How to Save a Difficult Relationship

Couples match each other 10% or 80%. The gap can be closed by how much work you put into the relationship — and almost any marriage can be saved that way.

What follows isn’t a very popular idea, but I sincerely believe it’s a practical one, and it has helped save hundreds of relationships.

When people start a family, their level of compatibility can vary widely. Some suit each other 10%, others 80%.

This is about character, about habits, about the way you think. There are people who are alike and who move in the same direction at the same pace. Their compatibility is above 70%. And there are those whose rhythms of life don’t line up at all, where the two people in the family are very different. Compatibility well below 30%.

But regardless of what percentage you started your family with, you can compensate for all of it with the amount of work you put into the relationship.

It’s simply that people who suit each other 60% have to work on the relationship less than people who suit each other 25%.

But either way, a relationship needs consistent, systematic effort.

Many people in an unhappy marriage think the only way out is divorce and then a search for someone new.

But with a new husband (or wife) you’ll still have to start the same process of working on the relationship and syncing up with each other. And there’s no guarantee at all that your compatibility with that other person will be much higher.

That’s why I so often say that almost any relationship can be saved if you engage with the process and start doing the right things.

People don’t actually want a divorce — they just don’t want to keep living the way they live now. The moment the things that wound and traumatise people leave the relationship, that relationship starts to heal.

And the good news is that all of this is achieved through the amount of work you put into the relationship.

Do you agree that a relationship can be saved if you start doing the right things?