PRINCIPLE # 6

Build and Maintain Trust

“Shutting down’ is actually one of the worst relationship killers,” says Cheryl Burke, a licensed mental health therapist in Winter Park, Florida. “Many intimate relationships are destroyed by an inability to communicate. When one partner or both has developed a pattern of shutting down when they’re uncomfortable, it is because they do not trust the other person enough to share their thoughts and feelings. In fact, in many cases the person does not even know that it is a trust issue.”

In marriage trust is everything. For you to have a healthy relationship trust must be there. We build and maintain high trust levels by being open in our communication, being vulnerable and allowing our spouse into our hearts. The reason many times we fear being vulnerable is because of how we have tried being vulnerable in the past and we were hurt. But you can’t have a relationship without vulnerability, and the reason vulnerability is called vulnerability is that it requires risk.

According to author Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Advantage, for Leaders to begin the process of making their organizations and families healthier, is to begin with themselves and their team. A leader has to understand and embrace the concept of being vulnerable, which inspires trust on the leadership team. That trust is the foundation for teamwork, and marriage is indeed teamwork.

Are you willing to stick your neck out by bearing yourself to your spouse because you know that your spouse will care for you when you do? Are you caring enough to hold your spouse’s heart when they open themselves up to you? That is how you build trust, by willing to be vulnerable and by providing them with a safe environment where they too can be vulnerable with you.

Principe # 5

Realistic concept of love and healthy expectations of marriage

We all come into marriage with great expectations or with little or no expectations depending where one is coming from. For example if you have grown up seeing men cheating on their wives and probably your own Father used to cheat on your Mother, there is a tendency that you will enter marriage with little or no expectations that your husband will remain faithful to you. So you are always suspicious of him and are always waiting for that to happen. This is obviously an unhealthy expectation of marriage.

On the other hand many of us come into marriage with this great expectations of a happily ever after like we see in movies or read on those fairy tales. But what we don’t realize is that yes, those are just that fairy tales. In real life real things happen. We disagree, we go broke, the good feelings come and go not to mention our differences, from different backgrounds, and we have different personalities and communication styles. 

What Grace and I try to help couples realize during our premarital coaching program is to be realistic in their expectations. We help them enter marriage with a balanced view of marriage and a realistic concept of love. A realistic concept of love realizes that love is more than feelings; it’s a commitment, a decision to love. So when the good feelings go, relax, don’t panic, just remember that you made a commitment to each other and once you decide to love them then you fall in love with them once again.

PRINCIPLE # 4

The other day I walked into this office looking for one of the men that has gone through our “Game-changer’ program for men. I found that he had just stepped out for some business from this lady who had come to assist me. As I was leaving I left a message for this man and when this dear Lady saw my name she asked if I was the husband of one Grace Achoki who had apparently done her bridal shower. I replied to the affirmative and she went on to tell me how great my wife was. She left me with these words “Gosh Mr.Achoki, you have a very beautiful wife”

You would have expected my response to be something like “Of course she is beautiful, thank you”, but I’m afraid I only said the last part ‘Thank you” inwardly being rudely awakened to the fact that yes my wife is beautiful. Now before you blast me, I know we will not admit it, but we so often take our partners for granted. Of course one of the reasons you married them was because they were beautiful or handsome but as time goes by we start taking those attributes for granted. In fact we start focusing on what they don’t have instead of appreciating what they already have. 

This is what leads to dissatisfaction with our mates leaving us exposed to the lies of the Devil that that other woman is more beautiful than your wife or that that other man is more understanding than your husband. It is amazing how couples address each other or the names they call each other when things are not going well between them. You cannot believe that these two people once upon a time were so much in love with each other that they even couldn’t imagine living without the other. Now here they are calling each other names and wanting out. 

We tend to devalue each other kind of how a car is devalued after a number of years and cannot even fetch the price you bought it for. How then do we keep it fresh? Stop dwelling in the dark room developing those negatives and come out to the light where you can clearly see their value. When you do so then you will begin to appreciate them for that and thus value them for who they are in your life. It is in appreciating them that their value goes up for you cannot devalue what you appreciate.

Principle #3

Maintain a great Attitude.

They say that your attitude not aptitude determines your altitude that is how high you go. I believe that is true also concerning your marriage. Let me ask you, what attitude did you come into marriage with? What is your attitude when things aren’t going the way you expect them to go?

Marriage experts and authors Drs. Les and Leslie Parrot include a positive attitude and outlook toward life as one of the ingredients of a happy marriage. When faced with challenges in their marriage, they view it more as an opportunity for growth than an obstacle. They are optimistic that however tough things are they can be sorted out. They also view their partner positively.

The problem with most marriages is that we have spent so much time in the dark room, having a negative attitude that we have developed a negative image of our partner in that dark room of our lives. So no matter how hard they try we already have this negative image cast in our minds that we constantly bow down to.  We approach our marriage and our spouse with this negative image in mind no wonder we lose that battle even before it starts.

What if we believed the best of our spouse? What if we judged them more for their intentions and we judged ourselves for our actions? How different will our marriages be if only we believed in them and overlooked their faults? Imagine how easy it would be to resolve conflict if only we humbled ourselves and realized that we too could be the cause of the problem. We so often remain stuck in our high and lofty position refusing to come down and say I’m sorry, instead of climbing down to say “You could be right here Babe”. 

Humility is indeed one of the greatest attitudes that is highly needed for our marriages to succeed. 

PRINCIPLE #2

Have a burning desire to see your marriage succeed. The secret to achieving your dreams is how badly you want to achieve them and that is what desire is. Jesus said that whatsoever things you desire when you pray believe that you have received them and you will have them.  As you delight in Him He will give you the desires of your heart.

When we lose hope in our marriages, the first thing that goes out of the window is our desires. We no longer desire anything for our marriage. Desire on the other hand is what makes us hopeful and keeps us going in marriage. According to Marriage Coaches Jeff and Jill Williams, “desires are the bridge from awareness to action. When you understand what you want, you can focus your energy and efforts towards your desired goal. When you are not clear on what you want, you will likely wander aimlessly around not knowing where you are going.”

To get what your partner wants you need to ask for and listen to their honest thoughts and feelings as their honest thoughts and feelings reveals their desires. And once you hear those thoughts and feelings and get to know what it is that they desire then you must be willing to help fulfill those desires. Our desires will give us a roadmap to what we want and where we want to go in our relationship.

According to Steve Covey in his books 7 habits for highly effective people, working on our desires together with knowledge and skills is how we create a habit. A habit according to him is the intersection of these three, knowledge which is the theoretical paradigm, knowing what to do and why; Skills is the how to do while desire is the motivation to do, the want to do. It is this motivation to do that separates a successful marriage from a mediocre one. And this is what we normally look for in every married couple that comes to us for coaching. Are they coming because they want to or they have to?

This motivation initially comes from a desire to have a happy marriage but later may be triggered by serious conflict or problems in the marriage. When we are at that point when things are not working, there is a motivation to see that they work.  What drives you? What is driving your marriage? I hope it is the desire to succeed, the desire to see your desires fulfilled.