Faithfulness and forgivness are the key ingredients in a successful marriage. So how do stay faithful to your partner even after long years of being together? How important is forgiveness in rebuilding intimacy in your marriage?

We would like to share with you an article on how to keep your marriage strong with faithfulness and forgiveness. Enjoy!

Keeping Your Marriage Together With Faithfulness and Forgiveness

By D P Haynes

There is no doubt that serious work is involved in keeping your marriage together but the benefits of doing so far exceed the amount of work required. In fact, if you have the right perspective regarding your marriage you really won’t consider it work to make your marriage better and keep you and your spouse happy.

The most important factor in keeping your marriage together is for the husband and wife to be committed to their vow to stay married until death do us part. It is one thing to say the words but it’s another thing to try your best to live them out. No one is perfect but if you commit to honoring your spouse and your word you will be able to face some of the difficult trials you go through. Life is a series of questions and answers and before you speak or act with regard to marriage impacting stuff ask yourself a question and let your conscious be your guide.

Keeping Your Marriage Together With Faithfulness

* Should I be having lunch with him/her when my spouse doesn’t know about it?

* Is it OK to continue to have personal conversations with someone who I’m beginning to feel attracted to?

* Would my spouse approve me flirting on line with strangers even though it’s anonymous?

These are just a few questions in the area of honoring and respecting your spouse by doing the right thing. You may be unhappy with some aspects of your marriage and think that substituting affections from someone else is keeping your marriage together. Please don’t be deceived into thinking that even thoughts of unfaithfulness are healthy for your marriage. A little spark can burn down an entire forest and a little innocent play can turn to marriage ending infidelity.

Keeping Your Marriage Together With Forgiveness

* Should I forgive him/her for bringing up past wrong doings during one of our heated conversations?

* Should I forgive my spouse when he/she offends me by always bringing up negative stuff?

* Should I forgive my spouse when he/she took advice from a friend instead of listening to me.

* Should I forgive him/her when I wasn’t even consulted about a major decision that impacts our family?

The answer to all of the above questions is obviously yes! Unfortunately, keeping your marriage together requires a heavy dose of forgiveness. Keep in mind that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting or continuing to let stuff happens that is driving you up the wall. However, it does mean that after you discuss the matter you put it behind you and don’t let it become a barrier to keeping a healthy and happy marriage. If you hold onto old stuff you will get stuck in the past and your marriage will never grow into the best marriage possible.

Conclusion:

These are a few secrets to Keeping Your Marriage Together. There are many more key steps you can take to make your marriage happier and healthier.

No marriage is perfect and your marriage doesn’t need to be in a crisis to take advantage of experienced professionals who have helped thousands of couples get or keep the marriage they desire. Just Click Here to uncover the secrets to having more love and happiness in your marriage.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=D_P_Haynes

They say that familiarity breeds contempt.  Trial separation has become an alternative solution for couples who prefer to make their marriage work apart from each other. But would this save a failing marriage?

Here’s an insightful post on Psychology Today if you think a trial separation is the best solution to bring back intimacy in your marriage.

Can a Marital Separation Make Your Marriage Better? | Psychology Today

Can a Marital Separation Make Your Marriage Better? Taking a “Time-Out” Under the Right Circumstances Can Help Relationships. Published on April 25, 2010. There are three main reasons why couples separate: as a step in the divorce …

Maintaining intimacy in your marriage can be achieved if a couple tries to rebuild the connection that they had before.  But how do you rebuild that connection? Simple: you can re-create that spark by spending time with your partner, or by simply having deep conversations with him / her.  There are a lot of ways to improve intimacy in your marriage; try to let your creative juices flow.

Here’s a great post on how to improve intimacy in your marriage by Stephen Martin.

Improving Intimacy in Marriage by Stephen Martin

Intimacy is the cornerstone of marriage and it encompasses every aspect of a relationship including the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection between two people. Physical intimacy is often what sparks a relationship, …

The common misconception about having a successful marriage is trying to change your partner. Unfortunately, this might be even more detrimental to your marriage because if you start criticizing your partner, he /s he would feel less valued and less appreciated.

Here is a short but helpful video from MarriageAdvice.com emphasizing the importance of accepting your partner for who he / she is. Enjoy!

Marriage Counseling – You Can Never Change Your Spouse

Marriage Counseling – You Can Never Change Your Spouse

To improve intimacy in your marriage, you and your partner have to communicate effectively.  It takes more than listening to your partner; you have to understand where your partner is coming from, their values, and their concerns.  Furthermore, you’ll discover more about your partner and ultimately yourself if you learn how to effectively communicate.

Here is an article we hope will help on how to effectively communicate in your marriage.

Effective Communication in Marriage | Marriage Intimacy

Communication is a process of sending a message through a medium to the receiver. It basically means to pass on or share or exchange views.

To keep you inspired all throughout the week, here are some intimacy in marriage quotes to share to your partner. Have a great week ahead!

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Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret

Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner

A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time. ~Anne Taylor Fleming

In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. ~Robert Sexton

One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it. ~George MacDonald

Have you been married for a while? If so, then you know that in marriage, as in any relationship, it’s easy to get so comfortable with the idea that the other person will permanently be there.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that–the other person–the one that is thought of as permanently there often ends up thinking they are being taken for granted. When this happens, the intimacy in their marriage begins to wane. Then the real trouble begins.

