Many good marriages slip into crisis because we don’t or won’t believe how much work it takes to keep relationships healthy and thriving. It’s just like when you stop investing in the house you are living in. It will easily fall into disrepair.

Think back to when you first started to pursue your wife. It required commitment, hard work, and imagination. If winning her required that back then, why does it surprise us when neglect hurts our relationship after we walk down the aisle? She wouldn’t have married you if you took her for granted. Why risk everything now?

There are many good strategies if you want to restore your marriage. We suggest these 10 strategies to help solve your marriage relationship problems.

1. Surround yourselves with people in healthy relationships.
Some of those negative patterns may have involved friends. Surround yourself with people who value marriage and there’s widespread support for making yours work.

2. Choose to love.
Love may have come easy when it was brand new. Love is as much a choice as it is an emotion. [Tweet This] Choice is an act of maturity and it has a much better track record than emotion left to make its way on its own.

3. Act as if your spouse’s happiness is more important than your own.
Putting our spouse first nurtures trust, gratitude, generosity and affection. It can also lead to physical intimacy.

4. Put the relationship ahead of everything, including your children.
It’s unfortunate, but time has a way of eating away at our priorities. “You’re the most important thing in my life” gives way to “my work… the family business…the children… my aging parents… even golf, football or drinking…” Marriages don’t work well when our partner plays second fiddle to anything – even the children. It’s a fact – the happiest kids are those with parents who love one-another best.

5. Start over from scratch.
Ask her out. Make sure you remember why you did the first time and build from there. When did you last talk for hours, hold hands at a movie, or give her a kiss when she wasn’t expecting it? Get silly about one-another. If you don’t feel like it, do it anyway- then you’ll remember why.