Marriage Counseling: July 2009

Husband-Wife Relationship: Life Long Relationship

Starting, maintaining and improving relationships are the most important aspects of one's life. There are lots of relationships like husband and wife, boy and girl about to marry, parents and children, between siblings etc. Among all of them, the husband-wife relationship is a very unique and life long relationship. Therefore, we are going to concentrate on the following types of relationships:

Relationship between husband and wife
Relationship between a boy and a girl deciding to marry

Let us look at the most important factors that are conducive to maintain and strengthen these relationships.

Most Important Aspects in These Relationships

The husband-wife (already married or having decided to marry) is the most beautiful relationship.
Nurture it carefully.
Do not permit any one else (who so ever he or she or they may be) to create a crevice (rift) in it.
Develop mutual respect.
Develop mutual trust.
Communicate, communicate and communicate with each other on whole lots of things.
Practice respectful communication (do not confuse it by being submissive).
Never ever use foul, un-civil language or four letter words while communicating and addressing each other.
Maintain equal status relationship.
Do not exert one-upmanship (or one-upwomanship) on the other.
It's not competition; it's pure companionship all the way.
Develop mutual consideration and caring: demonstrate by communicating and in actions.
Support and care for each other in trying (difficult) times (sickness, loss of job or any other such happenings) more particularly.
Be genuine with each other; do not pretend or fake.
Find qualities in each other and not faults (and not keep correcting the faults in the other).
Frequently, demonstratively, appreciate or admire those qualities.
Develop love and affection: also, demonstrate frequently by hugging, kissing and holding each others' hands for no reason, every now and then.
Develop friendship and so, carry out open friendly communication on whole lot of matters under the sun.
Give each other some private space.
Don't keep nagging the other; it can get on other's nerves.
Mutually satisfying physical relationship is important. It requires full participation from both the partners. It needs to be learnt and practiced and then needs to be re-invented (This is strictly applicable only to already married couples. It is strictly "No" for yet to marry couples).

Love Lots, love All the Way

The major objective of husband wife relationship is: give love and seek love.

So,

Do not find only the drawbacks or mistakes in the spouse; always err on finding the qualities and bright spots in your spouse. Every person has some good qualities and also some drawbacks. So, do not make yourself miserable by insisting to concentrate only on your spouse's weaknesses (you have some other sets of weaknesses too). Love lots.
Do not criticize; make suggestions respectfully if necessary. Praise lots unconditionally as well as conditionally. Love lots.
Do not keep correcting the spouse. Love lots.
Do not be the perennial teacher or preacher to your souse; be friend and companion. Love lots.
Do not try to make your spouse your carbon copy. Love lots.
Do not humiliate or insult or belittle your spouse. Love lots.
Do not sulk, participate a lot, communicate respectfully. Love lots.
Do not compare or compete with your spouse; collaborate. Love lots.
Don't shout; communicate politely. Love lots.
Don't ignore or become indifferent towards your spouse ever. Care lots. Love lots.
Do not insist on only your spouse fulfilling all of your desires; you will also need to contribute towards fulfilling these desires yourself and also, in contributing towards fulfilling the desires of your spouse. Let any misunderstanding on this point not create any confusion in your mind. Love lots.
Your spouse and you may have certain important priority beliefs (small or big is immaterial). Give each other adequate space and time to pursue those beliefs respectfully.

To Love Your Child, Love Each Other: You Have No Escape From Loving Each Other

A child wants wholesome love from both the parents for growing into a normal adult and human being. He wants love from his father. He wants love from his mother. He wants love from them together as a parental unit or a parental entity. He wants love in home.

If his parents do not love each other, the child will never be able to get a sense of living in a complete home. Something is missing somewhere, in home, for him. He will never be able to sense of love from them together as a parental entity. For him, love from parents as one single unified entity is missing. He will never grow normally.

When husband and wife love each other, it produces a kind of synergistic love in home and that the child enjoys, it is very healthy for him. That is many times more than when only mother showers her love on him or only father showers his love on him in their separate ways.

