Modern society is often obsessed with finding ways to suddenly revive or fix what is broken around them. You hear of ways to revive your sex drive, revive your lifestyle, revive your diet, etc. When you hear about all these products that promise to suddenly revive what is messed up or broken, it seems logical that you can do the same with your marriage. Here is the problem with that kind of thinking.
Suddenly reviving something, especially relationships often becomes ghoulish. What you don’t realize is that the old relationship and old marriage are dead. They are gone. When you revive the dead corpse of what was, you have something more akin to Frankenstein, than you do to a healthy marriage. Since a marriage is a relationship, it will take time. With each interaction, the warp and woof of your relationship are formed. You can make a choice to try to make your marriage work, in which case, you are looking at rebuilding a relationship from the ground up. When people talk about reviving their marriage, you may have this fantasy that with one weekend retreat or special trip it will suddenly ‘come back to life’. Such trips do stir up the passion, yet a marriage takes more than passion. It takes more than sex. It takes more than quick fixes.
If you expect a quick fix, you are in for disappointment. The two of you will have to build intimacy interaction by interaction, you will have to learn to enjoy each others company again. The two of you will have to improve your ability to communicate along with increasing the frequency of communication and improve the quality of communication. Each of you will have to learn how to be honest and how to be vulnerable. If your weekend retreat can do all that in the time the two of you are gone, good for you. If you are able to do all that, you are exceptional.
When marriages are damaged to the point of an affair, it will take hours of trial and error in opening up the channels of communication. There will be the ups and downs of learning how to deal with anger and forgiveness. It will take days of sharing each others whereabouts and activities for trust to form once more. It will take numerous interactions learning how to nurture and ‘tune-in’ to your spouse in order to feel reconnected with each other.
Quick fixes to your marriage are only going to give you Frankensteins. Let go of the expectations of the quick revive, and learn how to be ‘in relationship’ with your spouse. Although it takes time, it is time well spent. Time spent working on a relationship is never wasted.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
2 Responses
I understand this …have worked on my part for many years throughout the marriage and even spent one year living with believers to help me learn more and more how to serve others. My husband did not want anything to do with working out anything ….His only demonstration of what seems worth effort to him is his career.
The adultery was just one of the demonstrations that he views relationships as a ‘dime a dozen’ and not something he should apply much thought to since he is charming and has a way of getting anyone to like him with very little personal effort.
His natural charm, appearance and now in a setting of appearing prosperous has provided him with just ‘enough’ value to others to enjoy occasional interactions …from guys he played golf with and worked with to the OW and other women he enjoyed including in whatever he wanted to do.
Inclusion of his wife was seldom and with not much thought or desire to do so.
His only effort these days is toward his children with the OW …I have asked the Lord to help me by way of applying the shield of faith and to protect my emotions with the breastplate of righteousness…it seems to have calmed me down a bit since the breastplate covers the heart area …physically but I got an idea to ask for the emotional protection …which seems to ‘fit’ the idea.
Being in a marriage “alone’ is doubly lonely since as a single woman I always had somewhere to go and things to do . Presently I do not like to take an independent attitude since in marriage I am still accountable to the Lord to live IN the marriage for HIS sake.
And I feel that any actions on my part to demonstrate that I am being independent or behaving like a single woman …will be used against me as some kind of ‘evidence’ that I am “OK” doing that and so he is ‘off the hook’ in all of the ways a husband is responsible for in marriage for his wife’s various well being spiritually , mentally ,physically and sexually of course.
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The total disconnect that he is doing has nothing to do with my vows to the Lord and how my living accordingly reflects upon the Lord’s name for one thing.
I find this very difficult to look forward to any reconciliation in terms of romance because of how I feel about my physical appearance as it relates to my husband’s lengthy adultery with the OW …He actually lived more with her in his life as a husband is supposed to treat a wife …than he treated me .
Another difficulty is that he has seemed to ceased from any sexual desire whatsoever and seems to be proud of this . I know that I had experienced years of wondering if he was gay since he seemed so effected by my naked body in the shower and such …and if we had sex he would immediately leap out of bed to go to the bathroom! Habits from the way sex with the OW required him to get cleaned up and go home??? or some other …he said he thought he would get a disease if he did not wash up immediately….?????? This from a grad of a university of some notoriety!
If I was younger I might not feel so hopeless of this aspect of my life being ‘over’ ….but as I age and see the ‘assets ‘ becoming less and less ‘competitive” visually and I realize that my husband apparently did not find me as attractive as the OW …which he denies….I find it hard to believe that he could really appreciate me and my appearance or my sexuality , He apparently does not have a sex drive after all of the ‘damages done to him ‘ because of his adultery!
Perhaps …he is pretty depressed and depression could effect sex drive …but it seems so odd that he COULD NOT DO without it with the OW and not he has NO ‘needs’ at all !
I am now busying myself with various preparation for our son’s wedding but it is really difficult to look forward to that considering all of how my husband is behaving . There are so many aspects of his choices that DO effect our lives.
Instant recovery? OH I wouldn’t count on it …They say it takes only a minute to destroy what it took a lifetime to build…I sadly concur.
Rebuilding on a corpse is gruesome …and costly …the Resurrection COST Jesus everything…so it is …to live IN His resurrection we need to die TO self …and that can be a lengthy walk as well …indeed it is worth it though.
Thanks Jeff for your continued helps to all who come here with wounded hearts and lives….May your life continue to be blessed with the wife of your youth…who no doubt has been one of God’s ‘ingredient ‘ to your maturity and life long growth !
PS that living with other believers was the year before marriage and I did it deliberately to learn more about living with others who were not shy about investing in honest and transparent living with the aim to apply the Word to our lives…it was a good year ..sharing and being in a place where we also ran fellowships ….Learned a lot ..too bad my future husband was on the road but I shared a lot with him about it …still nothing like “being there:” getting personal ‘training’ in relationships …he maybe should have been….