Do-It-Yourself Marriage

Even if your spouse isn't trying, you can bring positive change to your marriage, says popular therapist Michele Weiner-Davis

Annette LaPlaca

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So what's a nice Jewish therapist like Michele Weiner-Davis doing in a Christian magazine like this? Sharing our commitment to save and strengthen marriages, that's what. With her popular books, including Divorce Busting (Simon & Schuster) and A Woman's Guide to Changing Her Man (Golden), her many years of marriage and family therapy and a happy 22-year marriage to Jim Davis, Weiner-Davis has a lot to say about how anyone can make his or her marriage better—even if he or she is the only one trying.

Is it common for one partner to long for the marriage to improve when the other spouse isn't all that interested?

What's common is a sort of stalemate: he's waiting for her to change, she's waiting for him to change. It comes down to "I'll do this if you do that." It's great when one partner decides to break out of unproductive ruts—and tip the first domino, so to speak.

How can you be so sure one person can bring about change alone?

Married people make things happen in their relationships all the time—but not necessarily positive things. If you wanted to make your spouse fly off the handle right now, could you? Of course! One of my friends says, "All I'd have to do is stand in front of the TV when a football game is on." I know if I tell my husband how to drive when he's driving, he'll snap at me. Everyone knows how to push those buttons. So if you can push negative buttons, couldn't you push positive ones? People have "change buttons," but we're too busy focusing on the negatives to find them. Change is a chain reaction, so I encourage people to find out what they can do differently to trigger a more positive response from their spouse.

So it becomes "changing you by changing me." Sounds simple, so how come this isn't obvious to all of us?

We have this inborn habit of pouncing on the negative and not noticing the positive. Most people don't realize how negative they are toward their partners. When they examine their own words and actions, they're shocked to find how critical they are. One woman came home from work to find that her husband had mowed two acres of their property—something he'd been putting off. She told me, "I got out of the car, and all I noticed was the grass under the trees where he couldn't get to with the lawn mower."

"Treat your spouse based on how you want things to be, not on how they really are."

When I ask individuals to tell me what annoys them about their spouse, they can instantly give me a list. But when I ask what they do that annoys their spouses, they have to go home and ask! Seeing their own behaviors from their partner's point of view can help them see how important their own actions are in shaping all their interactions as a couple.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1998, Winter

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