Wondering how the truth about hopelessness in marriage can help you? After extended fighting or failed communication, a marriage can quickly deteriorate before your eyes. Even so, not all hope is lost. By learning the causes, consequences, and solutions of hopelessness in marriage, you can work to rebuild your relationship into its strongest version yet.
Causes of Hopelessness in Marriage
Most married couples start starry-eyed and full of hope for the future. Unfortunately, after some time, poor communication, outside stress, and large blows like infidelity can destroy that initial happiness. As a result, this creates a sense of looming hopelessness in marriage.
Poor Communication
Communication is the pillar of relationships and poor communication can be the ruining factor.
Often, poor communication includes avoiding confrontation, jokes reflecting actual thoughts, blame-shifting, yelling, and insulting.Additionaly it can include ignoring the other person, giving the silent treatment, lack of compromise, and gaslighting.
Outside Stress Sources
Many marriages could have avoided divorce if the couples lived in a bubble away from the outside world. Unfortunately, outside things like addictions, finances, child-rearing, and workplace issues all add stress to both individuals and marriages. If handled poorly, this stress manifests in negative communication, poor lifestyle choices, and even chronic health problems.
Infidelity Causes Hopelessness in Marriage
Infidelity is one of the most difficult things to experience in a marriage. Obviously, it typically brings a wave of sadness and hopelessness over one or both partners. Couples can overcome cheating if there is a shared and committed desire to do so, but if left in the air, infidelity will rot a relationship to its core.
Consequences of Hopelessness in Marriage
Of course, after experiencing hopelessness in marriage for some time, other consequences can begin to manifest in your life.
Low Self-Esteem
If you feel like your marriage is in a rut, ruined, or incapable of being saved, it’s easy to blame yourself for the situation. Even if your actions did contribute to where you are now, you can turn these feelings around by focusing on possible solutions instead of the problem(s).
Physiological Symptoms
Hopelessness can bring about physiological symptoms. For example a lack of interest in your hobbies, isolation, feelings of fatigue, lack of appetite, and even headaches and body aches.
Detachment from Your Partner
The most prominent consequence of feeling hopelessness in marriage is feeling detached from your partner. This detachment may have started earlier on, but it only expands as your hopelessness grows.
Luckily, there are concrete steps you can take to reign hope back into your marriage, starting with the solutions below.
Solutions to Hopelessness in Marriage
If you’ve been feeling the consequences of hopelessness in marriage, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When you’re ready to fix your marriage, you can take these steps to recollect the hope, love, and respect you need in your relationship to move forward.
1. Recommit to Your Relationship
The foundation of a marriage is commitment. If you’re tired of the hopelessness and want to reconcile with your partner, you must first recommit to your relationship. It’s important to try and get your partner on board with this step too, if possible.
Recommitting to your relationship is making an executive decision that you are going to put your ego aside and put in the work necessary to mend your marriage. In short, marriage is a daily choice to put in the effort and work through issues. Only with this level of commitment can you move forward towards a more hopeful future together.
2. Choosing Respect Over Pride Helps Hopelessness in Marriage
If you’ve reached a level of hopelessness in your relationship, either you or your spouse will likely have trouble communicating respectfully. Without respect, the other person will automatically go on the defensive, prohibiting any progress or solution within the conversation.
That is why by choosing respect over your pride, you’ll need to reevaluate your openings to conversations. If you’re upset about cleanliness, for example, you should avoid attacking your partner’s character, actions, or inaction. Instead, you could use an “I” statement clarifying your needs. Tone and volume are also vital in opening interactions, and it’s important to stick to neutral ones even if your partner escalates.
If you hear something you don’t like, state how it makes you feel and maintain respect. That is why if you insult your partner back, that conversation has now become a war zone, and nothing good can come of a war zone.
3. Self-Reflect
The more time you know someone, the more flaws you’ll come across. Instead of criticizing your partner the next time something doesn’t go your way, take that time to self-reflect. Everyone has their downsides; while yours may be different than your partners, it doesn’t make either of you better than the other.
So, after you’ve reminded yourself that you aren’t perfect either, take the old adage to heart and try to walk a mile in your partner’s shoes. Are there any stressors they may be experiencing that you’re unaware of? What pressures are they living under? Use exploratory questions like these to build empathy towards your partner wherever possible.
4. Work on Your Communication
This is worth repeating – communication is the pillar of all relationships. Without effective communication, hope leaves your home faster than a bullet train. To work on effective communication, it’s important to review key aspects of a positive and productive conversation.
- Listen to learn, not to respond
- Don’t interrupt
- Be clear
- Be honest while being respectful
- Talk without blaming, insulting, or criticizing
- Be positive
5. Show You Care
It’s important to show your partner that you love and care for them, even during the difficulties you’re working through. Regaining hope in a marriage is similar to falling in love again.
Recreate positive days and dates from your past together. Arrange a date night, get dressed up, and enjoy a romantic evening somewhere special and without distractions.
During the day, do something kind and unexpected for your partner. Send them a sweet message, compliment them, give them a massage, or surprise them with a sentimental gift. A little effort goes a long way and, as a plus, kindness is often reciprocated.
6. Learn to Let Go of Hopelessness in Marriage
Some couples are so used to fighting that even the smallest disagreements become full-scale blowouts. Learn to choose your battles, forgiving and forgetting the small stuff.
Another important thing to let go of any past hurts you may be holding on to. If you’ve already told your partner they are forgiven, it’s not fair of you to bring up those past hurts in future discussions. Learn to let go first, so you can then learn to move forward.
7. Consider Couples Counseling
Most couples spend years in a hopeless marriage before reaching out for help. Professional counseling adds an intermediary to keep everyone calm while working on flaws and accentuating strengths.
Indeed, even healthy couples can benefit from couples counseling or therapy, so consider reaching for this helping hand if your resources permit.
8. Focus on the Good
It’s easy to get wrapped up in negative situations, but one of the best ways to replant hope in a marriage is by focusing on the positive. You fell in love with your partner for a multitude of reasons, and surely many of those reasons are still present beneath the surface.
Take time to sit and focus on the positive attributes of your partner. Appreciate the little things they do for you or your household and express your gratitude for them. You’d be surprised how far a little appreciation can go in mending hurt feelings and bridging gaps between two people.