Love After Marriage
“Make a Marriage Last”
http://www.Relationship-Insurance.com

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Table of Contents

Love After Marriage............................................................................... 4
Grow Your Love ......................................................................................5
Problems In Marriage ...............................................................................7
Cope With Marriage Problems ..................................................................10

Introduction to: Love after marriage

This section is about how to grow your love, protect it from marriage problems that erode it, and minimize the damage that fights, arguments, quarrels, or spats can do to your love.

How to grow your love

Discover the formula for growing your love after marriage. Here are the tips and techniques people use to protect their love and keep it growing. One key is to polish and refresh those memories of happy shared experiences.

Marriage problems that erode your love

There is a complete list of the ways people actively — and without meaning to — erode their love, or their partner's love, or both. Identify any of the ways that either you or your partner might use that will chip away at the loving feelings you both shared.

Coping with marriage problems to minimize damage

Few couples realize how vital coping is to the success of their marriage. Cope with marriage problems and you'll have one of those "magical marriages."

Grow Your Love

After reading "What is Love?," you know that real love is a collection of memories of positive experiences connected to your partner. You start your marriage with a vast bundle of feelings connected to the memories. We call this bundle "real love."

Remembering and reliving a memory

Memories fade over time, unless they are remembered and relived. If you are terrifically organized, you might make a list of your top 100 memories of you and your partner. Then, you could start at the top of your list and remember and relive each experience that made you happy.

Photos, scrapbooks, diaries all contain links to those memories. Even without those links, you can remember many, many times when you shared a connection to your partner.

By remembering and reliving the memories, you keep them fresh and you keep them close. Each time you refresh a memory you're adding to your bundle of love.

Sharing a memory with someone else
Every time you share a memory with your partner or a friend, you are
reliving it and refreshing it. You are adding to your bundle.
Each telling brings the memory more alive. You get to experience the good
feelings attached to that memory again and again.

Writing about a memory

You bring a memory to life when you write it down. You could start a diary of loving memories. You could begin a journal of your memories. You could start a blog and share your happy, loving memories with anyone who happens on it.

One wonderful woman told me, "Because of the war, he shipped out soon after our marriage. I kept my love alive by remembering and reliving the happy experiences we shared before we were parted. I wrote him daily, recounting my memories and the love I felt. When he returned, our love was stronger than when he left."

Create New Happy Memories

Add to your bundle of love by continually adding positive shared experiences. (Sometimes you have to fight all of the other demands on your time to make sure you put aside time to do something with your partner that you both enjoy.)

If you keep romance alive in your marriage, with regular dates, you can do the things that lovers and loving couples do to keep the fires of love alive. Keep adding new memories and your love bundle will keep growing.

Rewrite History — Turn Bad Memories Into Good

Studies of the happiest people show clearly that they have the ability to take bad memories and find the good in them. If you have any bad memories of shared experiences with your partner, find some good in each one. Something you learned. Something that made you better or stronger. Something that helped make you more resilient.

Anytime one of the bad memories comes to mind, pair it with the good you found in it, and with time and practice you'll only have good memories associated with your partner.

Protect your love: cope immediately with any bad feelings

Coping takes the sting out of a fight, harsh words, or other marriage damaging event. Coping switches immediately away from the strong negative emotions and uses questions and reason to handle bad experiences.

The opposite of coping is reliving or re-experiencing the bad experience. Every time you mentally replay the harsh words or damaging actions by your partner, you are eroding your bundle of love. Your goal is to grow your love. Mental replays of bad experiences don't do that. (Be sure to read all the Coping articles that start on page 41.)

Practice Accepting, Forgiving, and Forgetting

Accepting, Forgiving, and Forgetting are the strongest tools in your arsenal. They will help you grow your bundle and keep it from eroding. As Ruth Graham Bell said, "A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers."

A happy marriage — that lasts — is built on an ever-growing bundle of love. Sometimes it takes distorting history, accepting the unacceptable, forgiving the unforgivable, and forgetting the unforgettable. All of these are a small price to pay for the genuine joy that comes from a happy loving marriage that lasts.

Problems in marriage ...

... are almost always caused by these 10 marriage killers

Discover what researchers have found that causes problems in marriage. If you or your partner are using any of these 10 marriage killers: stop right now and protect your love.
1. Fighting, arguing, believing that you're right

The number one cause of problems in marriage come from fights or arguments which lead to harsh words and hurtful statements. When each of you believes you're right, it makes the other person wrong.

