subject: Marriage Counseling - What You Can Do To Help Your Relationship Avoid A Breakdown [print this page] A high number of people in dating and marriage relationships attempt to ignore or cover up an obvious fact...that men and women are very very different. The end result of this is, a large percentage of women and men choose to measure the opposite sex by their specific gender biased standards. A man ends up judging his wife's communication patterns by what he and his male friends engage in. A woman determines what her husband means based on what a close female friend would mean if she were to speak and act like him. Both sexes are suffering from a lack of proper perscpective.
Assume for a moment that one spouse is trying to understand the other spouse better. They describe a situation that is troubling to them and then ask why their mate behaves in that particular manner. In response to their question, they receive a good logical answer. What's the next thing they often do? Do they take the information and ponder it, think about how to work it into the fabric of their lives? Sadly, many don't. Attempting to fight the answer is what far too many people do. They attack the new information and become defensive, instead of seriously considering it. "Well that's not what a woman would do," or "that's not what a man would do."
The language may be different than what I just used, but the message is clear...why does the opposite sex have to be so different and not more like us? Why can't women be more efficient when they talk, get to the point quicker? Why don't men get it, how come it's so difficult for him to understand what I'm trying to say?
The problem is clear. Measuring their mate by unrealistic standards is causing men and women to suffer unnecessary pain. Their mate can't possibly meet the absurd expectations they are putting on them. It's being conveyed by their spouse that they've got some sort of fatal flaw, something seriously wrong with them. The spouse or mate that is being measured by unrealistic standards is highly likely to stop trying or in many cases, give up all together.
Walking a mile in the the other spouse's shoes enables them to see things from a different perspective than just their own. As mentioned earlier, it will most likely require several miles to gain the valued perspective necessary to make the marriage more harmonious.
Why are you together? The basis for failure in any human endeavour is fuzzy and unclear objectives or goals. In dating and marriage relationships this is also a very serious problem. It's common for people to fall into the trap of believing that ultimate goal is to get in a relationship. Once in the relationship we figure we've arrived, yet nothing could be further from the truth.
In comparison to what our ancestors dealt with, the world we live in today is far more complex. The marriage relationship is also more complex and requires a much higher degree of skill than it did when our roles and responsibilities as husbands and wives were rigidly defined. Increasing their understanding of the communication patterns of the opposite sex is essential for men and women who want a happy marriage.
A marriage must function as a team for it to be really effective. We may whole heartedly agree with this statement about teamwork in marriage, yet suffer from rarely seeing real life examples. Truth be told, learning to work as a team in marriage is a much more challenging task than most people anticipate. The marriage relationship is full of more emotion than most other human relationships.
Because of this emotional intensity, it's vital for a couple to learn how to work cooperatively together. As a couple and a family, they will be enabled to be succeed. The proper channelling of their emotions will also prevent them from tearing each other apart.
To channel their collective passions, a couple needs clear objectives. They help the team see how beneficial their differences are. Good teams are diverse teams. Where one is strong, the other is weak.
