4 Shifts That Brought a Struggling Marriage Back From the Brink

A note from Shaunti: I’m excited this week to introduce you to the newest member of our team, our lead editor Laurie Davies, via this guest blog. If your marriage has settled into a place of “so-so,” or if it’s hanging on by a thread, her story – coupled with small shifts that brought her marriage back in a big way – may offer a vision that your story could change, too. 

By Laurie Davies 

The trip to Alaska felt like a Hail Mary. Only it was our marriage – not a football – flying 2,500 feet through the air. My husband Greg and I planned to explore rugged Alaskan wilderness and maybe put our marriage back together. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. 

The previous few years had been rough. We’d both buried parents and dreams. Our son moved out in a huff, leaving us with an empty nest, which sounds a lot like emptiness. A couple of ruptured discs required back-to-back spinal fusions for me. And there were the other ruptures – marital patterns that we’d stopped attending to because, let’s face it, the sandwich years can take a bite out of bliss.  

Headed to a retreat attended by strangers from all over the U.S., I hoped beach walking and whale watching would take us back to the love for recreation that highlighted our 20s and 30s.  

But of all things to rekindle a spark, it was … potatoes. 

A marriage on the brink finds breakthrough 

On a tiny, Wi-Fi-free island in the Kodiak Archipelago, our lunches and dinners were chef-prepared. Our host said we were on our own for breakfast. On Day 1, Greg was up and out of our room early. Jet lagged and disoriented from Alaskan summer nights, I rolled over and skipped breakfast, grateful for the whole bed and quiet room. On Day 2, he tiptoed out again, and on Day 3 … same.  

At lunch that day, the conversation of a couple seated behind me revealed the truth. Before breakfast every day, my man hightailed it to the kitchen to prep potatoes. Then, he short-order cooked everything from eggs-over-easy to pancakes. For strangers. 

I never saw it coming. He scrubbed, peeled and diced his way back into my heart. 

Greg was who he had always been – a servant. I just hadn’t seen it in a while. The stress and strain of tending to the affairs of deceased parents, being at odds over how to parent a boundary-bucking teenager (and holding difficult emotions when he moved out), and navigating health challenges had taken a toll.  

We walked along the beach and I told him I admired his servant’s heart. He said he loved how I firmly established myself as the class clown on Day 1 of our trip. And we both felt it. Something shifted. We started an upward spiral. 

Our trouble spots weren’t fixed on a walk along the beach. (That would be a Hallmark movie.) But a counselor worked with us to help us yield with humility and empathy toward each other. Tears fell. Grudges died. Bad patterns came into the light. Marriage counseling is hard. The drive home can be long and silent or exuberant with breakthrough. But stack it all up together, and Greg and I found something stronger than what stood before. 

If anything in our story sounds like your story (or you’d like it to), how do you find your way back? Better yet, how do you not drift apart in the first place?  

Here are four small shifts that made a huge difference for us. (They’re all found in Shaunti Feldhahn’s book The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages. I have a fun footnote on that at the end of today’s blog.) 

 

Shift #1: Believe the best. 

In the push and pull of stress and disappointments, it takes an extra gear to believe the pain you cause each other isn’t on purpose. I Corinthians 13:7 says, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” It’s like a sandwich, with bearing and enduring as the bread, and believing and hoping as the fun ingredients in the middle. 

Of course, there are situations when “bearing” or “enduring” don’t apply. If there’s abuse, then safety, boundaries, and outside help are critical. But for most garden-variety trouble spots, renewing our minds to believe the best in our spouses is a game-changer.  

In the nationally-representative survey that undergirds the The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, Shaunti found that even in struggling relationships, 97% of spouses said they care about their mates. This means if we’re assuming our spouse doesn’t care, statistically, we’re wrong. And that means our resulting unhappiness is based on an assumption that’s also wrong.  

Greg and I have found that not only does believing the best of each other’s intentions lead to greater happiness, it’s also a whole lot less work. 

