A few years ago, right after two back to back pregnancies, my husband and I hit a bump, more like a road block, in our marriage. My husband and I were having disagreements and arguments between us quite frequently. Looking back on it now, I’m sure the lack of sleep and major life changes were causing a lot of stress and tension. It was enough to cause a lot of pressure, anger, even some resentment between myself and my loving, any other time great husband. So the arguments began. After a few weeks of bumping heads we decided to stop before it really got out of control. We couldn’t decide on a marriage counselor, yes we even argued about that, so we decided to grab a married couples’ self-help book. After grabbing some books we reserved a room that night at the beach away from everything. We wanted some uninterrupted, non-distracting, alone time to try giving us a shot at working this out together. We were able to truly focus on finding the root of this growing issue that had arose between us.
We dropped the kids off with my mother and headed to the beach. I remember having light conversation during our trip, and thinking, this is the most decent conversation we’ve had in weeks, I guess because we both, in our hearts, had hope to resolve the issue. We got there Friday night and started reading the books and working in the workbooks. It was intense, it made us really look at ourselves and it was like taking a weekend refresher course on marriage. We stayed there for the weekend working hard on us, reading through the books and doing the exercises, but more importantly spending time with each other. I have to say when we got home that Sunday evening we had a better outlook on our future together, being married, and as a stronger couple.
I say that we should do it once a year, but luckily things have not gotten that bad again. Regardless, there are always issues to resolve, to work on, to work through, and to work out and if a “refresher” away from home together is what does it, then so be it. And I would recommend it to any friend.
To anyone in relationships, how do you keep yours marriage strong? What secrets do you use to get through tough times or just to make sure the relationship is still strong and good?