6 Lessons For a Better Marriage (That I Learned After My Divorce)

Marriage can be beautiful and connecting and fun. It can also be lonely and heartbreaking. It can crack you right open and expose all your shortcomings and flaws. If you’re smart, you’ll examine these and do better in the future.

And if you’re also lucky, you’ll be able to adjust midstroke and things won’t break down (or might be easily resolved) in your marriage before it leads to divorce.

When I got married at 29 years old, I thought I had a solid handle on who I was and what I wanted out of life. My then-husband was a year younger, and seemed both exciting (He surfed! Rock climbed! Practiced Yoga! Was an alternative doctor!) and steady (he preferred quiet nights home or trying that new restaurant to crazy nights on the dance floor). While I’ve always loved to dance, I also really enjoyed going to museums with him and trying my hand at painting (I was terrible, but it was fun), and game nights with friends over.

A couple of years into the marriage, he got sick with a mystery illness. His energy downshifted to nights at home on the couch, and for a time, this suited me just fine since I was working 16–18 hour days building my business. Things got more disconnected between us, though, as my business took off and my energy was split between work and home. During this time, I did a terrible job focusing on him and our home, as I was learning to manage a dozen employees and respond to the demands of a busy bakery.

My ex and I both changed during the course of our 14 years together, and it wasn’t on a path together. I still wanted to travel and have adventures with him and see the world; he’d been quite a few places growing up and felt like he didn’t need to have those experiences anymore—he wanted to fast forward to middle age and be settled and sedate.

After we eventually split, I started looking back at my marriage, doing what relationship expert and motivational speaker Gina Hatzis calls a “Relationship Autopsy.” It’s a brilliant approach to help you suss out what factors you each contributed to the successes and challenges you faced, and what habits or personality traits led to the demise of your relationship.

This led me to 6 big realizations about relationships and how to foster a stronger connection (or at least not let love wither and die).

Before you react to a situation, pause to think about whether your response will foster connection with your partner or separation.

I think this is the single biggest tip, and everything that follows stems from this. My boyfriend’s sister told me she was chopping vegetables for dinner and her husband came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. He was needing connection and affection from her. I swooned at how sweet this is (they’ve been together over 30 years), but she confided in me that she was irritated because he did this while she was in the middle of a task.

She ended up snapping at him, he felt rebuked and rejected and slunk away, and they had a wordless dinner. She regretted it, so when she recounted the story for me later, I asked her, “Would it have been tough to put down your knife and turn in his arms and hug him back for six seconds?” It would have taken her just a few seconds out of her day to reciprocate the affection and validate her husband’s efforts, and it’s little things like this—that we may not even be aware of on a daily basis—that strengthen or weaken connection with our partners.

Of course, I’ve been just as guilty of not taking the opportunity to foster connection when I was married. Which leads to:

2. Put down your devices. If you really love and value your partner, chances are you want them to know this. Authentic connection and your focused attention on them and on the relationship is one of the best ways you can show it. This means putting down your phone, or your iPad or laptop. Yes. I mean completely.
There was a moment in my marriage—and I’m not proud to admit this—where I was working from home and trying to handle a situation at work and my then-husband wandered into my office and started sharing something about his health journey or day trading, or whatever his obsession du jour was. I don’t know because I wasn’t really paying attention to him. (SMH. I know. I know.)
I eventually looked up and made eye contact but I was still trying to figure out the best way to handle the rogue employee. I could have handled this situation way better, rather than humoring him, non-committally giving “uh-huhs” and “wow, reallys?”

I could have said, “Hey, I’m in the middle of this situation at work and I need to focus on it, but I’ll be totally present for you in 20 minutes.” I could have stopped working for the four minutes it took him to share his thoughts and given him my full attention. Either one of these would have resulted him in feeling seen and validated. Either response would have led to more connection. Unfortunately, I didn’t do either of these two things.

Even more unfortunately, situations like this weren’t a one-off, so I’m trying to be better now.

3. There’s no need to nag. Ever. And don’t passive aggressively do the task you’re asking your partner to do. I know I’m going to catch heat for this one. Friends of mine (primarily my female friends) tell me that they can’t get their partner to empty the garbage, or do the dishes, or whatever household chores need doing unless they nag repeatedly.

To this, I say, “Isn’t the whole point of having kids to have someone to do your chores?” Just kidding. I jest.

A good relationship relies on effective communication. It doesn’t matter how many words are flying around if nothing is coming home to nest. And nagging your partner only withers connection with them, and makes them feel like they are not enough for you.

