7 Tips to Prevent Resentment from Destroying Your Marriage
A marriage demands a lot of attention, love, respect, understanding, and the willingness to make it work. Many times, couples often complain about how things have changed after their marriage and how better off or happier they were during the dating phase.
This is a common complaint of many married couples. But what most fail to understand is that just as you need to woo your partner in the dating phase and be careful about the relationship, the same goes with a marriage. Issues such as physical and emotional intimacy, uncontrolled anger or suppressed anger and hurt, financial matters and even infidelity are a few factors that can create resentment between partners.
Here are 7 tips that can help prevent resentment from destroying your marriage:
1. Be Open about Feelings
One of the best ways to prevent resentment is to acknowledge your feelings. When partners keep their feelings suppressed, even on trivial matters such as meals and schedules, it can slowly lead to resentment. So, to prevent resentment from destroying your marriage, practice being vulnerable and acknowledge your feelings.
2. Keep an Open Channel of Communication
When you do not communicate honestly with each other, issues are bound to crop up in your marriage and lead to resentment in the longer run. Be honest about your past, your ideas about life, your finances, and your concerns at work, with any family member or even the marriage.
3. Take Responsibility for the Good and the Bad
Who wants to be held responsible for something that goes wrong? No one! Same is the case in a marriage. But to prevent resentment from destroying your marriage, take responsibility for your role in the good and the wrongs that happen in your marriage. Own up to your part in any conflict and dispute and strive to correct it.
4. Make Sincere Apologies When Needed
When you make a sincere apology, you are telling your partner you understand how they feel and that you are feeling bad about hurting them and it is sure to validate their feelings and bring forgiveness and allow you both to move past it.
5. Show Empathy to Your Partner
Expressing empathy doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But it is needed in a marriage. Expressing empathy can go a long way in keeping things smooth. Expressing empathy tells your partner that you understand how they feel and why they feel so.
6. Be Patient and Practice Forgiveness
A marriage needs a lot of conscious efforts to keep it going. Make a commitment to practice forgiveness towards your partner and don’t hold any grudges against them. No one is perfect and it is only human to make a few mistakes here and there, as long as they are not truly harmful or vindictive in nature. Be patient with your partner.
7. Be Respectful
If you don’t like something about your partner, express it to them in a calm and respectful manner.
A little thoughtfulness and understanding can go a long way in building a happy and healthy marriage.
