How to Enhance and Enrich Your Marriage

Any marriage counsellor will tell you that one of the most common problems observed when couples come for help is poor communication skills. People get into trouble in their marriages because they have not developed their ability to listen and communicate.

Barriers to Communication

These are a few of the things that prevent people from communicating effectively:

• Not knowing how to communicate properly
• Not taking the time to think through what you want to say
• Not taking the time to anticipate what your partner might be thinking and feeling
• Fear of revealing too much of yourself
• Fear of your partner’s anger
• Not wanting to hurt your partner’s feelings Empathy and Acceptance

People marry because they want to spend the rest of their lives with their partner. They have every hope of growing together and creating a relationship that makes them feel emotionally healthy. Two factors that are necessary for this to happen are empathy and acceptance on the part of both partners. Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in another’s shoes and understand how they view their reality, how they feel about things. Demonstrating empathy and acceptance is critical to maintaining a strong relationship. Let’s look next at some communication skills that enable you to create a climate of empathy, acceptance, and understanding. First we will explore a skill called Active Listening.

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Oklahoma ‘covenant marriages’ aim to lower divorce rate

The Daily O’Collegian has posted an interesting article questioning a new bill introduced into the Oklahoma legislature that recommends couples who are to be married go through premarital counselling, enter a so-called ‘covenant marriage’, and then be unable to divorce based on grounds of incompatibilty.
It doesn’t exclude other grounds for divorce, such as abuse, and presumably actual adultery, but it does suggest that couples who have undergone this counselling are somehow immune from problems later on in their marriages.

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Quick links: 7 questions to consider in choosing your ideal marriage partner

Dr Neill has written Seven questions to consider in choosing your ideal marriage partner which include:

• Can you accept each other as you are, warts and all?
• Do you like each other?
• Are your values compatible?
• Are you compatible in the way you express (and discuss) your feelings?

A useful starting point when considering a long-term relationship.