Take ownership and personal responsibility for all your actions.

The easiest thing to do when your relationship goes sour is to play the blame game. This only leads to more headache. The godly thing to do is just own up to your personal faults and everything will begin to fall in place.

Pray, pray, pray! Jesus is able to make it work

A lot of marriages fail because too much trust is placed on marriage counseling. As good as counseling is – (you should get it at all cost), you will need God to work in it. Also, marriages fail because we expect our counselor to fix our partner. God is the only one who can do stuff like that. The sooner you realize that neither you nor your counselor can fix your spouse, prayer will become your priority. Sometimes we just give up before truly seeking his help. Until we can all realize that he has the power to fix things, even the most difficult things, we may never experience divine breakthroughs in our marriages.

Communicate in a way that makes your spouse feel safe

By default, when we feel attacked all our defense mechanisms kick in. But again, this leads to more trouble. I recently learned that “it is not about right or wrong. It is about communicating with integrity. Because “when you feel understood, you feel cared for.” That’s the thing that makes a great marriage.

Establish a no loser policy

As a general rule, in any decision or after any discussion, both spouses must emerge winners. The experts say you need to set up a “no loser policy.” Both spouses must come up with a decision that they feel really good about. It is not acceptable for anyone to walk away feeling as though they have lost.

Go out of your way to please and serve one another

Every one of us come into relationship with expectations. When those expectations are not met, we begin to demand that they are met. This alone puts lots of strain on the relationship. There will be times when pleasing or serving your spouse will be difficult, but If both of you have a servant’s attitude, there is no way you can go wrong.

Understand you own fears and the baggage you bring to the relationship

Most of us grew up in very dysfunctional families, but it really doesn’t matter if you were raised in a broken home or a highly functional home. When two people come together, they bring different dynamics to the relationship. An awareness of personal flaws can help you adjust well.

Highly Esteem your Spouse

One of the reasons we do not succeed in our relationships is because we fail to place much value and worth on our spouse. We become too familiar with them and soon begin to devalue them because of their flaws. We must resist that temptation and learn to highly esteem them by focusing on positive attributes and not the negative ones.

Credit: Gary Bruegman inspired this post…