The Road Away From Divorce Part 2

Are you willing to work on your marriage?

Listen in: The Road Away From Divorce Part 2

In our last episode, The Road to Divorce Part 1, we covered some of the toxic patterns that might indicate your marriage is on the road to divorce. It’s possible that some of those behaviors sound familiar to you: you've gotten into a pattern of harsh startups with your partner; you have negative sentiment override and aren’t believing the best of them; your repair attempts have failed. Now what? 

In Part 2 of this divorce miniseries - part of our larger series, Making Marriage Work - Lynn, John, and Austin discuss what to do if you’ve realized you’re on the road to divorce. There are 5 things that you can do on your own to work on your relationship, and 4 things that you can do as a couple to move away from divorce and towards a happy, healthy relationship.

It Takes Two

If you recognized some of the toxic traits in your relationship, you have very important questions that you need to ask yourself: Am I ready? Am I willing to try to make our marriage work?

If you’ve already given up on your marriage and are looking for a way out, then the things we talk about in this episode might go in one ear and out the other. We can give you wisdom, perspective, and action items, but if you’re not willing to take those things and apply them to your marriage, then nothing will change. But we do understand just how difficult and complex the process of healing might be.

We also want to acknowledge that while there is a lot you can do on your own, you ultimately need the cooperation of your spouse for the marriage to succeed and move away from divorce. That’s why we’re going to share steps that you can take as an individual as well as things you will need to address as a couple. Usually the changes that you make will reveal more about your spouse and the state of your marriage. If nothing else, that will give you some guidance as to how to proceed.

5 Things You Can Do on Your Own

1. Have a funeral for your marriage 

While this first suggestion may sound odd, sometimes you can get into a scenario where there's been so much damage and things have been in high conflict and reactivity for so long that it's not going to be easy to repair. And some of it might be irreparable. Before you can begin the repair process, you need to grieve the ideal of the marriage you wanted but didn’t get.

Some hurts run very deep – an affair, for example. But even the smaller hurts need to be grieved. You may have had ideal expectations, maybe legitimate desires for your relationship. And then you realize that those didn’t pan out. You don’t live at the socioeconomic level you desire. One of you has a chronic health problem. Your spouse has an addiction or trauma in their background that makes connection difficult. Your differing families of origin mean that communication or parenting is a source of conflict.

Even little hurts can cause you to feel disappointed, frustrated, unhappy, and miserable – and they can add up over time. Whether it's an amputation of a leg or a paper cut on your finger, you need to grieve and then accept the reality of what you have. And in order to grieve something, you have to admit that you wanted it in the first place. Maybe it feels shameful to admit that your initial hopes and dreams have not worked out. If so, acknowledging your original ideals is the place to start.

2. Pray and journal

This step involves you asking God to change your heart and accept that you cannot fix, change, or control anyone else. It's acknowledging that you have a script or a playbook or a way in your mind that you thought the marriage was going to be or that you thought your spouse was going to be. In this step, you bring yourself to a point of humility and admit to God that you can only work on yourself and change your own heart.

If you're in a situation and you're unhappy, frustrated, and focused on things that are wrong in your relationship, start with prayer and journaling. Journaling is a way to regulate your emotions. It's a way to narrate and make sense of what it is that you're experiencing. And it's a concrete way to bring God into what may feel like a very hopeless situation.

Many people find that the combination of prayer and journaling saves their marriage. If you voiced every feeling that you had to your spouse, it would be more hurtful than helpful. Journaling helps you process your feelings before bringing them into your relationship.

3. Take the “Love Style” quiz

Another thing you can do on your own is check out the How We Love website and books. You can take a quiz to figure out what your style is. You can learn what your partner's love style is. And once you do, that can give you a lot of insight into the patterns of conflict that may be going on in your relationship.

Maybe your spouse is uncooperative and not interested in learning about your love style or their own. It will still benefit you to find out more about the past wounds that are fueling your repetitive fights. It’s a great tool to use in conjunction with a therapist or counselor. Even if your partner isn't willing to do it, you can start figuring out what's driving your behavior.

4. Get a support team

The next step you can take on your own is to get a support team. Find a trusted friend, mentor, counselor, or pastor; somebody who's not your spouse that you can talk to about your frustrations. Find people who can pray for you and give them permission to voice their feedback or push back on the assumptions you are making about your marriage.

There is no shame in needing other people. You weren't meant to walk through life and navigate life alone, particularly when enduring a difficult marriage. One of the most common and foundational illustrations in the New Testament is the fact that the people of God are a body. Bodies consist of interrelated parts that all have different functions and yet are each necessary. You were made to give and receive support and help wherever and however it's needed.

5. Evaluate your conflict patterns

Then this is the fifth and the final step you can take on your own as you look at patterns of conflict that are making their way downstream in your marriage. You can ask questions like, When do we fight? Is it always the same time of day? Is it a time when we’re tired or hungry? Are there certain things that we always fight about that are never resolved?

