Living together is never easy, whether it is with your spouse, children or parents. If you don’t want to end up seeing your divorce lawyers and getting a divorce, it is important to nurture your relationship with your spouse so that they feel loved, and to ensure good communication with them so they know how you feel. Divorce brings its own set of problems, so it’s not always the easy fix that people think it will be, especially when children are involved.
If you are feeling a bit negative about your relationship, here are some tips that might help.
- Spend more time together alone. This might mean waking up 15 minutes earlier so you can have your morning coffee together before the children and the day’s responsibilities require your attention.
- Make date nights. Remember when you were going out together what joy you felt when going on a date. You could hardly wait. It won’t be quite the same, since you are now living together, but a date night will help you have fun together and remember the good times you had before responsibilities struck.
- When you see each other at the end of the day, kiss properly, don’t just peck. If you have got into the habit of pecking, your spouse will be surprised and delighted.
- Take a moment to hug each other whether you are in public or not. Showing affection will make each of you more content and feel loved.
- Learn what your spouse’s main love language is and do that. It could be words of affirmation, gift giving, spending quality time together, acts of service or physical touch. How do you tell? It’s usually what they do with you. For instance, if your spouse often gives you gifts, that is their main love language. If you give them ‘no-reason’ gifts too they will feel loved.
- Respect your spouse. Men especially need the respect of their spouse to feel loved.
- Talk about your spouse’s day and really listen. If they have had a bad day, seek to affirm and encourage them.
- Tell your spouse you love him/her. Leave notes or post it on Facebook, but make it plain that you think your spouse is great.
- Be willing to change at least one thing about yourself to please your partner. Ask them what most irritates them about you and make an effort to change it.
- Listen to what he complains about doing around the house and see if you can change that for him, even on a temporary basis. You might mow the lawn or get someone else to do it as a surprise, so you can have more time together. Or it might just be taking out the garbage if he hates doing it.