Keys to Cultivating a Thriving Marriage

Each marriage is as unique as the two people who promise before God and their loved ones to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Their story begins when the couple first meet and carries on into their life together as a married couple. The couple also bring with them their experiences from past relationships. Finding that person you want to spend the rest of your life with is one thing, but maintaining a healthy and thriving married life is another.

Most of the individuals and couples that I see in my office come because they are stuck in unforgiveness of themselves or others. They reach out for help when they realize that their best efforts to make things better are not getting them the desired change. Fortunately, the keys to cultivating a thriving marriage are not that difficult to adopt.

Marriage comes with its share of challenges that few of us understood before entering into this lifelong covenant. For this reason, premarital counseling is often recommended as a way to prepare couples for these realities. By contrast, popular culture depicts an unrealistic view of marriage.

It portrays naive caricatures of extremes from amazing to awful, presenting marriage as a mostly dull existence, punctuated with frequent displays of friction or bliss. Rarely offering a glimpse of genuine care or concern for their partner. Neither extreme is true entirety. However, in many ways, what you put into your marriage will determine what you get out of it.

Challenges married couples face

Sharing life with another person means being side by side through the good times – the difficult times and even the boring times. You get to see your spouse at their absolute best, but you also experience them at their worst. The same goes for how they experience you. Marriage strips away any illusions you may have had about the other person, but it also allows the opportunity to truly be yourself. You can be seen, heard, understood, and loved.

Marriage is a complex relationship in which you know each other as friends, lovers, confidants, caregivers, followers of Jesus, and so much more. You experience every facet of the other person’s life, including their emotions and thoughts. There is no other relationship quite like it, and it comes with unique challenges and opportunities of its own. Added to that are the troubles that face people in general anyway. Some of the struggles married couples face include:

Financial and life stress

Being married doesn’t exempt you from facing work stress, or the pressure of inflation and a stagnant wage. Yes, you can face it together, and figure out your problems as a team, but it’s a challenge that can hinder a thriving partnership. Of the issues that often cause arguments in a marriage, money is one of the leading causes of stress and marital discord.

Couples may struggle to find time to connect meaningfully because their lives are busy, and if they do not intentionally carve out time to connect, a gulf may develop between them.

Marriage brings together two people into a lifelong union. The two “become one flesh,” (Genesis 2:24, NIV) and their lives are forever intertwined. This unity doesn’t mean the couple loses their individuality, however.

Couples can struggle with aligning their lives toward a common goal or purpose, with learning to yield to one another and do what is best for each other, or even in communicating what they want so they can pull together for a common cause.

A lack of alignment in various areas, whether it’s parenting, how to use their money and time, intimacy, or any number of areas, can lead to conflict, which can undermine goodwill and affection between the couple if they don’t handle it well.

Couples lacking proper alignment often try to figure it out on their own, making mistakes as they go. It’s kind of like driving across the country without a map. You will end up somewhere, but is unlikely to be the place you had in mind.

Poor communication

Though a couple may not start out struggling with their communication, it can become an issue that develops later in the marriage. Being communicative means opening yourself up to the other person, letting them know your thoughts, feelings, hopes, plans, fears, dreams, and much else. It can be about everyday things, or about what is in your deepest heart.

Communication enables the couple to know where they stand, what one another’s needs are, and how best to come alongside each other. Quality communication requires being able to articulate your thoughts and feelings, as well as being able to create space for the other person to express themselves freely. This level of -communication requires empathy, trust, and emotional intelligence. Most of us did not learn these skills in our families growing up.

Communication is made more difficult when the couple is engaged in conflict, especially if they aren’t handling it well. Tension, hurt, and assumption thwart meaningful communication.

The specter of infidelity

Being married is a lifelong commitment to one person, but that commitment, due to human weakness and the reality of sin, can waver. Infidelity happens for several reasons, including marital unhappiness, revenge, or self-exploration. If there is a low level of commitment to the marriage relationship, that can increase the vulnerability of the marriage. Infidelity poses a deep problem of marital intimacy in all its forms.

