According to the American Psychological Association “40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.” With the odds of your marriage succeeding or failing effectively having a 50-50 chance, how then can you work towards success? We wanted to offer up some simple tips you can use to have a healthy marriage, but because there are so many beneficial ideas available we thought we would break this knowledge into two posts. Here are our first 3 tips on having a healthy marriage:
– Communicate often and early. One of the biggest problems in relationships is lack of communication. When we don’t know what the other person is thinking we have room to speculate and make problems bigger in our minds than they likely actually were. As soon as you start holding things back from your spouse trouble starts brewing. Whether the feelings are of jealousy, anger, resentment, whatever- share them! Tell your spouse what is going on as soon as possible so that you can work through the problems together.
– Divvy up responsibilities. Believe it or not one thing that leads to major fights between spouses is not dividing the workload equally. In most households these days both the man and the woman are working 9 to 5 jobs and yet the woman is expected to also handle raising the kids and keeping the residence clean. This is a fast road to resentment and arguing. Be fair and create a system that ensures both spouses are handling an equal amount of child rearing and house maintenance.
– Be transparent with finances. This somewhat goes into the communication tip as well, but finances cause a lot of marital discord. If you have debts coming into the marriage talk about them up front. Also, never assume that because you make more money you have the right to purchase whatever you want. All purchases over a limit you and your spouse agree on together should be discussed. If you’re struggling to make ends meet, discuss it and come to a resolution together.
Be sure to check back with us soon for part two with even more ways to have a healthy marriage! In the meantime, if you and your spouse think you would benefit from counseling, we would like to invite you to contact Hammond Psychology & Associates, P.A. at (813) 654-0503.