Overhaul Your Marriage in One Easy Step

What if you could change one thing—today—that would instantly improve your marriage? You’d do it, right?

My husband, Daniel, and I did. We changed one, intangible thing, and I can’t overstate the positive results we’ve experienced. I wish we’d done it years ago.

It doesn’t require any prep work, you don’t need to buy anything before you get started, you don’t need to read a book, and you don’t even need to tell your spouse you’re doing it. You can start now, and you could start seeing changes today.

Here’s how. Recently I discovered a verse that we have adopted as the guiding verse for our marriage. I wasn’t looking for one. It wasn’t my intent when I came upon it in my Bible study. But as I turned it over in my mind and heart, it occurred to me it’s the single most important piece of marriage advice I’ve read:

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. Ephesians 4:2-4 NLT

Here it is, the change we’ve made that has had such an impact:

Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults, because of your love.

I’ve always had pretty high expectations for my husband. He was not capable of meeting them all the time—no one would have been. I was unwittingly setting him up to fail.

My expectations did not take into account his personality, what I know to be true of his heart or what I know his days are like. I was rigid and really good at righteous indignation. I demanded apologies for infractions, which he would begrudgingly give, all while I continued to list the ways in which his behavior had made me feel. I would tell myself my handling of these situations was fine because I was “right” and that I got to feel however I felt.

The problem isn’t that what I was saying was untrue, it’s that there was no grace. So his response to me became hardened. He didn’t sound sorry and probably wasn’t. We were caught in an unhappy cycle.

When I found this verse I vowed to change. I wrote it on a chalkboard in our room where we would both see it every day. I had opportunities to enact my changes right away.

Daniel is typically optimistic {and wrong} about when he will be home from various evening meetings. It has always driven me crazy. Lately I used his miscalculations as opportunities to show him grace, to make allowance for this particular fault. I made a choice not to take it personally. When he would come home, tired with head hung low, apologizing for being late, I hugged him, heated up his dinner and told him it was okay. And it was.

It was hard at first, to keep the snarky comments at bay, to say “it’s okay” and mean it. But it got easier. And before long, he was remembering to tell me about events in advance, staying home in the mornings on what would be particularly long days, coming home early on a rare slow day to ask if there was anything he could do to make me feel seen.

My small adjustment—making allowance for his fault—resulted in a huge change for us.

Since then we’re both on board. We are making space for each other to be who we are—faults and all—without fear of reproach. This has been freeing for both of us. It’s helped us feel more connected, reminded us we each really do have the other’s best interest in mind.

The caveat, of course, is that making allowance for faults is not the same as making excuses for poor behavior. Instead, it’s taking into account the person you’re married to, his strengths and shortcomings, and choosing to accept him fully as is, without complaint or exception.

In our case, I’ve been thrilled with the results. I want to write this verse on every wedding card I send from now on—I wish I’d found it {and adopted it} sooner.

It’s still a challenge every day, a choice to love another person who is, like me, so flawed. But when we give each other the freedom to be who we really are, suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a big challenge.

What heart change have you made that’s made a difference in your marriage?

{Photo Credit}