Marriage can be an incredibly fulfilling relationship, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges. All marriages go through periods of ups and downs, and how couples manage stress can determine whether the marriage thrives or struggles. Understanding the most common sources of stress on a marriage is important for identifying potential problems early and working to resolve issues before they escalate.
Financial Problems
Money is one of the leading causes of stress in a marriage. Couples often fight about finances more than any other issue. Trying to manage debt, expenses, and saving for the future on a limited budget can create constant worry and tension. Spouses may disagree over spending habits, how to prioritize bills, saving versus spending, and how to split financial responsibilities. Unemployment, a job change, large purchases, and unexpected bills can all strain a couple’s finances and relationship.
It’s important for couples to communicate openly, compromise, and budget together. Getting on the same page about long-term financial goals and developing healthy money habits and attitudes can help relieve money-related stress. However, deep-seated differences over finances may require couples counseling to overcome.
Lack of Communication
Communication issues plague many marriages. When partners stop sharing feelings, needs and concerns openly, resentment, misunderstandings and disconnection can build up. Spouses may avoid difficult conversations to keep the peace in the short-term, but suppressed feelings will eventually lead to frustration and conflicts. Poor communication makes it hard for couples to problem-solve together or support each other emotionally.
Healthy communication involves listening attentively, being vulnerable, validating each other’s feelings, compromising and expressing appreciation. Couples need to make communication a priority, even when talking about hard topics. If communication breaks down completely, marriage counseling can assist spouses in opening up.
Unrealistic Expectations
Many people enter marriage with unrealistic expectations that cause eventual disappointment and strain. Spouses may expect marriage to be non-stop romance, easy, and their partner to fulfill all their needs perfectly. When reality fails to live up to these high ideals, resentment sinks in. Some unrealistic expectations of marriage include:
- My spouse will make me constantly happy
- We will always share the same interests
- My spouse will anticipate my needs without me communicating them
- Disagreements will be rare
- We will have a satisfying sex life with minimal effort
Letting go of unrealistic expectations and embracing your spouse’s flaws and quirks can help save marriages from disappointment. Accepting reality also helps couples work together to build a healthy, connected relationship.
Lack of Intimacy
When emotional and physical intimacy starts fading in a marriage, the relationship suffers. Spouses can start feeling like roommates versus lovers. Sex may decrease or become non-existent, leaving both partners unsatisfied. Life stress, resentment, boredom, exhaustion and poor communication all commonly kill intimacy. If intimacy issues go unaddressed for too long, one or both spouses may end up having an affair.
Couples must make intimacy a priority in marriage. Setting aside regular date nights, reconnecting emotionally, experimenting in the bedroom, and using good communication to address any issues can improve intimacy. Seeking professional help for physical or psychological barriers is key too.
Conflicting Values or Lifestyles
Spouses who have very different values, priorities, interests or lifestyles often run into marriage problems. Partners may disagree on how to spend time, what goals to work towards, if to have kids, religious beliefs to instill, where to live, and more. Trying to negotiate major life decisions with a spouse who has fundamentally different views can cause continual tension.
Counseling can assist couples in finding compromises when values differ. However, significant differences in core beliefs or visions for life may be irreconcilable. If after sincere efforts couples still cannot get on the same page about shared values and priorities, separation may be the healthiest option.
Trust Issues
Broken trust from events like cheating, lying or hiding things erodes marriages. Betrayed spouses struggle to regain faith in partners who violated their trust. Without mutual trust, relationships crumble due to suspicion, jealousy, resentment and fear of being hurt again. An atmosphere of mistrust makes it impossible for couples to have healthy interactions or true intimacy.
Rebuilding broken trust requires accountability, open communication and consistency from the offending spouse over time. But some betrayals of trust result in damage too severe to fully repair. In those cases, professional counseling or divorce may be the only options.
Mental Health Issues
When one or both partners struggle with untreated mental health issues like depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, anger problems, or personality disorders, relationships suffer greatly. Mental health struggles make it hard for spouses to communicate calmly, express intimacy, or support each other’s needs.
