Is your marriage overdue for a tune-up? Could you use a back-to-the basics course?
Whether you’ve been married several months or several years, we all need a refresher course now and then. A pick-me-up. A few things to try to reignite the sparks and get back to the place where we once were when we had stars in our eyes and butterflies in our stomachs when we just thought about our spouse.
From my newest book, 12 Ways to Experience More with Your Husband, here are some ABCs to renew and re-glue your relationship so you can experience more trust, more passion and more communication with your husband:
A. Accept the fact that both of you are wounded.
A friend of mine, who is a marriage and family therapist, told me that people often react the way they do out of their pain. In a marriage, certain words or situations will trigger pain in us and we end up reacting defensively to our spouses.
“We sometimes interpret our husbands’ words or actions from a deep place of pain and then what may have just been considered a “misdemeanor” in our minds becomes a felony. That causes us to store in our hearts certain offenses that aren’t really from our spouse at all,” she said. “It’s often a resurfacing wound that we have to deal with.”
When something triggers us, we start to believe the age-old lie—that we are unloved or insignificant or unworthy—and then we react to the other person out of our pain. When we accept that we both have wounds that can cause us to respond to each other out of pain, we can be more compassionate toward the other and more aware of how we, ourselves, might be contributing to a volatile situation.
B. Become blind to his offenses
I’m sure you’ve often heard the term “Love is blind.” We say it about couples who are first starting to date, or about newlyweds. We even give it a negative connotation when we say things like “she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. But, love is blind.”
Then when we get to the point where we can really see our husband’s faults we believe we’ve attained a certain level of maturity.
I believe a new bride’s love is “blind” too. Blind to her husband’s faults. Or, maybe as a woman in love, she chooses to overlook them. The more I think about it, the more I realize today that it wouldn’t hurt for you and me to be “blind” to the faults of our husbands.
Admit it, you want your husband to only see the best in you. You would love for his eyes to become less critical and more “soft focused” on your body parts and imperfect personality parts as he ages. But can you do the same for him? You can choose to become blind to your husband’s faults as you let go of the things he does that tend to annoy you and show grace to him, instead.
Now I’m not talking about putting up with behavior that is unhealthy. Nor am I talking about becoming a doormat according to your husband’s moods. I’m talking about realizing you are a sinner by nature and so is your husband (Romans 3:23), and that means the two of you together are a mess that God is willing to redeem. I’m talking about extending grace and showing patience toward one another and loving each other as God loves each of you.
C. Choose to forgive and start over.
When you and I refuse to let
something go in our marriage we are choosing not to forgive. We might not see it that way. But that is what it is. When we hold onto something, cling to it, bury it deep inside, and even drudge it up now and then to remind ourselves—and our husbands—how much they have hurt us, we are refusing to forgive. We are harboring resentment in our hearts. We are allowing our hearts to harden.
Colossians 3:13 instructs us: “Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.” When we remember that we are all sinners (Rom. 3:23) and that God has forgiven us as we’ve surrendered our lives to Him, we can more easily forgive our husbands and their offenses against us. It is liberating to forgive. It is freeing. And it is essential if you want to experience more trust, passion, and communication with your husband.
As you practice these ABCs, remember that grace is the glue that holds the two of you together. Extend grace. Extend love, and remember the truth of First Corinthians 13:7-8: Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails….” (NKJV).
Cindi McMenamin is a national women’s conference speaker and mom who has been married 30 years to her husband, Hugh—a pastor and introvert. She is the author of several books including When a Woman Inspires Her Husband, When Couples Walk Together (which she co-authored with Hugh), and her newest, 12 Ways to Experience More with Your Husband, in which Hugh offers some interesting and eye-opening insights for wives and extroverts. For more on her resources to strengthen your individual walk with God, your marriage, and your relationships, see her website, StrengthForTheSoul.com.
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