How to Save Your Marriage During Testing Times

Marriage.com Editorial Team

Expertise: Relationship & Marriage Advice

The Marriage.com Editorial Team is a group of experienced relationship writers, experts, and mental health professionals. We provide practical and research-backed advice on relationships. Our content is thoroughly reviewed by experts to ensure that we offer high-quality and reliable relationship advice.

Learn about Our Editorial Process

6.6k Reads

Updated: 13 Sep, 2022

Table of Contents

It's normal to drift—this is a natural phase that will pass when you approach it as a challenge rather than a burden.
Don't pretend—talk openly with your partner about this hard phase and invite support so you can work through it together.
Control yourself and stay loyal during this rough patch by recognizing temptations, choosing faithfulness, and channeling effort toward rebuilding connection.

‘Relationship’, how attractive this word is, but before you are actually in one! We feel a very strong urge to have a life partner, especially men feel so. Once we find our affine, it’s all good and fun. Relationship has a complete science of its own. Every relationship is a little unique but there are few things that need to be taken care of by everyone, otherwise any relationship can be doomed easily. In this article we are going to discuss one really common and a very important issue that needs to be handled very carefully.

Do you feel you are losing interest and you are no more into your spouse? You don’t feel like putting any effort anymore because you are kind of bored? Is your marriage becoming a burden? Is marriage becoming one of the hardest things in your life? If both, your or your spouse’s answer is yes for any of the above questions then this article is for you my friend!

You obviously can’t expect marriage to be an easy ride. One HUGE mistake is to expect that you will feel the connection with your partner all the time. This expectation plays a very important role in destroying one’s relationship. To understand this logic let’s move step by step.

So let’s start with the beginning of your relationship. Your relationship might have been like a dream come true or might not be, but most probably you were really into your spouse. In that time period you seem to almost never think about separation and

you were willing to find a way out of every problem. This urge is natural because you have a lot of emotions giving you this driving force.

Let’s now come to the harder part of the marriage. This part begins when you slowly feel a little disconnected with your spouse, or it might be the other way around. Here we are going to talk about how to save your marriage in both of the scenarios just presented.

You are in this situation

When this phase starts, you try to tell yourself -‘it’s okay, I’ll put in some effort and everything might work out’ but as you don’t handle it properly what happens is that with every passing day the feelings, connecting you and your spouse emotionally, seem to vanish. Then there comes a time when you don’t feel any emotional connection at all. This is the stage when at every fight you think of giving up on your marriage, when you start thinking of ending your marriage more than you ever have. What to do now? How did you reach this stage? What possibly went so wrong? What could have been done to prevent it? We have got it sorted for you.

Understand it is normal

It is totally normal for a person, not to feel the peak of emotions after marriage has been a few months/years old. You are a human being know your weaknesses, and this is one of many. The very first thing that you need to make sure is that you make yourself understand it well that this is normal and this was destined to happen. Remind yourself that like life is full of different phases, relationships, especially marriage, is full of phases too. This is one of the phases and it will pass without any destruction if you pass this phase the right way.

Once you understand this you will stop thinking of your marriage as a burden and start taking this phase as a challenge.

Do not pretend

One mistake that you are most likely to commit is pretend in front of your spouse that absolutely nothing went wrong. This is when you think that pretending might save your relationship or simply because you don’t want your partner to get hurt. This pretend game does more harm than good. It might save your partner from getting hurt for a short period of time but as this pretending game goes just a little wrong, without even knowing it, you will become too suspicious and ultimately hurt your spouse much more.

So instead of pretending, talk to your partner. Please don’t be too blunt like ‘hey, I am no more into you, you bore me!’ Talking the right way is an art, I swear. Anyway, you should talk to your spouse in such a way that it will cause them as less hurt as possible. You must be thinking how? So basically you need to tell them that you are going through a hard phase and in this phase you want your partner more as a friend who can help you in getting out of this phase. Be super polite and also you need to make sure that you show your partner that you genuinely want to get out of this phase by getting just a little space or you might tell them that what things in the marriage irritate you, so that both of you can overcome them.

Control yourself

In this phase a man is most likely to cheat. Yes, you read it right. Men not only commit the mistake written above i.e. pretending but also start getting in affairs. Let’s just admit it that in this phase you are most likely to get attracted to other girls. Your heart might start racing for someone else, but this is the time when you need to put the REAL EFFORT. Here’s a reminder for you: there is a cycle in every relationship, you feel involved and then you feel not so involved. No matter how many times you get in a relationship, this cycle will repeat itself (if that relation is long term). So learn to control yourself. It is okay to feel attracted to someone other than your spouse because it is somehow not in your control, but it is not okay to respond positively to those feelings! You have to overcome those feelings. Trust me you can, all you have to do is to put effort in first few days/weeks and then these feelings will go away. The right man will always control himself for his wife and will stay faithful during this difficult time. Think more of your wife; remind yourself of her importance and what she actually deserves, a cheating husband or a loyal and loving husband? Try to put yourself in your wife’s shoes and ask yourself how would you feel if she starts getting attached to some other man?

Always remember your situation is unique to you. What you go through in your relationship is only experienced by you. Similarly, you are the best judge to solve your marital or relationship discords. The underlying fact is to just have the right intent which is to save your relationship. If you are focussed on saving your relationship, there is no dearth of possibilities.

Helpful?

Save Your Marriage Course

Continue exploring this topic

Hi, I'm your relationship guide. What's on your mind?

YOU COULD START WITH

Share this article on

Share this article on

Marriage.com Editorial Team Relationship & Marriage Advice

The Marriage.com Editorial Team is a group of experienced relationship writers, experts, and mental health professionals. We provide practical and research-backed advice on relationships. Our content is thoroughly reviewed by experts... Read more to ensure that we offer high-quality and reliable relationship advice. Read less