Shift #2: Close up the distance. 

Do you think it’s possible to live under the same roof without living together? I’m asking for a friend.  

The question sounds silly, doesn’t it? Married couples see each other every day. But it’s amazing how many pockets of isolation an average home offers if you look for them. And boy, did Greg and I look for them.  

This “retreat to your corners” mentality is not good, and Shaunti’s research bears this out. Only 35% of struggling couples hang out with their spouse at least weekly, compared with 83% of very happy couples.  

Our counselor got out a prescription pad and wrote “spend time together.” Greg’s a rule-follower and I never met an assignment I didn’t want an A+ on, so we set out to do our “homework.” We didn’t always talk, because we were talking a lot in counseling. Sometimes it was enough to walk across a beautifully lit bridge at sunset. Eventually we held hands. Finally conversation came. All the other good stuff didn’t take long. 

As recently as last week, we hit a speedbump and rather than retreat, we set aside our individual priorities and spent the whole weekend together. We hiked, watched NBA playoffs, enjoyed live music, and stayed close. Grace is easier to show to someone you’re not avoiding. 

Shift #3: Laugh more. 

One of the things that drew my husband to me was humor. He says I am the CFO of our family. That might not stand for exactly what you think it stands for. 

It’s Chief Fun Officer. 

We had some pretty lean, mean years with some of the stuff I already mentioned. What I didn’t mention was that on any given day I looked like I was fresh out of central casting for a zombie apocalypse film. Life sucked the fun out of me. I’m not saying all the levity in our marriage is on me because that’s not fair. But somewhere along the way, life got too serious. 

The happy-marriages research talks about bossing our feelings around, and there’s something to this. Scripture reminds us to think about what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. (I would add silly to the list, but that’s me.) I decided to start being fun again. This doesn’t mean Greg always laughed at my jokes (even though they were funny) because we were still working things out. But Proverbs 17:22 (NIV) nails it: A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. 

Shift #4: Have fantasies. 

Okay, now we’re getting to the good part, right? Fantasizing. 

With facts. 

I know. It’s not what you thought was coming.  

For years, Greg lived under the burden of something I expected him to deliver, because it comes easy for me. But it’s difficult for him. Greg has so many stellar qualities. He’s loyal, and chivalrous, and a servant (while I was writing this blog he literally asked me if the noise would bother me if he vacuumed.) But he’s just a man.  

I’ve learned to shove my unrealistic expectations aside and I think he’s done the same for me. We’ve learned to be grateful for how we do meet each other’s needs. We have, as Shaunti writes, “factual fantasies.”  

Maybe some of that comes more naturally in our fifties than it did in our thirties. Life and probably God humbled our pride. Walking through fire purified things that needed to go. But once raging, fires are tough to tame. I’m glad we got help in time. 

I’ll end with the fun story I promised at the beginning. When I joined Shaunti’s ministry team, one of the first things that felt “official” about the job was the arrival of a box of her books. We tore it open and Greg picked up The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, looked at me and said, “Well, it looks like we have lots of material to help us keep getting better.” 

Swoon. 

I didn’t have to go to Alaska to see the best in my man. He was in there the whole time.  

Not everyone will join the staff of a researcher and author whose life’s work is to help relationships thrive. But everyone can pick up a book from a store or the local library. Might I recommend The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages?  

There’s some good stuff in its pages. And none of it requires a Hail Mary. 

Laurie Davies is a writer, speaker, lay counselor, and ministry leader in the Phoenix area. A regular Guideposts contributor and former journalist, Laurie serves as lead editor on Shaunti Feldhahn’s Atlanta-based ministry team. She loves hiking, drinking hot coffee on 115-degree days (weird, she knows), and sharing life with her husband Greg and son Morgan. You can visit Laurie on her website or follow her on Instagram or Facebook. 

If you are interested in having Shaunti bring research-based strategies, practical wisdom and biblical principles to your next event, please contact Nicole Owens at [email protected].

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