Here is a list of 15 things
which, if you give up on them, will make your married life a lot easier and a
lot happier. We hold on to so many things that cause a great deal of
stress and frustration in our relationships – and instead of letting them
all go, instead of allowing our relationships to flourish and blossom – we
cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today you will give up on all those
things that no longer serve you, and you will embrace change. Starting today
you will make your marriage work.
Ready? Here we go:
1. Give up your unrealistic
expectations
Give up all your unrealistic
expectation about marriage being this beautiful box full of all the things you
have always longed for and see marriage for what it truly is – an empty box
where you and your partner MUST put all the things you want to take out. Accept
that if you want to have love in your marriage, you have to put it there. If
you want to have happiness, passion, intimacy, companionship, trust in your
marriage, you have to put it there. Relationships take work, a lot of work
and if you want to live a happy, beautiful and loving life next to your
partner, you will both commit to making your marriage work. Always remember,
relationships don’t work unless you do.
2. Give up control
People are made to be loved,
not controlled. The more you try to control your partner, the more you will
push him or her away from you and the less love there will be left between you
two. Give up control and allow the ONE you love to just be. Allow the person you
love to be who they are and not who you want them to be.
3. Give up possessiveness
No matter how long you two
have been together and no matter if you are married and have 10 children
together or not, you do not possess your partner. He/she is not your propriety. You
both are two separate entities and just as you are separate from him, so is she
separate from you. Give up possessiveness and allow your partner to breathe.
Give him/ her space and freedom they truly deserve and watch how much more
beautiful your relationship becomes.
4. Give up criticism
Give up the need to
criticize every little thing your partner does or doesn’t do and instead start
appreciating those many things that made you fall in love with this person in
the first place. Seek to praise not to criticize. Keep in mind that you
attract more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.
“Compliments and criticism
are all ultimately based on some form of projection.” ~ Billy Corgan
5. Give up the need to
fix your partner
Relationships aren’t about
fixing one another, relationships are about loving, caring and supporting one
another. You might think it’s your responsibility to “save” and “fix” your
partner but trust me, that’s not really the case. Give up the need to fix your
partner and work on growing, improving and evolving together instead.
“Men marry women with the
hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change.
Invariably they are both disappointed.” ~ Albert Einstein
6. Give up your jealous
behavior
”A competent and
self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is
invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein
The root cause of jealousy
is insecurity. Work on letting go of your insecurities and you will immediately
understand the futility of a jealous behavior. You will immediately give
jealousy up.
7. Give up on your fears
Give up the fear of cheating
on one another, the fear of falling out of love, the fear of having your
present relationship become as toxic as the previous ones and so on. Get out of
your fearful head and into your loving heart. Give up on all your fears and
love with all your heart.
“Perfect love casts out
fear. If fear exists, then there is not perfect love.” ~ A Course In Miracles
8. Give up the chase
for perfection
What screws us up the most
is this idea we have in our heads about how relationships should be like and
how our partners should behave. Instead of savoring, loving and praising one
another, nurturing the relationships we have, we waste our precious time and
energy seeking perfection, in ourselves, in our partner There’s no such thing
as perfect relationships simply because there’s no such thing as perfect
people. Your marriage is and always will be a reflection of who and your
partner are – two perfectly imperfect people.
“When you stop expecting
people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” ~ Donald Miller, A
Million Miles in a Thousand Years
9. Give up on blame
Believe it or not, it’s not
the other person’s job to make you feel all the things that you yourself can’t
feel on your own. It’s not the other person’s job to make you feel loved, happy
and whole when you yourself feel unworthy, unhappy and incomplete. That’s not
their job, that’s your job. Give up the need to blame your partner for
everything that goes wrong in your world, for why you aren’t feeling as loved
and as happy as you would like to feel and start taking ownership of your own
thoughts and feelings.
“Tell everyone you know: “My
happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be
happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And
before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way
you feel and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love
them is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.” ~ Esther
Hicks
10. Give up the need to
always be right
Remember when you and your
partner first started dating? Remember how beautiful and how lovingly you spoke
to one another? Back then you didn’t care whether you were right all the time
or not. All that you cared about was to make the other person feel loved,
appreciated and happy. So why change now? Give up the need to always be right
and choose to be kind, loving and supportive instead.
“Common courtesy plays a big
role in happy marriages. People who are permanently married are polite to one
another. They don’t want to hurt one another’s feelings, and they don’t try to
make the other one feel humiliated. People who are married for life are
extremely kind to one another.” ~ Frank Pittman
11. Give up living your life
according to the other person’s expectations
It’s true that relationships
require compromise but when you compromise too often, living your life according
to the other person’s expectations, you risk losing yourself and that’s how you
start feeling bitter, depleted, frustrated and very unhappy. Don’t lose the “I”
in playing the “We” game. Compromise when needed but not so much that you lose
your sense of self. Balance is key.
“The hardest-learned lesson:
that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.” ~ Mignon
McLauglin
12. Give up your clingy
behavior
There’s nothing less
attractive than a person who clings onto his/her partner expecting the other
person to provide all their emotional, physical, and spiritual needs. Take the
“pressure” off of your partner’s shoulders and put it on your shoulders
instead. Seek to become the provider of your own their emotional,
physical, and spiritual needs. Be the source of your own happiness.
“You have so little faith in
yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in
you, and so you seek without for what you cannot find within.” ~ A Course In
Miracles
13. Give up asking for more
than you give
“Some of the biggest
challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a
relationship in order to get something. They’re trying to find someone who’s
going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last
is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place
that you go to take.” ~ Anthony Robbins
If you enter a relationship
expecting to get a lot more than you give, chances are that you will have
many marriage regrets. The only way a relationship will last is if you see
your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go
to take. Give more, ask less.
14. Give up your emotional
baggage
Make peace with your past.
Make peace with your “stuff”. Don’t carry the heavy weights of your past with
you into the present. If you want to build a happy, loving and healthy
relationship, you have to start fresh, you have to leave your emotional baggage
behind.
“The past has no power to
stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do
that. What is grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.” ~ Lao Tzu
15. Give up attachment
There is a huge difference
between love and attachment and what most people call “love” is nothing more
than attachment. Attachment comes from a place of fear, while love is pure,
kind, and selfless. Love is ready to detach and let go if the relationship
between two people becomes toxic and detrimental to the healthy growth and
evolution of both parties. Attachment, on the other hand, loves to hold onto
toxicity, feeding itself with the pain and suffering of people.
Deepak Chopra says it best
with these words: “Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you.
Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires. Love imposes no
demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand – “Make me feel whole.” Love
expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything
but two people.”
And these are the 15 things
you should give up to make not only marriage work but also any romantic
relationship.
P.S. It’s very important to
understand that some people, no matter how much they love one another and no
matter how much they want to make their marriage work, might not be able to do
so simply because they both learned the lessons they had to learn and now life
calls them in different directions. To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, soul
mates, they might come into your life to reveal another layer of yourself to
you, to help you see a part of you that you did not know was there, but when
the work is done, they will leave, making room for something new, for something
better to come your way.
This is why it’s so
important to listen to your heart and intuition and make sure that you don’t
stay in a relationship that makes you feel dead on the inside simply
because that’s what society and everyone around you expect you to do. Your
peace of mind, health, happiness, and well-being are more important than
anything else. So stay happy!
“The real act of marriage
takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It’s a
choice you make – not just on your wedding day, but over and over again – and
that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.” ~ Barbara
De Angelis
