If your marriage went through a crisis or if you or your spouse is considering a divorce, you should know that there is still hope. It is possible to work things out and to fix your marriage. You should be ready to face several obstacles, including your spouse not being cooperative.
Ideas About Fixing Your Marriage Alone
How to fix your marriage alone really depends on what has occurred. It also depends on what kind of reaction you are dealing with coming from your spouse. There might have been a specific bad event and your spouse might be too angry or resentful to consider forgiving you and getting back together.
It’s also possible that your relationship might have slowly fizzled out over the years and your spouse might not see your marriage as being worth saving or might not seem willing to make any efforts to change things.
What May Be Ahead of You
If you want to save your marriage, you need to know what is ahead of you. You will have to work hard to make changes and to believe your marriage is worth saving. This might take time and your spouse may not change his or her mind right away.
Give your spouse some time and some space if you hurt them. This could be what your spouse needs if there was a big hurt or fight. Later you may be able to talk to your spouse to better understand their feelings and to apologize if you hurt them.
Take some time to think about your relationship with your spouse and identify the issues you are encountering and the things that need to be worked on.
Apologizing alone is not going to be enough and you need to clearly express that you want to work things out.
Convincing your spouse that your marriage is worth saving might not be easy.
In time, especially with professional help from a marriage friendly counselor, coach or therapist, you will learn different actions you can actually begin to take to make things better between you. It is very common for one spouse to be more motivated than the other to want to work things out.
Fortunately, my experience has been that one of the spouses going for help can make all the difference in whether or not the marriage can be healed. When one spouse goes for outside help and begin to interact differently with the more reluctant spouse, things almost automatically can begin to change in time as a result.
Following are tips to help strengthen your marriage. But first, check out my products related to marriage health.
Plan of Action and Patience
Put together a plan of action you can follow to improve the relationship and finally build a marriage that will make both you and your spouse happier. Your spouse might change his or her mind once they see that you are actually carrying out a different way of being toward him or her.
In time, as you are changing in your style of interacting with your spouse, they may be willing to open up and tell you what they would like or expect from the relationship and the kind of marriage they would like to have.
You should also focus on your personal growth so that you can feel fulfilled and be able to give more to your spouse even if they aren’t quite ready to give back.
Be patient and start working on things by yourself if your spouse is not ready to follow your plan.
Waverly Hanson
Marriage Counselor & Author
In my personal life, I have had a long successful marriage and have remarried following my husband's death. I have had three sons and helped raise a niece for three years and have seven grandchildren. I have loved spending time with them as they were growing up.
I also enjoy getting together with family and friends, ATVing in the mountains, photography, hiking, and traveling. I also enjoy reading, creating art, decorating, and serving others by volunteering.
Assisting couples in rebuilding their marriages has been so rewarding as I've had the privilege of seeing hundreds of couples reunite and get back to being positively connected to one another.
I also work with personal development and those who want to move forward by making positive improvements such as goal setting, self-care, boundaries, behavioral improvements, overcoming procrastination, conflict management, etc.