Four key ingredients for a collaborative marriage …

If you want your marriage to last, and for it to be a deeply enjoyable and satisfying relationship, then you’ll need to build a collaborative marriage.

Just a little common sense should make that fact obvious, but many seem to miss it. Marriage is two becoming one, and that meshing together doesn’t happen very harmoniously without collaboration between partners.

A collaborative marriage is very different from the story about a man who bought a new radio, brought it home, placed it on the refrigerator, plugged it in, turned it to WSM in Nashville (home of the Grand Ole Opry), and then pulled all the knobs off! He had already tuned in all he ever wanted or expected to hear.

To “tune” your marriage relationship to just what YOU want will create problems!

There are four key considerations both partners need to exercise routinely in building and maintaining a collaborative marriage:

1. Care for self. For some, it can be easy to ignore their own needs or interests and just dial into what their spouse wants. But doing just that for the long-term can result in a lot of resentment. It’s even easier to think only of ourselves, which quickly fails to be an effective way to mesh two lives together. But it is important to make sure you’re properly taking care of yourself so that you can bring your best self into your marriage.

2. Care for other. There’s an old saying, “If it’s important to your spouse, it should be important to you.” To blend lives together means to value and consider the interests, needs, and wants of the other person.

3. Care for us. The collaborative marriage takes into consideration the interests, needs, and wants of our selves, as well as our spouses, but it also goes beyond that to consider what is best for “us.” This is when a husband and wife work together to harmonize care for self and other to care for something greater than just the individual, but for the couple and their marriage relationship.

4. Care for those around us. In addition to you and your spouse, there are more than seven billion people on this planet! A harmonious and satisfying marriage involves a couple engaging the world around them and showing value and respect to the interests, needs, and wants of others both near and far.

Key for putting these four considerations together effectively is the communication between husband and wife. To help couples build their communication skills so they can build a mutually satisfying collaborative marriage, Scott Free Clinic offers as one of its FREE services the internationally-acclaimed, award-winning Couple Communication I training program. You can learn more about this outstanding workshop by clicking here.

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