Nobody gets married hoping to ruin their marriage. (Well, I hope so).
You marry someone you love, look forward to building a beautiful life together, and hope you’ll figure out whatever challenges come your way.
But one thing I’ve learned in my ten years of marriage is that you can love your spouse and still do things that make your marriage difficult.
And sometimes, you don’t even realize you’re doing them.
In fact, I’ll be confessing one or two of my own shortcomings along the way.
So, let’s talk about the ways you might be unknowingly sabotaging your marriage.
You always want to win arguments
Your husband isn’t your opponent, and marriage isn’t a competition where someone must always win.
I know how tempting it is to prove your point, especially when you’re convinced you’re right.
But sometimes, in trying so hard to win an argument, you end up saying things you shouldn’t say or bringing up issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the disagreement.
And even when you realize your husband has a point, your pride won’t let you admit it.
But what exactly are you winning?
I’ve learned that being right isn’t always the most important thing in marriage. Sometimes, you need to listen, admit when you’re wrong, and even apologize without adding a “but” to it.
This doesn’t mean you should stay quiet or agree with your husband just to keep the peace. You have every right to express your opinions and stand your ground when necessary.
You expect your spouse to know what you need without telling them
I thought we had agreed to ditch the idea that our spouses should know what we’re thinking without us telling them.
But apparently, some of us are still holding on to it.
You want your husband to do something for you, but you won’t say it because you believe that if he truly loves you, he should know.
You want more attention, but instead of asking for it, you start acting cold towards him.
He asks what’s wrong, and you say, “Nothing.”
Meanwhile, you think, “If you don’t know what you did, I’m not going to tell you.”
How is this man supposed to know?
I understand that after years of marriage, you should know certain things about each other without having to ask every time.
For instance, my husband shouldn’t need to ask me whether I like coffee after ten years of marriage. Lol.
But knowing your spouse well doesn’t mean knowing everything going on in their head.
Even identical twins who have lived together all their lives cannot read each other’s minds.
So, why do we expect that from our spouses?
Sometimes, you have to tell your spouse what you want. It doesn’t make the love any less genuine.
Your spouse can love you and still not know what you’re thinking. They are not God.
Even we have to pray to God to make our requests known.
You keep bringing up your spouse’s past mistakes
This is where I have to confess that I’m guilty of this.
I am, and I’m working on it.
Some hurts are just difficult to forget, especially when they come from someone you love and trust.
You might have forgiven your spouse and believed you’d put it behind you.
Then one day, something happens, and the memory comes rushing back.
Before you know it, you’re bringing up something from two years ago in an argument that has nothing to do with it.
And sometimes, you’re not even bringing it up because you want to hurt your spouse.
It’s just that you’re not as over it as you thought.
Here’s a difference between forgiving someone and healing from what they did.
You can forgive your spouse and still have moments when the hurt resurfaces.
But I also understand how unfair it can be to keep reminding someone of a mistake they’ve apologized for and truly worked to correct.
You can’t keep turning every argument into a reunion of past offenses if you want to be happily married.
You criticize your spouse more than you appreciate them
I once wrote about how my husband traveled for ten days after we’d been married for eight years, and I suddenly had to do some of the things he usually handled.
I had to take out the trash, do the school runs alone, and handle small responsibilities I barely thought about because he’d always done them.
And in those ten days, I appreciated my husband in ways I hadn’t before.
This happens a lot in marriages. We get so familiar with our spouses’ contributions that we barely notice them anymore. But if they forget to do one thing, suddenly we have plenty to say.
Your husband can do ten things right, but the one thing he gets wrong becomes the topic of discussion.
Yes, correct your spouse or express your dissatisfaction when necessary, but if your spouse hears more complaints than appreciation from you, something needs to change.
Don’t wait until your spouse is unavailable before you realize how much they contribute to your life.
