3 Causes of Marriage Failure and How to Avoid Them ...

There are quite a few causes of marriage failure and you should know what they are before you ever walk down the aisle.

A person’s wedding day should be the greatest day of their life, but the ceremony and party is just the first step in a long journey to staying in married bliss forever. Marriages aren’t simple and they are definitely something that have to be constantly worked on. We all know that to keep a marriage happy and healthy, there are plenty of rules and regulations, mostly unspoken, that both parties have to uphold. These are both big things and small things, and while most of them come naturally as a result of the love you share for one another, others take a little more practise to get right. To help you on your way to happily ever after, here are the three major causes of marriage failure and how you can avoid them.

1 Contempt

Living in close quarters with someone can be difficult, no matter how much you love them. We all have an early experience of this thanks to our own family households! When you are living with your husband or wife, it can be very easy to start to build up little resentments or annoyances that if not addressed can turn into a much bigger issue - contempt.

Things like too much sarcasm or being condescending can really have a negative impact on your relationship. They turn from niggles into real bones of contention and if unaddressed they start to become the major emotion in the relationship.

To avoid this, just step back for a second every day and try to evaluate what your behaviour has been like today. If you know you are doing things that annoy your partner, take steps to change this behaviour. If it is your partner doing them, you simply MUST talk to them about it. Don’t let niggles grow into contempt, which is one of the biggest causes of marriage failure.

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2 Criticism

We all have our individual ways of doing things and our own individual opinions, but that does not give us the right to belittle others for doing or seeing something differently. You are spending the rest of your life with this person, so do you really want to be in a marriage in which you are constantly criticising the things that they do and the decisions that they make? This will ruin a marriage in record time, so rather than criticising, perhaps have a calm, polite discussion about your grievances. You’ll be surprised how easily most issues can be resolved!

3 Defensiveness

Problems with defensiveness often arise in a marriage, thanks to the close quarters that you are now living in. Going hand in hand with criticism, defensiveness can arise when you are so annoyed by constant belittling that you finally decide to put up a wall and not let your partner in anymore. Once this defensive wall is up, it can be very hard to pull back down again. To avoid this, it’s important for both parties to accept responsibility for their end of a dispute. That way, nobody feels victimised or to blame, and you can move on with an equal share of blame and praise for both having found the solution.

These are three major causes of marriage breakdown but they apply equally to non-married relationships. What others can you add?