Is Your Marriage Stale? Here's How to Freshen It Up
Article from “Witness Magazine,” Winter 2022
It’s easy to slip into bad habits in marriage. Before you know it, your relationship is shoved a few notches down the priority list or totally ignored. Over time you get used to the status quo until one morning you wake up, and the spark is barely a flicker.
Every marriage relationship can use a fresh start – a process of improving, repairing or making it more successful. A fresh start can breathe life back into a stale marriage relationship.
Relationships require attention, much the same as a beautiful garden. Untended, a garden can quickly become full of weeds and insects. With a bit of attention, it can once again be beautiful and flourish. Our relationships are no different.
One of the weeds that can quickly fill your marital garden is weariness. Weariness in marriage leads to emotional fatigue, which can lead to losing heart and losing the will and desire to correct what is wrong.
Signs of a Marriage in Need of a Fresh Start
You are over-committed to activities and under-connected to each other.
Conversations are more about tasks than about the things in your heart.
Fun and laughter have gone on a permanent vacation.
Your thoughts about your spouse have become more negative than positive.
The need for a fresh start does not mean your marriage is over. It does not mean that you should close the door to this relationship and look for another one. That’s what some people will do.Instead, you can focus on improving, repairing, and making your marriage more successful. It begins by giving it some positive attention. I remembered this cautionary warning to the early believers about weariness in their faith when thinking about this topic.
So don’t get tired of doing what is good. Don’t get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time. (Galatians 6:9, New Living Translation)
In applying this to marriage, don’t get tired of doing the good things in your relationship that will be a blessing to both of you. While there are many good things that you can do for a fresh start in your relationship, three essential things will help.
How to Freshen Up
Make small gestures of kindness towards your spouse and make them often. It’s hard to be nice when stressed or angry, but don’t get tired of being nice to each other, even when in conflict. Keep the balance between the positive and negative stacked in favor of the positive.
Stay connected to each other. Couples drift because they fail to invest in hours of talking, playing and sharing together. Relational closeness doesn’t have a life of its own.
Make sure to have fun. Playing together has been thrown out the window in stale marriages and replaced with only serious adult responsibilities. The more you invest in fun and friendship, the happier the relationship will get over time. The correlation between fun and marital happiness is high and significant.
Can you prevent weariness in your marriage? Can you renew, refresh, and restore what has been lost? The answer is a definite, “YES!”
Willie Batson loves equipping individuals and couples with tools for building healthy relationships. Feel free to contact him for more help on strengthening your relationships. He is a retired pastor, a published author, a podcast co-host, and the Lead Coach at W.C. Batson Coaching. Visit his website for more information about how he can help you and other couples: www.williebatson.com