You avoid difficult conversations because you don’t want conflict
I would be lying if I said having difficult conversations comes easily to me. It’s tough, especially when you know what you’re about to say might upset your spouse.
Sometimes, you even rehearse the conversation in your head, only to decide it’s not worth bringing up.
But I’ve learned that avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t make the issues disappear.
You keep quiet about something that bothers you, hoping you’ll get over it. Then it happens again, and before you know it, you’re carrying around resentment your spouse might not even know exists.
One day, your husband leaves his shoes in the sitting room, and you’re ready to declare World War III.
Meanwhile, the shoes aren’t even the problem. You’re still angry about something that happened three weeks ago.
This is why I don’t believe a peaceful marriage is one where couples hardly disagree. Some couples don’t argue because they’ve simply stopped talking about what bothers them.
Of course, not every little annoyance deserves a serious conversation. But when something keeps hurting you, you need to address it.
You compare your marriage to other people’s marriages
Social media has been a huge blessing to me in almost every way, financially, socially, and even maritally.
If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you came here from Pinterest.
And guess what? I met my husband on Facebook!
So, when I say social media has been a blessing to me, I mean it.
But I also know that social media can make you unnecessarily dissatisfied with your life if you’re not careful. Especially your marriage.
You see a woman whose husband just surprised her with a brand-new car, and you wonder why your own husband has never surprised you with anything that expensive.
Another woman posts pictures from a romantic vacation in the Maldives, and you look at your husband sitting on the couch watching football, wondering what you did wrong in your previous life. 😂
Then there’s the husband who writes a long, emotional birthday tribute to his wife, calling her his queen, his heartbeat, his answered prayer, and the reason the sun rises every morning.
Meanwhile, your own husband sends you a WhatsApp message that says, “Happy birthday, darling. God bless you.”
Now you’re upset because you’ve started comparing him to men whose marriages you know very little about, not that he’s a bad husband.
There’s nothing wrong with admiring other people’s marriages. But I don’t think it’s wise to use what people post on social media as the standard for judging your own marriage.
You don’t know everything happening behind those beautiful pictures.
And even when those couples are genuinely happy, their happiness doesn’t mean yours is missing something.
Don’t turn another person’s marriage into a measuring stick for yours.
You can admire what someone else has without becoming dissatisfied with what you have.
You use silence to punish your spouse
There’ll be no world in which I’ll agree that giving your spouse the silent treatment is a healthy way to handle disagreements.
I understand needing some space when you’re upset. Sometimes, you’re so angry that you need to calm down before you say something you’ll regret.
But deliberately refusing to speak to your spouse to punish them is something else entirely.
Your husband asks what’s wrong, and you say, “Nothing,” even though you know exactly what’s wrong. You ignore his attempts to communicate because you want him to feel bad, beg for your attention, or somehow figure out what he did.
And some people can keep this up for days!
How do you live in the same house with someone you’re married to and deliberately pretend they don’t exist?
I don’t see how that helps anybody.
If you need space, tell your spouse and agree on when to continue the conversation. But don’t use silence as a weapon.
You cannot keep punishing your spouse emotionally and expect your marriage to remain healthy.
If marriage has taught me one thing, it’s that you can have good intentions and still get things wrong.
You can love your spouse and still have habits that hurt your relationship.
And sometimes, we’re so busy noticing what our spouses need to change that we barely examine ourselves.
I mean, I just confessed to bringing up past mistakes. And I’m sure if you asked my husband, he’d probably have one or two other things to add to the list. 😂
But that’s the thing about marriage. We’re two imperfect people trying to build a life together, and I don’t think we ever get to a point where there’s nothing left to work on.
I’m not saying you should blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in your marriage. You cannot single-handedly make a marriage work, especially when your spouse won’t take responsibility for their own behavior.
But if you recognize you’re contributing to the problem, admit it and try to do better.
Sometimes, the change we want to see in our marriages has to start with us.
And that’s not always an easy thing to admit.
