Everyone dreams of their wedding day to be one of the most special days of their lives. It’s a rosy, celebratory moment – a room filled with your closed ones singing along the tunes of love and joy. Marking the new beginnings of life, each of us walks down the aisle weaving a ‘happily ever after’ for our partner and ourselves. Only if it was easier said than done. For that, you need to know the secrets to a happy marriage.
Maintaining a healthy and happy marriage isn’t a piece of cake. For most of the couples, the beginning phase goes on smoothly mirroring exactly what they dreamt of. But if you aren’t consciously putting efforts into your marriage, the golden feeling may wear off leading to boredom, stress, and annoyance.
And let’s accept it – maintaining a healthy marriage is hard. Harder than that of any other relationship. It’s only because it possesses the deepest form of intimacy than that of any other relationship. So it shouldn’t be surprising to know that you need to put extra efforts into marriage for a blissful bond. Let’s take you on a ride to the secrets to a happy marriage.
Beautiful secrets to ensure a happy and healthy marriage
Don’t Forget Individual Identities
In a marriage, there are two people involved, ‘you’ and ‘your partner’. Many make the mistake of forgetting the ‘you’ part. It’s okay to prioritize your marriage and your partner, but not before yourselves. You are one of the key elements of your marriage. If you aren’t happy, there’s no way you can keep the relationship happy. If anything, you’ll feel constrained and bound.
Savour your individual identity and take time out for yourself. Just because you are married doesn’t mean you have to make everything about your partner. Have a separate life of your own. Go out by yourself or with your friends and have fun. The goal here is to become a secure, mature, and wholesome person to radiate the same in your relationship. Valuing yourself is also a secret to a happy marriage.
Keep Over Dependency at Bay
It looks very romantic when a screen character expresses their love to their romantic interests by reciting the famous dialogue – ‘You complete me’. Having a similar expectation in real life may form an over-dependent relationship. It may lead your marriage to suffocate in absence of personal space. As couples, your goal should be to complement each other, rather than completing.
Don’t wait for your partner to fill voids in your life. Even though your lives are intermingled, make a healthy boundary. Nurture your life according to your own interests and desires within that space. Being independent isn’t just a secret to a happy marriage, but to a happier you as well.
Consciously Live Moments Together
Excess of everything is bad. This proverb stays true in the case of marriage as well. If it’s bad to be overdependent, it’s worse to not enjoy companionship at all. Nurturing yourself is important so that you may inject the same nutrition in your relationship.
Have a desire to spend more time with each other. No matter how busy your lives are, take out some time to spend together on a daily basis apart from routine. It’s a good idea to learn a new activity or a hobby together. It could be anything from travelling to singing to swimming. The idea is to be dedicated to a common cause and evolve together. Even if it’s for a short period of time, consciously spend those few moments with each other. Being a secret to a happy marriage, it’ll strengthen your bond.
Expect and Accept Growth
Marriages are about companionship. You can be in your best company only when you are allowed to grow into the best version of yourself.
No two people are going to remain the same person as they were in their first meet. People generally get married when they are about to or are experiencing the crucial adult years of their life. In the life span of their marriage, they are supposed to change multiple times. Your thoughts, needs, desires, ideas about certain things – all of it is going to evolve. It’s important to grow and become the best version of yourself. Your partner and yourself should be able to accept this fact for it’s going to change your relationship as well. One of the secrets to a happy marriage is supporting and nurturing each other’s growth.
Never Forget to Communicate
‘Communication is the key to a healthy relationship’ – it’s a cliché but couldn’t hold more truth.
Expressing yourselves to your partner is important. Whenever you feel things are going downhill, talk about it. Your partner isn’t a mind reader. So instead of holding silent grudges, express your feelings at the moment.
Moreover, communication isn’t vital only in hard times. Communicating your love and happy thoughts are as important. Also, don’t mistake communication for just verbal conversations. In the books of psychology, there are different languages of love. Apart from Verbal Affirmation, there’s the Act of Service, the Material Exchange, the Quality Time, and the Physical Touch. Figure out your partner’s preferred love language. It could be one or a mixture of more than one. Once you decipher your partner’s preferred way of communication, you’ll unlock one of the many secrets to a successful marriage.
Celebrate Small Wins Together
We often knit ourselves a busy, stressful life. Amidst fulfilling endless commitments, we often forget to live and celebrate our wins.
It’s important to stand by your partner in hard times. But it’s as necessary to acknowledge the good times. Make your life-enriching by celebrating every happy moment, no matter how trivial it is. Be it a compliment from the boss, or a successful attempt at cooking new cuisine, savour it all together. You don’t need to go out and open a bottle of champagne to ‘celebrate’ it. It’s underrated but listen carefully to your partner when they talk about their wins. Give them your 100% attention, ask questions, and genuinely compliment them. That’s all it takes – an evergreen secret to a happier marriage.
Pursue Spirituality
One of the underrated secrets to a happy marriage is a mental and spiritual connection with your partner. Spiritual intimacy is a dimension of a marriage that may lead you and your partner towards contentment.
Given the lives we live, it’s very easy to succumb under stress and pressure. It can make you impatient and restless. It can affect your marriage by various means. A petty quarrel can bring in differences. Pursuing spirituality together may help you understand yourself and your partner better. It brings in calm, patience, and perspective. It’ll help you confront the real issues and solve your conflicts in a healthy way. When you step out from the end of the tunnel, you’ll see it as marital fulfilment.
Compliment Each Other
Since both of you are available for each other all the time, you forget how it feels to be in the absence of each other. That’s why after a period of time, people start taking their partners for granted.
Consciously try to not fall for this pattern. As human beings, we feel the need for constant affirmation. Therefore, appreciate your partner from time to time and let them know what you think of them. You could do it in several ways. Express through your words how much your partner means to you. Appreciate their action or thoughts. Compliment them about their positive attributes.
Respect Each Other and Be Kind
Once the honeymoon phase fizzles out in a marriage, people drop their guards down. They start disrespecting each other and become very judgemental. In bad times, they attack each other’s personality.
One of the keys to a successful marriage is to always think highly of your partner. Be mindful of what you blurt out when you are in a fight. When you start treating each other’s opinions as unimportant, disrespect kicks in. Keep in mind to always be kind and non-critical to each other’s choices.
Accept the Flaws of Your Marriage
In many cultures, parents and other elders equate marriage to settling one’s life. This may wire a mentality in a child’s mind that marriage is supposed to make everything perfect in an individual’s life. Since they get conditioned to this mind frame at a young age, they, as adults, continue to have the same expectations from their marriage.
However, marriage isn’t a merry-go-round. It can’t be perfect all the time. In fact, putting your partner at an expectation of keeping you happy all the time may crumple your relationship at once. Therefore, don’t expect it to be going well at every stage of your life. You spend a lot of time with your partner. There can easily be the difference in opinions on numerous matters. Instead of arguing over it, agree to disagree. Learn to respect each other’s opinions. Even if you’re going through a rough patch, accept it and make the necessary repairs.
There’s no guide book on how to have a happy marriage. It’s always constant work in progress. The key is to be passionate and dedicated to your relationship. So while you hold onto each other when things go wrong, make it a point to not let go of any happy memory as well.
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