Build your marriage on these three pillars and you can't go wrong.

Vows

Many marriages lack true commitment to the phrase “til death do us part.”

People don't have one or two big fights and then just get divorced. It never happens on whim. No one ever gets married while believing they’ll someday get divorced.

The separation happens slowly over time.

It all adds up.

And once it does it’s really hard to stay committed. It’s really hard to stay married. The belief that things could possibly get better ceases to exist, and you start to believe divorce is the only way to feel better.

But you’ll never get to enjoy the sunshine if you aren’t willing to weather the storms.

That takes commitment to your wedding vows.

Vulnerability

Communication in marriage isn’t as simple as a few tricks the therapist gives you.

How you communicate is often secondary to what you communicate. Our spouses can’t read our minds, yet we seem to often expect them to. It’s up to us to be vulnerable and share what’s going on inside of us.

Brené Brown says vulnerability is “the willingness to show up and be seen when you can’t control the outcome.”

Telling my spouse how I’m feeling, and what’s going on inside of me, is often terrifying. I have no clue how she’ll respond. But when I make that courageous step to lay it all out there, it’s rare that my marriage suffers.

Sometimes it may end up hurting worse than I anticipated. My wife’s reaction can be brutal.

But I know I told the truth.

And the conversation would never get to where it needed to go without the truth.

Victories

When fighting with my wife, I usually think I’m right, I’m mature, she’s wrong, and she’s acting like a child.

And I’m sure she's thinking the same thing about me.

But if I’m so mature, why am I not the one doing the work to get us to a healthy place of reconciliation?

“Victories” means you need to work on your own stuff.

You need to win victories on your own issues and not worry about fixing your partner.

When you stop seeing the flaws in your wife and telling her what you see wrong on “her side” of things, and turn your attention towards your own crap, you'll tend to be a much better couple.

When we focus on our own personal growth, it naturally adds health to our personal relationships.

Most notably our marriage.