The fluorescent light from our kitchen glanced off the pale linoleum floor as my husband Anthony and I glared at each other across the dining table. My heart sank. I was realizing for the first time how different our values were, even though we both professed to be Christian. Disillusionment was a horrible sensation, as if a hole had opened in my heart and my hopes were dripping into the pit of my stomach.
How could I have been so blind? How could I have made so many assumptions? Had I married the wrong one?
This is the third post in a three-part series on true love. Here’s what is covered in this series of posts:
- Part 1: What does it mean to find the one?
- Learn what a healthy relationship looks like and the fears that may be holding you back.
- Part 2: How do you know if you have found the one?
- Learn about the 6 signs of true love as well as the 3 signs of a bad match.
- Part 3: What if you think you’ve married the wrong one?
- Learn why your once-passionate relationship has transformed into a cycle of hurt and get tips on how to turn your relationship around.
What If You Think You’ve Married the Wrong One?
You are not alone. There comes a time in every marriage when you will face disillusionment. The first few years of marriage are especially vulnerable, with half of all divorces occurring within the first 7 years. Parenthood often brings another wave of conflict, with two-thirds of marriages plummeting in satisfaction after the birth of the first child.
Believe it or not, disillusionment is a crucial crisis that you must face in order to develop a healthy marriage. Unless you truly acknowledge your differences, you cannot build a marriage that is big enough for both of you.
Your challenge during this dark time is to prove yourself faithful to your promises of love. When you show respect for your partner’s feelings and needs–even when you don’t understand and don’t agree–you prove to your partner that you are worthy of his or her trust.
If you fail to take your partner’s feelings and needs seriously, you begin a toxic, negative cycle that unfortunately spirals very quickly out of control. If you think you’ve fallen into this cycle, it’s time to act fast. The trauma you experience in a relationship is very real. The reactive things you do to each other when you feel threatened can easily amount to emotional abuse. If you don’t want to traumatize your partner and lose your marriage, you must do whatever it takes to learn the skills to fight well.
How to Fight for a Happy Ending
You can do this. You can grow. It takes practice. It takes grit. But this is the kind of love you were made for.
Here are the key skills you need to master.
1. Safety First
To fight well with your partner, you must make sure you stay safe and your partner stays safe. In other words, you must practice healthy boundaries.
Protective Boundaries: What you let in
Your protective boundaries keep you safe from others. They determine what you’re willing to let into your life, and what you’re not. You have a right to set physical and emotional boundaries around how you are treated and what messages you let into your heart. You enforce your boundaries by taking appropriate action when your boundaries are violated.
NOTE: If you have been feeling scared for your physical safety, please reach out quickly for help. Domestic violence is very dangerous and, in extreme cases, can even lead to murder. It’s vitally important for you to have a concrete safety plan for yourself and any kids you care for.
If your spouse is characterologically abusive, he or she is not capable of having a healthy relationship with you; and for your own safety you must get away. If your spouse does not want to treat you abusively and is committed to change, you still need to establish boundaries and keep yourself safe until he or she has shown through repeated action over time that he or she is worthy of your trust. To give your trust prematurely will prevent your spouse from understanding the gravity of his or her actions and hinder your spouse from growing into a safe person.
Restrictive Boundaries: What You Let Out
Your restrictive boundaries keep you safe for others. They establish what you’re willing and not willing to do when you get upset. You don’t have a right to unleash your hurt and anger upon others without restraint.
In his book The New Rules of Marriage, therapist Terry Real suggests that you take a deep breath and hold it in while you press one hand against your stomach at your belly. This is the feeling of self-restraint. Prayerfully commit to using self-control during your fights. Refuse to let yourself engage in behaviors that hurt your spouse–even when you feel angry and upset.
To learn more about healthy boundaries, check out the book Boundaries by Christian therapists Henry Cloud and John Townsend.
I’ve also created a free resource pack, with concrete tools to help you develop boundaries and practice the other tools mentioned in this post.
2. Calm Down
To fight well with your partner, you must learn how to keep calm during your fights.
Self-Regulation: How to Calm Yourself Down
When you are triggered and upset, you usually feel several things at once:
- Part of you feels angry and wants to attack or blame someone (fight).
- Part of you wants to get away from the triggering situation (flight).
- Part of you feels hurt and vulnerable.
Self-regulation means you know how to (1) deactivate the fight/flight response and (2) comfort the part of you that’s feeling hurt.
To physiologically deactivate your fight/flight response, remember to break, breathe, shake, and speak. Each of these has been shown to physically calm your body down:
- Break: Take a 20-minute time out.
- Breathe: Take 10 deep belly breaths.