Avoid problems in marriage by identifying the irresolvable issues and agreeing never, ever to fight about those. It's hurtful, damaging, and totally a waste of time, love, and energy. (This will cut the number of fights by from 70 to 90 Percent.)
2. Being contemptuous of your partner

Contempt is the worst of the communications that cause problems in marriage. Contempt, scorn, or distain show open disrespect of your partner. When you do have to fight or argue — and you will — never, ever display contempt.
3. Displaying disgust toward your partner

Disgust causes problems in marriage, because it shows an acute 'dislike' of your partner. It shows you are revolted, sickened, or repelled by your partner. This is the opposite of love. This erodes both of your bundles of love. Just as you control yourself so as to never strike each other physically, you must learn to control your words, gestures, and expressions — if you really care about having a happy marriage that lasts.
4. Becoming defensive, rather than listening

Defensiveness causes problems in marriage. A minor disagreement can escalate into a hurtful exchange if you respond to criticism by being defensive. To have a happy marriage — that lasts — learn to respond to criticism by listening, not going on the defensive.
5. Criticizing, rather than complaining

Criticizing causes problems in marriage because it makes your partner wrong. It's fine to complain, because that's about you. A complaint is about you being unhappy. A criticism is about your partner being wrong. It's about blaming your unhappiness on your partner. That won't get you a happy marriage that lasts. Criticizing is one of the major causes of problems in marriage.
6. Stonewalling: not being open to discussion

Stonewalling is a serious cause of problems in marriage. Stonewalling is ignoring your partner totally — not listening or responding when your partner is speaking, complaining, or even criticizing. The message stonewalling gives is "you're not important" or "I can totally ignore or disregard what you say or feel." This isn't being there for your partner. This isn't expressing love toward your partner. This can lead to real problems in marriage.
7. Making mountains out of molehills

Take something trivial and make it hugely important, and you have the recipe for problems in marriage. Save your influence for things that are important. Practice accepting, forgiving, and forgetting the little things. Do as Richard Carlson says in his book, "Don't sweat the small stuff ... and it's all small stuff."
8. Comparing your partner to other people

One way to have problems in marriage is to compare your partner to someone else: "You're just like your father." or "You sound like your mother." Or, "Why can't you be more like Mel?" You love your partner. Your partner is incomparable. If you want a happy marriage that lasts, you'll give up the idea of ever comparing your partner to someone else.
9. Judging your partner by your expectations
If you really want to start problems in marriage, judge your partner by your
own expectations.

If your partner is different in some way than what you expected, you've got two choices. You can be surprised, or you can be upset. We recommend you be surprised, because surprises make you happy. If you choose to be be upset or disappointed, we suggest you cope with that feeling, or replace it with surprise.
10. Judging Your Partner by Your Rules

Everybody is entitled to his or her own rules. I can't expect you to live by mine. You can't expect me to live by yours. So, unless you want to create problems in marriage, don't expect your partner to live by your rules.

Sally was all over Walter because Walter was not as neat as Sally. Sally had rules about picking up: everything must be in it's place, and never leave things on the kitchen sink overnight.

This difference in neatness (which, by the way, is an irresolvable difference), almost drove them apart. Sally criticized. Walter became defensive, and over time he just tuned her out and turned to stonewalling.

Finally, they learned about irresolvable differences and agreed never, ever again to fight about neatness issues. Sally still wanted us to acknowledge that she was really "right" about being a stickler for neatness.

We helped Sally understand that both of them were "right." Sally, however, was judging Walter by her rules. And that will virtually always lead to problems in marriage.

Now You Know 10 Ways To Create Problems In Marriage

If you recognized yourself or your partner, in any of those 10 marriage killers, and you really want your marriage to be happy and to last for the rest of your life, learn how to stop doing what you were doing. Do something more productive, and learn to cope with those things your partner does. Luckily, coping is the next topic on ways to Grow Your Love.

Cope with Marriage Problems

We've talked about how to increase love in your marriage, and then about avoiding the ten marriage killers. However, the most valuable marriage tips are about coping with any marriage problem.

Amazingly, the evidence indicates it's often the little things that kill marriages. Here's a quote from a study called: "Social Allergies in Romantic Relationships."

"Wet towels on the bathroom floor cause mild irritation. But the reaction gets stronger each time it happens. Through repeated exposure it may produce a social allergy — a reaction of hypersensitive annoyance or disgust."

Learn what coping is and how to do it

You cope when you learn to handle any bad feeling you get. You neutralize it. You can even turn it into a laugh. You don't let it grow until it's a "hypersensitive annoyance" or "disgust."

Coping is managing, handling, and dealing with the little things and not allowing them to become big things. Coping is vitally important, because it's the way you keep a marriage happy, and stay positive enough to begin each 'issue' discussion on a positive note.

If you don't cope well, you run the risk of building ever larger feelings of resentment, dissatisfaction, or annoyance with the partner you vowed to love forever.

What's the Secret to Coping?

Until the publication of our copyrighted Coping program, most coaches and counselors offered happy marriage tips that were basically affirmations or clichés. "In a hundred years it won't matter," or "Don't sweat the little things," or "Don't make mountains out of mole-hills."

In our unique Coping program we offer four simple questions to ask yourself as soon as you become aware that you're having a bad feeling about your partner. These questions serve to take you out of your feelings, and move you to your reasoning self. They lead to one of four simple choices that are the wisest possible choices to resolve the bad feelings and cope successfully with any marriage problem. To learn more about coping, visit: http://www.Relationship-Insurance.com