When Marriage Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

The refining years.

You don't know what you don't know.  That sums up marriage, doesn't it?  We're all good-hearted people here, but there is so much baggage that we're carrying with us that we don't even realize is there until it's silently causing problems everywhere.  With all the variables of jobs, kids, moves and extended family elements, every couple's timeline is different, but generally speaking there is a stage where a marriage gets worse before it gets better.  We don't usually like to talk about it because it feels like admitting to failure somehow, but I think that is a misconception.

You have likely read a story about how silver is refined in a fire and that it isn't purified until everything else is burned off at very high temperatures.  Marriage is a continual picture of this.  Our marriage may begin with impurities and it certainly can pick up dirt and unproductive films.  As we are going through life together we often have at least two choices.  We can all sit in our filth, allowing it to poison us against each other or we can endure the fires that allow us to throw off all the junk allowing this relationship to become this entirely new thing.  Your marriage just might get worse before it gets better, but it may be the only way for it to truly get better.