FAMILY: What is Your Marriage All About?

What is you marriage all about? Is it about the sex, financial stability, the fun, or anything that may be fleeting and within a few seconds could be taken away from you if say an accident happened and your spouse was crippled?

There are 7 essential needs in a relationship that keep it rowing and amazing, including:

With all these parts, you will never become dissatisfied with your marriage. When something happens and one is taken away the other 5 take over filling the spot until that lost need is rediscovered and it always can be. Here is why each is so important.

1. Certainty:

The first human need is the need for Certainty. It’s our need to feel in control and to know what’s coming next so we can feel secure. It’s the need for basic comfort, the need to avoid pain and stress, and also to create pleasure. This is a survival instinct and we thrive off knowing what to expect. In a marriage, we want to know what our path is and who we are to become. A marriage that is always spontaneous and sometimes it good but other times its not really makes a person re-evaluate if they want to be in the relationship.

2. Variety:

Do you like surprises or do you like only the surprises you want? Those you don't want, you most likely call problems. At the same time, you need both in order o grow. Much like muscles or character, you don't grow them unless there is opposition to work again. In a relationship, you can't just have a spouse that runs like clock work and never changes and is never spontaneous. Mixing things up is a way to create variety, whether in your bedroom or in the kitchen and helping with the kids. Going above and beyond is a great way to be spontaneous and introduce variety.

3. Significance:

What make you feel important? Is it the PhD at the end of your name, a large Facebook following, a large amount of money in the bank, or piercings and tattoos all over your body? What gives you uniqueness and makes you feel special at home. Is it that your spouse comes home and is excited to see you ever time? Is it that they rely on you and respect your advise? Find out what makes you tick and tell your spouse. Look at the 5 Love Languages for finding this ( www.5lovelanguages.com ) Here they speak of what you are truly looking for to feel love and then how you normally show love. Keep your love language and don't try to mold it to your spouse but at the same time, find out their love language and try to serve that person the way that makes them feel significance.

4. Love and Connection

"Love is the oxygen of life; it’s what we all want and need most. When we love completely we feel alive, but when we lose love, the pain is so great that most people settle on connection, the crumbs of love. You can get that sense of connection or love through intimacy, or friendship, or prayer, or walking in nature. If nothing else works, you can get a dog.

These first four needs are what I call the needs of the personality. We all find ways to meet these—whether by working harder, coming up with a big problem, or creating stories to rationalize them. The last two are the needs of the spirit. These are more rare—not everyone meets these. When these needs are met, we truly feel fulfilled." - Tony Robbins

5. Growth

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. If a relationship is not growing, then it will die. You need to understand that love is a verb and an action word. You want to keep adding to the relationship and your spouse needs to do the same. The lack of either side on a normal basis will make the relationship lack and fall apart.

6. Contriboution

The secret to life and love is always contributing and feeling that your contributions are significant. Life is not about "me", its about others. What do you do when you get good news, you want to share it right.? You want to share because it enhances the experience. Same thing goes in the home. If the spouse doesn't feel like they can contribute, they fall in their significance, which effects their feeling of growth and other essential needs.

ACTION ITEMS:

1. Consider each of these needs fulfill your internal needs and then look at how your spouse feels about these same needs. Write them down.

2. Begin finding at least one way to serve each of your needs. Start working on them each day.

3. Begin to serve your spouses needs. By serving them you become more significant and enhance any relationship. Don't bend to their needs over yours but find out how both of your needs becomes important and work together.