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Fixing your marriage can be hard, but not impossible. If there is a crack, working towards fixing the crack TOGETHER might be all that is needed. The journey of a thousand smiles starts with just a concerted step in the right direction.
In the film Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson, David Dunn (Willis) is having dinner with his wife at a restaurant. This is their first real attempt to work on their marriage in ages. Apparently it had been on the rocks for a while even though they were still living together and had a son.
At dinner she asked him at what point he felt that their marriage was not going to work. He said it was one night when he had a nightmare and didn’t share it with her. That spoke volumes to me. It seemed to be so little but I can tell you from experience and also with counselling that when hearts start to withdraw, you can tell when people no longer feel like sharing the things that matter anymore – and even the little stuff they’d talk about is hidden or worse, it is shared with someone else.
Something else happened. Much later in the movie, after he had gotten a better handle on his abilities, he is seen carrying his sleeping wife upstairs to their room. She had been sleeping alone downstairs and he had been upstairs with their son all this time.
She wakes up in his arms and is surprised but she says nothing. I see this and can’t help but think what she is feeling. Sure she’s shocked but what else? Fear? Is she wondering if he is taking her there to claim her as his again?
He places her gently in bed and lays his head on her chest and you can see her struggle to breathe. Bruce Willis then says five words that made that scene one of my best in the whole movie.
He said; “I had a bad dream”.
She exhales slowly and you can see her torn between crying and being joyful. She tells him; “It’s over now.” Do I really need to explain the relevance of this act?
Many married people and folks who are dating and come to me, often share in detail all the things going wrong with their spouse/partner and that’s fine. There are some though who have an equal share in the blame but want them to fix it all.
Take a cue from this example. This man made a move that set fixing his marriage on a firmer path than before. There’s no way she could ignore the significance of such a gesture. What are you doing about fixing your own relationship/marriage or are you still waiting for the other person to make the move? If you are then maybe it isn’t as important to you as you claim.
Sometimes the smallest gestures and the shortest words create a beautiful atmosphere for reconciliation. Only kids keep bickering when someone is trying to extend an olive branch and fix what may not even be all their fault in the first place.
They keep twisting the knife in the wound rather than meet their partner half way. As I told someone long ago, “fighting a wo/man over that same man or woman is tiring and will kill love very fast. Stop getting in your own way and fix things or there will be nothing left to fix”.
*PS. This post isn’t about most men, most women, Nigerian women and men or any other gender related dribble.
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