Dealing With Past Problems in Your Marriage That Won’t Go Away

So you've decided to work on your marriage. Congratulations! You may just be starting the journey or may be well on your way, but you are hoping, I hope, for a bright future ahead.

If you are working through The Couples Communication Handbook, you have a lot of powerful new skills to aid you along the way. Perhaps you already feel like you are having fewer fights and connecting more around the good, the bad, and the ugly in your relationship and in your life. 

But you may find you have run into a perplexing problem: what do you do about the past hurts in this relationship that happened before you had these skills? Or, conversely, perhaps you are wondering what to do about the fact that your partner keeps bringing up past hurts that you are wishing you could move on from.

What do we do about these old injuries in the relationship? 

The answer is—you deal with them just the same as you deal with new injuries that happen. That is to say, you talk about them. (New injuries, of course, are certainly going to happen.) A good marriage is not a marriage without stress between spouses; it is a marriage where stress between spouses is handled effectively.

But doesn't it just cause more pain to dredge up old fights? 

Not if you do it well. 

The way to do it well, of course, is what the book is all about. We are not going to do a deep dive into that process here. The point of this post is to assure you that opening up old incidents can be fine, and in fact quite productive, if done appropriately.

Usually, the reason old hurts keep popping up and causing problems in the present—even when the incident and its consequences are long gone—is that the issues at play were avoided, ignored, swept under the rug, but never resolved.

Jenna and Will* have never quite gotten over the fiasco that was the birth of their first child. Will had a business meeting going on that day, and when Jenna went into labor, he was in the thick of things. Under tremendous stress, he sped home, drove her to the hospital, and dropped her off—then left to go back to his business meeting. Jenna was, of course, extremely distraught, and although the delivery ultimately went fine and there haven't been any similar setbacks since then, the incident tends to get mentioned seemingly out of the blue when they get into fights where Jenna is particularly mad at Will. Naturally, this is maddening for Will, and his angry reactions just amplify the pain for Jenna.

When they came for counseling, they actually didn't mention that incident until many sessions in. Both of them felt it was not a current issue. And yet, it still hadn't disappeared. They simply had never dealt with it fully and put it to rest, and so the issue just wouldn't die. 

Jenna doesn’t bring this issue up when she's mad as a way of getting back at Will or to intentionally fire him up. The reality is that although this conflict is years in the past, it still hurts her. Will needs to understand that she is aching for empathy and closure around this issue, not merely throwing it in his face out of spite.

 What Jenna needs—what they both need—is to go through the whole thing using empathic dialogue, the method described extensively in the book. In fact, she might need to do this more than once—and that is fine. If Will can look at these resurrections of the issue as opportunities to meet her need rather than as attacks on him, it will be much easier for him to help her put it to rest. 

If you have an issue like this in your marriage, know that you too can get past it—but not by ignoring it or trying to suppress it. Rather, you need to open it up, difficult as that may be, and discuss it with patience and with empathy. If you do this well, you will not only be able to finally bury this ghost from the past, but you will walk away feeling more connected and stronger in your relationship. 

To learn more about empathic dialogue and how to pull it off, pick up a copy of the book, or reach out for guidance and help on moving your marriage forward. 

*This is a real case, but names and details have been changed to protect privacy.