Are there times you wonder why your friends don’t support you in working things out with your spouse? Although your friends, especially those who attended your marriage should be supporting reconciliation, they don’t always come through. Reconciliation requires hard work and your friends may not be emotionally ready to see you go through the tough process.
There are likely other reasons why your friends may not be as supportive as you’d hoped. They may have their own relationships they’re working on, or they could simply be burnt out from hearing about your marital problems. They may be in the midst of their own personal struggles and don’t feel they have anything positive to add.
With surprising regularity, some friends won’t support you and your spouse having reconciliation. This means that there will be many times you feel alone in wanting to work things out with your spouse.
There are many reasons for your friends not supporting reconciliation. Some don’t understand marriage, some take up your offenses as theirs and some are convicted by what’s going on.
When you start working on your marriage, it convicts them of not doing anything much about their marriage. In some cases, they may even be having an affair themselves. It reminds them that they haven’t made their own marriage a priority. Everyone has a breaking point, and your friends may have reached theirs when it comes to hearing about your marital woes.
It’s important to remember that you don’t need anyone’s approval or permission in order to work on your marriage. You can still choose to put the energy into making things better even if those around you aren’t as supportive.
Whatever their reason, you can’t depend on them in your struggle for reclaiming your marriage. They may say marriage is important to them, yet when the going gets tough you find out that there are limits to their priorities.
When your hope is rebuilding or saving your marriage, you’ll find out how many of those professing a belief in marriage really believe in the institution. Marriage requires sacrifices and examining your priorities.
When you make your marriage a priority in life, you’ll often find that the children, friends and other priorities will fight for their share of your time. In choosing to save or rebuild your marriage, you’re going to make value judgments in the form of setting priorities.
As long as your marriage looks like a Sandals resort commercial with romance, wining, and dining, things go smoothly. What the commercials don’t show are the choices and sacrifices made along the way.
When the painful struggles of marriage become real to you and those around you, it’s convicting. It forces you and them to consider whether the commitment to your wedding vows is worth it. You find out if they were just words or whether you meant them.
When you decide that you meant it, we have the tools you need for taking action. It’s one thing to want a better marriage, it’s another to make it happen. Knowing what changes to make is critical.
Your marriage needs help in improving intimacy, communication, how each of you treats the other, and adjusting expectations. You’ll also need help in knowing what patterns to break along with where to look.
In the Affair Recovery Workshop, I guide you in each of those areas. You can know what to do rather than blindly guess. You’re not in this alone anymore when you have the tools you need.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
