Discover a new way to Cope with Marriage Problems

Master the coping skills that will help you cope with marriage problems and protect your marriage. Coping is a major factor in building the love in your marriage.

The idea is to protect your love by coping with marriage problems that can arise from those terrible moments when you lovers exchange harsh words or hurtful comments. Coping is a great way to protect your love from any significant damage.

When to use Emotion, and when to use Reason

Coping requires a switch from the emotional you, to the reasoning you. Some people pride themselves in always being emotional. Others take pride in always being rational and using reason. Both are cheating themselves.

Happy people use emotion when the emotions are positive; they use reason when the emotions are painful or negative.

If you build this simple habit of switching from emotion to reason and back again to cope with marriage problems, you'll automatically become a much happier person. You'll cope effectively with anything that happens in your life, as well as your marriage.

You'll also have a fuller, more satisfying and successful life, using your full capacities of both emotion and reason.

Jump from Emotion to Reason to Cope with Marriage Problems

Emotions and reasoning are in different parts of your mind, and even in different parts of your brain. The emotional part is great to use when people, events, or situations are positive, good, or happy. Feel the joy. Feel the win. Feel the love.

The reasoning side of your mind is best used to solve problems, answer questions, ask questions, and deal with adversity.

The simplest way to switch, then, is to use any bad feeling as a trigger to switch to "asking and answering" some important questions. Keep these questions with you; practice using them anytime you have a bad feeling. Then, when the pressure is on — and your marriage is under threat — you'll have practiced them and made them a habit.

You cope with marriage problems by switching from feeling bad feelings to asking questions.

The Four Questions That Will Evoke Reason

We'll explore the four questions that will help you cope with marriage problems one by one. Here they are. They're carefully designed to produce the best possible outcomes:

1. What's happening?
2. How am I creating that bad feeling?
3. Is that bad feeling what I want for my life?
4. How can I move toward what I do want for my life?

1. What's Happening?

You cope with marriage problems by immediately asking yourself, "What's happening?" Actually, until you've mastered coping, you probably won't make an immediate switch. At first, the emotions will be too strong, and they will carry you into replaying, or reliving, or remembering whatever caused the bad feelings. (This is where the damage is done, and why it's so important to stop replaying the hurts, and so important that you cope with marriage problems to minimize the damage.)

"What's Happening," is the first question because it engages the question answering machinery in your mind, which is in the rational and reasoning part.

Generally, the answer to "What's Happening," will be something like, "I'm feeling really angry." or "I'm feeling really hurt." or "I'm feeling really defensive."

"What's Happening," helps you cope by focusing on resolving or fixing the situation, rather than continuing to feel bad about it.

2. How Am I Creating This Bad Feeling?

This question won't really be answerable until you learn about the Sage Model. The Sage Model is a model of the mind that allows you to see how you are producing a bad feeling. It may be something like attaching too much importance to something that could be seen as trivial. Or, it may be something like using your expectations or your rules to judge your partner.

Until you want to learn how you really are creating your bad feelings, it will be sufficient just to ask the question, even though you won't have much of a specific answer to yet yet.

It's important to remind yourself that YOU are creating that bad feeling, somehow.

Maybe you don't know exactly how yet, but it is a good reminder that we all create our own feelings, by our thoughts.

It will also help you reaffirm that when you are ready, you can begin changing your thought process to minimize the number of bad feelings you produce for yourself.

3. Is This (the bad feeing) What I Want For My Life?

If you are learning to cope with marriage problems, then it seems obvious that you don't want a life or a marriage filled with bad feelings. So, the answer to this is virtually always, "No. I don't want a life filled with bad feelings like this."

This question also has the added value of helping bring to mind what you do want for your life. In other words, you begin making all your choices with your long term goals and values in mind.

4. What Can I Do To Move Toward What I Want for My Life?

This fourth question leads you into problem solving. Problem solving can be overdone, but when something is going wrong between you and your partner, you will cope with marriage problems better by asking questions than by dwelling on bad feelings.

The Four Wise Choices

To make coping simpler to master, we've limited your choices to four wise choices:

A. If Action will move me toward what I want for my life, ACT.

B. If discussion or negotiation will move me toward what I want for my life, ASK, or begin negotiations to resolve the difficulty.

C. If Action or Asking won't help, I will choose to ACCEPT whatever it is I cannot or will not change.

D. If Forgiveness will move me toward what I want for my life, I will FORGIVE.

A. ACT When Action Will Move Me Toward What I Want For My Life

If I did something wrong, I'll ACT to undo it. If I've criticized, I'll change to complaining. If I've displayed disgust or contempt toward my partner, I'll apologize, I'll display appreciation, I'll clean up whatever mess I've made.

B. If ASKing will help to cope with marriage problems

I'll ASK. Maybe I need to negotiate some win-win resolution of a conflict. Maybe I need to ASK what I can do to resolve the problem. Maybe I'll ASK my partner to help me work on some issue.

Maybe I'll ASK my partner to please take out the garbage, or to please, in the future, put the toilet seat down.

C. I'll ACCEPT What I Can't or Won't Change

When neither Act nor Ask will do any good, I'll ACCEPT whatever I need to accept to cope with marriage problems.

ACCEPTance is one of your most powerful tools to cope with marriage problems. Acceptance also is a generous gift you can give to others and to yourself.

Remember the ancient serenity prayer?

D. When Forgiveness if called for, Forgive

Remember that accepting, forgiving and forgetting are the most generous gifts you can bring to a marriage. They also will make you happier. They will make your marriage happier, and certainly will make it last longer.

By practicing on small bad feelings, you will quickly master the ability to use these four questions and four choices to cope with marriage problems easily, happily, and generously.

Coping Resources

If you decide one day to join the team of people working together to make happy marriages, and make marriage last, you'll have full access to the audio/video coping course, and book two of the "Metamating Series," that teaches how to answer the second of the four questions: How am I creating this bad feeling?

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