I’m an atheist, my wife’s a Christian and my kids are still young for me to say what they will be when they grow up but this is not about our differences in belief.  Recently, a wife posted a comment on one of my Squidoo lenses asking for advise.

If I were still a Christian, I would have advised her to pray to god and ask for guidance. In fact, I would have told her that if they put god in the middle of their marriage, everything will be fine. Gladly, I’m no longer swimming in the sea of religious delusions and so I was able to give her some advise which I think will help her even better. No, I’m not claiming to be an expert in this field but I think what I told her would help do a better job in fixing their relationship than any prayer can offer.

Marriage problems are everywhere and just like any other problem, it does not give respect to anyone – no matter whether you believe in 1 god, many gods or none at all. So how does an atheist (or at least myself) handle marital problems?

In my experience, the best thing to do is to the face the problem head on and not to ignore it and let things cool off. We humans are social beings and we tend to keep track of what other people are doing to us and what we are doing to them. We then eventually tally these and see who’s doing a good job or not. Sadly, most of us will try to make excuses if the tally says that it’s us who’s got the lower score. Also, if we find ourselves to be doing better than our partner, we tend to boast about it and make demands.

Armed with this knowledge, I decided to approach marital problems (and other relationship-related problems) in a manner that many will object to – I DON’T TRY TO SOLVE IT. Yep, that’s right. Solving relationship-related problems is a lot more difficult than say fixing a financial problem mainly because we’re all different. What works for me may not work for you. But I have to do something, don’t I?

Of course!

What I do is just to make myself a better and more sociable human being. I do that by choosing to make as many people as I can happy and trying my best to hurt lesser and lesser people everyday. I realized that fault-finding and comparing scores don’t help, in fact they make things worst. Instead, I work my best to be as kind as I can be without being a hypocrite and I do that simply by being honest to myself. If I can’t smile at you no matter how hard I try then I won’t. But if I can then I will and somehow that makes me feel better and look better to others as well.

But you can’t do it, can you?

Actually, you can. We’ll probably have different mileages on this because some are simply happy and some are grumpy but I assure you that trying your best to be as sociable and as friendly as possible will always do you good. If you can’t say “I’m sorry” today, then try again tomorrow. Keep on trying until you finally manage to. If it’s hard for you to smile today, then try again the next day and the next day and the next day until you find yourself capable of smiling even to the most annoying person in the world.

Be warned though – DON’T BE A HYPOCRITE! Be true to yourself because if not, all your efforts will be in vain and you’ll end up getting tired and finding yourself keeping a tally of things again.