Project Happily Ever After

Someone recently asked me how I went from wishing my husband would just drop dead already to feeling so happy that he was still in my life. He wrote, “I am willing to try anything and am desperate to find something that works. Can you share your secret?”

At first I thought, “One secret? One thing? It was 600 million little things. It would take me an entire year to write it all down for you.” I thought about writing back, asking him to read the Free Marriage Advice series and to download my free Relationships Rules ebook. I thought about suggesting that he wait until early 2011, when Running Press will publish Project: Happily Ever After, which details the entire story of how I saved my marriage.

But the word “desperate” kept haunting me. And something else struck me, too. I realized that there was just one secret to saving a marriage. It was this:

Try everything.

Try reading all of the marital improvement books at your local bookstore. Try marital counseling. Try couples retreats.

Try things that, at first, seem really stupid. Try things that you don’t think could possibly work. Try. It. All.

Some of the things that you try will work. Some won’t. My journey from bad marriage to good was not linear. We took two steps forward and one step back, over and over again. So will you.

But with enough effort, anything is possible. Anything.

Oh, and just because I could not resist, here’s another secret: Speak your voice. Ask for what you need. Stand up for yourself. Know that you deserve to be happy. You deserve better. No one deserves to be stuck in a bad marriage.

Got that? No one. In the end, it’s the belief in your own worth that will help you solve your problem.

A bad marriage is not a curse that was inflicted upon you by an evil sorceress. It’s a problem, one that you can solve with creativity, effort and patience. Think of yourself as a real life MacGyver. Only instead of being stuck inside of a closet with just a match, some Silly Putty and a paperclip, you are stuck in a bad marriage with just a bunch of marital improvement books, websites and marriage therapists. How will you use the tools that you have at your disposal to solve the problem of being stuck in a bad marriage? Only you know the answer to that question.

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Tags: bad marriage, save your marrage

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Marriage Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.