Can we keep our
marriage together once we have messed up? Yes.
In our
day, we are seeing more and more marriages messed up by infidelity,
instability, irresponsibility, incompatibility, irritability, and
you name it. Husbands and wives spend more time fussing and looking
for a way out of the mess than they do trying to reconcile. They
know that they vowed at their wedding to stay together till death do
us part [Matt 19:6]. And they know that the Bible is against
divorce [Mal 2:16]. But they don’t have a clue what to do to keep
their marriage together and thrive in a happy marriage. It just
doesn’t seem worth the effort.
So, we
offer some advice from the words of God that will help you if you
are truly determined to salvage what is left of your marriage and
turn things around for the better. If you will follow this little
outline of instructions, you will give yourself as good an
opportunity as you can get to keep your vows and be glad that you
did.
First, you personally need to draw as close as you can to the Lord.
When the fight starts in a marriage, the principle thing on your
mind each morning and evening is the wretched condition of your
marriage and your life. You may have a way to function each day
that allows you to see some good in your marriage and to tolerate
it. However, when you are alone and have time to really consider
the true state of your marriage, you are not happy with it. So, you
try to do some things that make you happier [like shopping or
hunting and fishing] and you try to recommend ways for your spouse
to change so that you can be happier. You’d be much better off to
concentrate your efforts on getting much closer to the Lord. You
will never be the spouse that you are supposed to be by consuming
your efforts on your pleasure or your spouse’s problems. Right now,
you need to get with the Lord in personal devotions [Bible reading
and prayer] and fall in love with him. Your marriage is like a
triangle with the Lord at the top and you and your spouse in each of
the other two corners on the bottom. The closer you and your spouse
get to the Lord, therefore, the closer you get to the each other.
Then you have to be honest about your contribution to what has gone
wrong. Own your part of the lust, selfishness, cruelty,
dishonesty, broken trust, spiritual weakness, unjust criticism
[fault finding], broken fellowship with the Lord, neglect,
retaliation [that’s brilliant – kill yourself and your marriage
trying to get back at your spouse], bitterness, living in the past
[what happened to you before will happen to you again if you keep
imagining that it will], nagging, withholding affection, and all of
the other things people do to torment each other in a bad
relationship.
Then you need to sincerely apologize. You don’t apologize just
so that your mate will let you off the hook or to entice your spouse
to apologize to you. You apologize so that you may acknowledge
before your spouse exactly what you did wrong and so that you may
sincerely employ your best effort to prevent it from happening
again. Your apology allows you to reconcile with your spouse by
giving him or her the opportunity to forgive you for what you have
done wrong. Learn to sincerely forgive and learn to love [this is
something you are not naturally equipped to do, Tit 2:4-5, Eph
5:25].
Establish some ground rules of communication. Never ever bring
up prior relationships or infidelity. Get it all out at one time
and be done with it forever. Quit bringing up the past. The past
is the past and all you have is what is before you. Stop all
jealous behavior and don’t give your spouse the first reason in the
world to be jealous about you by hugging all over guys, or hugging
all over girls. Stop talking really animatedly with a pretty girl
or handsome man and then talking gruffly with your spouse. Your
body language screams a potential for trouble here. If you continue
this kind of behavior, you are not going to fair very well in trying
to restore trust in your marriage. Stop all phone calls, emails,
text messages and other forms of communication with others that
contribute to some sort of fantasy in your mind.
Establish some very appropriate “boundaries” for yourself and your
spouse. In strained relationships, the spouses have a tendency
to say and do very cruel things to each other. One spouse may point
a finger at the other one to blame them for something that might not
be their fault at all. Take the blame for the things about which
you are truly at fault and do not accept the blame for something
that is not your fault, thinking that somehow this is going to make
for a peaceful relationship. It is wrong to accept the blame when
you aren’t wrong. You have to learn appropriate and fair ways to
communicate with each other. If you are talking about a subject
that is tense, only go as far as you can in the conversation without
getting mad. If you need time and space to cool off, take it. Then
resume the conversation when you can handle the subject without
flying off the handle. Learn to be a good listener. Often,
strained communication in relationships comes from the inability to
hear what your spouse is saying. If you perceive that your spouse
is saying something that you don’t like, very calmly ask your spouse
to clarify the statement. It may very well be that you have “heard”
something that he or she didn’t say or even intend to say!
