Building Committed Marital Relationships

Making Intimate Relationships Work Through Commitment

One of the key factors in the creation of troubled families is a relationship breakdown between the parents.

People define "committed relationships" as those in which one's love and sexual desires are committed to only their partner. 

But there's another aspect of commitment that is often lacking in these relationships. And that is the commitment to commitment  ──  the commitment to try, to act, to overcome hurdles and blips encountered on the way, to remain in a true partnership no matter what.

Famous basketball player and coach Pat Riley is certainly on the mark with his observation that, "There are only two options regarding commitment. You're either IN or you're OUT. There's no such thing as life in between."

What Riley says about life and basketball is certainly true about committed intimate relationships and marital situations.

There are two components to commitment ── preparation and persistence.

Persistence is what frequently separates successful relationships from those that are not. 

According to Dale Carnegie, "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." The same rings true for successful intimate relationships that last the long haul.

Too many people are ready and willing to discard their aims, desires, dreams, and even their purposes in life by casting everything overboard as the first signs of difficulty or misfortune manifest. They see obstacles and failures as defeats, or even worse as misinterpreted "signs" that things are not meant to be the way they had planned, hoped or dreamed. 

As the Japanese proverb goes: "Beginning is easy, continuing is hard." 

What steps are you making this week to commitment to being committed to your intimate or marital relationship?

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.