Embrace the idea of looking upstream to figure out what is happening that's coming downstream. That's proactive and healthy. But growth in marriage is slow, so even when you start to notice patterns, it’s going to take time to make changes before you see real growth. Once you’ve identified some conflict patterns on your own, the next step is to discuss it with your spouse. And this gets us to those steps that you and your spouse can take together.

4 Things You Can Do as a Couple

1. Evaluate your conflict patterns

It can be daunting to begin this process with your spouse. Start with humility – don’t act like you have all the answers and are just telling them the way it is. Assume your spouse can make reasonable observations too. Have some curiosity about what your partner is saying. Don’t just dismiss their observations out of hand but get curious and explore your patterns together.

This is the opposite of the divorce pattern we talked about in the last episode: negative sentiment override, where you see everything your partner does through a negative lens. Instead, you’re going to assume the best about your partner, and assume that you're a part of the conflict too. You're not seeing them as all bad and yourself as all good.

If you come with humility and curiosity, you can work on the dynamic that's going on between the two of you. It’s easy to think something is either/or. A lot of times it's more complex – it’s both/and. Your conflict patterns might center around personal preferences where you don’t have a clear biblical principle, and that’s when you need to use wisdom.

2. Practice a soft start up

As we discussed in our last episode, many times couples will begin conversations with a harsh start up – using language that is inflammatory or triggering. Instead, practice using softness in your conversations. Try starting a request with, “Would you be willing…” For example, “Would you be willing to take the garbage out tonight so that we don't miss it in the morning?” Maybe it’s raining and you’re asking your spouse to go out in the rain. The question slows them down to think about what they value most. Do they value your request more than their own comfort?

Think about the difference between asking “Would you be willing…” versus coming at them with “Can’t you just get off the couch and take the trash out?” The second approach would be a harsh start up and put them in defensive mode. It would stop being about the trash and be about them feeling disrespected and minimized.

Another thing to pay attention to is tone. Many times you may not be intending to sound sharp and forceful, but it comes across that way. If you tend to be a pretty forward person, scale your intensity back to about 80%. It might seem ridiculous to you, but saying “Hey, can we talk about this for a second?” is much more inviting. When you try it for the first time, softening your tone might feel flowery, but that's actually a good way to do the soft start up. You can even ask your spouse, “Is my tone good here?”

3. Learn how to repair after conflict

The next thing that you can do as a couple is work on repairing. Everyone engages in negative behavior sometimes - it’s not just that you and your spouse are engaging in negative behavior, it’s that you don’t know how to repair the impact of your negative behavior. A lot of couples skip this step. They have the argument; they retreat to their own corners; they come back never having processed what just happened.

One thing we want to encourage you to do is what marriage researchers John and Julie Gottman call a ‘debrief’ after an argument. After you’ve had that fight and you’ve had time to calm down, go back and revisit the argument without getting in the argument again. Figure out what you were feeling when the argument started and the reasons why that conversation went poorly.

This first step in the debrief is to each take a turn and share how you felt before and during the argument. Try to use “I feel…” and choose feeling words to describe your state of mind.

When taking turns, the second step is to validate the other person’s feelings by restating their point of view in your own words to ensure that you’re understanding what they’re saying.

The third step of the debrief is to accept responsibility. Own your own part. If you can take ownership, that softens the other person's heart towards you. You can figure out what each of you need – an apology, changed behavior, reassurance, comfort - and resume normal life together.

4. Take a break when needed

As part of the Gottmans’ research, they had couples stay at an apartment for 48 hours and measured things like blood pressure and skin temperature during their stay. They found that when couples were in conflict, women were able to stay calm in the presence of their husbands. But for husbands, staying in the presence of their wives during conflict meant their blood pressure and skin temperature went up. They were flooded and overwhelmed. When the husbands and wives moved to separate spaces, the husbands calmed down, but the wives became more distressed.

Wives, when you see your husbands start to get worked up, let them take a break if and when they need it, especially if they ask. They need to be able to calm down on their own before they can communicate well. Husbands, when you take a break, use that time to pray, go for a walk, get out in nature, reassess, coach yourself through the intensity of what you may be feeling and get back to a state of regulation. Then you will have more clarity to figure out the root of the conflict and resolve it. And yes, you do need to be willing to come back so that the conflict can be resolved.

Stay the Course

Our recommendations for individuals and couples are hard to implement, especially if you’ve been on the road to divorce. Change won’t happen overnight, but don’t give up hope! If you and your spouse are able and willing (the key phrase!) to practice these together, we’re confident that you’ll be on the road to better and deeper connection.

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Recommended Resources:

How We Love - quiz, books, workbooks, and more

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver