If you are wondering how to save your marriage you must begin with indignation. Resentment can be significant and is common because both you and your partner are imperfect human beings. Before long, someone is going to get hurt, offended, or have their needs unmet. It’s inevitable, hurt will happen. When it happens, most people handle it badly by escalating, withdrawing, or becoming passive aggressive, which further injures the marriage. Unresolved resentment will prevent you from filling your partner’s love bucket because you have a clog in your pipe. So learning how to effectively resolve resentment is critical if you’re wondering how to save your marriage. This post will show you three specific steps to get you started.
How to Save Your Marriage – Getting Started
Step #1: Go to the original pain point
The first step if you’re wondering how to save your marriage is to go back to when your feelings were first hurt. What happened? Maybe it was a week ago? Maybe it was five years ago? Maybe it was 30 years ago? You need to go back to the original experience or the moment the pattern started. What went down? An example from my life was after my wife and I got married in 1999. My wife began to avoid all intercourse because her repressed sexual trauma from her upbringing began to surface, which made her realize how much she hated sex and me who wanted it. Every time we tried to have sex it would trigger her and she would angrily reject me because my sexual desire reminded her of her trauma and the perpetrators growing up. Rejecting her during my most vulnerable moments triggered rejection wounds from my past, causing me to respond with anger in response. My anger made me seem even more insecure to her sexually, so she further avoided intimacy. It was an ugly vicious circle that left deep traces of dissatisfaction in both of us.
What was the starting point of your outrage?
Step #2: See their innocence and take ownership for yourself
The second step, if you’re wondering how to save your marriage, is to find innocence in your partner’s hurtful behavior and take responsibility for yourself. In my example above, I had to think about why my wife’s sexual trauma surfaced soon after we were married. It took me a while to realize that trauma tends to surface when one feels safe. So my wife wasn’t sexually rejecting me for being mean, quite the opposite. She was expressing her trauma because my marital commitment made her feel safe enough to do so. Realizing this was an important step for me to see the innocence in her abusive behavior. It didn’t mean she was completely innocent because she could have worked harder to heal her trauma. However, he showed me that he wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt me.
The second thing I finally realized is that when someone has a trauma trigger they need to be comforted and reassured. They need to see that they are safe and that the “lion is not chasing them.” Trauma triggers a person’s fight-or-flight response in their sympathetic nervous system. So they have to complete the cycle of trauma by recognizing that they are not in danger and that everything is okay, which takes them out of fight or flight and into their parasympathetic nervous system. If someone receives comfort and affirmation in response to their traumas that are inflicted several times, they can heal within their relationship. However, instead of providing comfort to my wife, I gave anger in response to her sexual rejection. Therefore, without realizing it, I was making her trauma worse! My anger compounded her trauma.
I used to blame my wife for all our sexual problems and had a lot of resentment around it. However, when I finally realized that her sexual rejection was not malicious and my reactions only exacerbated her trauma, my heart flooded with compassion. I still remember the conversation as tears streamed down our faces as we both recognized our parts in the vicious cycle that had destroyed our relationship. It was one of the most healing moments of our marriage.
What’s up with you;
What was the innocence in your partner’s abusive behavior?
How did you possibly contribute to their offending behaviour? What was your place?
Step #3: Apologize sincerely on your end
The third step if you’re wondering how to save your marriage is to apologize on your end. The part that was your fault. The way you made things worse. I had to apologize for responding angrily to my wife’s causes of sexual trauma. I had provided the opposite of the comfort he needed. When I sincerely apologized for doing this and empathized with how it must have made her feel, the chains broke. The wall between us began to come down.
Resentment cannot be healed without heartfelt ownership, empathy, and forgiveness.
What are the areas of resentment in your relationship? You are not going to win the argument about who was right or wrong. You need to talk about how the upset topic made you both feel. What were both of your basic needs? What emotional wounds from your past caused you? What was the innocence in your partner’s abusive behavior? How did you make it worse? As you heal the resentments in your marriage, the love will slowly begin to return!
For more help, see the related articles below.
Surviving infidelity
Case Recovery
Is my marriage over?
Should I get a divorce?
How to fix a broken relationship
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What other ideas would you suggest on how to save your marriage?
