– Top 3 Ways to Make a Healthy Marriage: A Nashville Marriage Counseling Perspective. Part 1 of 3

Last Updated on May 4, 2023 by Chris Roberts

TOP 3 WAYS TO MAKE A HEALTHY MARRIAGE: A NASHVILLE MARRIAGE COUNSELING PERSPECTIVE. PART 1 OF 3.

It takes work to keep your marriage healthy and alive and enjoyable. Most of us wish this wasn’t so. We want the person we fell in love with to be the easy person in our lives. We want our marriage partner to be on our side, to join us in life, to make our life happy, to just simply enjoy and relax with each other. For any person who has been in a relationship longer than 3 months, we know this just isn’t the case. Any relationship takes work. The longer we are together, the greater the reward of intimacy and connection, but the more we must continually find new and different ways of encountering each other.

Nashville marriage counseling is a great place for couples to find solace from the stresses of everyday life and focus on their one, true love: each other. There are 3 primary areas where attention must be focused in order to keep love alive between two individuals: Honesty, Play, and Commitments. We must continually expand our understanding of honesty with ourselves and with our partner. We must find time to play and laugh and be silly with our spouse. And we must make ever new commitments to the person we give our undying devotion.

HONESTY: A NASHVILLE MARRIAGE COUNSELING PERSPECTIVE

As we grow and mature, both within and outside the realm of relationship, we must continually be updating our notion of honesty. Honesty is not just about confession, although sometimes it entails that aspect. Honesty means a life-long determination to expose the parts of ourselves we never even knew were hidden. As our relationships sour and become stale, we so easily hide the parts of ourselves we don’t like or we fear our partner will deride. Honesty is not simply about telling our spouse everything that we think, say, or do. If we aren’t aware of the reasons for “confessing our sins to our partner,” we may be downloading unprocessed parts of ourselves in order to simply make ourselves feel better. This isn’t honesty at all. That has more to do with guilt reduction, which is very rarely helpful in a healthy marriage.

Nashville marriage counseling can provide invaluable insight to couples regarding how they are approaching the concept of honesty in their lives. Some couples get stuck in the rut where one partner berates the other for “not telling them everything,” and other partner feels trapped, suffocated, and guilt ridden. In these cases, neither partner is acting in a healthy, grounded position. We all have secrets. No relationship is meant to absolve partners from having hidden information kept from the other. We will always have secrets. Secrets aren’t necessarily bad or counterproductive to a healthy marriage. What we do with these secrets and the reasons we keep them are far more important!

Honesty looks like saying to your spouse, “I’m just really frustrated today. I’m not really sure why and I’m so sorry. Maybe part of it is your fault, maybe a lot of it isn’t. I wish I wasn’t frustrated right now, but I am. Perhaps we can talk more about this when I’m not so worked up.” This is beautiful honesty! It doesn’t blame the other partner, but it also makes them aware you are feeling sideways in life right now. Typically though, we don’t communicate feelings of frustration in this way. Often, we act out our frustration through pouting, anger, or avoidance. Sometimes we are not even sure we feel frustrated. Our spouses just receive the brunt of our actions.

As humans, we hate NOT KNOWING things. We hate not knowing why we feel frustrated, or hurt, or sad. So, instead of being okay with not knowing, we place certainty, through blame, on those closest to us: usually our marriage partner. We have to learn that not knowing is sometimes more honest than rushing to conclusion. We have to learn that honesty is about learning to do some processing on our own, so that we don’t use our partner’s strength against them.

Honesty is not easy. It takes work to even understand how honesty is supposed to be enacted. In future articles, we will address the 2 other areas where work is required to have a healthy marriage.

If you notice your marriage isn’t as healthy as you would like, then Nashville marriage counseling may be the help you need to get things back on track. Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville is a licensed professional counselor with years of experience working with married couples. Chris would love the opportunity to talk with you more about your situation.