Marriage Advice to IGNORE If You Want a Happy Marriage with Your Wife

There are two kinds of marital advice: the good and those you need to ignore.

When you’re in a rough patch with your wife, you often seek your married friends and family members’ advice. You ask them how they’ve gone through their troubles and problems with each other.

After hearing what they’ve got to say, you sometimes act too fast and believe them right away without giving the situation much thought. But you see, what you’ve heard might have been wrong.

Still, you’re not at fault for holding on to other people’s opinions in an effort to reconcile your differences and come to an agreeable solution for you and your spouse. After all, you’ll always need guidance from other people who have more experience than you.

To help you avoid self-sabotaging your marriage, we’ve sorted out a few bad marriage advice you should ignore:

1. Married life is easy as long as you love each other.

Do you seriously think love is all you need to make a marriage work?

Love needs understanding, patience, compromise, acceptance, and forgiveness to suffice. A husband and wife have to rely on each other for all the right and wrong reasons, and not only on how they feel.

2. Do ‘it’ every day.

True enough, physical intimacy can help keep a married couple happy and satisfied with each other, but the thing is, this is just impossible. When you have countless responsibilities and obligations to attend to, you hardly get any alone time with each other to engage in intimate activity.

Being sexually active as a key to a happy marriage is a false belief. You have to keep in mind that love goes way beyond satisfying each other’s fantasies, and there are more ways to make each other feel loved and special.

3. A baby will keep your marriage together.

As much as you want to believe that children can save a failing marriage, it doesn’t work that way. In fact, research has found that adding children to your flawed marriage can only mean more stress.

On a more important note, having children during a strenuous time of your marriage can only decrease your satisfaction with each other, so don’t listen when others tell you so.

4. Don’t go to sleep angry.

This is one of the most common bad advice given, even to unmarried couples. Sure, it’s great to sleep in peace with your partner, knowing that you resolved a conflict and reconciled before going to bed.

However, it’s not always a good idea to force things to be alright. Following this advice leads you into thinking that all matters can be soothed in one sitting, when in fact, some issues can’t be solved in one day.

You have to know that it all depends on the person. If you’re the type who wants to have a clear mind before talking about a problem, do it your way. Likewise, you also need to understand if your wife asks the same thing.

In a way, people have different ways of processing emotions, so you can’t force them to get over it quickly.

5. Have the same hobbies.

It’s important to get married to someone whom you can completely relate to but it doesn't mean you have to share the same hobbies. It’s healthy to have a few similar interests with each other, as that gives you something to talk about other than important matters.

Still, you need time alone by yourself. You don’t have to be together 24/7. Even if you’re married, you still need your own space to grow, develop, and mature into the person you need to be. That being said, it’s okay to have different hobbies. It’s okay to let your spouse do his or her own thing.

You need to remember that you’re two different individuals, and you need to appreciate and embrace your diversity.

6. You need to be each other’s best friend.

We bet you said the same thing to your best friend at his wedding when you made that speech. We hate to break this to you, but this is bad advice.

Being a husband to your wife means you need to lift her when she feels down, to remind her she’s beautiful even if her hair’s a mess, make her feel safe even if you’re not around, and protect her no matter what.

And this is not the role of a best friend, but the role of a spouse. So stop telling married couples they need to be each other’s bestfriend. Instead, tell them they need to be each other’s wife or husband.

7. Simply forgive and forget.

Forgiving and forgetting are not synonymous. They are two different things that can be done at the same time but don’t always go hand in hand.

When you’re married, you’ll face many adversities, and even if forgiving seems impossible to do, you need to learn it. However, it doesn’t imply forgetting things.

Learn and reflect about matters that are beyond what’s tolerable and acceptable to you. Take it from there and see what you can manage to go on with.

8. Learn to compromise more.

Meeting each other halfway is a skill you learn when you’re married. It helps 99% of the time, but if only one of you does the compromising, it’s not right.

This is an old concept of love that your friends and family may force on you. There has to be a balance between giving and taking, and you need to promote equality in your marriage.

Ignore this advice because setting aside your personal burdens to cater to your partner’s satisfaction is not how things should work all the time.

Marriage as a Major Life Choice

For couples, getting married is one of the most celebrated relationship milestones. No other day can be more perfect than telling the world about your love and promising in front of your friends and family that you’ll always stick around for each other.

But before you decide to settle down, it’s wise to know about the path you’re taking. Ready yourself for what you’re going to face and expect the worst to come. Above all else, brave the waves of life by holding your spouse’s hand and never letting go.