The Number One Reason Why Most Marriages Fail
There are less people getting married today than there were
just ten years ago. Recent statistics show that 1 in every 2 marriages end in
divorce. Why is that? It could be any number of reasons from cheating spouses
to irreconcilable differences. But, the number one reason lies within the home.
It is how spouses treat one another.
The definition of validation is to make valid; to give
official sanction confirmation or approval to. Synonyms for validation are:
Acceptance, affirmation, approval, authenticating, recognition, etc. Most
people do not validate each other. We go about our daily lives taking each
other for granted without stopping to appreciate our spouses.
This is where some will argue that they don’t need to be
validated. “Proof of a job well done is good enough” people will say. If that
were true, then why do we always try to impress our bosses to show them just
how well of a job we can do? Or, to outdo our friends when it comes to
impressing them with possessions? We want to be validated. We want to feel
important to someone.
A person goes home to their spouse and 2 different scenarios
can transpire - He or she could go home to a spouse that makes them feel very
important, the king or queen of the castle, if you will. Or, that person could
go home to their spouse who sees him or her as a nuisance, as an intruder, or
as a scapegoat, or even as someone to beat to the ground when things don’t go
their way.
You know the kind of person I am talking about. It could be
one of your friends who thinks her husband doesn’t do anything right. He
doesn’t make love in a way that sends fireworks to her head, he doesn’t
discipline the children so she’s always the bad guy, or he doesn’t do the
chores correctly and she always has to redo them. The poor guy can’t do
anything to please his wife. Is this his fault or is it the wife’s fault?
Certainly isn’t his fault. He could be perfect in every way, but she would
still find fault because she doesn’t understand that making her husband feel
important isn’t just a boost to his ego, but vital to their marriage.
How about we look at it from a different angle. Let’s say
that a woman is the one that doesn’t feel important in the marriage. Let’s
envision that she makes a big impressive meal and clean the house after working
a typical 8-hour shift, but her husband doesn’t notice or doesn’t think he
should thank her for her efforts. There could be any number of reasons why this
happens. But for argument sake, let’s just say that it’s because he just
doesn’t think it’s that hard to keep a house clean and to plan and prepare a
healthy meal for the family. More often than not, when you are young and newly
married, you just don’t think of those kinds of things, because it’s hard
enough to think about yourself, let alone another human being. So, she does all
this hard work and gets no feedback from her husband. Later on that night,
while they are lying in bed, he makes advances towards her, but is met with
resistance and has no idea why she won’t reciprocate.
When we don’t validate our spouses they look for that need
elsewhere. He will look for it in the work place, which wouldn’t be such a bad
thing, unless he neglects his family; or he will look for it in a specific way
with another person so he can be made to feel important, as in a sexual
rendezvous or just an emotional pursuit.
Either one of those, a sexual encounter or an emotional
relationship, can be quite devastating to the marriage and more often than not,
because that kind of betrayal is hard to get past, a divorce is the only way
out. However, a divorce doesn’t stop the cycle of the offending partner
ignoring the other partner’s needs.
Not being validated, along with not having mutual respect
can be damaging to the relationship. Marriages are built on trust, respect,
communication, and love. That list is in no particular order, however each one
is just as important as the other to the marriage. Without just one of those
key proponents, you don’t have a lasting relationship.
If you can’t trust your spouse, your lifelong partner, the
person who stood with you among your family and friends and vowed to spend the
rest of your life with, the person who sees you at your most vulnerable, then
whom can you trust? Nobody.
Respect has to be mutual. If you want it, you have to give
it. It truly is that simple.
Talking to your spouse is vital to your relationship. You
must take time out of your busy schedule to talk to your spouse every single
day. If you don’t have time to talk, how are you going to make important
decisions concerning your life together? When something major happens,
communicating with each other will be the only thing that gets you through it.
Contrary to some beliefs, yelling is not communicating.
What we are discussing, I have unfortunately seen in my own
marriage. There are no perfect marriages. My husband and I have been married
for twenty-five years. Within those years, we’ve survived affairs, deaths, a
premature birth, serious illnesses, interfering in laws; you name it, we’ve
done it. The only way we could get through all that is with lots of
communication. Communicating with my husband brought back the trust and respect
that we lost in our time of need. My husband wasn’t validating me and I
certainly wasn’t validating him, that’s how we grew apart. We had to find that
need elsewhere with other people.
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