Read the Intro & 40 Day Challenge

Introduction to
You Can Save Your Marriage

Why You Need These Principles

There are ten choices you can make right now to save your marriage. These are not ten secrets, ten mystical incantations, ten wishes, or ten magic tricks. These are Ten Proven Principles that you have the power to choose to follow right now. And it is in choosing to follow these Ten Principles that you create the greatest hope for saving a relationship in crisis; a relationship like yours.

I also want you to know that I can help. No matter what crisis your relationship is currently facing -- your spouse is having an affair, your partner has told you they are leaving you, the person you love has said they don't love you anymore, or any other relational emergency -- I can give you the solid guidance that you need to make the choices that give your relationship the best possible chance for survival.

Additionally, I will be here to help you get through the crisis. You do not need to go through this alone and with my help and the help of friends -- the right friends -- there is going to be a brighter day. And let me say this as the first critical point that you must remember:

You will survive this crisis.

It may not feel like it right now, but you will make it through this. There is hope and, yes, you are going to be okay.

Truth Number One: You will survive.

Truth Number Two: We have been given the ability to choose how we respond to other people, even when they are choosing to hurt us. 

Our responses are not at the mercy of those who are hurting us. One of the most misused phrases in our culture is, "You make me so angry." The fact is, I may not like what someone does to me and they may be intentionally trying to hurt me or get me angry, but the very simple yet profound truth is that my anger is mine. No one can make me choose how I respond to anything.

The person who you love and is threatening to leave the relationship cannot, no matter what they are doing, make you respond in any way that you don't choose to respond. Period. Oh, they think they can; and they think they know how you are going to respond. Saving Your Marriage is about responding the way you need to respond in order to save this relationship.

Dr. Viktor Frankl survived over three years in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. In his most famous book, The Meaning of Life, Dr. Frankl wrote:

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

In the midst of the horrors of the death camps, Dr. Frankl realized that his captors could do anything they wanted to his body: they could deprive him of food, torture him, and spew unspeakable epithets and threats out of their mouths toward him. But what they could not do was make him chose how he would respond to what they did to him. They could not make him hate. They could not force him to give up hope.

I do not know every aspect of the situation that has brought you to where you are at this very moment. I don't know if your spouse has physically moved out of your house, is openly having an affair, has just told you they're leaving, just said they don't love you anymore, are treating you with spite, or, for whatever combination of reasons, you just know that your marriage is in trouble. I can you tell that even though we've never met, I have heard your story and I can help. In my almost 20 years in the counselor's chair, I have seen and heard what you're going through many times over. And I want you to know that you have choices you can make. Some of things you can choose to do can create the greatest probability of saving this relationship; and some will all but insure that the relationship will end.

And the ones that will save you are probably not the ones you've been trying so far.

Sadly, a great deal of boneheaded advice has been given to those who are facing losing a mate or the end of relationship. Wives have been told to "submit" and simply love their husbands more demonstratively, even if he is having an affair or treating her abusively. Husbands have been told to demand that their wives stop acting in a way hurtful to the marriage and strongly remind her that she should be expected to obey.

That advice simply does not work.

I want you to know that your feelings are very important. But in this situation, "do what you feel like doing" is the worst advice anyone can give you. Saving Your Marriage is not about feelings first and foremost; it is about action. Every professional counselor worth the paper their diploma is written on understands that our actions can ultimately dictate our feelings, but our feelings do not have to dictate our actions. That doesn't mean we can prevent sadness anymore than we can predict the next time we'll have a great laugh. It does mean that when we let our thinking brains make the right choices, we influence our feelings in the future.

A few years back my two boys and I all earned our First Degree Black Belts in Tae Kwon Do. One thing that journey taught me is that Black Belts are not the privilege of only the best athletes. Rather, this coveted honor could be earned by anyone who was willing to work hard and make good choices. Furthermore, I discovered that the essence of Tae Kwon Do is not about learning the best ways to attack and hurt people. More importantly, the core of good martial arts is good self-defense. And when a person masters the art of self-defense, they can handle almost any situation that comes along.

Saving Your Marriage is about self-defense: Relational Self Defense. These Ten Principles are not designed to hurt your mate or anyone else for that matter. They are about defending you and the relationship that you care so much about. Relational Self Defense works in marriage, premarital relationships, and even in dating. Relational Self Defense is about choices that can be learned by anyone who is willing to work hard.

In martial arts, the journey from a White Belt (beginner) to a First Degree Black Belt is begun by learning very simple basics.

It is the same in Relational Self Defense. As such, the early chapters of this book are longer than the chapters toward the end. As you learn the first of the Ten Principles, you will also be discovering the core truths about relationships that cause the Ten Principles to work. However, this is not a text book that is intended to make you a master of psychology. This is not about pinhead theories or useless anecdotes. That is not what you want or need. The Ten Principles are ten major choices written as concisely as possible so you can get about the business of why you decided to read them in the first place: the business of saving your marriage.

Furthermore, I want you to know that you may not need all Ten Principles. However, if you are facing a relationship crisis, there is a strong likelihood that you are not seeing things as clearly as you can. You may not think a Principle applies to you when, in reality, it may be the one you need the most. Feel free to skip around, but do, at some point, take the time to read the whole book. Let me help you see things that are difficult for you to see right now. Let my experience help you. I know that these Principles work.

But you must follow them -- faithfully.

The 30-Day Challenge

I want you to take the 30-day challenge. For the next 40 days follow these Principles to the letter. Do not deviate, do not rationalize to do something different, and do not avoid doing them simply because you do not feel like it. Follow them. 30 Days. Then honestly evaluate where things are in the relationship. Are they better? I promise they will be.

Then I think you will see the importance of following these Ten Principles as a path to overall life change. The simple truth is that most people have not learned the right way to have a healthy marriage. They've learned from watching their own parents, TV, movies, reading books and friends. The Ten Principles apply for the rest of your life.

There is not a quick fix. There is not one paragraph you can turn to that will magically change everything. Your relationship didn't show up in crisis mode over night and the crisis will not subside in a day.

But you can make choices now to make things better.

A word of warning: Believe it or not, but there are people who do not want your relationship to survive, and I don't just mean the mate who is leaving you. It may be a divorced co-worker, a misdirected family member, an opinionated person in the pew at church, or any number of people who cross your path everyday. The truth is, when you tell them you are going to work to save this relationship, they will try to talk you out of it. Right now their reasons are absolutely irrelevant (that is, unless you are in an abusive relationship; then getting to safety is the right thing to do. We will cover that in more detail in Principle Number Four). But if you are not in an abusive marriage and others are opposing your efforts to save this relationship, then simply put as much distance between you and them as possible. It may even be appropriate to tell them that you are going to work to save this relationship and that you would appreciate their support. If they can't give it, then simply ask them to not say anything at all.

Your relationship can be saved but you will need to not only make the right choices in following these Ten Principles, but you will also need to battle (or better, avoid altogether) the forces that are trying to see your relationship destroyed. You need people that will support you. You need folks who will encourage you to do the right things -- the best things.

That is what I am doing.

I can teach you the best possible way to save your marriage. You can make the choices that will give you every opportunity to bring your relationship back from the brink of disaster. You can choose to influence your future.

The hope for your future is about choices: ten of them. 

To read the ten principles for saving your marriage, click the buttons below to have immediate access to either the eBook OR AudioBook You Can Save Your Marriage, by Dr. Tim Alan Gardner.

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