I am currently in a class that talks a lot about marriage and family relationships. The other day we started talking about how important it is to be motivated to have a healthy relationship and how motivation can play a big part in the outcome of a relationship. I wanted to find an article talking more in-depth on the motivation behind marriage and found an interesting one at psychologytoday.com. The article is called "The Marriage Quiz" and offers the quiz as a opportunity to look at problems in your marriage.
Motivation comes into the article when the author explains that many people in relationships use negative emotions and instead of using them as a motivation to improve, they use the emotions as a tool of blame. The author goes on to explain, "In reducing self-doubt, it eliminates the motivation to heal, improve, and repair, leaving in its place a chronic and impotent resentment. It keeps their consciousness locked on how unhappy, even "damaged" they are at the hands of their partners." The main point of the article is that to keep a marriage healthy and strong, you must be able to effectively heal and repair problems, which is only achieved when both parties involved are motivated to do so.
The article can be found at:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/200909/the-marriage-quiz
Discussion Questions:
Is the motivation to keep a relationship working all it takes?
What happens when one party is motivated to work at the relationship but the other it not?
Motivation comes into the article when the author explains that many people in relationships use negative emotions and instead of using them as a motivation to improve, they use the emotions as a tool of blame. The author goes on to explain, "In reducing self-doubt, it eliminates the motivation to heal, improve, and repair, leaving in its place a chronic and impotent resentment. It keeps their consciousness locked on how unhappy, even "damaged" they are at the hands of their partners." The main point of the article is that to keep a marriage healthy and strong, you must be able to effectively heal and repair problems, which is only achieved when both parties involved are motivated to do so.
The article can be found at:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/200909/the-marriage-quiz
Discussion Questions:
Is the motivation to keep a relationship working all it takes?
What happens when one party is motivated to work at the relationship but the other it not?
There was a point in the article in the beginning about making your partner happy but if you were happy before you met your partner, you will likely be happy after marriage; but if you were an unhappy single, marriage alone won't make you happy. This is very interesting because I feel like my friends and I are coming around to the age where the idea of serious relationships and marriage gets tossed around. But my question is are we happy enough as individuals to be with someone seriously enough to marry them and spend the rest of your life with them?
If someone isn´t happy or excited about something or someone for long periods of time, how can they be motivated to keep being satisfied and work at the relationship?
I don’t know if motivation is the only thing that keeps a relationship going, but I do believe that it is a big part of it. I think that one time motivation is a huge part of a relationship is when a conflict occurs. Both people really need to want their relationship to work and they need to put the time and effort into their relationship to make it a success. For a person to really put time and effort into saving the relationship takes a lot of motivation. It is very easy for someone to just give up and say it is over. So, to answer your second question, if only one person is motivated to keep the relationship intact, and the other is not, the most likely occurrence will be the ending and failure of their relationship. You cannot expect one person to do all the work. People change throughout their lives and each person needs to be willing to do the work and stay motivated for the relationship to remain strong during those changes.
I found this great article that talks about ways to make your relationship work. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/111667/how_to_make_your_relationship_work.html
Rule number one in the article involves the amount of success a relationship has. It is determined by the amount of effort and commitment.
Rule number two is to never stray from your morals or your values.
Rule number three is to make sure to take one on one time with your love outside of the bedroom.
All three of these rules have some association with motivation. A person needs to follow these rules to have a successful and healthy relationship.
I think that motivation is a huge factor in keeping a relationship together. I have been in a relationship for almost 7 years and I know that I have put a great deal of motivation into my relationship. We have seen the very worst of each other and our relationship at one point seriously hit rock bottom where neither one of us thought things would ever be the same. It has taken a great deal of motivation on both our parts to keep the relationship going strong and get through those tough times. So many people don't have this motivation that is why they say over 50% of marriages end in divorce today. People do not have the motivation to stay together and they make divorces way too easy to get nowadays. In my opinion they need to either make getting married harder so that people aren't able to simply get married after dating only a week sometimes! That's insane! Like how Kloe Kardashian and Omar Odem got married after dating for like 2 weeks!! That is insane, how can you marry somebody you have only known for 2 weeks?? I think that is partly the reason people don't have the dedication or motivation to stay together, they hardly know the person. And it's so easy to just go request a divorce. People getting married drunk as hell in Vegas and then divorcing. It's insane. I think people who are married should take more time to try to work out their marriage instead of just divorcing after being married for a few months or a year. They put no motivation or care into trying, that is what marriage counselors are for. I honestly think that if both partners had the same motivation to keep their relationship together that together they could find a way to save their marriage.