5 Shifts To Improve the Health Of Your Marriage
There’s a lot of importance placed on understanding your spouse. From marriage retreats to pastoral counsel to books like Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus (and all the variations of that using spaghetti and waffles or just the basic concepts of His Needs Her Needs), a lot of people think that the key to a good marriage is understanding your spouse.
But what happens when the focus of marriage improvement is on understanding your spouse? While the presumption of this approach is that the spouses will develop empathy and perspective which will make it easier to tolerate each other and thus be able to get along better, it’s an oversimplified solution that actually only preaches to the choir. Here’s why: the spouse who is already working to understand is hearing the importance of the message to understand their spouse, but the one who needs to hear it (the spouse who is making the marriage difficult) is not getting it. It’s falling on deaf ears - or, worse, it’s being used by the difficult spouse to elicit more empathy from the spouse who is trying so hard.
The real solution to improving your marriage also gets lost in translation when the emphasis is placed on understanding your spouse. Those who are already working hard to have a good marriage often understand their spouse very well - usually to a fault, because their understanding of the reasons that their spouse is the way he/she is becomes excuses for poor behavior. Then, rather than the marriage improving, it becomes even more dysfunctional as the empathetic spouse keeps understanding and making excuses for the difficult spouse’s behavior.
The Real Solution To Marriage Problems
So if understanding your spouse is not the solution to a good marriage, then what is? First let, me make a distinction between what is needed from each spouse to have a better marriage, because when I say that understanding your spouse is not the solution, I mean that to be directed toward the spouse that is already learning everything they can in order for things to get better. That spouse needs to back off from having empathy toward their spouse - they need something else (which is what the rest of this article is about). But for the difficult spouse, an understanding of their spouse may be the very thing that is needed. However, this article is not written for the difficult spouse who needs more empathy and understanding, because that spouse is likely not the one reading this because that spouse is not seeking to understand. And you aren’t going to get them to understand that that’s what they need, dear one. So let this article show you how to proceed.
The tendency is to think, once you understand your spouse, that now that you understand why your spouse is the way he/she is, you also understand how to fix them. And you want them to know the solution because you are delighted to share your insight with them, knowing that it will make your marriage better. You’ve understood the problem and now it can be solved!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, as you may have discovered by now. No matter how much you hound your spouse, talk to your spouse, correct your spouse, teach your spouse, get your spouse to read books or watch videos, set a good example for your spouse, or even pray for your spouse, you cannot make your spouse understand the problem or do anything to fix it. Why? Because you can’t make someone understand something or even want to understand something. If your spouse doesn’t think they’re the problem or doesn’t think they can (or will) change, you can’t convince them otherwise.
To their detriment - and to the detriment of their marriage - a lot of people put more effort into understanding their spouse than they do into understanding themselves:
Do you truly understand why you are so determined to understand your spouse? (Hint: it’s so that there is hope for them to change).
Do you truly understand what it is that makes it so important to you for your spouse to change? (Hint: it’s so that you don’t have to change in ways that you don’t want to).
Do you truly understand what it is you’re scared of if your spouse doesn’t change? (Hint: you’re scared that you won’t be comfortable and happy).
And do you truly understand how that fear is driving the decisions you are making as you try to navigate your relationship right now? (Hint: you fear having to do hard things that are realistic but undesirable - like boundaries or divorce).
In understanding yourself and the answers to those questions, you will discover what your responsibility really is in your marriage - and it isn’t to give your spouse insight so they will change so you will not have to face your fears or be uncomfortable. It’s much easier to want someone else to change so that we’re more comfortable than it is for us to change so that we’re more comfortable. But that’s usually exactly what you’re doing when you’re trying to understand your spouse so that you can help them change - you’re trying to make yourself more comfortable which you believe will happen if the marriage is better. You’re trying to get your spouse to be a nice person so that you don’t have to deal appropriately with their abuse or their lies or their indifference or their disrespect.
If you really understood yourself and had the awareness that the reason that you’re trying to learn and understand your spouse is so that you can change them, then you would be at the first step toward doing what it really takes to change your marriage. Because what it really takes is not for your spouse to do the hard thing that you’re asking them to do (change), but it’s for you to do the hard things that you’re trying to avoid having to do if your spouse doesn’t get better (set boundaries, risk discord, etc.)
But being willing to do the hard things that you are avoiding is exactly what is going to help you become relationally healthier. And when you become relationally healthier, your marriage has a chance. It’s when you start expecting more of the right things and tolerating less of the wrong things, and you learn to honor yourself enough (as a child of God) to let your spouse know that there are things that you expect from them and won’t tolerate from them. And it’s only when you expect more of yourself that your spouse may begin to feel the pressure to step up and treat you the way you expect to be treated.
Following are five shifts that you can make to stop focusing on your spouse and start focusing on yourself.
5 Shifts That Will Improve the Health Of Your Marriage
Treat your spouse like an adult.
Stop treating your spouse like a child who still has a lot to learn while acting like you’re the teacher who’s going teach them or the parent who is going to parent them or the counselor who’s going to counsel them (or who is going to get them a counselor - which doesn’t work, by the way). Instead, respect them enough to give them the freedom to be an adult and act the way they want to and be the kind of person they want to be and make decisions as an adult, even if they’re bad decisions - and then allow them to experience the consequences of those decisions without interfering, teaching, becoming the victim of those decisions, or rescuing. Being a “helpmate” doesn’t equate to being a creator. Helping is not the same as creating someone into who you think they should be or who you think God thinks they should be. Being a helpmate means you are helping them be who they want to be - and sometimes that means that they want to be crude or disrespectful or dismissive of you - so you submit to their will and allow them to do that and respond in accordance with the natural laws of relationships.
To focus on yourself, don’t think about what your spouse should be doing differently. Philippians 2:3,4 says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Rather than trying to change your spouse, think about what you should be doing in order to align with what they are revealing their own interests to be instead of trying to figure out how to get their interests to align with yours.
Stop caring what your spouse thinks.
An emotionally unhealthy spouse will often try to get you to believe that you are the problem, that you hurt or offended them, that you are disrespectful, that you are not a godly spouse, that you are wrong about something, that you misunderstand them. It’s a tactic [get all 40+ tactics] to get you to care what they think and move their direction so they don’t have to care what you think or move your direction. So then what do you do when your spouse does this? You might try to understand where your spouse is coming from, or try to convince your spouse of what you meant when you said this or that, or try to get your spouse to understand your perspective, or try to convince them to take you seriously when you have concerns. When you do this, you are communicating that their perspective is important and, if it’s important, you have to either honor and agree with their perspective or you have to convince them to change their perspective so that it shows an understanding of and honor toward yours. In doing this, you are giving them authority over whether you feel right or not, whether you feel justified in your actions or concerns, and you’re putting your security about yourself in their hands. Frankly, it’s unbecoming. Your spouse is not the one who dictates who you are or whether you’re right or wrong. Their perspective or understanding is not that important. You don’t need them to agree with you, understand you, or even care about what you say. You have the authority to decide whether you’re right or wrong about something and it doesn’t matter if they agree or understand. When you stop caring what your spouse thinks, you can start focusing on honoring yourself rather than looking for honor from them.
Stop letting your happiness hinge on whether they are a good partner or not.
You can spend a lot of pointless hours, days, or years trying to get someone to become the partner you wanted them to be - or you can accept the reality of who they are and live your life the way you want to without regard for whether they are cooperating with that or not. When you can’t be happy unless you have a happy marriage, you are giving your spouse power over your happiness. They are stealing your joy when you need them to be a good spouse in order for you to enjoy life. Instead of waiting for your spouse to step up and do what will make you feel better, accept the reality of who they are and decide whether you want that in your life or not. 1 Corinthians 5:11 says “you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral, or greedy, an idolater, or slanderer, a drunkard, or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” And Proverbs 17:1 says “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.”
Stop trying to live in a fantasy that you’re creating about what things should look like and start living in reality.
Jesus said he is the truth (his life is the embodiment of truth as he lived exactly as a person should, approaching each situation in life with perfect discernment, even if it looked wrong to some people). Jesus also said that he would send the Holy Spirit to reveal truth after he was gone - and if you’re born again, the Holy Spirit is revealing truth to you - are you listening?
Truth is what aligns with reality. Truth is never what something should be - it’s what something is. For example, it’s not true that your spouse “should” be more considerate or loving toward you - that’s what you want to be true. What is true is that your spouse is not considerate or loving toward you. In light of that truth, how will you live?
Jesus lived his life in alignment with reality. He opposed people who imposed their beliefs on others, those who told others how they “should” live and laid heavy burdens on the people. Jesus showed us the right way to live and made it clear through his example that what is right is not always what makes people happy. We often see Jesus doing things that offend people, but, since it’s Jesus doing them, we can know that he was doing what was right. [Get my resource on What Would Jesus (Really) Do?]
If you’re living your life to try to achieve some ideal while ignoring the reality of what you’re working with it’s like trying to bake a cake with gas and motor oil and bolts and pistons and gaskets. You can think you’re going to get a cake if you try hard enough, but you’re not. You can’t change those things into flour and sugar and eggs. And you can’t change your spouse. You have to live within the truth of that and then, like Jesus, discern how best to navigate it.
Stop expecting God to do your will.
When you say things like “I know that God can change anyone, I know that God can change my spouse’s heart, I need to just keep praying for my spouse,” then what you’re saying is that, because that’s what you want, you are going to believe that God wants that too. And maybe he does. But that doesn’t mean that you keep tolerating (and participating in) sin while you wait for what you hope for.
And, yes, this might mean disunity or separation, and I know you’re going to point to Bible verses about how divorce is wrong or husbands and wives should be united, but God doesn’t operate based on how things should be - he operates based on how things are (e.g. ”Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard” Matthew 19:8). God knows that we live in a broken and fallen world, and not everything is going to turn out like Eden. In fact, God knows this so well that he made some people to be the objects of his wrath so that he can show mercy to the objects of his mercy (Romans 9). Sometimes there are things in this broken world that happen so that God‘s glory can be revealed. And for him to be glorified is his will above and beyond your marriage being what he designed marriage to be. Jesus didn’t die for your marriage, he died for you - to set you free - and if you are living in a situation where you are in bondage to your spouse and attempting to please your spouse and attempting to create a marriage that looks like what you think it should look like or what you think God thinks it should look like, then you are making your spouse an idol - you’re making your spouse (or your marriage) the focus of your attention. And that’s not what God wants.
Sometimes God presents us with difficult circumstances so that we can learn more about who he is and that he doesn’t always will every marriage to turn out great - just like God doesn’t will every person to change or even to be saved. He desires it, but what he wills aligns with what is true and real.
These 5 shifts may be the only hope for your marriage to improve. Why? Because as you improve your own emotional health by making these 5 shifts, you are indirectly inviting your spouse to make shifts as well. Rather than working to understand your spouse in an effort to get them to change while neglecting an understanding of yourself, you are focusing on what you need to change so that you can understand why it is that you are trying so hard, why it is that you’re still with them, or why you are not aligning with what is true. It’s time for you to understand yourself and it’s time for you to change because… Hope isn’t found in our situation changing, it’s found in our situation…
If you need clarity about how to make these shifts, schedule a Breakthrough Session below.
