These days more than ever it's tough to keep a marriage vibrant and happy.
We have many stressors that leak their way into our lives, and somehow begin to create a wedge in our relationship with our spouse.
We then often seek advice for marriage that will help our situation.
If your marriage isn't what you thought it would be, then you're likely looking for marriage advice so that you can turn it around.
But at the same time you don't want to give up who YOU are.
You don't want to give all of yourself, and let your spouse get away without having to do some work.
Well, the thing is that even though marriage is not a balance sheet, and shouldn't be looked upon as what I'm doing and what you're doing to make the marriage work, there is the fact that if there are two people in the marriage, then doing your half can make a significant difference.
The key though IS how you look at your marriage, and the way you see your role in the marriage, and the way you see the marriage as a whole.
You see the truth is that your marriage is about the both of you together as one.
But the one thing that we don't have control over, is what our spouse does or does not do.
That's a tough concept to take for some, and they spend they make the mistake of spending the majority of their time trying and trying to change their spouse.
I made that mistake for years and years in my own marriage, and I suppose my wife was making the exact same mistake.
We were trying to control one another, and trying so hard to WIN the battle as individuals...
and change the other person that we never learned to find out who we each were as individuals, and learn to live in harmony, together, yet as two separate people.
You have to end the power struggle and stop trying to change your spouse no matter what.
If your spouse is controlling then you have to make a decision of how you'll deal with that.
If they're controlling and abusive then you have no choice but to either seek physical and mental help, or get the heck out.
But if it's a controlling where there is no abuse involved, and it's simply a power of wills then you must break the cycle early, or anger and resentment will begin to plague the marriage (if it hasn't yet).
The problem can happen when either one spouse is controlling, or both spouses are trying to control.
Either way usually equals a power struggle.
Sometimes it's both spouses trying to push their will on each other, or other times it's one spouse trying and the other rebelling.
Either way, that's trouble and seeking advice for marriage is the right thing to do.
The problem is that when we give into a controlling person we lose our identity.
When we try to control another we lose the identity of the marriage as a unity.
Therefore we have to seek balance.
Not where each person goes off on their own, but where both couples have to depend on one another as...
for lack of a better term...
a team.
It's not easy finding good marriage advice that deals with power struggles and control, because most marriage counselors try to focus on the issue of communication.
That's not always the problem.
The problem usually comes way before communication starts...
which is intention.