To Build a Better Marriage, Start with a Detailed Image of What You Want

If you and your partner set out to make your relationship better, it would be understandable if you focused primarily on the problems that you wanted to solve. It would be understandable but not the best approach.

To improve your marriage, you need to focus beyond the problems and difficulties that you have with each other. You need a picture of the relationship as you want it to be - the more detailed and vivid a picture the better.

To see only problems is to focus exclusively on the negative. Of course, attending to problems is essential. However, in the absence of a clear direction, it is risky: Couples can easily get lost in their troubles, when troubles is all that they can see.

The “clear direction” that is needed is the picture of the life together that you really want. That positive vision carries energy and hopefulness, which will be very useful when you tackle the difficulties you have been having with each other. From the perspective of the vision you want to realize, problems are obstacles in the way that you are determined to remove – much easier to deal with than problems with no clear vision of anything better.

A vague, general picture of a desired relationship carries little weight when the marriage is in trouble and the problems are large. What you need is a vision so clear and so detailed that someone could practically walk into it and start living.

How can you possibly develop such a vision? We will explore that question in the next post.