Getting professional treatment is vital for managing mental health issues that put strain on a marriage. Partners also need patience, empathy and encouragement from each other. However, refusal to get help for debilitating or destructive mental health problems may necessitate separation.
Poor Conflict Resolution Skills
Every couple disagrees and experiences conflict at times. How spouses manage arguments and negotiate solutions either strengthens their bond or slowly destroys it. Some destructive conflict resolution patterns include:
- Screaming matches with insults and hostility
- One partner stonewalling, shutting down or ignoring the issue
- Scorn, criticism and contempt toward each other
- Bringing up past mistakes or hurts
- Refusal to compromise
To resolve conflict in a marriage successfully, spouses need to communicate respectfully, pick battles carefully, compromise, forgive each other’s flaws and focus on solving the issue versus attacking their partner. Couples counseling provides great help developing healthier conflict habits.
Lack of Quality Time
Today’s hectic modern lifestyle leaves little room for couples to enjoy quality time together. Partners overwhelmed by work, children, chores, outside commitments or technology often neglect their relationship. They may share a home and daily logistics but have no meaningful connections. Emotional bonds weaken when spouses do not devote engaged, undivided attention to each other on a regular basis.
Carving out regular date nights, getaways, activities and device-free time to talk and have fun together is essential. Being fully present and engaged during quality time also matters. Couples need to prioritize nurturing their relationship, or else resentment from emotional neglect can damage the marriage.
Unbalanced Division of Labor
Families require a lot of work running a household, raising kids, managing appointments, planning social engagements, and more tasks. Couples often get frustrated when these responsibilities fall unfairly on one spouse. The partner carrying the extra load feels strained and overwhelmed, while the other feels criticized and unappreciated.
An equitable division of labor prevents resentment in a marriage. Spouses should openly negotiate duties based on their resources, strengths and schedules. Tasks may shift over time as situations change. Accepting imperfections and expressing gratitude also help. Hiring home assistants or childcare can alleviate pressure too.
Personal Crises
When spouses face major life challenges like health issues, job loss, accidents, trauma, family death, addiction, violence or other personal crises, the stress can tax marriages significantly. Trying circumstances preoccupy spouses’ energy and emotions, leaving little left to invest in the relationship.
Getting through a crisis requires patience, teamwork, sacrifice and compassion from both partners. Seeking counseling, peer support and other professional help during difficult times enables couples to cope and reconnect through pain. Spouses also need to grant grace if each other’s stress reactions flare up.
Child Rearing Differences
Couples often clash over issues like parenting styles, discipline, education choices, baby care, bonding time, activities, providing affection, and more. Spouses may have contradictory views on how to raise happy, well-adjusted kids. Navigating tricky parenting decisions while sleep deprived and stressed out exacerbates marital conflicts.
Parenting disagreements require compromise, united fronts when possible, and accepting each parent’s unique relationship with their children. Counseling helps smooth out major differences in parenting philosophies. And remembering kids need happy parents, not perfect parents, provides perspective.
Incompatible Sex Drives
Mismatched libidos between spouses generate frustration and tension. The higher desire partner feels rejected while the lower desire partner feels pressured. Over time, both can feel hurt and resentful. Fatigue, stress, health issues, and relationship problems often contribute to low desire.
Couples should communicate gently, respect each other’s needs, try meeting halfway, make sex intimate and varied, address underlying issues, and know fluctuations are normal. Compromising may involve higher desire spouses controlling frustration and lower desire spouses pushing comfort levels occasionally.
Interference from In-Laws
Managing relationships and expectations with in-laws adds stress to many marriages. Spouses get put in the middle trying to mediate and please both their partner and extended family. In-law conflicts most often involve boundaries, advice, frequency of visits, child rearing, money, traditions, or other lifestyle differences.
Setting healthy boundaries and presenting a united front helps couples minimize interference from both sides of the family. Partners also need to support each other’s relationships with their own relatives. And maintaining a respectful, distant relationship may be healthiest with toxic in-laws.
Infidelity
Extramarital affairs often lead straight to divorce. Being unfaithful betrays the fundamental trust and intimacy bonds of marriage. Infidelity causes intense hurt, resentment, jealousy and anger when discovered. The betrayal of vows makes the offended spouse question the whole relationship.