I realized that while my ex and I were both neurotic about certain things, our neuroses didn’t line up. For example, I liked to consolidate dirty dishes in the sink until we unloaded the clean dishes out of the dishwasher so that the counters stayed clean and clutter-free; he preferred to have the sink empty to facilitate handwashing the dishes if he got in the mood to do so, which often resulted in dirty food encrusted plates all across the counter. Unsurprisingly, and despite numerous conversations (with lots of words flying about), this led to me doing the dishes a majority of the time, simply because I couldn’t bear to have the counters scuzzy. This irritated me because we had agreed that dishes would be his thing, and laundry and the majority of the cooking mine, and here I was feeling like I was doing most of it.

I didn’t learn this concept of phrasing things as requests until my current relationship. Before my boyfriend and I moved in together, we discussed cleanliness, and divvying up household duties, and pitching in when the other requests it. I learned to time my requests when he’s upright, rather than when he’s relaxing (because everyone is entitled to downtime), or in the flow state in another project. And I learned that he hears through his eyes so if he’s not making focused eye contact, he’s probably not hearing me.

Timing is everything.

I have also learned to phrase my requests with a specific timeframe attached. And sometimes I’ll add in the reasoning, since psychology studies have shown that when you give someone a reason—even a completely inane one—they’re more likely to comply with your request.

My requests might look like “[Term of endearment] would you be willing to [name of task] so that [What I am going to do in the meantime] [Because answer.]

In practical terms: “Hey Babe, would you be willing to empty the clean dishes from the dishwasher so that I can put the dirty dishes right away? [Because] I’m about to start making dinner.”

If this is met with resistance, or a verbal yes with no followthrough, you can follow up with a “Sweetheart, I really need this done now, but I can do it right now, if you’re not able.” If your partner gets huffy or gets defensive or stonewalls, well, that’s a whole other situation (and this article probably won’t help that much).

And yes, there are times when I need to let go of the need to have it done RIGHTNOW. My timeline is not necessarily his timeline. My priorities are not necessarily his. Of course… I also don’t start dinner until the dishwasher is empty…

People tend to complete the tasks that they prioritize or enjoy, and the rest gets done because it needs doing, and not because we enjoy doing them (hello? Taking out the garbage?).

4. Let go of the need to have everything done on YOUR timeline. This will lead to more relaxed interactions, and help you genuinely appreciate what your partner contributes. (A bonus 4.5 tip would be to show genuine appreciation to your partner. We all want to have our efforts acknowledged, and this keeps us much more likely to want to continue making an effort.)

5. Choose to be happy, rather than clinging to the idea that you need to be right. My mom once told me, “In any situation, you can be right, or you can be happy. But you will very rarely get both. Choose wisely.”

In my much younger years, I liked being right, a lot, but as I matured, I realized that insisting on being right and trying to get the other person to see and admit that you’re right only kills love and connection. My ex liked to repeat (but butcher) the phrase whenever we would argue, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married?” This malapropism also withered love and connection because I felt like I wasn’t ever able to express myself without feeling invalidated afterward. Needless to say, the marriage eventually ended.

In my relationship now, I often pause to think about what is really going to matter to us as a couple, and to me individually. Will speaking up bolster my boundaries, or will it harp on something inconsequential? Is this a situation that is likely to be repeated or is it a one-off? Will it even matter in 5 hours, or 5 months? How can I approach this in a way that strengthens connection?

The other day, my boyfriend took a vase of big beautiful flowers outside to deadhead the stems that looked like their better days were behind them. I opened the slider door for him since his hands were full and then realized when he was done and I was closing the slider that there was some dried blood on the curtains. I gasped and asked him if that was blood on the curtains, and if he was okay. He tensed up, wondering if I was going to explode or get mad, but I was only worried, thinking perhaps he’d cut himself while cutting off the dead flowers. We realized that it was only dark red pollen from where the lilies had brushed against the curtains and had a laugh about it. He thanked me for staying calm, and I reminded him that curtains are just things, and they can be washed.

I’m not sure if younger me would have been irritated with my ex for getting something on the curtains, or if I’d have had the same reaction. But I do know that I wouldn’t have been as conscious about thinking about how my response would affect my relationship.

This tenet (choosing happiness over the concession of being “right”) is especially true when my guy is doing something nice for me or that he thinks I’ll enjoy, like cooking dinner or deadheading a floral arrangement he bought me, I’ll think to myself, “Is some flower pollen on the curtains or a mess in the kitchen really the point I want to hang my relationship on?”

6. Find what connects you and make this a priority. For some people, it’s Thai takeout and true crime shows. For others, rock climbing or trying the hot new restaurant in town. Think about what connected you and got you excited about your partner when you were first dating, and keep doing things like that. Dating your partner—no matter how long you’ve been together—is vital to keeping the love light burning brightly.

I’m thrilled that my boyfriend is up for exploring new hiking and biking trails, or getting dressed up for no reason and going out for dinner, or shopping for all the ingredients for a complicated dish and trying to make it at home. For us, it’s a sense of play and adventure that connects, and we strive to incorporate a little of that into our lives each day.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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