Love is a very deceitful thing. One minute you feel giddy and lovestruck over your other half, the next minute you’re at each other’s throat calling each other mean names. For most of us, we have held onto the bit that you fall in love, you get married, and you live happily ever after. The end. Right?
However, for those of us who are married, that is one of the greatest and most misleading expectation-versus-reality experiences we will ever go through. Sure after getting married, we live in the honeymoon stage where we think everything’s going great and that we will weather the storm no matter what. Unfortunately, a few years into the marriage, reality sets in and we end up questioning ourselves if we made the right decision marrying that other person in our bed.
Some marriages even start crumbling apart with no hopes of restoring it whatsoever. But is it really the end for these unions?
The good news is that it’s never too late to turn things around. Even for couples who have gone to extremes and found themselves in situations where a personal injury lawyer is needed because of abusive relationships, some of the marriages have been restored while others did not which is still a great blessing.
Restoring any marriage is no easy feat but as long as there is breath and a willingness to change, hope is never lost.
The Road to Restoration
Get back to the basics of your relationship.
Whenever an argument looms or starts to get out of hand, always go back to the basic fundamental of showing courtesy and kindness, not just as a spouse but as a human being.
Resist the urge to get critical.
Mostly, a lot of us get into a critical mindset with our spouses, especially when things start to go south. We keep tabs on all the wrong things they do and use these as weapons for the next argument.
While you may feel vindicated doing so, it is not helpful to your marriage in any way. Avoid looking at your partner through a critical lens. Instead, choose to look at them the way that you saw them when you fell in love. Go back to those days and remind yourself that that person is still there but is just hurting.
Seek forgiveness and forgive. Really forgive.
Understandably, you will get hurt by your spouse and you will hurt your partner in any relationship. Being married and living under one roof is a guarantee of that.
Asking for forgiveness and bestowing the same is an issue of pride. It is important to set aside your pride. Pride comes before destruction. If you wish to save your marriage, you have to swallow your pride, learn to ask for forgiveness, and forgive even without being asked.
Be intentional and never take each other for granted.
Make the conscious choice to always make your spouse feel appreciated and loved, even if you don’t feel like it. Whether it comes to spoken words, spending time with each other, serving one another, or even sex, you should always be intentional.
Choose your battles wisely.
While marriages are peppered with conflicts, you need to learn how to pick which battles to fight. If you nitpick on everything and assert yourself as right all the time, chances are you are going to get burned out easily and disinterested in the marriage. You have to learn how to let some things slide and deal with those that really need to be dealt with.
If you exert the same amount of energy fighting over a popsicle flavor with the same intensity you would unfaithfulness in the relationship, you’re already in a losing battle to begin with.
Get rid of bad habits and establish new and better ones.
Habits may be hard to break but no one ever said it was impossible. Perhaps you’ve built plenty of bad habits in the course of your marriage that irks and annoys your partner which causes most of the tension at home.
Take an honest look at yourself and identify those bad habits. Ask your partner to help you overcome these habits. Be humble throughout the process if you really want the marriage to work. The key to real change is humility first and foremost.
Nurture yourself as you nurture each other.
You can’t give what you don’t have. This is elementary. While it is important that you shower your spouse with love and affection, putting their needs before you, you also need to take care of yourself once in a while.
Take a break now and then. Go out and get some me-time. Recharge. Refuel. Re-energize. Once you’re refreshed, you will find that your capacity to love is greater.
Relationships, especially marriage, require hard work. You can’t afford to breeze through it thinking that everything will be okay. You took a vow that should never be broken. To have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, ‘til death do you part. Have a sense of urgency to live up to your vow.
