Are you fighting for your marriage and need motivation to keep moving in the healthy direction?
Many of the women I coach and many who read my blog desire to see breakthroughs in their relationships.
Based on experience and working with others, a key factor for turnarounds (either personal or marital) is a willingness to take responsibility for our own personal growth vs. focusing on making your spouse grow.
Your husband (or wife, if you are a husband reading this) might very well need to grow. But you can’t make them.
When it comes to fighting for your marriage, your real options lie with taking ownership of your side of the relationship and understanding what is yours to do and what is not.
Today’s post is a list of my favorite quotes, which I’ve written or talked about over the years, to help you wrestle with the different dimensions of marriage.
There’s a lot more to do and I’ve talked about it here and here. But sometimes in the course of working through marriage problems, we need quick reminders to keep us moving forward.
Enter inspiring quotes for when fighting for your marriage.
Today’s quotes for when fighting for your marriage are for the wife who needs those middle-of-the-day reminders to help her prioritize the important things.
They are also for the wife who is in a mostly-healthy marriage experiencing normal marriage issues but who needs to stay balanced – quick, digestible tips to keep you steering in the right direction!
I hope these sayings motivate you to fight for your own health first, and for the wholeness in your marriage (if your spouse is willing to get whole.)
Without further ado,
Quotes for when fighting for your marriage, by yours truly : )
1. Healthy couples experiencing typical marriage problems can go the healthy extra mile because their marriage is already standing on a foundation of mutual love, honor, respect, kindness, faithfulness, and all those good things every marriage needs. There’s no power imbalance. But for destructive marriages, there’s no “extra.” It’s not “extra” if it’s all you do, all day every day.
2. When we ignore warning signs and allow our spouse to manipulate and control us to silence, we set ourselves up for even more trouble because we can’t resolve what we don’t confront. And what is unaddressed gets worse, not better.
3. Teaching one spouse to operate with a “team mindset” while the other spouse operates on a selfish, entitled mindset is a recipe for unending destruction.
4.Addictions, adultery, abuse are individual issues, not something a spouse can prevent or help with.
5. We cannot control our spouses. But we can take ownership of our side of the marriage and reinforce a healthy environment for ourselves.
6. There’s no short cut to a healed marriage, only intentional work.
7. We (plural) can’t fold our hands and expect love to thrive and grow, unattended.
8. No one ever changed a marriage by themselves. You can keep working till the cows come home but you won’t have any positive or lasting results if the other person doesn’t engage or do their part.
10. While there is sanctity within the bonds of matrimony, the sacredness doesn’t extend to hiding sin and wrong in the name of “personal concerns” or “protecting our Christian image.”
11. A relationship that demands the ending of your personhood so it can exist is not a relationship. It’s an aberration.
12.FYI A healthy relationship does not devour. It does not require the ending of one individual.
13. While “don’t give up on your spouse” is relatively good advice when both individuals are equally committed to individual growth and change (with fruit to show!), it is devastating when only one person is committed.
14. It is okay to grieve the loss of the marriage you thought you had and the spouse you thought you married.
15. The suffering spouse in a destructive marriage must be encouraged to not give up on THEMSELVES – her own welfare, safety, and health. The (often flickering) but God-given desire for security, peace, and joy must be validated, not diminished. .
16.Quotes for when fighting for your marriage. Fact: the committed spouse in a destructive marriage is often pressured to over-understand and over-empathize with their problematic spouse. Meanwhile, their spouse shares no such ambition.
17.If your spouse expects you to participate in their poor or harmful assessment of reality, time to boundary up (wisely, safely.)
18. A happy marriage is a personal choice. The same way you decide to get married? It is the same way you choose to stay happily married. Intentional mutual commitment.
19. Our need to be valued does not decrease the longer we are married. Couples who have great marriages have learned to prioritize one another no matter what is going on with the rest of their lives.
20.Generally, boundaries start with a curious, empathetic exploration of YOUR needs, values, and limits. Boundaries are established on a firm (or increasing) sense of worth as a human being – that you are worthy of being seen, heard, and valued.
21.The point of boundaries isn’t to prop them on others. It’s to figure out your margins, what you need to stay grounded, safe, thriving..
22. Your husband is not above God’s will or God’s Word. Marriage is not permission to sin or dishonor another human being.
23. Quotes for when fighting for your marriage: For the Christian, one way to avoid feeling overrun and overwhelmed by burdens is to remember God surrounds our lives.
24.If your spouse is chronically neglectful, or demeaning or controlling (insert other behaviors), and you’re craving clarity, but he never really verbalizes his intentions with you or the marriage, please know: action, or the lack thereof, is also a language.
25. While God is love, He also teaches us how love does not look like, so we know what to do when it’s absent.
26. Being a Christ-centered woman doesn’t mean you never slip up or make mistakes. It means you allow God to redeem the broken places and grow the healthy ones. It means you allow Him to form you into the woman He created you to be.
27.Just because a spouse sympathizes with a partner does not mean they should continue to expose themselves to the partner’s unrepentant conduct. You can love someone —> from a distance. And pps. all forms of abuse are a choice.
28. Marriage is about growing up, and growing up together is hard. But it must be done if we want to stay healthily married.
30. Marriage doesn’t get better or worse by itself: It takes someone doing their part or not doing their part.
31.Spouses with goodwill (aka good, decent spouses) don’t consider themselves above the limits of love. Their middle name is not “irresponsible.”
32. Overall healthy marriages don’t have hardheartedness as an underlying system. They don’t have remorseless patterns of entitlement and control.
33. God can heal any marriage. But His willingness isn’t the problem. Both spouses must be engaged and willing, with fruit to show.
34.Decent spouses are not a stone wall where all forward movement and improvements fall and crash to the ground.
35. Forgiveness does not equal amnesia: You will remember the past.
36. Sometimes we need to feel the depths of desperation to begin to make sense of where we are and where we need to be.
37.Rather than ask couples to commit to a no-divorce policy or offer prayers for no divorce, why don’t churches ask couples to commit to zero abuse, zero adultery, zero neglect, zero abandonment, zero harm?”
38. Your spouse doesn’t have to prove himself to earn forgiveness (forgive in your own time, no pressure.) But he has to prove himself to win back your trust.
39. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. Sometimes the best thing you will do for your health and well-being is to walk away from mind-numbing fights.
40. If you are waiting for the perfect, most convenient, least uncomfortable time to address problems in your marriage, you’ll miss all opportunities for growth and your marriage will suffer.
Quotes for when fighting for your marriage: Bible Verses
48. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Philippians 4:6
49. “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm” Proverbs 13:20
50. I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
51. “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.” Psalms 1:1-3
52.For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Romans 8:13-14
53. “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” 1 Corinthians 5:9-11
54. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Acts 20:28-30
55. “..but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:14-15
56. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
I hope these sayings and quotes for when fighting for your marriage motivate and inspire you in this season of life. For more help, click here to find out how I can help you navigate obstacles.
Ngina was very empowering. She made it easy for me to figure things out for myself by guiding me to them instead of putting words in my mouth. She was very reliable and consistent and I loved the follow up emails with readings that added to our conversations. I had clarity and peace at the end of every session.” Marriage Coaching client
Hi! I'm Ngina and I'm a certified marriage coach, author, and blogger. I'm on a mission to help women find clarity so they can begin to address problems. I examine unhealthy relationship advice and how elevating the marriage institution above individual welfare has harmed us. I love Jesus, my sweet guy and a hot cup of tea.. Join the Adventure
