Mending Marriage

Infidelity rocks the entire status of a relationship. Couples in these kinds of situations are often presented with two options: the path to ruin or reconciliation. My husband and I chose the latter, and, in this journey, we found a greater love than ever before.

My husband and I decided to try to make our marriage work, mainly for the sake of our daughter. As we went over everything that had led us up to that point, we realized we had an excellent foundation for our marriage. We had been best friends for years before dating, and that friendship carried over as our relationship evolved. Rooted in this knowledge, he and I looked at what options we had to mend what had been broken.

Our first step was to seek counseling. But this was a horrible experience. We either had counselors with advice that didn’t lead anywhere, or one of us was openly attacked by the counselor. After having an introductory meeting with a counselor who passively-aggressively attacked my character, my husband and I felt like we were failing at reconciliation. We had worked so hard on re-establishing friendship that we were determined to work together to find a solution. As he and I discussed our progress over lunch, we created a new approach to move back into a loving marriage. This lunch and change in our approach became the pivotal point in redefining our marriage.

Many years ago, a friend raved about “The Five Love Languages.” Although we had been recommended other books and found very little salvation in them, we tried this book.

It saved our marriage!

As a couple, we found out we were failing, not because we didn’t love each other but because we were showing love to each other the way we would want it. It turns out, my husband and I have completely different love languages. My husband’s primary love language is “Physical Touch.” He would show love by being physically attentive, always touching me in some way. I, on the other hand, like physical touches in definitive measures. His presentation of love drove me crazy. I, meanwhile, have the love language “Acts of Service.” I showed him, love, by doing little things for him, like making him dinner and laundry. While he appreciated these gestures, he did not feel it came from a place of love but a place of duty.

Love was lost in translation.

Despite trying to understand the others’ love language, we encountered more misconceptions. Fortunately, he and I share a secondary love language: “Quality Time.” He and I decided to indulge in this more often and see where this led. As he and I began to spend more time together, we could communicate our primary love languages more effectively. It was here that he and I came to a reasonable compromise: we would try to do one act of love in the other’s love language a couple of times a week. It seemed simple.

Like with any new practice, it took trial and error. But he and I developed a groove. Understanding these love languages gave us a whole new library of information about our partner. It’s given us the skill to read our partner and slip into their love language far easier. For example, I make it a habit to touch my husband somehow, at least once a day. I can usually read his body language and pick up on when he needs to be held or if stroking his neck while driving will help him relax. He returns the favor by giving me what I need to rest when I feel overly tired and will try to get a household chore out of the way while I nap—learning love languages taught us how to be better partners to each other.

As we began to understand that, it started to unfold truths about ourselves that we weren’t privy to. Over the last couple of years, my husband and I have been looking more at the opposing sides to ourselves to better our relationship on our personal ends. It’s unearthed traumas, negative patterns, toxic traits, and clinging to past selves. This may sound terrible, and, in many ways, it is. It’s hard to address your ugly side, but it’s also so beautiful when you can let those things go. You can put your demons to rest and carry a much lighter load.

And that’s where we are now. We have been through everything designed to ruin a marriage. But my husband and I look back at that time now and have an appreciation for the experience. It sucked at the moment, but we can say we are more connected and in love than when we were first wed. We are still improving ourselves and trying to be more tentative to our partner’s love language. We are far from perfect. We are human and make mistakes. We get carried away by life, work, school, raising a family, and the chaos of the world we live in. There are days where one of us carries the mental load while the other deals with their personal issues. But we do it as a team. We have evolved into entirely different people than the two teenagers who formed a friendship over Edgar Allan Poe. Still, our inability to give up on each other has never been more substantial.