Communication. In my opinion communication is the most important step in any good marriage. You need to sit down and communicate about everything. Keeping secrets is not going to help only hurt your marriage. When sit down and communicate about anything and everything, also talk about problems, beliefs, and about what you want in your future life together. You’ll find that is so easy to be open and communicate even in ruff times.
Honesty. Being open and honest is the only way to be true to your self and your partner. If the truth is going to hurt it is still better to be known, than kept a secret. A secret will only haunt and hurt your marriage latter.
Understanding. This is a hard one. To understand someone is easiest when you have good communication in your marriage. Everyone gets upset and that you may need to wait for them to calm down before you can understand them. Do your best to take a minute to look at it for their point of view. This will help in the understanding. Once both of you understand where your partner is coming from it will make it easier to compromise and make your marriage better.
Commitment. There needs to be a strong commitment for a great lifelong marriage to work. There is no longer just me or he and she, there is “we”. You need to work together not against each other to make a marriage work. Any lifelong marriage is going to take work from both sides to be successful.
Team Effort. As stated in the last step, a lifelong marriage is “we”. This is very important specially when raising children. Children know how to wedge between to get what they want. Children don’t mean to do this. They just want to get their own way. You need to be a team, have the same objectives and goals and know the rules. Make sure your both on the same team and set forth the rules will make this easier.
