Is your marriage no longer a priority? Do you spend less time with your spouse and worry your marriage is starting to suffer? Or, worse, do you not think about your marriage at all?
It's not uncommon for today's couples to be pulled in so many different directions and have so many demands that marriage is no longer a priority. Soon, the marriage becomes more like an obligation and less like your loving marriage. This could be a primary reason why some marriages could be depressed.
What is wrong with marriages today?
Most marriages start hot, but as everyday demands and responsibilities stack up, they slowly cool down throughout the years. Our relationship with our spouse hopefully began as sweet courtship or a passionate love affair.
It eventually took us down the aisle to a future we envisioned as even better than our love on the day of our wedding. Little did we know exactly what that would entail.
Most successful marriages are of two people whose love, friendship and bond grows stronger throughout the years. As successful as these marriages may be, they also include: putting up with the other's annoying habits, sex the same way - with the same person for years, forgetful husbands and nagging wives, meddling in-laws, problems with kids, money and schedules. Ya. Marriage, even the most successful ones, aren't easy.
Marriage Depression
As if things aren't complicated enough, we have to go mess things up with "marriage depression". A DMK term used to describe a marriage that is down-in-the-dumps. It includes both spouses that may or may not experience their own personal unhappiness, but are in a marriage that has lost their attention and it's luster. The couple may be missing some of the must-haves on our DMK Marriage Essentials List:
- communication
- time alone with one another
- passion and excitement
- commitment
- good sex life
- interest in each other
- plans for the future together
- honesty and/or fidelity
- consideration and respect
- empathy
When marriage depression makes spouses miserable
Most times when the marriage is depressed, it depletes personal happiness from each spouse. Without acknowledging the marriage is lacking, the relationship just gets worse. Eventually this leads to one or both spouses seeking happiness in other ways until some type of action leads to intervention or divorce.
When marriage depression is ignored
Some spouses choose to ignore the depressed marriage. They maintain their own individual happiness and go on with their lives together, but separate. The marriage usually continues to suffer until it is a very small part of each spouse's life. Some of these relationships end in a divorce after a long, miserable marriage of many years.
Others just exist in a marriage that has emotionally ended, but without legal closure. The couple maintains their social identity as a married couple, but they are emotionally divorced. It can send some spouses seeking love, romance or sex through an extra marital affair. Some spouses begin to live in a lifestyle free of romantic companionship to maintain the fidelity and security of a lifeless marriage.
Fix it or end it
Without a doubt, the personal happiness each spouse feels he/she has at the expense of the marriage contains some portion of denial and ignorance. It's similar to ignoring addiction, personal loss or financial devastation. All need acknowledgment, actionable intervention and/or closure.
Marriage depression needs the same attention. If your marriage is emotionally damaged, fix it or end it. Do this for yourself, your spouse, family and marriage. Living in denial that your marriage is suffering will often do far more damage than an a separation or divorce.
It may not be a serious problem yet
Every marriage has problems arise over the years. Most marriages lack some of the essentials of a healthy marriage on the list above, but may not yet be depressed. If your marriage is starting to show signs of depression it may be time to initiate something that is unique to you as a couple that will bring about whatever it is the two of you are missing.
Read the next article in our DMK Marriage Workshop, "Can your marriage be saved?"
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