Little in life can feel more hopeless than being in an unhappy marriage. Once you get married, your family becomes the primary focus of your life. If you and your spouse aren’t happy together, how could you possibly be happy as an individual? You don’t want to get a divorce, but sometimes it feels like the only way forward. How can you be happy in an unhappy marriage?
It is indeed a massive challenge. But it’s not hopeless. Three different but interconnected paths can lead you forward. The first is that you need to reframe the way you see your relationship. You’re not necessarily “in an unhappy marriage.” Instead, your marriage is merely going through a rough patch. You’re not inherently unhappy people; things are just unhappy right now.
The next path is to work to strengthen your marriage. When you first got together, everything was easy. You were naturally happy. But no relationship stays that way forever. They all take hard work, from both parties, to maintain. Likely, you’re already trying to do this. But we’ll help provide you with a few more tools that you can hopefully use to improve your chances.
Finally, you need to learn to put yourself first. Your family might be the most important part of your life, but it’s not all you are. By prioritizing yourself, you are able to grow into a stronger, happier, healthier individual. While this may seem selfish, the fact is it will benefit everyone in your family as well. When the individuals comprising a marriage are healthier, the marriage itself is as well.
Reframing Your Perspective
If you want to learn how to be happy in an unhappy marriage, the first step is to reframe your perspective of your situation. None of the other strategies will get you anywhere if you don’t first do this. Yes, you and your spouse are unhappy in your marriage right now. But that doesn’t mean you need to resign yourself to a life of unhappy marriage.
The key phrases that will carry you through this process are “right now” and “yet.” Don’t tell yourself you’re unhappy, say you’re unhappy right now. Don’t say your marriage isn’t thriving, say your marriage isn’t thriving yet.
We’re not asking you to live in denial. You don’t gain anything by pretending your marriage is something it’s not. Reframing your perspective does not mean telling yourself your marriage is a happy one if that’s not yet true. Accepting the reality of your situation is imperative to your ability to improve it. We’re merely saying that you need to embrace the fact that it can be improved.
Almost nothing in life is immutable. Your marriage, your life, and your happiness certainly aren’t. But your attitude towards them can make them so. The only way to make positive change is if you—and your spouse—accept that change is possible, and commit to making it happen.
Strategies to Improve Your Marriage
No marriage is the same, and there is no single approach that will work for every couple whose relationship is in a rut. But there are a few overarching principles that can benefit just about everyone. These principles are:
- Communicate
- Admit your mistakes
- Set achievable goals
- Be patient
- Hold yourselves accountable
- Focus on the positive
- Explore couples therapy
- Be ready to take a break
Communicate
The most crucial step is to increase communication between the two of you. Likely, your spouse is also unhappy. But the two of you have just been suffering alone, drifting further and further apart. It’s possible they want all the same things you want, but they’re unsure how you feel and don’t know how to broach the subject with you.
It’s also possible that they’re entirely oblivious, floating along in their own world, unaware that the relationship is in trouble. Either way, you need to get on the same page. This is a partnership. You won’t be able to fix your marriage on your own. You both need to buy into the idea and commit to making things better.
The only way to do so is by communicating with one another. You need to tell your spouse how you feel. Ask them to open up and share how they feel as well. Communicate how important it is to you that your marriage gets back on track. Even if things have been on the rocks lately, your happiness should still matter to them. If it doesn’t, this relationship might not be worth saving.
If your marriage is unhappy, it’s likely that open personal communication is not a standard part of your relationship. If that’s the case, broaching this topic might be a challenge, and it probably feels very intimidating to you. But while you’ll have to get out of your comfort zone to have this conversation, remind yourself why you’re doing this. Staying in your comfort zone has left you unhappy. Take the leap and communicate, so you can start making things right.
Admit Your Mistakes
Very few unhappy marriages are solely the fault of one spouse. Almost always, both parties have made mistakes along the way. When you broach this topic, your spouse may go directly on the defensive. They might be caught off-guard by the conversation, and feel as though you’re blaming them for the problems in your relationship.
It’s essential, then, to make sure they know that you don’t think you’re blameless here. If you start by admitting your mistakes, that can lead to the initial conversation taking a much more productive tone overall.
Naturally, you don’t make your mistakes on purpose. Many of them you might not even be consciously aware of. A useful practice, then, is to take some time to reflect on the role you’ve played in the current state of your marriage. Mistakes you’ve made, unhealthy patterns you’ve maintained, and so on.
The purpose isn’t for you to shame yourself, or to make yourself feel guilty. Instead, it can just be useful to reflect on your own mistakes, as it can add perspective to your overall view of your marriage, while also allowing you to target specific behavior you can change. And, of course, it prepares you to breach the subject of your marriage with your spouse by putting your best foot forward.
Set Achievable Goals
If your marriage has reached this point, it might seem like the problems facing you are too immense to overcome. Where do you even start with challenges that run so deep? The fact is, if you try to tackle it all at once, you’re likely not to get very far. When we aim too high, it’s very easy to get discouraged and wind up just throwing in the towel.
