If married life is not what you initially thought, it's time to learn how to save your marriage and bring back love and intimacy into your relationship. If I was able to do it, you can do it. 

If you want to save your marriage, stop exhausting yourself trying to change your spouse. Instead, focus on making yourself happy first.

Here are two skills that can save a troubled marriage:

1. Know what you will and will not tolerate

That’s right. Putting yourself first is the key to inspiring your spouse to put you first. A study in the Journal of Social Psychology explains that if you don’t feel good about yourself and have high self–esteem, you won’t have a "high degree of difficulty."

That’s when your spouse perceives you honor and respect yourself and you know what you will or will not tolerate. Of course, it’s impossible to do this when you are using so much of your time and energy to please them and give them what you think they want.

2. Make yourself happy

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If you only take away one thing from this article, let it be this: The one thing that won’t ever work to help them make you happy is to focus on making them happy!

Here’s the amazing thing: What makes a good spouse happy is to make yourself happy, as suggested by a study on the interrelated dynamic of spousal interactions in the Journal of Happiness Studies. One of the simplest ways to do this within marriage is to "date yourself." That means you do for yourself what would please you.

If you’d like your spouse to take you to dinner, tell them you’re taking yourself out to a spa lunch. If you wish they had bought you more presents, treat yourself to something you want. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and it just has to make you happy. This could mean taking an hour every day for yourself to do yoga.

Once they see you’re not setting aside your wishes for them, they'll remember the wonderful person they fell in love with and what made them unique. A change of vibe like this can re-light your spouse's passion and help save your marriage.

It’s worth repeating: Good spouses like to make their partners happy. Period. They like to give presents, they like to take you out, they like to be faithful to you, and they like the way it feels when you feel good about yourself when you’re with them. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, PhD explores martial perceptions of positivity to help show people like the way it feels when you let them know you feel good.

When I married my husband over 20 years ago, I thought the heart–wrenching days of dating angst were over. I thought I’d never again worry about my man becoming distant from me or withdrawing.

And yet, the unthinkable happened: Our initial wedded bliss gave way to disconnection to the point I felt like I was living with a stranger. I tried everything to save my marriage, including talking to my husband repeatedly about it.

I was exhausted from trying to change him until I made an important, life-changing discovery: The only way to change him and save my marriage was to change me. I realized I had lost track of myself and my happiness, which resulted in my husband doing the same.

Once I started to make small changes in myself and put the focus back on the most important person — me — I was able to save my marriage and create a stronger, more connected union than ever, as suggested in a study of unexpected adjustments to marriage.

If you expect they will do their best to make you happy without demands and by just letting them know when they make you happy, you’ll be on your way to more love than you ever imagined.

Rori Raye is a relationship coach who's helped thousands of women transform their love lives.

This article was originally published at Have The Relationship You Want. Reprinted with permission from the author.