Relationship Goals: 5 Tips for a Healthy Marriage From a Love Coach
These five tips for a healthy marriage from love coach Karen Card will help you achieve your relationship goals. She offers five ways to keep your love strong, ranging from “don’t mother him” to “let him keep pursuing you.”
First, a quip about love:
“Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you’ll take him anyway.” - Judith Viorst.
Ah, ain’t love grand?! Okay, back to our relationship coach, her healthy marriage tips, and achieving your relationship goals. For more info about Karen or her book,How to Get More Love: 40 Tips to Make Love Work, click the cover. Read on for her tips for a healthy marriage…
Relationship Goals: 5 Tips for a Healthy Marriage From a Love Coach
Tip #1 - Let the Man Keep Pursuing
To achieve relationship goals, the man should pursue the woman and not the other way around, and here is why. When a man pursues a woman, he focuses on her needs and making her happy - and this makes him happy. In that scenario, both are happy. However, when a woman pursues a man, it causes the man to stop pursuing her. Then when he stops pursuing her, he tends to stop focusing on what makes her happy and instead he focuses on what makes him happy. While this initially feels good for the man, without the challenge of making her happy, he quickly loses interest in the woman. In this scenario, both are unhappy.
This is often frustrating for women because being assertive and going for what they want works very well for businesswomen, but not in the world of dating. Many women do not understand that a man needs to feel he is successful at pursing her and making her happy in order for him to really fall in love with her. A man needs to feel his desire to make her happy - through pursuing her - to see her as a valuable person and someone he will stay interested in for a long time.
- Advice to Men: If you are interested in a woman, you need to pursue her - do not wait for her to pursue you. While it may be flattering and seem easier for her to do the work, realize it probably will not last. To have a healthy relationship you need to pursue her.
- Advice to Women: Stop pursuing! Even if you ultimately get him, the relationship will not proceed the way you hope, because he will have lost his desire to make you happy. To improve your chances of getting a great guy, you need to be where men are, let them see you, and smile a lot. That’s it. Just keep smiling and let him pursue you.
Tip #2 - Recognize the 3-month Honeymoon Phase
When we start dating someone we really like, we mistakenly believe the good feelings will last forever. After all, how could it feel so good being with this person if they were not the “right one”?
When you have chemistry with someone you can’t deny the awesome way you feel when you are around them. The reason we feel so good is the result of chemistry or more accurately, chemicals, i.e. hormones. That is the good news. The bad news is that it usually only lasts about 3 months.
After three months of believing you have met Mr./Ms. Right, reality sets in and the rose-colored glasses start to come off. To achieve relationship goals, remember that this is the time to really get to know this person - the good and the bad, and then decide if you are still as compatible as you believed.
- Advice to Men: Although she feels like Ms. Right at the beginning, she will eventually become human and she probably won’t laugh at all your jokes. Give your relationship some time and see if you are willing to be in a real relationship with a real woman.
- Advice to Women: Realize he may seem like the perfect Mr. Right, but don’t start making wedding plans until you have dated seriously at least 3 months. Then look at him for who he really is, and not who you thought he was at the beginning.
Tip #3 - Don’t Try to Be the Perfect Wife
During a new relationship, a woman may become so attracted to a man that she already thinks of him as her future husband. If she believes he is Mr. Right she will want him to think she is Ms. Right. So, she starts acting like she is the “perfect wife” for him. She unselfishly tries to meet all his needs, i.e. cooks/cleans for him, plans all their dates around his favorite activities, ignores her friends to accommodate his schedule, and she may even offer to do his laundry. The message she is trying to send is, “See how great your life will be when we are married.”
Unfortunately, the message he hears is, “She really enjoys taking care of me, so I don’t have to do any work. And since she seems so happy doing this now as my girlfriend, I won’t ever have to marry her.”
This mis-communication is setting up unrealistic expectations for both partners. Here’s how to achieve relationship goals:
- Advice to Men: Realize if she is making your life seem too easy, it is not going to last. If she is doing all the work, she is expecting a marriage proposal.
- Advice to Women: Do not act like the “perfect wife” until you have a ring on your finger. Act like a cherished girlfriend who deserves to be treated with care and respect.
Tip #4 - Don’t Follow the Golden Rule
We have all heard about the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is a great rule to teach kids to get along with others and to think before they act. However, this rule does not work so well in relationships with the opposite sex, and won’t help achieve relationship goals.
Men and women have different needs and relationships do not work if we forget this. When a woman “does unto” a man, she gives him what she wants to receive (what she really wants him to give to her). When he does not appreciate this, she is upset and neither partner feels good. One example of this is when a woman is upset, she may want to talk about it, but when a man is upset, he may want to be left alone. If she follows the Golden Rule when he is upset, she will try to get him to talk about it, which is the opposite of what he needs. When she is upset, he may leave her alone, which is what he would want, but is the opposite of what she needs.
Instead of following the Golden Rule, try following the Silver Rule: “Do unto others as they want to be done unto.” In other words, give them what they really need and not what you would need in the same situation.
Advice to Men: It helps to discover exactly what she needs that is different from your needs. You may be giving her all the wrong stuff. If she is calling you several times each day, chances are that she really wants you to be calling her.
- Advice to Women: Most of the time, he is not being thoughtless; he is just treating you like he wants to be treated (like a man). To achieve relationship goals, try making a list of all your differences so that you both can work on giving to each other in the right way.
Tip #5 - Don’t Mother Him
Every long-term relationship has a balance that defines each person’s role in the relationship. These balances show up in different forms; some relationships have a give and take balance while others work on a masculine/feminine balance. There is another balance however, which is not healthy; it is the mother/son balance between a woman and a man. When a mother cares for her children, she does not expect anything in return, after all, they are just children. However, when a woman cares for her husband, she expects to get something back for her efforts.
In a mother/son balance, the woman ends up “taking care of” or “mothering” her husband. The more she does causes him to do less (because she is taking care of everything so he does not have to). This results in a relationship that both partners will grow to resent. She will become resentful when he does not do his share and he will eventually become resentful of the loss of his masculinity. To achieve relationship goals, don’t she must stop getting mad at him for expecting her to do everything, she needs to change his expectations and change the balance in the relationship.
Restoring a relationship to the proper balance may take some work. To get started, she needs to ask for his help and give him more responsibility. Even if he does not do the task exactly as she would have, she needs to let him do it, for the sake of getting his help. Then she needs to be sure to appreciate him afterward.
- Advice to Men: Recognize that wives are women and not just moms. While it may feel good now to have her doing everything for you, it will grow less and less enjoyable and you will eventually lose your romantic interest in her. Sometimes you have to make a “date” with her to remind you both that she is still a woman and not just a mom. Get a babysitter and go out to dinner at least once a month. During your date, make a promise to each other to avoid discussing the children. For one evening, be romantic adults, not parents.
- Advice to Women: To achieve relationship goals, recognize that he does not “need” you to take care of all his needs. Although he may “want” you to, you are turning him into a person that cannot do anything for himself. While it may feel like you are showing him how much you care, in the end it will backfire. Men are not romantically attracted to mothers, they are attracted to women. Let him be a man and you will both be happier.
Karen Card, a certified relationship coach, has helped clients all over the world get engaged, get married, stop divorces, and find happiness through love. She holds a degree in Corporate Wellness Management and certification from Dr. John Gray’s Mars/Venus Institute. To visit Karen, go to Coaching for Love.
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