Small victories can add up into significant accomplishments, though. And when you are able to cross goals off your list successfully, momentum builds rather than wanes. Rather than trying to knock out all your problems at once, then, the best path forward is to set a series of small, achievable goals.
Perhaps you don’t spend enough quality time together, so you can strive to spend thirty minutes together each day with your phones left behind in another room. Maybe you can try to cook a good dinner a few days a week, and always sit down to eat together. These are just examples; ultimately, it’s up to you to come up with a few ideas to address what’s ailing your relationship.
But the point is, small goals can genuinely make a difference in the long run. And achievements make the more significant problems facing your marriage feel manageable. There’s no need to try to fix everything all at once. Set achievable goals, cross them off, and move forward.
Be Patient
Building off the strategy above, patience is truly imperative if you are going to repair your unhappy marriage. Just because you’ve committed to making a change doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away. The problems facing you are deeply rooted; they are fixable, but it’s going to take some time.
Being patient is difficult. If your marriage is unhappy right now, it is difficult to make peace with the fact that it might have to remain that way for a time before getting better. But if it’s going to get better at all, patience is absolutely necessary.
It’s natural to want everything to get better as quickly as possible. But if you’re set on an instant fix, you’re going to get discouraged and possibly give up too soon. Just because everything doesn’t improve right away doesn’t mean things aren’t on the right track.
Instead of maintaining a big-picture lens, it’s critical to look for and celebrate your small victories. Progress will be gradual, and it won’t always be a straight line. Setbacks don’t mean you’ve failed. Be patient and just keep moving forward.
Hold Yourselves Accountable
That said, there’s a difference between patience and complacency. Just having a conversation about repairing your relationship isn’t the same as doing it. When you’ve existed within the same patterns for an extended time, it can be far too easy to just slip right back into them, even when your intentions are in the right place.
When you set goals, it’s essential to follow through. Happiness is, of course, subjective and difficult to define. But the small achievable goals you set along the way should be objective and measurable. That allows you to hold ourselves accountable, and ensure that you’re following through and genuinely putting in the effort.
You might not be able to fix everything that ails your marriage in one fell swoop. But you can control the level of effort that you give. The only way forward is if both of you are willing to put in the work and maintain your commitment.
That means it’s crucial to hold each other accountable as well. That can be a challenging balance to strike without coming off as accusatory and promoting defensiveness, but if one partner’s effort level starts to lag behind the other, or if one fails to follow through, it’s important to point this out, and make sure they keep trying their best.
Focus on the Positive
If you’re willing to go this far, presumably it means you believe your marriage is worth fighting for. There are reasons you got married in the first place, and there are reasons you want this marriage to work. That is almost certainly true of your spouse as well.
As you try to improve your marriage, then, it can be immensely helpful to focus on what it is you’re fighting for. Working to repair your marriage is a worthy goal in and of itself. But it can be much easier to stay focused and committed when you have a more specific motivation towards which to work.
Likewise, it’s critical to focus on your successes during this time. As we’ve mentioned repeatedly, this isn’t going to be an instant fix, nor is your progress going to be a straight line. There are going to be setbacks, and there are going to be times when it’s difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But there should be consistent small victories as well. During the trying times, it can be invaluable to focus on your successes, as an individual and as a couple. It’s going to be a long, grueling process. If you aren’t able to stay focused on the positives, it can be easy to lose hope. Remind yourself why you’re doing this. And remind yourself that you are making progress.
Explore Couples Therapy
There is, unfortunately, too often a significant stigma surrounding couples therapy. It feels like couples who go to therapy are waving the white flag. They’ve given up on fixing their relationship, and are merely wasting money while they delay the inevitable divorce. Or at least that’s what the narrative would have you believe.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s natural that you would want to be able to fix your relationship on your own. But pursuing therapy is doing just that. Therapists do nothing other than give you a more expansive toolbox with which to try to repair your relationship.
Exploring couples therapy doesn’t mean you’re throwing in the towel. Rather, it means you’re willing to do everything in your power to make your relationship work. Couples therapy isn’t for doomed couples, nor is it even merely for eliminating the problems in your marriage. It is about setting you up to be healthy and successful in the long term. Even the happiest couples you know could benefit from therapy.
It’s likely to be uncomfortable at first. And the idea of getting started might feel intimidating. But if you genuinely want to make your marriage thrive, this is arguably the most powerful path available to you. Yes, it will require you and your spouse to be vulnerable. But it could also be tremendously effective.
Be Ready to Take a Break
None of this matters if you aren’t willing to commit fully. Hopefully, your spouse shares your same goals. Surely they want happiness for you, for themselves, and for your family. But if they don’t follow through and make the changes you discuss, you must be ready to take a break.
We know this may sound like quite a drastic step. But consider the alternative. If you’ve told your spouse that you’re unhappy, forged a plan to move forward and make things better, and they don’t follow through and make the changes you need, you have two choices. You can take a break. Or you can return to the previous status quo, and resign yourself to a lifetime of an unhappy marriage.
