4 Tips on Enhancing Your Marriage

1. Work on Personal Development

You can't change your spouse and you shouldn't want to -- especially if you want to cultivate a healthy marriage. One major factor in enhancing your marriage begins when you take an introspective look at yourself. Don't spend all your time judging and complaining about your spouse. That will never end well. You can see positive and productive changes in your marriage when you work on personal development.

There are several areas that you can start working on that can help you to become a better person and spouse. Learn about the different types of personalities. When you identify your and your spouse's personalities, that can help you immensely in interacting in more mature ways. You can find free personality tests online. One book you might want to read is "The DNA of Relationships" by Dr. Gary Smalley.

A second area to work on is learning your love language. You can read "The Five Love Languages" by Dr. Gary Chapman to help you identify both your love language and your spouse's love language. This can enable you to fill their love tank in the right way. Hopefully, they will be interested in learning about your love language to properly fill your emotional love tank.

The third thing you can work on is effectively handling your emotions in a mature manner. Read the book, "Deadly Emotions," by Dr. Don Colbert. This book can help you understand how important it is to embrace your emotions and handle them in positive and productive ways. Learning how to become more emotionally mature is vital in becoming a better spouse.

2. Improve Your Intimacy Level

To cultivate and maintain a healthy and thriving marriage, you need to improve your intimacy level. You can experience intimacy with your spouse on three different levels. You are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. Connecting with your spouse on all these levels is vital to continue growing together as a couple.

The spiritual and soul connections overlap. This is where you can connect on that emotional level. Focus on deepening your vulnerability with each other. That means you need to share things in your heart that can help you connect on deeper levels. You may be embarrassed at first to share those deep things. However, the more you practice this deep emotional vulnerability, the easier it will get.

Connecting on a physical intimacy level with your spouse is essential to maintaining a vibrant marriage. You both are likely busy with work and family responsibilities. You may be too exhausted to connect through sexual intimacy. However, it's necessary if you want to continue to grow as a couple and fulfill each other's physical needs. Be open about your likes and dislikes in this physical intimacy area of your marriage. Vulnerability will help bring you both to a new level of closeness.

3. Identify Daily Stressors

Stress can play a negative role in your marriage. When you're both stressed, it's easier for basic conversations to turn into arguments. Stress can cause you to say things that you'll later regret. If you want to experience a healthy marriage, take the time to identify the daily stressors you and your spouse experience.

Maybe you are getting stressed out taking care of your kids. You may be overworked at your job. Financial issues can be stressing you out and causing problems in your marriage. It's important to take that introspective look to see what's stressing you out. Ask your spouse to take that personal assessment as well. Then come together for an honest conversation. Ascertain where your daily stressors overlap. Then identify things that stress you out and others that stress out your spouse. Try to find ways to relieve your stress levels each day. You can do that through physical intimacy, emotional connection, and having fun together and individually.

4. Cultivate Better Communication

Communication plays an integral role in a healthy marriage. If you and your spouse don't spend time each day or during the week having genuinely honest conversations, you will run into problems in the future. Take the time to communicate effectively with your spouse.

You may want to set some rules if you think that your communication has been poor in the past. Agree to talk calmly. Don't talk over each other. Avoid interrupting each other. Once you've dealt with issues between you, don't continually bring them up during future discussions. That can become hurtful when you and your spouse keep bringing up the past.

Consider implementing a weekly or monthly date night where you can go out and have fun. It's vital that you invest in spending uninterrupted time together, especially if you want to cultivate a healthy marriage. In everything you do, make every effort to communicate well with your spouse.

Enhance Your Marriage

Start enhancing your marriage today by following the four steps in this article. Work on self-improvement and growing as an individual. Then you can become a better spouse. Invest in continually improving your emotional and physical intimacy for a healthier marriage. Identify daily stressors so that you can create an action plan to remove them or handle them more effectively. Always cultivate better communication so that you can prevent many future problems in your marriage. See more articles like this at Pufs.com.