Try these steps for starters:

Cool Down:

You need to cool things down. If you are arguing, step out of the situation in your head and cool down. Matters can get very hot and one of you needs to bring the temperature down and it might as well be you. I am not suggesting that you walk away but keep your control and count to 10 or a 100 if you must.

This may be a technique you have applied before but trust me, taking a breath before you lose control completely will do a lot to dampen things down. Do not lose your temper, you have probably done it before and it hasn’t worked, just aggravated the situation so cool it. By doing this you will start to talk or at least exchange a few civil words and start the next step to help save marriage.

Recognize what is occurring

If you have followed the first steps and are trying to take a small time out, try and see what might be happening. There is a huge world out there and there are lots of different angles to any picture. Yes it might look like the end of your world at the moment but try shifting your perspective, try going out of your situation and viewing it as others might. It may start to look a whole lot better than you thought. If you can view things through other eyes, possibly even those of your spouse you might be able to start to know why things are in a downward spiral and that might start to give you some guidance to help save marriage.

Get your sense of humor back

If that is possible. In other words try not to take yourself or the situation too seriously. Sometimes it is simple to make a storm out of nothing really and if you can stand back and reckon we will find this situation amusing later on, then bring that later on into the now.

Sometimes by trying not to take things to heart, you can see the amusing side as well and while things might be rough for you now, having a laugh at how things can get out of control is often the best thing. If you both have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills, perhaps you will find that what started this particular argument off, amounts to nothing really. Try and advance from here.

If you have had a chance to stand back and see some different perspectives, then you have a chance to progress.

Look for ways to improve

Once you have had a chance to step back and catch your breath and then been able to get some perspective on the situation, you can go on. If you can break down the problems you have been having into manageable chunks then you start to see that the problems are not insurmountable

Then what remains is to try and solve matters and go forward. You are probably as much to blame if there is blame as there are two sides to every tale. If you can take responsibility for some of the things that have got out of control, if you can learn to stop overreacting perhaps and if you can work on how you handle any given situation then you are well on the way to help save marriage.

You can see where I learned how to turn my marriage around.  Click Here for the book that literally Saved My Marriage, by Amy Waterman – highly recommend it.