Hello Friends,
Have you ever been in a season of marriage where nothing seems to be going your
way?
Maybe you and your spouse are in constant conflict? Everything you do or say turns into an argument. Instead of your home being a safe place, you find yourself walking on eggshells every day, because anything could turn into an argument.
If this sound familiar, chances are other areas in your marriage are suffering as well. For example…
When was the last time you kissed or hugged your spouse, or you received a hug or a kiss? When was the last time you had sex with your spouse? What is the tone in your marriage, loving or condescending?
Perhaps you are not in constant conflict, but you have lost your connection in other ways. With life’s demands when was the last time you went on a date with your spouse
or had a meaningful conversation with them? Screaming is not always what kills a marriage, silence or overwhelming schedules might be the problem.
Either way if you get into these seasons, it’s critical that you work together with your
spouse to get out of them. If you stay passive during these times the enemy will use it to weaken your commitment. Once that happens, it is easy to give up on your most important earthly relationship.
Today’s Culture
In most cases, a marriage can be saved if both people decide to work at the relationship to fix whatever the issues are.
However, our current culture tells us a different story. It tells us that if a marriage is not working out perfectly, the only reasonable thing to do is to quit and try again with
someone else.
It spreads the lie that says if you are going through a hard season in your relationship, it means you married the wrong person, and divorce is the only option.
There are seasons in marriage that may seem impossible to get through, this is true for everyone. However, I encourage you that if you and your spouse will work together as a team you can get through it. You may have to do a major reconstruction on your marriage, but it’s possible to be happy again.
Let’s look at ways you can re-construct your marriage and get out of a difficult season.
5 Ways to Reconstruct a Marriage
Reset
The first step in this reconstruction process will be looking at your marriage and deciding what needs to be reset.
- What’s not working?
- Are there things you and your spouse use to do, that you have stopped doing?
- What brought life and laughter into your marriage? Are they still happening?
- Is there some you could establish that you have never done before?
- What is something you can do on a regular basis to invest in your marriage?
These are just a few questions to get you started. The objective here is to sit down and figure out what needs to change in order to get your marriage into a healthy rhythm that will allow it to grow.
Remove
After you have looked at the areas that need a reset, now it’s time to figure out what needs to be removed from your marriage.
You may think, “Where do I even begin with this one?”.
Let’s start with two issues that are easy to let happen in a marriage.
Criticizing and Complaining
If criticism and complaining are normal in your marriage they should be the first two things that you remove. They will cause your marriage to be in a constant negative state, and nothing will change or get better in a negative atmosphere.
Unrealistic or Uncommunicated Expectations
Another area to possibly do some removing is unrealistic or uncommunicated expectations. These expectations will only lead to conflict because they can never be fulfilled which leads to resentment and frustration.
Do an inventory of what your expectations are, if they are unrealistic, remove them altogether.
An example of an unrealistic expectation would be if you are expecting your spouse to fulfill every area of your life. You spouse cannot meet every need, want, and desire. That is asking them to be a god. They are not equipped to be successful so that makes it unrealistic.
If your expectations are just uncommunicated, sit down with your spouse and talk through them. Expectations are way more likely to be carried out if you actually communicate them to the people that needs to know them.
I can say that Alex is way better at fulfilling my expectations if I tell him what they are. The ones I leave uncommunicated typically do not happen.
Just like with the reset option, each marriage is different, so take an honest look at your relationship and decided together what needs to be completely removed so change can come, and then do everything you can to remove them.
Repair
After you have removed the negative things in your marriage, you will likely need to repair the damage those areas caused.
The first things that will need to be repaired will probably be forgiveness and grace.
During hard seasons grace is hard to maintain, especially if forgiveness is not present. However, a marriage without grace will not succeed. It will not go the distance. If grace and forgiveness are not an active part of your relationship, a lot of other nasty issues like resentment, bitter, and jealously will arise. No marriage is perfect and as hard as we try everyone makes mistakes. Abundant grace is the only way you will be able to start rebuilding your relationship.
It’s Ok to Get Help!
Even after you have reestablished grace and forgiveness there may be other areas in your marriage that need more repairs than you both can handle. In these cases, don’t be ashamed to get help. If it just seems too hard, get a therapist or a pastor to help you repair your marriage.
With every marriage being different, you will have to look at your unique situation and decide what needs to be repaired, but a good place to start is to identify any reoccurring conflict that keeps coming up in your marriage. By looking at reoccurring issues you may can spot the areas that need to be repaired and then you can start the revive process.
Revive
The next step in this process is to start doing things that will revive your marriage. After you have taken out what has caused the problems, and you have started to repair the broken areas, it’s time to invest in your marriage in ways that will build it back up.
Making investments in your marriage should be something that you do for the rest of your life. When it comes to a relationship you can never be passive and expect a good outcome. Although this may seem like a lot of work, try to find daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly ways to revive your marriage. This may seem like a lot so let me give you a breakdown.
- Daily- say “I love you” every day.
- Weekly- speak their love language once a week. (Look below in the rediscovery section for the link to discover yours and your spouse’s love language.)
- Monthly- go on a monthly date night.
- Yearly- Pick one big investment such as a getaway, a retreat, a marriage conference, small group, etc.
As you can see once you break it down, it’s not overwhelming at all to revive your marriage and keep it healthy.
Rediscovery
The final step in this process is to start rediscovering your spouse. Whether you have been married for days or years. There is always something new you can learn about them that you didn’t know.
Just last week, Alex and I were talking and discovered something that we both had in common from our childhood. We have been together 13 years but just now discovered that new detail.
There are tons of ways you can start rediscovering your spouse.
Date Nights and Personality Test
The main way is to go on dates and simply ask questions. It amazing where an open conversation can go. Just like Alex and I, you may discover something new simply by sitting down and letting a conversation go wherever it goes.
Other ways are to learn something new is to take personality test. You can find out the way the Lord wired you and your spouse by taking a few tests like Meyers Briggs, the Enneagram, and the Temperaments test. We have taken all of these and have learned so much about each other.
One of the best ways to rediscover something new about your spouse is to learn their Love Language. Not only will you learn how your spouse gives and receives love, but this will give you ways to love your spouse well which will help you revive your marriage.
Your Marriage Can Go the Distance
This reconstruction project will take some time, but it’s worth all the work and time it will take. By going through these steps your marriage can be everything you want it to be. It will take both of you doing your part, but don’t give up. You and your marriage are worth it!
One final thing, communication is critical to this process, check out our blog, “Constructive Ways to Communicate,” for ways to communicate in a way that will build your marriage up.