Establish some real and achievable expectations for yourself and for
your spouse. It is a good idea to write these down. In
dysfunctional relationships, people don’t have a very good idea what
is truly expected of them and they are not sure that the
expectations their spouse has are even agreeable to them. So each
spouse should write down what he or she expects of the other and
what he or she is willing to do to meet those expectations, if he or
she agrees with them. Otherwise, you will end up despising your
spouse because God didn’t create him or her to live up to your
fantasies and unreasonable expectations built upon a Hollywood dream
world.
Calmly, succinctly and honestly describe the kinds of situations
that contribute to problems in your marriage. This way, your
spouse can work on those areas. You cannot make him or her change,
you are not responsible for your spouse’s decision to change, and
you are not responsible for the decisions your spouse makes when he
or she is wrong. Your spouse is the only one who can change
him/herself. But you can point out some specific areas where there
are difficulties between you. You can also enumerate the steps you
are going to take to improve your part of the problem. You should
also state the steps you are going to take to appropriately protect
yourself in those instances where your spouse is doing something
harmful to the relationship. If your spouse wants to please you
then he/she can make the necessary changes and take the necessary
steps to improve him/herself. And you better be very complimentary
and encouraging if your spouse does make some changes because it
takes a lot of work and sacrifice to make changes like that. Being
appreciated for the effort is very rewarding and encourages more of
the same
Examine yourself in the sight of God. Get a true picture of
yourself and quit believing your own prideful evaluation of
yourself. You are not that great. You are not that deserving of
the kind of attention you think your spouse is supposed to give
you. Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a
fall. Humility is a great way to see yourself before God. It has a
tendency to keep you humble in your marriage, as well.
Get
out all of the sin in your life that is contributing to the problems
in your marriage. Quit going to the bars. Quit drinking. Quit
tobacco [what a nasty habit (kissing a smoker or a dipper is like
licking an ashtray)]. Quit stimulating your imagination with wicked
thinking and wicked viewing [just count the number of times you have
looked or thought inappropriately]. Quit cussing and intimidating
your spouse with your anger. Quit bossing your spouse around and
demanding things all the time. Quit spending money irresponsibly.
Quit gossiping to your friends about your problems. Gossiping
prolongs the problems in your marriage. Those folks can’t solve
your problems. By talking, you’re just relieving tension and taking
away the fuel necessary to change what’s broken in your marriage.
At the same time, you are just making yourself sound right and your
spouse wrong, particularly when you get the people to whom you’ve
been whining to agree with you. Then, if you ever do get your
marriage straightened out, your friends are going to despise your
spouse for all of the bad things you said and they are going to
think you are crazy for going back to him or her!!
Go
to work on making your marriage a happy marriage. A happy
marriage takes a lot of work. Don’t just survive; thrive. There is
no instant gratification in repairing a marriage. When it has been
messed up it takes much more work to fix it and make it happy, than
it does if you haven’t gotten off track. So, look for steady slow
progress and rejoice in moves that are in the right direction.
Don’t wait for huge changes before you can smile and rejoice. Spend
time together. You might have to quit fishing and hunting for a few
years to ensure that you have years of happy recreation in the
future and not just an escape from the misery you are in. Turn off
the stupid idiot box [television]. You cannot carry on a
conversation when you are distracted all the time by what’s on the
tube. Get away from the email and text messages, too; reserve those
for a time when you are not together with your spouse. Nothing is
more important right now that fixing the most important part of your
life.
Go
to work on your marriage together. “We” have the problem so
“we” have to work on it together. It is “our” problem, not just
mine and not just yours. So, “we” aren’t going to play the blame
game. If you have to call someone on their bad behavior, remember
to take responsibility for your part of the problem. That’s all you
can do. And remember, never apologize for something that you did
not do just to buy peace; you will end up crippling your marriage,
because your spouse will not have to own what he or she did wrong.
Like Bib Jones, Sr. said, “It is never right to do wrong to get a
chance to do right.”
Go
to church together. Find a really good Bible believing, Bible
preaching and Bible teaching church. Go to Sunday school, Sunday
morning and evening services and Wednesday evening prayer meeting.
This faithfulness to your church will help establish faithfulness in
your relationship. You will hear things in the preaching and
teaching of the words of God that will really help you grow closer
to the Lord and closer together. And when you are at home, pray
together. As they say, “Folks that pray together, stay together.”
Now,
these may seem like a lot of things to do. However, if you will
take the steps to add each of these things to your marriage and do
them faithfully, you will find that you can get through the trouble
you have had and move on to some much desired happiness.
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