Cultivating a thriving marriage

What does a thriving married life look like? Each couple may have a unique idea of what the marriage of their dreams looks like. Each spouse may have a slightly (or vastly) different picture of an ideal marriage. That can create a mismatch of expectations unless communicated and explored. Fortunately, there are ways to strengthen your marriage for the best chance of flourishing. Ideas include:

Communicating your needs

Many couples need to learn how to hold space for one another. After spending years with one another, it’s easy to make assumptions about your spouse’s wants and needs. It’s also easy to be dismissive of your spouse’s needs, even while being offended at the lack of regard for your own longings.

That is why couples need to listen in a new, open way, providing opportunities to hear each other afresh, to listen carefully to what your spouse is saying, and to commit to coming alongside them in meeting their needs.

It’s also essential to communicate your needs instead of assuming your spouse will figure them out. It’s important to do this gently, calmly, and assertively, without resorting to manipulation or aggressively coercing them into doing what you want. This requires vulnerability, and that can be difficult if the space doesn’t feel safe.

Being willing to compromise

You don’t always get what you want in life. When sharing life with someone, it can be tempting to fight for your own choice and not give up ground. A couple can take on an adversarial posture toward each other – every encounter is a chance to win, or at least to not lose. This can happen when there is a prolonged and unresolved conflict at the heart of the marriage.

Everyday conversations can quickly become a chance to subtly (or not so subtly) gain ground, making sure that you get what you want. When the couple refuses to compromise and look at one another as competitors, that undermines the health of the marriage.

Marriage is a partnership; if your spouse wins in life, you also win in life. Embracing the attitude of serving one another and looking out for one another’s interests is at the heart of every successful marriage. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ

Maintaining curiosity

When things go wrong, you may pull away from your partner to emotionally avoid problems. Avoidance behaviors may include using alcohol or drugs to numb your pain, hiding behind work, or shopping. However, refusing to address the problem doesn’t make the problem go away. Rather, it pulls you away from your spouse and misses the opportunity to lean on them for support.

Instead, sharing your concerns with your partner, and being vulnerable with them can help your relationship flourish. Additionally, it’s important to be continuously curious about your spouse. People grow and change over time. This is one great reason to have a regular date night.

Carve out time for an opportunity to connect with the person you married, to find out about their life and what’s happening in it. Like the other key steps, this must be intentional. You may have to plan to be spontaneous. If you are waiting for spontaneity to happen naturally, you may be waiting a long time.

Allow your curiosity to extend to their hobbies, or to being willing to try out new things together. This is a fantastic way to build intimacy.

Develop a poor memory

When attempting to strengthen the position that you are right, you may be tempted to bring up your spouse’s historical mistakes, missteps or even past transgressions.

This tactic tends to either ignite an argument or shut down any positive communications completely. Recounting a historical laundry list of your spouse’s mistakes takes couples farther away from their desired communication process and drives a larger wedge between you and your partner.

It is useful to develop a poor memory and avoid dwelling on the mistakes of the past. Remain in the “here and now” which will allow for greater receptivity by your partner to hearing your position. Ask yourself: Do I want to be right? or do I want to be happy?

Seek help

Pain, past trauma, patterns of thought and behavior that undermine communication and intimacy, all make relationships complex. These aren’t always easy for a couple to navigate by themselves. Seeking the help of a licensed Christian marriage and family therapist can provide the couple with the safe space and wise guidance they need to work through these areas of concern.

Reaching out to grow

I believe that no matter how long you have been married, you can learn to cultivate a thriving marriage. Marital counseling with a Christian counselor can help couples who have found themselves stuck, and lacking the necessary tools to get unstuck and be happy again.

Your marriage does not necessarily need to be in crisis to seek the help of a marriage therapist. It is ok to pursue counseling just to improve or energize your marriage. Whether your relationship is struggling, or you just want to grow deeper together, reach out to us today and we can connect you to a qualified couple’s therapist to help your marriage thrive.