Even though it’s comforting to know that you both vowed to be together forever, relationships, even marriage relationships should never be taken for granted. If this happens, it almost always begins a downward spiral that is very challenging to get out of. Intimacy in any marriage is an essential aspect that helps each partner feel loved, cared for, and valued.

Keep It Alive

In order to keep the intimacy in your marriage alive and well it is important to find ways to spend time quality time together; quality time together is never pointless. In order to have a healthy thriving relationship there needs to be quality time as a couple, time for you, and if there are kids, time spent as a family. Life always needs to have a balance. This idea is also true in a marriage as well. It is essential that each person sustain this sense of balance and a little romance time into the mix couldn’t hurt. Setting up time to be romantic–reminding each other how much you both care, promotes intimacy.

You can create new levels of intimacy in your marriage in many ways, such as explore new fun things to do together, taking classes together, or just sitting in sharing the same book and discussing your ideas about it. The ways you choose to be together don’t matter the point is to beat together in ways that you enjoy.

It’s also important to remember why you fell in love with your partner in the first place. Perhaps it was your shared love for golf, or a passion for art; whatever it is that you enjoyed together, it is important not to lose sight the things you have in common that first created that loving experience.

Reevaluating What You Thought You Knew

If you and your partner have been together for any time at all, it’s important to remember that as we grow we change. Just as it makes good sense not to take your marriage for granted it also makes good sense to remember that your partner is always evolving. Spend time talking and discovering what you each enjoying now, what stimulates you, what you are passionate about. Continuing to explore each other brings back the youthful wonder that can unlock the many secrets to making your marriage more fun and dynamic.

Keep it real!

Finally, it is critical that neither you nor your significant other have unrealistic expectations. Letting go of any expectations you have about your relationship partner will support you in having a more loving and open mind-set. Everybody has faults, and if you focus on them we guarantee that you will see more of them. So focus your attention on the more enjoyable characteristics of your partner. Let go of expectations that you hold about your partner. Leave room for surprise and make room for a more relaxed and comfortable relationship. This will also support you on your journey to enhance the intimacy in your marriage.

For additional tips, strategies and tools about creating a deeper level of intimacy in your marriage or just to discover other self help tools visit us at: www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com or stop by our website at: www.FocusedAttention.com

Below are short but sweet quotes that you can share with your partner.  Reconnect and rekindle the intimacy in your marriage.

Don’t smother each other.  No one can grow in the shade. ~Leo Buscaglia

Assumptions are the termites of relationships. ~Henry Winkler

Love one another and you will be happy.  It’s as simple and as difficult as that. ~Michael Leunig

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. ~Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self

Love is not singular except in syllable. ~Marvin Taylor

Less Can Mean More

Does it seem challenging to keep the intimacy flowing in your marriage? If so, the reason may be that nowadays most of us have extra demands, at work, with family and more personal obligations then we’ve ever did before. If noticing that this pressure is diminishing that the intimacy and your marriage, but you are still finding it difficult to focus as much time on your marriages you want to, read on and find out how when you focus on small stuff it can make a big difference.

The next time you find yourself believing that you’re too busy, too tired or too inundated to work on your marriage, take a minute and rethink this point of view. A lot of couples believe that the intimacy in their marriage will always be there, and when they have more energy and more time they’ll absolutely start putting some effort into it. But until then, what they’ve got is good enough. Or is it? While this mindset might seem perfectly legitimate and even take the a bit of pressure off for a while, it actually makes your life more stressful.

Build a Solid Foundation

Let me illustrate what I mean, imagine that your life is a giant loaf of bread, and your marriage is the dough. You can add the best quality, most interesting and delicious ingredients, but if you don’t start with premium dough, the rest of your ingredients make no difference.

Your marriage and the intimacy you have are just the same. No matter what other activities you fill up your life with, no matter how gratifying your career is, or how secure your friendships are, if you don’t have a strong base, adding more activities to your life is it going to get you where you want to go. On the other hand, if you continuously work towards improving the intimacy in your marriage and make it strong, you’ll be amazed how now every other area of your life seems easier to manage; you feel more relaxed and are able to experience more love, joy, and satisfaction in your life.

““People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.” ~Stendhal

It’s Easier Than You Think

Do you know why most couples put off improving their relationship? Because it seems complicated. They think because there is so much that they’re not enjoying about their marriage, so much baggage they’re carrying, and so much history may simply don’t know where to begin. They believe that improving their marriage requires a complete overhaul. The good news is that there are simple and easy ways you can start moving immediately towards a deeper level of intimacy and your marriage.

#1 and the easiest, shift your perspective. By simply shifting the way you see things work wonders to improve your marriage and the level of intimacy you feel. Instead of concentrating on all the things problems you and your partner have, take a minutes to focus on all the things you do enjoy.

Don’t just keep your attention on the big stuff, begin to notice all the little things they do every day–all the little things you enjoy. Maybe they always pour you a cup of coffee before they pour their own, or they automatically give you a hug when walking in the door.

Although these gestures may seem minor and perhaps even unimportant on some level, when focused on, they are the true basis of intimacy in your marriage. As I’m sure you know your spouse is anything but perfect and the same goes for you. And we can guarantee that they are not going to do everything the way you would like them to all of the time. Then again, paying attention to the small stuff they do will likely help transform your negative feelings of resentment, frustration or sadness, and help you remember the reasons you married them in the first place, which we guarantee will instantly begin to deepen the intimacy in your marriage.