This week my husband and I celebrated 31 years of marriage together. I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage this week and am thrilled to be a survivor! Many times over the years I’ve been asked a very hard question: “How do you stay in a marriage if you’re not happy?” Keep reading if you want to know my answer.
That’s a fair question. I’ve even asked myself this question a few times through some difficult seasons. I’m sure my husband has asked himself this question too.
Here’s my answer:
Happiness isn’t the glue that keeps marriage together. Commitment is. When marital relationships are difficult and we feel unhappy, that’s when we rely on our commitment to our spouse.
I’ve been asked another tough question:
“Doesn’t God want us to be happy in our relationship with our spouse?”
I’ve also pondered this question a lot. As a Christian, I believe God does want us to be happy, but not at the expense of ending the marriage. Our personal happiness is not more important than the marriage. It’s not unimportant, but it’s not more important.
True Story Ahead
A vow is a promise where a person binds himself or herself to an act, service, or condition or in marriage to another person. This means we are tying ourselves together or gluing ourselves together with cohesion so that we stick together. We do this with our words in the marriage ceremony. It’s supposed to be a covenant, an unbinding contract. The signed marriage certificate is just the legal document, it’s not the thing that indicates your commitment. Your vows are what you are committing to do.
Sadly, as most know, marriage is not treated this way by at least 50% of us in our first marriages. And the stats are staggeringly higher for second and third marriages. Oh, trust me, the stats are real. These stats make me sad.
These divorce stats were never more real to me than when during our second marital separation we attended the first evening of a Retrouvaille program. Retrouvaille is specifically designed for marriages on the brink of divorce. That’s exactly where my marriage was teetering.
As we sat waiting for the program to start, I looked around this room filled with rows of unhappily married couples. Bob and I took up two of these chairs right smack in the middle of all these people who were once just stats to me. Now, the realness of divorce hit me like Hurricane Irma is about to hit Florida. It scared me to death. I wanted to evacuate as soon as possible, but God insisted we stay hunkered down and face this storm head on.
Divorce is painful and some people never recover. Guess what? Working through marital problems is also painful. Those who stick it out recover and rebuild just like those who have to rebuild after a hurricane.
Here’s the good news, my husband and I did just that.
Through a lot of prayer, commitment to our wedding vows, and God Himself as the main component of the glue that bound us together, we are still celebrating wedding anniversaries.
We’ve learned marriage takes work. We’ve spent endless hours nurturing our relationship. We had to learn how to communicate better. We implemented many tools to help us rediscover a loving marital relationship.
Divorce
Now don’t get me wrong, and this may surprise some people, especially other Christians. I’m not opposed to divorce, in some circumstances. But feeling unhappy isn’t a reason I think constitutes divorce. Trust me. Neither my husband nor I were happy during many years of our marriage and some days, we still aren’t always happy with each other. That’s why we rely on our commitment.
We don’t bail on marriage because we’re feeling unhappy. Oh, we need to address the cause of the unhappiness, but we don’t bail on the marriage. We work through the tough issues. And yes, I know some issues are super tough and require a lot of work from both the husband and the wife.
Again, I believe happiness is not the glue that keeps marriage together. Commitment is the glue that holds marriage together. And the tougher the glue, the stronger the marriage.
Divorce doesn’t fix anything unless there’s abuse, adultery, or an unwilling partner who refuses to cooperate after much counseling.
Marriage and Happiness
Marriage can and should contain happiness. Please don’t quit just because you’re not feeling those lovin’ feelings any more.
Learn to love again. As Bob Goff would say, “Do Love.”
Love is a verb. It’s an action. Love the feeling is a result of love the action.
Happiness will follow love the action.
Deal with the hard stuff with wisdom, strength, and clarity. Check your reasons for why you are unhappy. Is it really your all spouse’s fault or could it be your own or both of you contributing to an unhappy marriage?
In my case, it was both of us. We both continue to grow and develop and do love. We continually seek to find ways to be a blessing to each other, like Bob mows the lawn and I do the bills. We each help with our household chores and our date nights many times consist of grocery shopping, but we do it together and that’s fun. And he still sends me roses to say he loves me as the picture above is evidence of the roses he sent me this week for our anniversary. And I shaved my legs for him 🙂
The point is, if you’re in a marriage long enough, you’re going to experience the “worse” in the “for better or worse” part of your vows. Don’t quit. Please keep working on your relationship. Seek help from others. We did.
Commitment will see you through the “worse” times so that you can experience the “better” times once again. I know it’s true. I’m happy again and enjoying the fruit of the work my husband and I put into our relationship. By the way, it’s a forever thing, working on the marriage.
But with Jesus in our corner, marriage can blossom into a bouquet that not only looks pretty, but smells pretty too. It’s vibrant, full, and beautiful.
Marriage can and should have some happiness included, but on days when the happiness factor is missing, remember your commitment and stick together. Then you can be a survivor of marriage too!
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