In some instances one partner will decide that keeping the family intact isn’t worth the trouble and they’ll move out and seek a divorce. In other cases the couple wants to try and rebuild the relationship but they have absolutely no idea where to start. If you’re faced with this now and you want to rekindle the love and commitment that was once present in your marriage, there’s help.

There are simple steps that you can take, beginning today, that will reconnect you and your partner emotionally. Learning how to stop your marriage from falling apart is the key to a happy, fulfilling future with the person you love.

Communication is obviously vitally important to any successful marriage but, many couples don’t truly see the value in listening to their partner. It’s so easy to go on the defense when your partner comes to you because they are troubled about the relationship, or in particular, something you are doing.

If you want your marriage to succeed you have to be willing to hear the negatives as well as the positives from your spouse. Make a commitment to one another to truly listen to each other. Let your partner talk, without interruption when they are expressing what they feel about the relationship. Absorb what they say and learn from it. Don’t try and defend your position. Instead compromise and grow from everything they tell you. If you can do this, they’ll follow suit and do the same for you.

Dating doesn’t have to stop once you two make that trip down the aisle and become husband and wife. Couples who are happy in their relationships tend to make time to continue to date each other. Depending on your budget, you don’t have to devote a great deal of money to this.

Something as simple and pleasurable as arranging overnight care for the kids with a close friend or relative and then having dinner together at home, followed by a movie or a shared bath, can be more than enough. The focus shouldn’t be on the experience, but more on the company.

Enjoy this type of uninterrupted time with your spouse. It can help you both to get to know one another again and it will remind each of you why you fell in love with the other.

There are things you need to take into account when you are considering whether a relationship is going to last the duration.

Apart from the sex do you have things in common?  Are you able to talk about anything and everything?  Do you feel you could pick up the phone or sit down and talk to him about anything that is on your mind?

Does he make you feel good about yourself?

When you are together are you able to laugh and feel relaxed.  Can you just sit and talk together?

Do you have things in common – similar interests and hobbies?  If you have the same likes it gives you something in common to talk about outside the bedroom.

How do you get on with his family and friends and vice versa.  Do you feel comfortable around them?  This is very important as it make things very awkward and uncomfortable if you don’t get on with his best friends or his family and you can guarantee that it will enventually come between you.

Another very important factor that needs to be taken into account is your views on having a family.  If you are considering spending the rest of your life with this man you need to make sure you both feel the same way about having a family,  If you want to have children and he doesn’t then this could really tear you apart in the future.  Many couples have failed in their relationship due to difering views on this subject.

One very important thing, I think is, are you friends?  If you are comfortable together and have a deep friendship then the chances are you will make it together.  Friendship is a good foundation for any relationship and the chances are with friendship you can overcome anything life throws at you.

Remember to talk!

I personally would hate to be a bloke and have the worry of trying to propose and getting it right.  The pressure must be huge!

I have heard stories of many proposals over the years and the intention of the poor guys were to be romantic but the whole thing ended in disaster! (Although they did get to marry the girl in the end)

A friend’s boyfriend took her out for a romantic dinner for Valentine’s night and got the waiter to hide the ring in the special Valentine’s desert that was part of the menu.  Plan was she would find it and fall into his arms!  The reality was somewhat different – she bit into the cake, broke her tooth and she spent the whole evening in excrutiating agony until she could get into see her dentist

Another disaster was when another bloke decided to hang a banner across the front of his girlfriend’s flat asking her to marry him.  Whilst he was hanging it he slipped and fell as she came round the corner and he spent 3 weeks in hospital after surgery on his broken leg.

Maybe us girls are just being plain selfish by expecting our men to think up all these gimmics – after all what is wrong with someone telling you they love you and want to spend the rest of their life with you??  To me that sounds perfect!

If you want a romantic night together what could be nicer than some food to help things along the way.  Now, the thing is you have to get it right.  If you cook him his favourite meal of beef stew and dumplings with mashed potato and veg followed by sticky toffee pudding and custard is he really going to feel like moving into the bedroom and romancing you?  No, the chances are he will want to lie on the sofa and fall asleep and romance and sex is that last thing he will feel like.

What you want to go for is light food and preferably food that can be eaten with the fingers and food you can feed each other.  Strawberries and champagne are a good option for afters as is chocolate spread ;0)

Of course if you enjoy such foods as oyster, they are supposed to be an aphrodisiac but beware the bad oyster or your night could turn out to be a total disaster!    Just be sure you know what you are doing when it comes to shell fish.

What ever you decide to go with…have fun and make sure you have plenty of tissues ready – especially if you go for chocolate spread.  (I recommend Nutella!)

When I think about one of my most romantic nights with my now husband, it is sitting on a jetty in the Lake District on a moonlight night with the temperature down to about -3 eating fish and chips looking out over the lake.  It was a special night and we had such fun and were frozen to the core but for me it was one of the best nights I have had and felt so romantic.

Romance is not really about the money that is spent on you it should be about the time spent together and how it made you feel.  Don’t get me wrong nothing wrong with a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates but for me a home made card and a cooked dinner speaks volumes – he cares enough to try!