How to Maintain a Healthy Marriage Before it Breaks
Marriage
Audio By Carbonatix
4:00 AM on Tuesday, September 30
By Keren Kanyago, Marriage
Buying a house is exciting! Securing a place to call home and raise your family on your terms is a huge blessing. However, this blessing comes with a boatload of responsibilities. Deep cleaning, repairs, lawn maintenance, and gardening, among other responsibilities, are inevitable. They must be done regularly for the home to function at optimum.
Glossing over home maintenance will lead to dire consequences like health hazards, pest infestation, decreased property value, structural damage, and skyrocketing repair costs. Besides, trying to sell off a neglected home is not easy. The house needs to be renovated first, which costs a whole lot more than maintaining it. Similarly, in life, anything that is not tended to deteriorate. King Solomon was intrigued by what neglect can do and put it this way:
“I went by the field of the lazy man, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding. And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; Its surface was covered with nettles; Its stone wall was broken down. When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and received instruction: A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest; So shall your poverty come like a prowler, And your need like an armed man.” (Proverbs 24:30-34)
Marriage is no exception when it comes to maintenance. If a marriage is not tended to, cracks are inevitable. Sometimes the cracks run so deep that couples revert to abandoning the marriage altogether. But here’s the thing - most couples kick off marriage totally in sync and in Love with each other. Newly married couples find it hard to envision anything that could go belly up in their union. Like a new homeowner, they are eager to have a little heaven on earth.
If settling into the marriage and going on with life is all a couple does, weeds and thorns are bound to spring up in their marriage garden. If paying bills, raising kids, and building careers/businesses are all they prioritize, trouble is inevitable. When couples fail to intentionally tend to their relationship, they are neglecting the foundational aspect of maintenance and inadvertently paving the way for renovation.
King Solomon attributed the atrophy of the neglected field to both laziness and lack of understanding. Granted, some couples are well aware that like a car, a marriage cannot run without regular servicing. Perhaps their premarital counselors did an awesome job preparing them for marriage. But they keep putting off the servicing of their marriage and attend to other more pressing matters. They may prioritise everything else but their marriage.
Other couples are simply devoid of the understanding that they need to maintain their marriage. In the end, the two groups of couples end up in troubled marriages. Things like resentment, unresolved conflict, unmet needs, poor communication, and lack of intimacy choke the air out of their once blissful marriage.
3 Important Marriage Maintenance Habits
Maintaining a marriage majorly involves embracing healthy habits geared towards keeping the marriage fire burning. It entails the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly intentional habits that a couple embraces in order to keep their marriage wheels turning.
Communicate Effectively
The importance of open and honest communication in marriage cannot be overstated. After all, it is communication that brings a couple together. To stick together and keep each other enthused, couples need to communicate effectively. Two cannot walk together unless they agree (Amos 3:3). Poor communication or lack of it causes couples to drift apart and fosters mistrust. It also injures the couple’s emotional intimacy and sets the stage for unresolved conflict and marital dissatisfaction. On the other hand, effective communication is laced with respect and empathy. Each spouse should be willing to compromise, and blame should be avoided. Couples need to carve out time regularly to communicate as a critical way of maintaining their marriage.
Meet Your Spouse’s Needs
Nobody saunters into marriage without needs and expectations. Couples get into marriage with a set of physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. They tie the knot in full confidence that their spouse will satiate those needs. When spouses are intentional in meeting each other’s needs, marital satisfaction soars through the roof. On the other hand, when they gloss over each other’s needs, resentment kicks in.
Seek to know from your spouse what rocks their boat and set out to enthuse them. In most cases, your needs as a man will be polar opposite to those of your wife. So don’t assume you know what floats your partner’s boat; find out from them and set out to enthuse them.
And while at it, don’t wait for your partner to take the first step in meeting your needs. Be the first to disarm them with your thoughtful and loving actions and watch them follow suit. Paul urges us to esteem others more highly than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). In the long run, you will find yourselves outdoing each other in expressing honor (Romans 12:10), and your marriage will naturally bloom.
Keep Dating
Whatever you do, keep dating your spouse. This will help keep your marriage a priority and keep the romance brewing. As a result, your emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy is strengthened. It also helps you communicate better and nurture your friendship. So, keep the dates night going, explore shared interests, hit the road for a vacation without the kids, go for a movie, and try hiking or a road trip, among other juicy activities.
3 Important Renovation Habits
Renovating your marriage is a more intensive exercise that will involve rebuilding trust and sealing the cracks in your marriage. The couple has to buckle up and purpose to stick through the process which can be agonizing as emotions come to the fore.
Consider Marriage Counseling
Marriage counselling offers a safe space where a couple can explore the icky habits sabotaging their union. Through guided conversations and professional support, the couple gets equipped to explore their challenges and rebuild their relationship. In the end, communication can be improved, conflict can be resolved, and intimacy can be restored. The couple is also equipped to better understand one another in order to meet each other’s needs. Counseling is a tested and proven way of renovating a marriage.
Purpose to Forgive
Both partners will need to intentionally forgive and let go of the hurt they have caused each other. Unmet needs, strained intimacy, unresolved conflict, poor communication, disrespect, and mistrust all compound and cause resentment between spouses. A couple may get stuck if one or both of them are not willing to let go of old hurts. For the marriage to get a new lease, each spouse needs to be willing to forgive. Granted, some wounds like marital unfaithfulness cut very deep, and forgiveness may take time. It’s therefore important for spouses to be patient with each other as they embrace forgiveness.
Love God’s Way
When couples seek to love each other God’s way, healing and restoration are guaranteed. The apostle Paul describes Love as patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, and not proud. Love does not dishonour others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
Even the most dented marriage can be reconstructed when couples purpose to love each other God’s way. There will be forgiveness, goodwill, humility, forbearance, respect, and trust. Further, the Bible instructs wives to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord and husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:22,25).
Shifting focus from your spouse and instead doing marriage as unto the Lord is a great game changer. It is equivalent to building your marriage on the rock. When the rains come and the winds blow, your marriage will be left standing strong.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/skynesher
Keren is a freelance writer who digs up the wisdom nestled in God's word as she weighs in on parenting, marriage, and a plethora of life issues. Read more of her work in her newsletter Wisdom Trails.
