What to Do When Your Marriage Seems Stuck

Sharon Jaynes has captured my imagination and challenged my life with a number of books. In this Marriage UPGRADE, she challenges those who have a spouse to consider whether the "romance" has faded ... and what we can do about that.

"Sometimes we can get so busy taking care of life," Sharon says, "that we forget to take care of love."

I (Dawn) know without a doubt how busyness can kill the spark of married love. I've seen it happen too many times. But it's not enough to diagnose a problem; we need a solution.

Sharon continues . . .

What do you do when you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’ in your marriage?

Maybe you truly adored your husband in the beginning, but now you can’t remember why. Maybe you honestly admired his finer qualities, but now you can’t remember what they were. Maybe you appreciated his wonderful attributes, but now you take them for granted.

Between taking out the garbage, paying the bills, running the car pool, mowing the lawn, disciplining the kids, and folding the laundry, sometimes the passion of marriage gets lost.

It happens to all of us at one time or another.

We can get so busy taking care of life that we forget to take care of love.

None of us got married so we could have a long list of chores.

If you’re like me, most likely you got married because you were madly in-love and couldn’t imagine life without your man! You got married because your heart skipped a beat every time you laid eyes on him. You couldn’t wait to tie the knot and build a life with this incredible person God had miraculously brought into your life.

Maybe you still feel that way. But maybe you could use a little reminder—a re-stoking of the romance.

In the book of Revelation in the Bible, God had this to say to the church at Ephesus:

“I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:4, NIV).

Ephesus was one of the most loving churches in the New Testament, and yet somewhere along the way they lost that initial thrill of knowing Christ. Their love for each other and for God had grown cold.

So how do you get that lovin’ feelin’ back?

God gave the church two simple steps, and I believe we can apply them to our marriages as well. “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:5a, NIV).

REMEMBER how it was in the beginning.

RETURN and do the things you did at first.

For most of us, life is just daily. However, the accumulation of small struggles can nibble like termites to undermine the foundation of what appears to be a healthy structure as surely as the unexpected, earth-shaking rumble of sudden disaster. And routine, even good routine, can rob us of the joy and passion of marriage… if we let it.

One day I took John’s words in Revelation to heart, and decided to remember and return by romancing my husband for fourteen days straight.

Everyday wasn’t earth-shaking romance, even though there was some of that.

• One day I simply put a sticky note on his bathroom mirror that said, “I love you.”
• Another day I placed a box of Red Hot candy on his car seat with a note that said, “You’re a hottie.”
• One morning I warmed up his towel in the dryer and had it ready when he got out of the shower.

And you know what happened? At the end of the fourteen days, Steve had a skip in his step and smile on his face like a Cheshire cat.

And what happened in me? I can hardly describe the love that welled up in me, as I loved my man well.

Hear this… I changed.

I don’t have a big, bad personal story of how God took a terrible, tumultuous marriage and miraculously transformed it into a storybook romance filled with white-knight rescues, relentless romance, and rides into the sunset leaving all danger and darkness behind. Although our marriage has been all that at one time or another, it’s no fairy tale.

Our marriage is a daily journal, one page after another, one day after another. I'm guessing just like yours.

Some entries are smudged with tears; others are dog-eared as favorites.

Some days are marred by unsuccessful erasures that couldn’t quite rub away hurtful the words said; others are finger-worn by the reading of precious events time and time again.

But on those days when I see my marriage slipping back into the mundane cadence of passionless routine, I pull out my list of ideas, and put a smile on Steve’s face.

And that’s my challenge to you and to me today.

What do you need to do to love your husband well today?

Sharon Jaynes is a conference speaker and author of 21 books. Click here to read a sample chapter, watch a video, or download free resources for her latest book, A 14-Day Romance Challenge: Reigniting Passion in Your Marriage; or visit Sharon’s blog and learn about her other resources.