How Hard is Marriage? Sanity-Saving Tips For Wives

“Marriage is hard” is how some spouses avoid taking individual responsibility in marriage.

When I was newly married, I thought all problems between a couple were something both people needed to work on: All issues were solvable.

Even where one person was at fault, I was taught that prayer, patience, and better instruction would fix the problems. (The only exception was physical violence.) So I taught from that point of view.

What I didn’t understand, what the counsel around me didn’t seem to know/accept, was that a healthy relationship takes two, and it’s also possible to appear present and loving while being the opposite of that behind closed doors.

When one spouse signs up at the starting line, quits somewhere in the middle, and still expects to win the medal (an intact marriage), the other person is basically tending to a dead relationship.

Projecting Our Marriage Problems

Back then, my husband and I were experiencing newlywed adjustments.

Some couples experience a relatively smooth start to marriage, but that wasn’t the case for us. That little fact caused me a lot of internal turmoil. (I don’t know why our Christian books and sermons continually emphasize that “marriage is hard” while simultaneously shaming and guilting people for experiencing problems. But I digress.)

From hindsight, most of our issues stemmed from adverse experiences in our pasts, plus unhealthy beliefs about God and marriage. But we were adjusting and growing. Too slowly for my liking but we were seeing positive and lasting changes.*

Unfortunately, I counseled everyone from that perspective (I was a small group leader and marriage enthusiast.) Which turned out to be projecting my own experiences onto other marriages. Read more High-Conflict Couple Vs Abuse in Marriage

My support for other couples was mostly along the lines of what we had been counseled: pray, support, respect, love, give more, etc.

Now looking back, some of the “marriage problems” were actually individual character issues. I didn’t know it back then, but lack of knowledge does not absolve me from responsibility. I wrote about that here: Why I’ve Deleted My Books, Courses, and Over 200 Blog Posts

Once You Know Better, You Do Better: Updating Resources

Once you know better, you do better.

When people accuse me of being judgy or arrogant, they don’t realize I have an intimate understanding of “typical marital issues.”

I know what it is like to be miserable with each other AND still operate within the standards of love. I know what taking personal responsibility looks like—its ups and downs and long-term fruit.

So when some Christians want to call a disaster a minor scrape on the knee, that no longer adds up for me. And it’s not delusional: the line between chronic hardheartedness/unrepentance and typical growth pains between two honoring human beings is undeniable.

I’m working to get my books and courses back out again after pulling them down two and a half years ago. I’ve grown, and the updates and revisions reflect that journey.

Updating and republishing has taken longer than I expected. I think it’s harder to re-write a book than write one from scratch (any writers out there who feel this way, too?)

But I’m enjoying the growth and looking forward to having my books and course available again!  

The reality is that married Christians don’t get a pass: they don’t get to practice unkindness, immaturity, disrespect, pride, unrepentance, and call it “the married life.”

Where the bar is so low, the “wriggle” room so big, and the coddling so deep, it looks like marriage is where decency went to expire; the spouse on the receiving end is not obligated to put up with it.

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