You can buy a sports car, hitting gym daily, and can have an affair. It is stereotype middle life crisis that we see on screen and off-screen in real life. Although not everyone acts in such a way but do experience a reckoning as we approach the midlife. The feeling is same like hitting a wall and wondering if there isn’t more life, particularly to marriage.
I usually see this phenomenon in my own practice, that one of both the partners have questions to their relationship. Even seen in young couples that they have disagreements on classic issues like finance, parenthood, and may on other phases of relationships. But are there exist such couples who headed for divorce or are simply mired in difficulties, better navigated by both.
The Rough Patch, a book based on the content of marriage and the art of living together, the author and psychologist Daphne de Marneffe, who often argues that it could be possible for the couples to weather these issues and the other bumps of their life that results out stronger on the other side.
According to the author, “it is common and natural that these couples have to experience rough patches. In the orthodox times, marriage was just an economic arrangement that was based on child-rearing and labor. She also explained that we want partner in love so as to live longer and we aspire to close intimate marriages but emotions are complicated and inconvenient.
Here, the author shares some advice for the couples who are trying to overcome the midlife rough patches and are hoping to avoid it.
Develop communication Skills :
Skills of good communication is not just an ability to discuss critical relationships but it is also the way of what you want and expressing it. We can hang up to an idea which is common with a potential partner. That is why to communicate in a healthy way is most important.
Working on Yourself :
It is however tempting expecting that our partner will change that suits our preference. It is because it with all yourself. If you don’t know how to articulate of what you want, then how can you expect that your partner will understand your emotions? It is also important to change yourself too for a healthy relationship.
Be a Good Listener :
For a successful marriage, self-responsibility and self-awareness are the key ingredients. For an example, if you try to interrupt your partner or if you try to demean their feeling, you will acknowledge the problem and there you try to change. To overcome the situation you can say that I am working on it on how it affects you when I act on this. Your partner will definitely understand.
Success Redefined:
If you both have tried your ways in saving your relationship and you are not in a rough patch then there is no shame in parting ways because not every divorce is a failure, the author says. It has been seen that most divorced couples understand each other than married ones.
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