[Affair Recovery Radio] Keeping your Marriage Relationship

Although you’ve talked about keeping a man, or woman, or your marriage, do you know what ‘keeping’ means and how to do it? Keeping a spouse or relationship takes effort. It does not just happen.

Keeping means taking care of, protecting them, being with them. It means tending them. The challenge is often in finding out what their needs are. It could be that the affair exposed and area where you weren’t doing a good job of keeping.

Keeping the Relationship <<– listen to the audio here

Hi there, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you tuned in to today’s radio show. The show today will be dealing with the topic of keeping a relationship.

Most of you have had affairs or are dealing with affairs. One of the things that you may want to be striving to achieve is to keep your relationship or keep things healthy. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, keeping a relationship.

Although you’ve talked about keeping a man or keeping a woman or keeping your marriage, do you know what keeping really means and how to do it?

Keeping a spouse or a relationship takes effort. It takes work. It does not just happen. There may be times that you experience what you call magical feelings, but making a relationship work is more than just magic.

You don’t just pronounce a few words and hope that the forces of the cosmos somehow magically intervene and keep things going.

No. It’s going to take more than that. Keeping will involve taking care of that person, protecting them, being with them, it means tending them. And the challenge is often in finding out what their needs are.

It’s hard meeting the needs of your spouse if you don’t know what those needs are. It could be that the affair exposed an area of your relationship where you weren’t doing a good job of keeping. We’re going to be dealing with that today.

How can I keep the relationship? And the answer is, learn, practice, and protect. Or what you could call the LPP principle. Give them the LPP and this will help you remember what you can do to keep a relationship.

1.L. Learn their needs. This includes the work of sorting perceived needs from real needs. There are always these things that you think they need and what you think they need may not be what they believe they need. And you’re going to have to study your spouse and their ways to figure this out.

There’s plenty of locker room/dressing room conversations about what men and about what women need. You’re going to have to throw that out the window and find out from your spouse yourself what do they need. Not what Joey or Joann or what Keisha or Latonya told you, or what your aunt or your uncle told you, or what some men’s magazine or women’s magazine told you. Find out for yourself.

Many times just the process of finding out will start you on the road to discovery. Learn their needs.

2. Practice talking with them. Talking with them is not the same as telling them things or talking to them. Talking with them includes knowing what their interests are, knowing what their preferences are, and knowing what their quirks are.

It also means listening to them.

When you are talking with someone, rather than talking at somebody, that means that there’s this give and take, this back and forth, that you are actually listening. When you practice talking with them you’ll know how to keep the conversation going.

I have met some women and some men out there that they can talk and talk and talk, and they never give any space to the other person to respond or to be able to have any say-so. When you’re in a relationship like that you feel shut out, like what value do I have. They’re doing it all.

You may be damaging things and not even realize it. Now, if it’s sometimes you get so used to having your spouse around you want to unload. When you start talking with them, make sure it is with.

That means you share some and you listen to what they have to say. Don’t just talk at them.

3. Practice without smothering. This gets into the protection aspect. Keeping a relationship involves protecting them from risk, threats, and dangers. The challenge is protecting them where they’re vulnerable, without controlling them.

This is your spouse, not a hostage.

You’ve got to find a way to essentially, like an umbrella, cover them and protect them without being the blanket and smothering them. Of course, for an umbrella to be effective there’s some space between the protection and them.

They can breathe. The blanket, on the other hand, is right up next to them, never gives them any air room. It’s potentially dangerous.

Both the umbrella and the blanket protect, but one can end up smothering and you don’t want to do that. You want to be able to protect without smothering.

These are some of what is involved with keeping a relationship. Because keeping is not just having a sense of connection. It’s also about taking care of them, protecting them, being with them, tending them.

I encourage you to get into the practice of doing it. The more you do it the more it will come naturally. This may give you some ideas as to what to do to start turning your marriage around, to bring healing to the brokenness in your relationship.

I encourage you, take what you’ve learned today with the LPP principle, learn their needs, practice talking to them, protect without smothering, start putting these into practice. It will start changing your relationship.

Because here at Affair Recovery Radio my goal is to help you through the recovery process one step at a time. These are small things that if you put them into place they have huge huge payouts. So I encourage you to start putting things into practice. These are things that you can start doing right away and I encourage you to do so.

Some of you have written in to my email address and asked questions there. If you do that I can answer them privately. If you ask the questions on the blog it has a public feature where other people can read it as well. So if you’re in one of those situations where things are very sensitive, write to my privately. And you can find that address there on the blog.

These recommendations will get you started. If you want more, the “30 Days to a Better Marriage” Program guides you in strengthening and improving your marriage.

Best Regards,

Jeff

 

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