If you and your partner are both willing to put in the work, are able to truly acknowledge your part in contributing to the current state of your marriage, and will actively attempt to change your behavior in a way that best suits your relationship, then your marriage can be fixed.
In order to find out if your marriage can be fixed, you have to give it your all and hope that your partner is doing the same. You have to put your marriage before yourself.
The stronger your love was before, the greater the challenge of finding it again. Once a marriage starts trending downward, it is incredibly difficult to rechart its course. And, sadly, the better the relationship was, the more of a challenge it will be to get back. If the beginning of your courtship made you swoon and swear you had found your soulmate, getting back to a romance that sounds worthy of a Disney movie is going to be a much steeper climb than if your relationship had started more slowly and with reasonable highs and lows.
Time can color the memories of your past in a more positive light than the relationship actually was. In this case, your struggling marriage of the present has an impossibly high standard to live up to.
Let it go.
Often when I work with couples, counseling often begins with arguments from months, or even years ago. The history of the relationship is extremely helpful in understanding what led the couple to this moment. But there is a difference between a couple who is telling their story and two people who can't let go of the past.
In couples counseling one of the most important concepts is to help each person to see and understand the other person's point of view. Establishing this skill is a crucial tool for the couple to be able to look at both past and future arguments through a different lens. If you can remove the idea of one person being in the right while the other person is in the wrong, the doors of reconciliation swing wide open. And yet, there will be times when no amount of exploration or explanation will change someone's understanding of the argument, nor will it decrease their feelings of hurt and resentment.
This is totally normal. And probably this one argument, or this one slight, this one incident, is not worth ending your marriage.
Lead with love.
There will be times when the best way to improve a relationship is simply to let go of whatever argument or betrayal or disappointment is chipping away at your marriage and to instead lead with love. You agree that the intent is not to harm the other person. And you agree to apologize if someone gets hurt.
Marriage is a long-term investment. Keep in mind that this is the person you chose to commit to, despite their flaws and yours. Once a relationship starts feeling unsafe and unstable, our tendency is to focus on the negatives that arise.
But if you are always focusing on the negatives, it is all too easy to forget about the love that you feel for each other. Leading with love is essentially agreeing to give your partner the benefit of the doubt that they want this relationship to work just as much as you do.
No marriage is perfect, and any couple who claims that they never fight is either lying or terrified of what might happen if they allowed their true feelings to come out.
Marriage isn't supposed to be a well-choreographed dance, but rather an opportunity to learn and grow with another person.
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