Is Stress Ruining Your Marriage?
According to a CDC study 43% of marriages dissolve within the first 15 years. Stress is a major contributing factor in divorce. Couples facing increased stress in their daily lives often find themselves unable to cope with this stress in a productive and healthy manner. The inability to cope with life’s stressors often leads to outbursts of frustration and anger ultimately ending with the separation of spouses.
Learning to cope with stress is the key to keeping a marriage functioning. Once a couple can identify those elements that cause stress and eliminate or reduce them the overall condition of their relationship will improve. Each relationship is different but there are some common stressors that are quickly identified.
Household Finances
Financial woes affect most couples. Leaking roofs, broken water heaters, car repairs and more take their eventual toll on every household. The constant fear of not meeting expenses is a serious and real stress inducer. However, financial stress should not affect the fabric of your marriage.
The easiest way to avoid financial stress in your marriage is to learn to live within your means. New cars, bigger houses, and swimming pools are not necessities. Internet, cable television, and cellular phone service aren’t necessities either unless they are required by your employer. The truth is that people become accustomed to certain luxury items and start to regard them as necessities. Couples overstretch their budget maintaining luxuries which in turn increases the stress level in the household and causes bickering and fighting.
Credit card debt contributes the financial stress in the home. Always pay over the minimum balance and keep a tight lease on credit card spending. Practice the save and pay technique on a regular basis. See something you want? Save for it then pay for it. Don’t use your credit card. If credit card debt is already out of control contact a credit counseling service. When spouses work together to reduce household debt the stress level in the home decreases. Spouses can encourage each other to divert luxury funds to paying off credit card debt.
Child Rearing
It is common for couples to disagree about how children are to be reared. Discipline and allowances are the most common points of contention. Often spouses come from two distinctly different backgrounds with two separate and unique set of family values. In the early development of a relationship family values are not usually discussed in depth. By the time couples have children they still lack crucial understanding of the family values of their spouses.
When these values class the resulting arguments can tear a relationship apart. Each spouse wants to provide the best possible care for the child(ren) even though the methodology may be different. Realizing and accepting these differences the first step in removing this particular type of stress from the marriage. Compromise, innovation, and team work are the fundamentals to good child rearing.
Bottling it Up
Hiding emotions, avoiding confrontation, keeping secrets, and telling lies are the best ways to destroy a marriage. A marriage is unable to function if both parties are not open and honest about their feelings, needs, wants, and intentions. Bottling up emotions, hiding indiscretions, and holding in feelings will only increase the stress level in the relationship and can lead to mistrust and anger. Talk openly with your partner and express those inner feelings.
There are many other things that can cause stress in a relationship. Division of household chores, division of child rearing responsibilities, insecurity and infidelity and more can cause undue stress on a relationship. Identifying the stressors in a relationship and working to remove or reduce their impact on the relationship is an important step to healthy and happy marriage.
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