Being Proactive with Addressing Your Marital Problems

Every married couple has their marital problems; even what we would call good marriages have their issues. It’s just the nature of relationships that our imperfect humanity marks those relationships with both glorious and tainted strokes. While every marriage has its problems, the people in each marriage have diverse gifts, skills, and resources to address those problems, with the result that some marriages survive and thrive while others flounder.

However, it’s important to remember something that Gary L. Thomas once said when he pointed out “A good marriage isn’t something you find; it’s something you make.” This is important to recall because it tells us that a good marriage isn’t something that you stumble onto or conjure out of thin air.

If a healthy marriage is something you work at, then that means every marriage has the potential to become a great marriage. It may mean being proactive with any issues your marriage may have in the future or developing the skills you need right now to successfully triage your marriage and restore it.

Below are some ideas and steps to help you address your marital problems.

Acknowledge marital problems and recognize that they need attention.

Problems of all shapes and sizes assail marriages. From infidelity to a lack of communication, poor emotional and physical intimacy, disagreements about how best to raise and discipline the children, and so much else, marriages face challenges. While the adage “let sleeping dogs lie” may seem attractive, especially if you prefer to avoid conflict, it certainly makes for a poor mantra in a marriage.

Instead of ignoring problems in the hopes that they will diminish or disappear altogether, it’s better by far to face the reality of your marriage head-on. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that all is well does no one any good, and though it may shatter the image of the marriage you hoped for, it’s important to deal with the marriage we have and work to make it the best it can be.

Sometimes, especially for believers, there may even be a sense of shame about the state of their marriage; their lofty ideals and the reality of their marriage don’t match, and so it may seem easier to ignore what’s happening or pretend it doesn’t exist.

However, in The Taste of New Wine, Keith Miller reminds us that “A Christian marriage is [not] one with no problems or even a marriage with fewer problems. (It may well mean more problems.) But it does mean a life in which two people are able to accept each other and love each other amid problems and fears. It means a marriage in which selfish people can accept selfish people without constantly trying to change them – and even accept themselves, because they realize personally that they have been accepted by Christ.”

Instead of shading our eyes from the truth of our brokenness and the messiness of our marriages, in Jesus Christ, we have the resources on hand to meet the challenge.

Simply recognizing that your marriage has issues is but the first step of many toward its healing and restoration. It takes much sensitivity and wisdom to know how and when to address issues, but the goal is to address them, not hope that if you wait long enough, they’ll simply disappear. Sometimes the wisdom upon which we must rely is that of others.

Better to address marital problems sooner than later.

When a wound is left untreated, often it begins to fester. In a marriage, a couple inflicts many wounds upon one another – some of them are intentional, but others simply aren’t, though it hurts all the same. With marital problems, it’s better to address them sooner rather than later, because they can become more complicated the longer they are left unresolved.

Have you ever had a fight with someone, and the fight goes on for so long and takes so many twists and turns that you lose your way and forget what the fight was about in the first place? It may have started as an argument about your driving skills on your way to dinner, but somehow it ended up being about the in-laws and how “you never take my side and stand up to them.” Arguments have a way of evolving, and so nipping them in the bud is the best policy.

Marriage takes a lot of hard work.

Dealing with marital problems requires the recognition of the twin realities that problems do come up in every marriage, and that it requires a lot of hard work to resolve them. There’s a mistaken but popular notion that real love and romance don’t require work. It should be effortless, shouldn’t it?

The challenges that each marriage faces are unique to that couple, so couples don’t struggle with the same things in the same way, and some couples have the skills, emotional intelligence, etc., to deal with their problems in what may seem like an effortless way. But to say that marriage doesn’t require work is a fairytale sold to us by Hollywood and written fiction; it’s not based in reality. Marriage requires work to make it flourish.

Karen Gray helpfully reminds us that “You often hear it said that people have bad marriages, but in fact, this is not true. Marriage is a God instituted covenant between a man and a woman, and it is good. That has never changed…The institution hasn’t failed – people are failing to work out their problems. Couples are simply giving up and walking away, or simply have no idea what they can try next. The good news is that even ‘soured’ relationships can be healed. Things can change. People can change. Marriages can be better than they ever were before.”

Accept your role in things.

Getting to work on a marriage requires that we take a long, hard look at ourselves and discern our part in the problem. It’s not fashionable to look at ourselves and think that we might be the source of a problem. By far, it’s easier to blame the other person for the bad in the marriage.

One early example of this is what happened in the Garden of Eden in the Genesis story. Adam blames God and his wife for his failure, while Eve blames the serpent for her disobedience. What no one does in that story is take responsibility for their actions and part in causing the mess.

Phil Callaway tells this challenging story – “The first three years of our marriage were miserable. Until I got a divorce. A divorce from loving myself and seeking my own way. I was reading the book of Galatians one night when I stumbled on the verse, ‘I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’ (2:20), and the most profound thought hit me: If I am dead, and Christ lives in me, can my wife see Him there? Finding the right person, I have since discovered, is less important than being the right person. The happiest married people I know discovered early on that the ‘better’ comes after the ‘worse’.”

If we don’t accept our responsibility, we may overlook the root of the problem and delay the healing the marriage needs.

Keep the main things the main things.

We need to cultivate certain practices to keep our marriages healthy. Sometimes, people didn’t get any, or they received inadequate premarital counseling. They aren’t aware of the value of apologizing to their spouse, or the necessity of practicing forgiveness to create room for reconciliation.

As a result, they are unaware of the tools at their disposal to ensure that they remain accountable and promote the health of the relationship. In her book Save Your Marriage: A Guide to Restoring & Rebuilding Christian Marriages on the Precipice of Divorce, Karen Gray wrote that “After God, who is the central core pillar to any Christian marriage, there are four important marital relationship foundations. These are:

Self-Esteem: If you don’t love yourself, you will find it almost impossible to accept love from others.

Friendship: A strong friendship will sustain your marriage even when feelings of love are harder to find.

Laughter: It will improve your quality of life, your health, and your relationships.

Romance: Feeling close to your partner can be the glue that holds your relationship together through the rough patches, but the absence of romance causes a void that problems will easily fill.”

By keeping the main things the main things, you can head off potential problems and address current issues in your marriage.

Seek support.

Lastly, it’s important to seek support, whether it comes in the form of professional coaching, speaking to a trusted spiritual advisor, or being honest about your struggles with a wise couple. While our first or natural inclination may be toward keeping our struggles concealed and going it alone, being able to share your burdens, get wisdom and accountability can help your marriage flourish.