9 Most Overlooked Threats to a Marriage

The 9 Most Overlooked Threats to a Marriage

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I feel bad for marital communication, because it gets blamed for everything. For generations, in survey after survey, couples have rated marital communication as the number one problem in marriage. It's not.

Marital communication is getting a bad rap. It's like the kid who fights back on the playground. The playground supervisors hear a commotion and turn their heads just in time to see his retaliation. He didn't create the problem; he was reacting to the problem. But he's the one who gets caught, so he's sent off to the principal's office. Or, in the case of marital communication, the therapist's office.

I feel bad for marital communication, because everyone gangs up on him, when the truth is, on the playground of marriage, he's just reacting to one of the other troublemakers who started the fight.

Conclusion

As a therapist, I can teach a couple how to communicate in an hour. It's not complicated. But dealing with the troublemakers who started the fight? Well, that takes a lifetime.

And yet.

It's a lifetime that forms us into people who are becoming ever more loving versions of ourselves, who can bear the weight of loneliness, who have released the weight of shame, who have traded in walls for bridges, who have embraced the mess of being alive, who risk empathy and forgive disappointments, who love everyone with equal fervor, who give and take and compromise, and who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of presence and awareness and attentiveness. And that's a lifetime worth fighting for.