Many people fall in love, get married and work hard at adding value to their relationship for the first year or two. Then the couples become used to being married and start taking each other for granted by not adding or neglecting their values. One or both couples may start looking for these values outside the marriage.

Marriage is very challenging in ways one cannot imagine. Marriage is a business and not all business is the same. There are different models adopted. A marriage is more like a Partnership than an LLC, a partnership whose purpose is the management of a shared life. Two companies merge to form a partnership. Forming mergers are to improve the profitability of the two companies involved. Profitability is a net gain. If one company takes over another, you do not have a merger, you have an acquisition. Acquisitions are not about the coming together of equals. Acquisitions are about one company absorbing another into itself while keeping the essence of its original identity, an identity to which the absorbed company stays subservient.

Certainly, many marriages use the acquisition model. And not that it cannot work, but because people, in general, tend to grow more independent over time, the acquisition model may become problematic as the subservient partner feels increasingly less inclined to remain so.

Every successful business creates the values that will sustain the business and make the business grow. In business, the value is what causes people to want to trade with you. Value is what makes someone decide to hand you their money because they are going to get something they want, something in which they find compelling value.

Value is not fixed or tangible; it rests on perceived benefit. Value is in the mind of the beholder. Innovators work hard to understand exactly what value means to their customers, so they can generate and provide it. Value is an emergent property of the supplier and the consumer; it cannot take place with only one or the other. You need to work hard to generate and give the needed values to your spouse. What your spouse values are not fixed or tangible. You can create new value; you can create more value, or you can create better value. The new value is the most difficult strategy. Creating more value is much easier because you are working with something you already have. Creating better value is also easier because it is an extension of what you are currently doing.

Are you adding value to your marriage?  Do you even think about what you can do every day to keep the relationship growing?  How does your spouse feel about you if they believe you are compromising rather than giving? If you are giving are you giving in the way your spouse needs you to give?  Your purpose in a relationship is to give in the way your partner needs you to give, to give consistency and to add value to their life.  If you focus on yourself, then you cannot give as they expected.  If you are valuable to your spouse or partner, compromise will disappear and ‘giving’ will take over.

You create value for money either by saving or investing. Where you have money that does not have value, you become poor. Your marriage or relationship becomes poor if you do not add the necessary value. When you give your heart and truly mean it, then you give without expecting anything in return. When you add value because you believe in what you are adding then you do not expect anything in return. The reward for you is in adding the value.  It is not your responsibility to ask for reward, that is down to others to give.

Success in anything, be it your career, your hobbies, your relationship, happens and grows when you add value and when those around you who matter see you adding value and want more of the value you bring to their lives. In a relationship, if you both do this for each other and you do this consistently then instead of compromising, you will both become a formidable team working to achieve a common goal thereby meeting each other’s needs.   That way you can climb the mountain together in the morning and still be back for tea. The value you both share will bind you.

How you personally define marriage is the foundation of how you treat your marriage and how you commit to your marriage. Your expectations in the marriage will decide what will build or break the relationship.  The success of a marriage is dependent upon whether each spouse chooses to value the other highly.

Your marriage is the most important relationship of your life. You must realise your spouse is the person who deserves most of your attention. You must treat your spouse like they are your hero, your king, or queen, and give them the benefit of your best attention. That obviously also implies that you must pay attention when your spouse talks to you. Often, we are guilty of “tuning out” when we get home. We spend all day concentrating at work, and when we get home we just want to relax. That often also result in the fact that we do not listen properly when our spouse talks to us.

Novelty is the quality of being new, original, and unusual. Adding value through novelty simply means kicking our relationship into high gear, with thoughtful experimentation and spontaneity. Finding out what your spouse’s preferences are in the bedroom and catering to those, is a great way to prove that we are placing our spouse’s needs first. Maintaining a surprise element in the sex department is electrifying and amazing. It is, however, unique to each couple and how this plays out will be contingent on things like sexual experience, personality preferences, a willingness to experiment and knowledge about sex. Keep religion and tradition out of this. Make the most of your life together.

The key to is to learn how to increase the value of your spouse. As we learn how to increase the value of our spouses, we increase our ability to deal with anger. One problem is that when people do not see enough value, they try to straighten that person out by using anger. What do you do when you see no value in your spouse? Where you see no value or little value, you must create it. You do not give up. You stay put and deal with the issue. There is no room for escape. You are in this for a lifetime.

Value is a key that opens many doors. Show your spouse, you appreciate him or her and you will add value to their life. When you predict their needs, it adds value. You must pay attention, so you can really know them. It is easy to add value when you understand the power and purpose of love in your relationship. There is no greater power than love! Love can heal the world. Love is pure and decent, innocent, and true. Love will last forever. Love is magical.