So, there is no escape from loving each other since you already love your child so much. Love each other Mr husband and Mrs wife, you don't lose anything in love. Love does not need financing or rocket science or strategic management. Then, love only multiplies.

Celebrate Uniqueness But Do Change for Better

In most marriages the husband has got some expectations from wife and wife has some expectations from the husband. Many couples do make some allowances for the differences in their habits, interests, outlooks, thinking etc and even accept each other despite some conflicting aspects on these matters. However, many, why majority of husbands want that their wives should be like them in most aspects and the wives want the husbands to be like them. Carrying it too far can create problems.

So, for improving husband wife relationship, don't expect your partner to be your carbon copy.

It is therefore a myth that the marital discords occur only due to the differences in the personalities, attitudes likings/disliking, habits and behaviors of husband and wife. That may be the trigger but the real root cause of the dissonance or conflicts is that one of them wants the other to change into the carbon copy of the self. This extraordinary expectation can be very heavy on the other person particularly when this demand or expectation is expressed in a forceful or condescending manner. One must understand that it is very difficult to change one’s personality, attitudes likings/disliking, habits and behaviors not only in a short period but also over long period.

If the wife likes watching romantic movies or reading romantic novels and husband likes to watch action movies and action novels, it is not necessary for them to expect the other to do the same. As understanding husband and wife, they may start taking interest in each other’s likings over a period of time- that’s the best thing to happen and ideally should happen. Or it may happen that one is a very tidy person and other compromises tidiness for whatsoever reasons, one must learn to let go each other. The tidy person should compromise with other person’s untidiness and untidy person should try to become tidier gradually and also, in the process, both should help each other in making the home a tidier place. It may also happen that one finds it a necessity to pray and spends some time in the process of praying while the other person either just does not believe or is in a position to finish praying in a jiffy. Give each other some space and time on such and similar issues. Different food habits may be yet another example. While gradually developing taste for the food that is liked by your spouse is always a good proposition (though may not be always practical), the family can always work out menus that work well for all of them.

Yet, the two are unique individuals and forcing each other to become “ditto” is not the answer. The best thing will be to enjoy and celebrate the uniqueness of each other while some good changes may be taking place in both. Both should try to change for better.

Qualities in a Spouse (Potential Spouse or Existing Spouse): Applicable to Both, Husband and Wife

We spoke about the differences in the personalities of the life partners and resultant possible discords between the two due to such differences. Therefore, before deciding to marry, one can check on the qualities of one's prospective spouse though practically it is very difficult to do so easily.

Everyone likes to have a perfect, happy and permanent marriage and married life. To a large extent it may depend on the qualities in the existing or potential spouse, qualities in husband as well as qualities in wife. With good qualities in the marriage partners, the marriage may work well. But that is no guarantee because good marriages do not happen automatically just because on some counts the two partners see a few things in the same way. However, matching up of qualities is one of the factors in marriages that one can consider.

As a ready reference, we give below a list of some 75 qualities (and disqualifications) one may look out for in an existing or potential spouse. They are arranged simply alphabetically and therefore, order of their presentation does not signify their order of importance.Add more those you can think of. Then, arrange them in order of your preference by paired comparison method or any other method you like. Take the prospective candidate and check him/her against these qualities/disqualifications. Can be even more precise by rating him/her on a scale 0 to 5 after attaching weights to the qualities.

The List:

