There’s a good chance your marriage trouble began when your spouse stopped meeting your expectations.
Do you know WHY this happened? It’s simple…because YOU stopped meeting your partner’s expectations. (Or the other way around).
So, if you’re wondering, “can this marriage be saved”, all you need to do is start meeting your spouse’s expectations again, right?
NOT SO FAST. It’s not quite that easy.
If you feel resentment towards your spouse, you might be thinking, “Why should *I* meet their expectations when they are not meeting MINE!?!”
Once you meet your spouse’s expectations, yours will, in turn, start being met (assuming all good will has not diminished in your relationship) and your marriage trouble will diminish!
But first you must know…
CLEARLY Define Ultimate Expectations
I want to make it clear that we are NOT talking about normal expectations here. We ARE talking about Ultimate Expectations.
It’s possible you might have indirectly stated that you wanted one or more of these expectations to be met or maybe you’ve verbally attacked your spouse because your needs were not met.
Every man and woman has their own gender-specific set of Ultimate Expectations.
At no point in time are these needs ever discussed out in the open, yet both husband and wife expect each other to know how they want to be treated.
I’m going to reveal exactly what these needs are for a man and woman so you can put your marriage trouble behind you. If you study them carefully and meet your spouse’s particular needs, you’ll see an improvement sooner than you might expect.
The good news? As long as you continue to meet your spouse’s expectations, you won’t have to worry about marriage trouble in the future.
Her Ultimate Expectations
1) Patience under all conditions
As a woman, you need to keep your family together physically and emotionally. Because men generally tend to only take care of themselves, you’ll try anything within your power to keep your husband connected with your family.
For instance, you might try to bring your husband closer to your children by telling him to stay home instead of going out with friends. Your husband might insist that he needs some time to himself.
He may become intolerant, rude or even mean because his need for free time is not being met. It’s this kind of scenario that often leads to marriage trouble.
Since you expect patience from your husband, you also expect him to forgive your sometimes awkward attempts to bring father and children together through “nagging”.
When your husband fails to be patient with you, your Ultimate Expectations are not met, your stress level can go through the roof and that’s when the marriage trouble begins.
2) The ability to listen as if everything you say really matters
You have sensitive emotions that are easily damaged by the smallest detection of negative voice inflection. To properly handle this condition, you want your husband to listen without judgment to everything you say; no matter how long it takes you to say it.
You want him to be sincerely interested in every subject you choose to talk about. If there is one thing men struggle with, it is listening to their wives talk about subjects that men could care less about, yet this is a serious need that women want their husbands to meet.
Poor communication is one of the leading causes of marriage trouble.
3) Compliments and encouragement about what you do, have done or are about to do
You need positive, not negative feedback. You want your husband to look for the good in you, regardless of what you might be doing wrong. If you don’t receive positive encouragement from your husband, you’ll run into marriage troubles.
4) Complete emotional support for what you value in life
If you come from a childhood home where your father abandoned or ignored you, unfortunately, you are forced to pay the price…along with your husband.
The price you pay is that you tend to be emotionally insecure and either put yourself down or put your husband down because of your past. There are some exceptions to this. There is still much you can do to avoid marriage trouble in the future.
His Ultimate Expectations
1) Staying just as sexy, playful and interesting as she was when you were dating
When you’re entering marriage trouble, this expectation is usually one of the first to go unfulfilled. It has much to do with the fact that as a man, you are physically wired to need sexual contact which keeps you going back to your wife for fulfillment.
But the problem is, your wife does not have this need for sexual contact like you do. Instead, she needs an emotional connection which requires acts of kindness, conversation, encouragement and a genuine interest in her. These are all the activities you did during the romance stage of your relationship, but that unnatural effort dried up quickly after the wedding and now you’re faced with marriage trouble.
Most men say to themselves, why work hard? Romance was work, but we’re married now. This is the mystery of romance vs. marriage. As a man, you want your wife to be as sexy, playful and interesting as she was when you were dating, but you don’t realize that it was YOU who stopped the kindness, conversation, encouragement and genuine interest in her that actually made her sexy, playful and interesting.
2) Time that is free of any domestic demands so you can do what you really love to do
This is simply a man thing. Women typically don’t need as much alone time as men. Your wife might treat you like you’re a woman and refuse to believe that you would ever want to be without her for any length of time.
If she understands this expectation, she’d ask if you’d like to plan some time with your friends, do your favorite hobby or just get away from daily responsibilities for a while. If she supports this need often, you’ll want to support her emotional needs in every way you can.
3) Compliments and encouragement about what you do, have done or are about to do
If you are a man, you need even more encouragement than your wife does, but unlike your wife, you don’t hint around for it. You want your wife to tell you how good the things you’ve done in the past were and how good your present is and your future will be.
If your wife says she can’t do that because none of it is good, she is not meeting your need for encouragement. This often makes you resent your wife for not meeting this need. Resentment leads to marriage troubles.
The more your wife looks for the good in what you do, no matter how small (“Honey, I really like how organized you made your work bench.”), the more you will give her the emotional rewards in her Ultimate Expectations list.
4) Complete emotional support for what you value in life
In the same way your wife needed her father, you needed yours, but for a different reason. You watched your father as he related to your mother and other women.
If you came from a home where your father respected women, enjoyed conversation with them, listened attentively and showed respect, it will be no problem for you to do the same and marriage trouble will not be an issue for you.
On the other hand, if your father lived for himself, ignored you and your mother and you didn’t really notice this when you were young, you will have a difficult time trying to go against this “model life” that your father gave you and marriage trouble will almost be inevitable.
To solve your marriage trouble, you need to know how to…
Are You on the Secret Path to Divorce?
Find out…before it’s too late
If you’re unhappy in your marriage, it’s because these expectations are not being met. You need to CLEARLY define your Ultimate Expectations to your spouse to avoid the possibility of unknowingly entering the Secret Path to Divorce.
In fact, after studying people for over 27 years, I’ve created a “map” that ALL couples travel when they are headed toward the “Secret Path to Divorce.”
So why is this path a SECRET?
Because MOST people don’t know about this little-known, yet CRITICAL information that is absolutely crucial to a successful marriage.
If they did know about it, we wouldn’t have the high divorce rate we do today.
I know the information in the Secret Path to Divorce report will help you put your marriage troubles into perspective as it has for so many others. So go ahead, start meeting your spouse’s expectations and end your marriage troubles today.
