Unless each partner is prepared to do their part as a part of a relationship, trouble is going to brew. It cannot be a one sided affair. Sooner or later one of the partners is going to rebel. The problem is that when this happens, the other half of the team is caught off guard. Their surprise at the uprising is genuine. The relationship had fallen into a rut and they thought everything was going fine. Then all of a sudden their little garden of eden experiences an earthquake.

Unfortunately, it is usually the female of today that carries the overload. In today’s economy it takes two incomes to keep a family’s head above water. This alone can cause tension in a relationship. Gone are the days of the female that could stay at home and cook and clean and tend to the domestic needs of the family.

Today the female in a relationship has to wear several hats. She usually has a full time job, from which she comes home from exhausted, only to be met with the childrens problems and the almost immediate need to feed them. Next comes the husband in a rush to eat and get going because tonight is his bowling night. The wife is faced with doing the dishes, putting the children to bed and straightening up the house.

This can go on as pretty much a routine, with the wife and mother taken more and more for granted. Until one day when it dawns on her that there must be more to life than this. She loves her children and her husband but she feels used. Then depression sets in. She feels trapped in a situation from which there seems no escape and her depression deepens.

The reason that this situation is so common in marriage relationships is the tendency for people once they are married, to fall into certain roles. The wife feels that she should cook, clean the house and care for the children. The husband feels that he should be the bread winner and do small repairs and tasks about the house. This is natural. In fact it is in our genes.

But today’s marriage relationship can no longer be that way, not when both spouses need fulltime jobs. A marriage today is a partnership like never before with duties split right down the middle. No this is my duty and that’s yours. Men must share the care of the children. Men must share the household duties of cooking and cleaning.

But, even if the duties are split equally and each spouse is doing their share, there is something else that must be considered in a healthy relationship. It’s the fact that men and women are different and even though they might try to deny it, the fact is that women require more love and consideration than men. So, a tender word, a hug and a kiss, not occasionally, but often will go along way to making for a happy marriage relationship.