners to sexual thrills.
Please remember if you don’t take effective action in this category, there is a huge probability your spouse will find someone else, even if it’s just a friend with benefits or a so-called emotional affair.
5. Create excitement to be married to one another, even if it’s been years since you felt that thrill
At least one of you must learn how to excite, entice, and please yourself and your partner now before the axe falls. When you’re in a loving, committed, monogamous, intimate relationship, your partner is the only person who can satisfy you, so researching any issues you may have and finding the solution is your urgent, essential goal.
Here are your possible problems that need to be resolved fast:
- When I ask a man whose marriage is teetering on the verge of separation or divorce or one who is living in sexual Siberia how often his wife has initiated sex throughout their marriage, he will usually reply either “Never!” or “About 25% of the time”. This tells me their marriage was always in trouble, and he will feel shock or anger when I suggest this before he tells me how great he believes he is in bed.
- His libido has always been much stronger than his wife’s, and he never bought sex toys to help her.
- His wife never felt truly comfortable with her sexuality or with her husband’s willingness to understand her and help her solve this, and she never brought sex toys into their bedroom either.
- Their marriage may work in other rooms of the house, as transactional marriages do, however, theirs has never been a true meeting of equals or a true love affair, and over time, the bond weakens until there is only convenience, habit, and two aging “siblings” living together.
Solutions: “Sexpress” your Love
- Look in the mirror, yes, while you’re naked, and commit yourself to any diet and exercise you know will make you feel hot!
- For women, your hairdo can change everything and make you feel fantastic, so whatever you need to do will pay huge dividends in passion and love.
- With so many inexpensive sites with great bodycon dresses and separates, you can look like a million dollars for a few hundred. I wore a few dresses that cost between $18-$35 each to a passionate weekend in a $1800 hotel room and looked as good as anyone in the bar or restaurant, and you can, too.
- Learn enough new hot moves that your partner will be guaranteed to find a few of them thrilling. Think about all the things he may have fantasized about that you have avoided up to now and ask yourself, “If I’m his only partner and this is forever, don’t I want to “sexperience” more?
I once asked a woman if she felt nervous about her upcoming sexual encounter with a new partner. She replied, “Since I’ll be the only woman in the room, I’m sure it will be great!” The ultimate step to resuscitate your marriage or relationship is easy because when you love someone, and you express and “sexpress” that love, you both win!
When you provide your partner with a series of magical, unforgettable experiences that are mutually thrilling and your home life is peaceful and loving, too, you have created the Secret to Marriage.
Susan Allan is a Life Coach whose Evolution Revolution Trainings offer proven tools to experience joy, and happiness and let go of suffering.
