Some Characterisitics of a Healthy Marriage

A couple with a successful marriage share a belief that their marriage relationship is worth maintaining. They share a vision for what their marriage is becoming or ought to be becoming. Gardens need weeding and attention in order to be maintained. Automobiles need regular servicing and repairs to be properly maintained.

A marriage relationship needs increasingly effective repair mechanisms to mend the delicate strands of emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy after a big conflict.

Often it seems to me that the most essential characteristic of any healthy relationship is effective repair mechanisms. I believe that what happens after the fight is not only more important than what happens in the fight, but is more important than the absence of fighting. Do you wish to start looking squarely at the strength of your marriage? Start by looking at how you both use repair mechanisms to maintain and grow your marriage relationship. The couple with a successful marriage treasure the relationship itself enough to maintain it, create the conditions for it to grow, pay attention to dysfunctional patterns, and celebrate what is strong and good.

A couple with a successful marriage relationship usually is committed to growth and change not only as a couple, but as individuals.

A successful marriage relationship is like two stunningly beautiful mountain lakes nestled up together like two diamonds in a ring. Together they give life to others by the cool clean water that flows from them. But lakes that have no fresh input from streams higher up become stagnant or simply dry up. Individuals with a vision for a successful marriage relationship have a sense of self; they have goals, desires, passions, interests, feelings, opinions and, yes, friends of their own. Each individual has unique aspects of their own lives that they bring to the marriage relationship.

A successful marriage relationship usually contains two people who have grown up enough that they are adults when it comes to emotional maturity. A husband or wife knows how to regulate his/her own urges enough to not sleep with anyone who gives them attention. Each of them know how to calm themselves and take responsibility for his/her own anger. They each understand that life is messy and that we can’t always have everything the way we think it ought to be. A husband has acquired enough frustration tolerance to deal with daily life including his wife’s moods, bad days, expectations, and even her parents. Likewise, the wife has also acquired a similar degree of stress tolerance. He or she knows how to negotiate a fair deal and look for win-win agreements. Perhaps most importantly, they each know something about their own needs and wants so that each of them can take responsibility to get his/her needs met without expecting a spouse to be a mind-reader.