2 Steps You Must Take to Improve Your Struggling Marriage

Step #2: Decide It’s Time To Hang Up the Hurt

But there’s a second truth to confront as well: dealing with your hurt in a healthy way is essential. You don’t deserve to feel hurt and disrespected and “building your friendship” might sound good in theory—but it is hard to be friends with someone who you feel doesn’t care about you.

So this is where you need to enlist help. From both a qualified counselor and positive, encouraging friends who will support not just you but your marriage. You need help and guidance because you’re confused. Because you don’t know the next steps. And because if you’re feeling hurt, it is highly likely your spouse is too. The stuff that hurts you looms large, and needs to be addressed—but have you thought through what looms large for them? Maybe you shutting down has hurt them deeply. Statistically, most husbands and wives intensely care about their spouse. They just don’t always know how to show it correctly. And because we’re all imperfect people, that most likely applies to your relationship as well.

All of which is why you need help. Sure, your spouse should be willing to go to counseling—but even if they won’t right now, you can. It is absolutely critical that you go to a counselor who is not only licensed and experienced, but one that is committed to helping to restore your marriage. And you need someone capable of guiding you through this, who can help you to see the best in each other again. (One way of doing that is called the 30-Day Kindness Challenge.)

It would be such a tragedy if two people like Lynn and Dan, who did care about each other, fell apart simply because both had been trying hard in the wrong areas and didn’t realize it or were hurting each other without really intending to. Both would be feeling hopeless. But there is hope. It will take work to restore your marriage, and you will need help doing it, but as you get to know your spouse all over again, you’ll realize that you can reconnect and you’ll see that it is well worth the effort.

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Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her newest book, The Kindness Challenge demonstrates that kindness is the answer to pretty much every life problem, and is sparking a much-needed movement of kindness across the country. Visit www.shaunti.com for more.