You know the teachings about marriage, and you pray for your marriage to be like that, but it’s not.
You studied the Bible, went to marriage classes, sought pastoral support, prayed, even been to counselling. Despite all the efforts, things remain relatively the same at home: you argue, put up a wall, feeling hurt and distant. Sometimes you are worse than strangers, more like enemies, no signs of two people who are committed to each other in love.
Maybe what you need as a couple is not more knowledge, but the kind of Christian Couples Counselling that lets you experience something different in your interactions with each other in sessions.
These are the 5 signs such a service is probably what you actually need:
You want to speak to your partner respectfully. You want to be patient and loving. Instead, you snap, nag, or become defensive and cold. You turn to the kids or to your work, rather than to your spouse. You want to be close but end up feeling more alone.
Verses remind you how your spouse should have behaved and how you deserve to be treated better. You use them to attack each other sometimes, to gain an upper hand. They no longer bring peace, love and unity to your marriage.
Someone saying “I’ll be praying for you” is enough to make you feel dismissed before even sharing your real challenges. You feel judged, unheard and inferior. You don’t need one more person to tell you how having more faith would just ease your pain and solve your problem.
You prayed, but your prayers don’t seem to get answered. You don’t know if you have prayed wrong, asked too much, or what you want is in fact not legitimate. Even more, what if you have just simply married the wrong person?
You are stuck in the same kind of argument pattern over pretty much anything: from chores, to childcare, to finance, to holidays, to jobs, even to the marriage itself. You don’t understand how you always get there, and you don’t know how to get out of it. It becomes the expected way most of your conversations would go, and it has gained its own unwelcome momentum.
If you are experiencing these signs in your marriage, you are not alone. There’s a reason your body doesn’t do what you know and want in your head. There’s a reason you don’t know how to pray for your relationship anymore. There’s a reason you got stuck in the same loop.
The key is not how much you know or how hard you pray.
The key lies in emotions — your God-given emotions, that are wired in your nervous system by design.
Emotions are experienced through the body, not in the head. That’s why knowledge alone couldn’t cut it.
The ways we protect ourselves from painful emotions become the ways we hurt our spouse, forcing them to protect themselves in ways that hurt us back.
It doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck there. You just need a little bit of consultation over the patterns, to help you get out of it together. The right support will focus on emotions, not knowledge.
If you recognise these signs in your marriage, check out our evidence-based Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy service, or head to the Contact Page and reach out for a chat.
