How to Combat Marital Malaise

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“We love each other. I think we’ve just lost our way somehow,” Dave, a middle-aged husband, married for 26 years, said at the beginning of their first couples counseling session with me. Sitting beside him, his wife Melanie bit her lip to stop the trembling before adding, “I never thought it would come to this.”

Their reason for coming to therapy wasn’t a major problem. No one had cheated or gambled their savings away. Friends and family saw them as a loving couple with a solid relationship. They both loved their young adult children and were doing fine with the transition to an empty nest. And yet something felt off.

I’ve seen many couples like Dave and Melanie coming for therapy, battling a malaise that is sapping the loving energy out of their relationship.

At the heart of this malaise may be some habits that couples can fall into during their years together. Breaking these habits may inject new life and energy into a relationship.

What are these habits?

Stubborn silence

Beyond the notorious “silent treatment” one angry spouse may inflict on another—a negative habit indeed that blocks communication and conflict resolution—there can be the silence based on feeling you have nothing safe to say to each other at this point. One long-married client complained, “We don’t talk about our son because we’re both terribly upset about the estrangement his new wife has engineered, and we can’t talk politics because that’s too upsetting for both of us. What else is there?”

There can be a number of safe topics. Perhaps you can talk about warm memories from the past or notice and comment on the beauty all around you or explore a new topic that sparks your curiosity. Express your commitment to improving your relationship. Talk about your dreams for the future.

Nitpicking

If minor daily irritations are coming between you, start thinking before you speak. Joe and Cynthia, long-time friends of mine, chuckled ruefully as they recalled their last emotional skirmish. She forgot to close the new shower curtain—with the spectacular ocean sunset that Joe loves to see—after her shower one morning. That same day, Joe managed to hit a nerve with one of Cynthia's pet peeves: He used the ice cream scoop, and then, instead of washing it and putting it back in the drawer, he left it marinating in a soaking cat food bowl. Both snapped at each other and sulked briefly before realizing that this was small stuff, that these were tasks they could easily do themselves, and, furthermore, that remembering to close that curtain or to wash that ice cream scoop, even if it seemed unimportant, could be a thoughtful, loving gesture that could build more daily goodwill in their relationship.

Clinging to old pain and grudges

There’s nothing like a litany of old grievances to keep the rancor going during a conflict with your partner. It tells the other that nothing is ever forgiven or forgotten, and feels like hurt from decades ago is an unexpected (or dreaded) add-on to the current conflict.

“It’s predictable, frustrating, and painful,” a client I’ll call Roger told me recently. “Every time my wife is disappointed in me for anything—might be forgetting some essential item on a grocery list—she will get furious again about a one-night affair I had 23 years ago! I have apologized over and over. I’ve never strayed since. But there it is whenever there’s a conflict, as raw a hurt as it was all those years ago. I’ve told her so many times that if I could travel back in time and erase that from our history, I would in a minute. But of course, I can’t.”

Bringing old pain, grudges, and hurt from the past into the present only adds to the pain of the present. There is pain that may never completely heal, but in order to grow and flourish in your relationship, leaving this pain in the past and letting go of your sense of betrayal and anger is a gift to yourself, lifting the weight of anger and resentment and making room for new joy and growth in your life and your relationship.

Trying to change each other

You can only change yourself and your own reactions to others’ actions and choices. Most of us know that, but still we try, sometimes with the best of intentions, wanting a spouse to be healthier or happier or to stop sabotaging his or her path to professional success. As spouses, we can encourage and support our partners’ efforts to improve, but the real desire and responsibility for change lies with the other. Even a relationship/life-threatening habit, like an addiction to alcohol or drugs, can only be changed when the addict makes the decision to stop and get clean and sober. That doesn’t mean standing helplessly by in the meantime. You can urge or encourage a move toward sobriety. You can draw a line in the sand and let your addicted spouse know the consequences for your relationship if he or she continues to abuse substances. And you can empower yourself to make a choice between what you can live with and what you can’t. But any change in your spouse, whether small or life-changing, has to come from him or her.

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Maintaining an amiable façade while seething within

We’ve all seen or experienced this, the smiling through clenched teeth as a spouse makes embarrassing disclosures or jokes at our expense or is openly critical in public. There can be many good reasons for not making a major scene on the spot. There are times when a quiet “Please don’t” or “Stop. We can discuss this later” can help to defuse the situation. There are times when the cruel words or obnoxious assumptions or unfair judgments or demands happen in private, and yet a conflict-averse spouse may shrug off the hurt and act as if all is well while stuffing the pain inside.

But the issues behind the words need to be discussed—perhaps after taking a time-out to collect your thoughts—and the impact of your partner’s words or actions needs to be communicated: “When you joke about my weight, it hurts me and doesn’t help my weight loss struggles.” Or “I feel hurt and humiliated when you tell others about my parents’ drinking problem.” Or “When you criticize me constantly, it makes me feel terrible about myself and angry with you.” Getting hurt and resentment out into the open without attacking the other, but letting him or her know how his words affect you, you can begin to move past relationship tensions to new growth and peace with each other.