Overcoming infidelity requires immediate ceasing of the affair, accepting responsibility from the unfaithful spouse, honest examination of why it occurred, rebuilding of broken trust, and counseling. But some cannot move past the pain of betrayal even with significant work.
Growing Apart Over Time
Marriages often start growing apart when life gets busy or complacent. Spouses stop learning about each other’s inner worlds. Interests, goals, passions, opinions and senses of humor can drift over decades. Couples lacking engagement or new shared experiences may no longer feel connected.
Reigniting growth in marriage requires curiosity about each other’s growth as individuals. Trying new activities together, reliving fond memories, traveling to new places, reading relationship books, and asking thoughtful questions helps spouses reconnect. The key is continually getting to know each other, not assuming familiarity.
Empty Nest Syndrome
When the last grown child leaves home, parental bonds fade, and spouses suddenly have to relearn how to connect. Some experience midlife crises regretting lost dreams or mourning a sense of purpose. Depression, marital tension and divorce rates increase post-empty nest.
Couples need to prepare for empty nests by strengthening communication and individual identities ahead of time. Pursuing new joint passion projects, hobbies, date nights and travel keeps marriages exciting. It’s also vital to embrace this new chapter versus dwelling on loss.
Addiction
When one or both partners have addiction issues, the marriage suffers. Addictive behaviors like alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, pornography, shopping, gaming, or eating disorders destroy intimacy and trust. Addicts become unreliable, volatile and selfish. Marriages drown in associated financial, legal and health crises.
The addicted partner must pursue professional treatment and recovery work. The spouse needs support via counseling, peer groups and boundary setting. However, refusal to get help or repeated relapses may necessitate divorce especially if severe physical or emotional abuse occurs.
Physical or Mental Illness
Chronic health conditions and disabilities–whether mental or physical–put enormous stress on marriages. Lifestyle disruptions, treatment management, pain, caregiving demands, worry about the future, financial strain, exhaustion, resentment, depression and grief all tax couples’ relationships.
Open communication, outside support, flexibility, research into the illness, focus on what’s controllable, and gratitude for each other’s efforts helps marriages weather physical/mental illness storms. But professional counseling assistance is often crucial to overcoming this challenge.
Death of a Child
The grief over losing a son or daughter strains even the best marriages. Spouses grieve differently, leaving them disconnected. Deep trauma and exhaustion overwhelm couples’ capacity to support each other through the catastrophic loss. Many parents divorce later unable to manage the pain together.
Preserving marriages after child loss requires extensive counseling, support groups, openness about grief, and patience. Spouses should grant each other grace knowing the magnitude of grief may eclipse everything else temporarily. But they need each other more than ever during such deep sorrow.
Loss of Outside Support System
Relying solely on a spouse for emotional support breeds unhealthy dependence and isolation in marriages. Without other social outlets or strong community ties, minor issues escalate because couples lack perspective. Leaning entirely on a partner to meet all needs sets unrealistic demands.
Spouses require supportive friendships, family ties, counseling, hobbies, faith communities, and meaningful work. Maintaining outside emotional connections brings context that keeps marital stresses from consuming couples’ lives. Shared activities also strengthen bonds.
Retirement Struggles
The adjustment to retired life presents couples with new challenges. No longer defined by work identities or busy schedules, spouses must rediscover purpose and routines together. Too much unstructured time together or financial worries amplify tensions too.
Smooth retirements require proactive planning and communication years in advance about expectations, lifestyles, time management, and finances. Pursuing exciting new ventures together, separate interests, and travel keep marriages vibrant. Prioritizing emotional intimacy and staying active count too.
Conclusion
Marriages face countless challenges from financial strain to infidelity that test couples’ bonds. But understanding common marital stress points helps spouses identify issues early and work through them together. Seeking counseling, improving communication, compromising, and carving out quality time empower couples to thrive through life’s inevitable difficulties.
With commitment, vulnerability, and effort, married couples can navigate any hardship that comes their way. While marriage takes constant work, overcoming hurdles together reaps immense rewards for spouses, families, and communities.