- Shake: Move your body vigorously for at least 1 minute.
- Speak: Put a name to each of your feelings and your underlying needs.
Your goal is to get back in touch with your kind, compassionate, and curious self. When you’re in a place of inner calm, you’re much more able to hear God’s voice and to respond wisely to the situation. If you have a practice of prayer and meditation, you may already know that calm feeling. Next time you feel that sense of calmness, compassion, and wellness, notice how it feels in your body. Is it a lightness in your heart? A warmth? How does your face feel? Your back? Your chest? Sometimes, all it takes to connect with your calm center is to get to a quiet spot and recall the body sensations you’ve experienced before.
In this place of inner calm, take time to comfort the part of yourself that feels hurt. Name the feelings that you’re experiencing. Bring them to God. Throw out false messages about yourself and receive instead the truth in Christ: You are worthy. You are enough. You are loved.
Co-Regulation: How to Calm Your Partner Down
When you are in a place of compassion and calm, you can help your partner calm down, too. In fact, our bodies are wired for safe connection. According to the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, creator of the Polyvagal Theory, the fastest way to turn off a person’s physiological fight-or-flight response is connection with a safe person.
- Reassure your partner that you want to be safe for him or her.
- Comfort your partner through loving touch.
- Listen and empathize with your partner’s point of view.
- Name your partner’s feelings.
- Seek to understand the underlying needs and longings beneath your partner’s feelings.
Once again, you can check out the free resource pack if you’d like more details on how to calm down.
3. Speak Up
Instead of lashing out reactively during a disagreement, learn the skill of speaking up proactively and effectively.
- Start softly and gently rather than harshly.
- Share vulnerably. Lead with your fears and hurts rather than your anger. This evokes compassion rather than defensiveness.
- Focus on what you feel and need (what therapist Terry Real calls future-positive) rather than what your spouse failed to do (past-negative).
- Ask clearly rather than demand. Don’t expect your spouse to read your mind, and remember to stay respectful.
- Use “and” instead of “but” to show you can accept both your point of view and your spouse’s.
The resource pack includes a cheatsheet of 20 things to say to turn a fight around, if you need more ideas.
4. Insist on a Win-Win
There’s no place for martyrdom in a healthy marriage. It might seem easier to retreat and to let your spouse get his or her way. You might give up asking for your needs and just try to take care of things on your own. If you are a Christian, you might even think that you’re loving sacrificially. But over time this breeds resentment, rather than love. It also deprives both of you of the opportunity to grow.
You are not as strong as you think. If you sacrifice your needs over and over again in order to let your partner win, you will begin to view him or her as a bully and a threat. Relational trauma is real. When you experience a jarring lack of safety in your most intimate relationship, you may even develop physical symptoms of PTSD.
Humbly, but assertively, insist on a win-win solution. Take your partner’s feelings and concerns seriously. But also speak up for what you need. Above all, stick it out and resist the urge to give up or give in.
Instead of living from a mindset of scarcity, as if the two of you must squabble over one small pie, embrace a mindset of abundance. Exercise your God-given creativity. Find a way to make a bigger pie. You might need to think out of the box. You might need to commit to growing new skills. You might need to become healthier and stronger than you’ve ever been before. Remember that God is able, and He wants to give you life abundantly.
Need more? My free, detailed resource pack includes tools such as:
- 8 questions for healthy boundaries
- 8 tools for calming down
- 20 things to say to turn a fight around
- 5 questions for deeper empathy and connection
- 4 steps to a win-win solution
5. Get Help
It may very well be that the person you’ve married does not have the skills to build a healthy relationship–yet. The good news is that research suggests that if even one of you can learn how to approach your relationship with a secure attachment style, you have a good chance of helping your partner shift into a healthy style too.
If you find yourself stuck in hurtful patterns and don’t see improvement in your relationship after 3 months of trying new skills, I urge you to get help quickly. Find a trained couples therapist to coach you. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, the Gottman Method, and PACT (the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy), are all research-supported therapies to help you learn how to build a healthy relationship.
If you live in California, my husband Anthony Liu provides couples therapy via teleconference during this time of sheltering in place. I also would be happy to recommend you to other excellent couples therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Don’t delay. The longer you repeat negative patterns, the less hope you will feel that your relationship can ever change.
Learning new skills takes hard work. And it is fueled by hope. Don’t wait until your hope is gone before you seek help.
May you live deeply and love deeply, friend!
Related Posts
Want to improve your relationship? Check out my posts about the two simple ingredients that will change the way you fight and the four promises every relationship needs. You can also take the Marriage Fitness Test to screen for risk factors in your relationship.