A person who will help you to make the marriage work
Acceptance of the partner with his/her qualities as well as flaws
Affectionate
Age
Aggressive/Submissive/Assertive
Allows flexibility to spouse (in food and drinks selection, dresses, job etc)
Angry and shouts
Bragging type
Can be a good parent
Caring
Commitment
Common sense
Communicative with spouse and those with whom he comes in contact
Considerate
Discourteous/Rude
Distrustful
Does not get angry
Dominating
Drinks (social drinker likely to get addict or already habitual drinker)
Take drugs/Drug addict
Earnings
Education
Ethical behavior
Fake/Pretends
Family background
Flexible
Friendship
Gossipy
Height
Helping
Honesty/Genuineness
Humility; not arrogant and full of him/herself
Hygiene
Immature
Insults
Intelligence
Jealous
Job
Kindness
Languages
Lazy
Looks
Looks more at qualities than the flaws
Loving
Loyalty towards spouse (no infidelity)
Macho type
Mature
Nationality
Normal health
Not a miser
Not hysterical
Open and sharing (with spouse)
Patient and understanding
Personal responsibility of spouse, children and home
Political
Potential to grow professionally
Pronunciations in different languages (required to deal with people in the society)
Reckless spender
Respectful to spouse and other members of family and society
Rigid
Romantic
Secretive, hides things from spouse
Smokes
Social, has good friends in adequate numbers
Stable (not blow hot blow cold type- changing colors and moods every now and then)
Street smart
Supporting
Suspicious
Takes interest in many things other than profession
Tells lies/Makes stories
Tidy
Trustworthy
Truthful
Unproductive
Uses assertive behavior at appropriate places and occasions (not aggressive)

and now the tail piece.....

Who Says Marriages Are Made in Heaven?
No, They Have to Be Worked Out on Earth

Taking marriage for granted is the sure shot way to failure of marriage- it may result in withdrawals, tenseness, irritation, bickering, sadness, unhappiness, discords, fights and may be, divorce. Everyone gets adversely and negatively affected- husband, wife and children.

Never ever assume that since it was love at first sight or second sight or it was a well analyzed or well planned search for the life partner through a series of dating procedures or it was a perfect match making by way of arranged marriage procedure also involving parents or other well wishers and also the horoscope matching pundits, it will automatically end up in a perfect marriage.

Do not think that successful marriage will automatically happen. No, it does not happen; it has to be worked out. It requires the necessary values, knowledge (rational, emotional and spiritual), thinking patterns (paradigms) and a strong will to develop and implement the related skills and competencies and finally using those skills and competencies through out the married life. Also refer: (Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://humansoftware.blogspot.com/ or http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3#

Developing the marriage related skills and competencies and implementing them need to be addressed with lots of seriousness. You will have to list down what skills and competencies you should develop and implement to make your marriage a success. Get knowledge on them, acquire them, practice them and implement them. Also refer: (Competencies- Life Management) http://shyam-bhatawdekar.blogspot.com/ or http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#

(You may feel interested in reading about "Parental Responsibilities" at: http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/)

Other Related Topics of Interest

Counseling: General and Psychological

(Anger Management) http://controlling-anger.blogspot.com/
(Children’s Behavior Problems) http://child-behavior-problems.blogspot.com/
(Cholesterol Control) http://controlling-cholesterol.blogspot.com/
(Counseling) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/
(Counseling) http://counseling-family.blogspot.com/
(Cross Cultural Etiquette) http://cross-cultural-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Emotions) http://emotion-feeling.blogspot.com/
(Executive Etiquette and Manners) http://executive-manners.blogspot.com/
(Exercises) http://exercises-plan.blogspot.com/
(Family Counseling) http://family-harmony.blogspot.com/
(Health: Homeopathy) http://homeopathy-medicines.blogspot.com/
(Life Management: Competencies) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4
(Life Management: Effectiveness Management: HSoftware) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/management-in-life-profession-family/6txz9nck6g3/3
(Life management: I Am Liberated) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/i-am-liberated/6txz9nck6g3/6#view
(Marriage Counseling) http://marriage-counsel.blogspot.com/
(Ownership on Job) http://job-ownership.blogspot.com/
(Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/
(Personality) http://human-personality.blogspot.com/
(Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/
(Quit Smoking) http://quit-smoking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Self Development) http://managing-self.blogspot.com/
(Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://managing-stress-strain.blogspot.com/
(Stress Management) http://management-of-stress.blogspot.com/
(Telephone Etiquette) http://telephone-etiquette.blogspot.com/
(Walking) http://walking-plan.blogspot.com/
(Winners and Losers) http://winners-losers.blogspot.com/