You’ve fallen in love and gotten married, but now you’re finding that your marriage is starting to falter or isn’t as satisfying as you’d expected it to be. You aren’t sure what to do about it, but you know it needs to be fixed immediately. It’s time to get help—but where can you find it? Consider the following five kinds of baggage that can crush your marriage and look out for them if you see them manifesting in your relationship.
The Selfish Load
In a good marriage, spouses are committed to one another’s needs. They are open and honest with each other, they don’t play games or lie, they accept that they will have disagreements but work through them together, and they love each other unconditionally.
However, even in the best marriages there can be baggage that weighs down the relationship. These five types of baggage can inhibit your marriage from being its best:
The Selfless Load
Selflessness is not a bad thing. It can be used as an opportunity to sacrifice for the greater good. But, when it comes to marriage, selflessness can be interpreted as putting one’s spouse on a pedestal and trying to live vicariously through him or her. This leaves you feeling empty and resentful, because your needs are not being met and your spouse is not meeting your expectations.
The Heavy Load
After Hurricane Sandy, many New Yorkers were left with a heavy load. They returned to their homes, only to find them damaged and covered in mud. The same is true when it comes to our marriages. When we’re weighed down by baggage, we cannot reach our full potential in life or marriage. There are five kinds of baggage that can crush your marriage.
The Toxic Load
Research from the University of Kansas reveals that there are five types of baggage that can negatively impact your marriage. They are: 1) a past divorce, 2) infidelity, 3) financial stress, 4) being a workaholic and 5) not having children. The study found that the more types of baggage you have, the higher chance you will have to deal with marital issues.
Unspoken Loads
An unspoken load is any kind of baggage that a person carries around with them without ever speaking to anyone about it. And this type of hidden weight can seriously damage a marriage if not dealt with in time. The five types of unspoken loads are: 1) regret, 2) self-hate, 3) guilt, 4) shame, and 5) secrets.