Congratulations on this beautiful new journey of your life. Marriage is such a sacred ceremony, truly and fully giving yourself to your loved one for life. Of course, it has become less sacred for some. Getting married and divorced multiple times has become rather common. The reason for this is that if your partner triggers you, you will simply meet another person with similar qualities unless you do some ‘inner work’.

This is due to what we call the law of attraction, which basically means that like attracts like. If you have a positive attitude, you will get positive results, but the opposite applies too. Of course, that’s just a brief description of the law of attraction, the easiest way to think of it is as a mirror.

Everything in your life is just a reflection of what is going on inside you. The person you meet can only love, respect and honour you as much as you love respect and honour yourself.

The marriage vows are what they are for a reason. Consider the phrasing “till death do us part”, “in sickness or in health”, “for better or for worse”. If you truly surrender to these vows, you have the opportunity to create a blissful, harmonious relationship. Of course, this surrender has to come from a place of love and compassion and not resistance and resentment.

I’ve been with my partner for 10 years and recently got engaged. It’s been a bumpy road, but by never giving up on each other we are now at a new place in our relationship. We communicate differently and have truly gotten to know each other inside and out.

Don’t wait for it to happen. Create your happiness

The struggle in my relationship was something called co-dependency, something most people suffer from. Basically I used to base my happiness on whatever my partner was going through. This made us suffer a lot as a couple, because I was too much in his business. Our relationship started to improve when I stopped trying to change him and started working on myself. I realised that my happiness was in my hands and as long as I expected to get it from someone else, I would be living a struggle.

Since making the decision to invest in my self-development, I have discovered that what needed to change was my self-love. So the conclusion was I didn’t need anyone to love me more, I needed to love myself more and the rest would follow.

I encourage you all to look within yourself for the answers you are searching for and your relationship will thrive because of this decision. Not only did I change for the better, but when I stopped trying to change my partner, he started to change by himself and we are both becoming better together.

One area which has improved in my relationship is communication. About a year ago, if my fiancé were to tell me something about myself I didn’t want to hear, I would get so defensive and my ego would not allow me to think that he is saying this because he loves me and wants me to be better. Instead, I would wonder how he dared make such a comment. Now that I’m not so defensive, I am able to listen to the constructive criticism and continuously better myself.

A sure way to have a harmonious relationship is to focus on what you want. As a culture, we do tend to grow up watching people complain. We tend to copy this and take it into our marriages/ relationships. A more productive way is to focus on the good in our relationship.

A good exercise to do when you’re starting to feel frustrated at your partner is to make a list of all the lovely things they do for you and what you love about them. Putting pen to paper is very powerful and can bring about different awareness from just going through things in our minds.

Another powerful exercise is gratitude. Again, it’s about shifting your focus and instantly changing your mood. This is actually something you can do together.

With my family, we like to start our day meditating on why we are grateful for each other. We have a three-year-old daughter and I love teaching her these powerful tools to create a happy life.

And if it’s still just the two of you, a nice idea is to have a gratitude dinner once a week or month to celebrate one another.

Words are very powerful and hearing your loved one express how you make their lives better melts away any negativity you might be holding on to.

Relationships take work, so don’t take anything for granted. When you feel things are getting stale, don’t wait for your partner to bring the romance back, make the move and spice things up by booking a spa, hotel room or a nice dinner, or even just buying some lingerie. If you feel your partner should appreciate you more, tell you they love you more or be there for you more, once again don’t wait for it to happen.

Create your happiness. If there is a lack in life, it’s what you have created for yourself and if you created one reality, you can easily create another. So just go for it and whatever it is you want to hear more, say more of.

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