If your spouse doesn’t commit, you need to demonstrate that you are serious. If you allow yourself to slide back into your same old patterns, the next time you make the same request, you can expect the same outcome. Your spouse needs to see that you are not willing to spend the rest of your life in an unhappy relationship.
Taking a break doesn’t need to be the end. It’s very possible that this could be precisely the wake-up call your spouse needs to finally break the cycle and move forward with a healthier relationship. It’s also possible that they might not. And at that point, you need to consider the possibility that you might be better off with this person in your life.
On Putting Yourself First
As you’re working to make your marriage healthier, you should be doing something else in concert: learning to put yourself first. And you should encourage your spouse to do the same. That might feel very counterintuitive to some of you. Marriage is about sharing yourself with someone else. What does putting yourself first have to do with how to be happy in an unhappy marriage?
The reasons this is so important are twofold. First of all, your marriage does not exist in a vacuum. It is made up of two people. And yes, in a healthy marriage, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But the stronger the individuals comprising the relationship, the stronger the relationship can be.
There is another reason it’s important as well. Right now, your marriage is unhappy. You know you’re willing to put in the work to make it better. Hopefully, your spouse is as well. And someday your marriage could be happy once more. But the fact is, you can’t control your spouse. You are part of the equation, but whether this marriage thrives is ultimately not up to you.
The only person you can control is yourself. Hopefully, this marriage turns into the beautiful thing you know it can be. But if you focus on growing as an individual as well, you can be happy whether it works out or not. A few ways to put yourself first include:
- Find something you’re passionate about
- Spend some time alone each day
- Advocate for yourself
- Be interdependent without being codependent
Let’s explore them all one by one:
Find Something You’re Passionate About – And Pursue It!
When we think about the word “hobbies,” we might think of children’s activities or things bored people do to pass the time. But in reality, hobbies can be an invaluable part of any self-actualized existence.
It’s essential to find something in your life about which you can be passionate, and which can be all your own. Maybe it’s art, maybe it’s a sport, maybe it’s gardening, or anything else you can think of. It’s possible you already know exactly what your passion is, but you’ve set it aside since you’ve gotten married.
Pursuing your passion as an individual is essential to happiness in married life. It will leave you feeling more fulfilled, and gives you an outlet for any frustration or negative energy so that you don’t inadvertently direct it at your spouse. And most of all, it is something you enjoy that is fully within your control.
Spend Some Time Alone Each Day
If you’ve been in a relationship with your spouse since you were relatively young, it’s possible you don’t really know yourself. When you direct all your energies into a relationship, it can be challenging to learn who you truly are, and what, exactly, it is that you want out of life.
But committing to a relationship and to your own self-discovery does not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, they should go hand in hand. It is critical to set some time aside for yourself each day. Time spent watching TV, scrolling on your phone, or doing housework is not what we’re referring to. Rather, it’s time during which you can be alone with your own thoughts.
This doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. It can be as simple as taking a 15-minute walk each day. Get some fresh air, and get a chance to clear your mind and do some reflection. It may seem like a small action, but it can have surprisingly significant effects.
Advocate for Yourself
This concept ties into many of the things we discussed above, about improving your marriage. But it’s important to carry on even once your marriage is happy once more. Even in a loving, mutually respectful relationship, no one can truly advocate for you and what you want aside from you.
The healthiest relationships are those where both parties openly share what they want and what they need with their partners. No matter how well the two of you know each other, you’re not mind readers. Your spouse doesn’t know what you need until you tell them so. Expecting otherwise is a recipe for unnecessary bitterness and resentment.
Even worse is if you just decide that your needs don’t matter. That is far too common in many modern relationships, and it simply isn’t fair to yourself or your spouse. Marriage is about finding someone with whom you can spend your life in a way that makes both of you happier, more loved, and better taken care of than you would be on your own. When you give up on that for yourself, you prevent your marriage from reaching its full potential.
It may be challenging at first if you’re not used to doing so, but you and your partner will both benefit if you learn to advocate for yourself and for your needs.
Be Interdependent Without Being Codependent
It’s absolutely okay if you and your spouse rely on one another. That can actually be a good thing—in the right amount. But major problems arise when this reliance crosses the line into codependency.
Codependency is what happens when two people in a relationship become so intertwined that they have no sense of self independent from the other person. Codependent people constantly crave the approval of their partner, while even often unconsciously attempting to hold them back, for fear of losing them if they grow too much. Picture two trees growing side by side, where their branches become entangled to such a degree that neither tree can grow to its full potential height.
Rather than trying to hold each other in place, people in healthy relationships rely on each other in a way that lifts each partner up. Rather than being afraid that if their partner grows, they’ll lose them, someone in an interdependent relationship trusts their love and knows that the higher their partner goes, the higher they will go as well.
Rather than craving validation, approval should be a given. Healthy relationships are focused on complementing each other’s strengths, rather than using the other person to hide from your own insecurities. This is, in a way, the culmination of all three paths forward.
Once you’ve adjusted your perspective, you’ve each learned to put yourself first and grow as individuals, and you’ve been willing to put in the work it takes to maintain a healthy relationship, you can have a marriage where each partner lifts the other up rather than holding them back.