How Long Should You Fight for Your Marriage?

We get this question more than almost any other, and it always comes from the same place: desperation.

How long am I supposed to fight for my marriage?

Usually the person asking is the only one still fighting. Their spouse is coasting, or checked out entirely. And underneath the question they're actually asking, there's a second question they're not saying out loud: do I even have the strength to keep going?

We want to answer this honestly. Not with a Christian platitude. Honestly.

Two Things We Get Out of the Way Immediately

Before anything else, there are two situations where the conversation changes entirely.

The first is abuse. Physical, verbal, any of it. The only way to escape abuse is to escape it. You flee first and sort out the rest later. Not after one more chance. Not after one more counseling session. You leave.

We watched a show recently where a woman stayed in an abusive relationship and was ultimately killed. Erik got hot about it — genuinely angry — and in the conversation afterward he caught himself blaming her for not leaving. Diana and our daughter stopped him: wait, wait, wait. It's him. He's the one who killed her.

He was right to be angry. But the anger belongs on the abuse, not on the person trapped in it. And the answer is still the same: at the first instance — a hit, a push, a shove, even the words — you go.

The second is when the relationship violates your conscience. Things you would never normally put up with, weighing on your mind and your heart over a long period of time. That's not pickiness. That's your conscience telling you something deeper is wrong.

When you hit either of those, you're not living in an illusion anymore. You're looking at reality. And no matter what you decide from there, it's going to be hard.

"But God Hates Divorce"

Here's where the Christian community ties itself in knots.

We believe in the sanctity of marriage. We made our covenant before each other and before God. So divorce is out of the question — frowned upon, avoided, not discussed. And people carry that into situations it was never meant to cover.

We walked with a couple where the wife had a completely sexless marriage. Not a dry season — years. She waited for marriage. She wanted her husband. She loved him. And there was nothing. No intimacy, no connection, no willingness on his end to even try.

She came to us asking: is this God's will for my life?

Sitting with that, we asked ourselves a question that reframed everything: would we ask this of our own kids?

If that were our daughter — would we tell her you made your bed, now lie in it? Would we tell her to stay for fifty more years in a marriage with no love and no intimacy because leaving is worse?

We couldn't imagine God putting a penance like that on anyone. And we're not good fathers compared to Him.

So yes — God hates divorce. But He doesn't hate the divorcee.

If you've walked through a divorce from a marriage that was destroying you, hear this: God loves you and He is for you. He would never have wanted you to live out a sentence that kept damaging you and your family. There is grace for you. There is kindness coming at you. And there is a love that's there to actually heal what got broken.

Where Pastors Get This Wrong

We have to say this as pastors, about pastors.

A woman we know was married to a man who had been addicted to porn for thirty years. She set a boundary — she wasn't going to have sex with him while that was active. She moved out of the bedroom.

She went to a pastor for help. He told her she was in the wrong. That by withholding sex, she was the reason her husband was acting out.

That's insanity. That's a man with no understanding of betrayal trauma, giving advice that harmed the person who came to him for help.

We corrected that fast. But it happens constantly, and here's why: a lot of spiritual leaders are simply not trained for this. Some of them are quietly struggling in the same area and trying to compartmentalize it while dispensing advice.

Erik will say it about himself. Before he went through counseling and worked with a CSAT, he was giving men the worst advice he could possibly give. He didn't know it at the time. You don't find out until you've gone through the process yourself and can look back and say: that was junk. All of it.

If you're in this: pay for the right help. Find a CSAT. Find someone trauma-informed. If you go to someone ill-equipped, you walk out more damaged than when you came in.

One more thing for anyone giving counsel: don't sit with only one spouse and build the whole picture from one side. Narcissists are persuasive. They will get you on their side, control the narrative, and make the person who's actually being harmed look like the problem. Ask for discernment. Get both people in the room. Then press harder.

The Real Question Isn't "How Long" — It's "Is There Work?"

Nobody can make this decision for you. Not us. Not your pastor. It belongs to you.

But there's one thing you can actually measure: is your spouse doing work?

Not promising. Working. It looks like this:

You say, we're disconnected — it feels like we're two people living separate lives in the same house. And they say, thank you for telling me. Let's connect ten minutes a day. Thirty. Let's talk about our day.

You say, we haven't had sex in a month, I miss you, I want you. And they say, okay — once a week? Twice? Let's put it on the calendar. It isn't sexy to schedule it. Do it anyway. If it matters to you, it matters to me.

That's work. That's a person listening and making strides.

The other version sounds like: that's your problem. You ask for too much. You're nagging. Whatever, whatever, whatever.

When you're married to a spouse who's in the "whatever," that's the point where you have a decision to make. Is this okay for the next ten years? Fifteen? Thirty?

God never intended a one-sided marriage. We didn't get married to walk alone. We got married to walk together — side by side, hand in hand, for the rest of our lives. That's the whole point.

What We'd Tell You

If you're reading this and recognizing your own marriage, we're sorry. That's a brutal thing to live in, especially over years.

Here's what we'd say: make a clear decision to get real help. Not advice from a friend. Not one more year of hoping. Call someone trustworthy and start talking it through. And ask the Lord to help you use your heart and your mind — He gave you a brain to think with, and this is exactly what it's for.

Can God restore it? Absolutely. We're living proof. But God also gave us free will, and He honors it. If one spouse is fighting and the other one won't, that's their decision — and no amount of your effort changes it.

You are not condemning yourself by refusing to live in destruction. And you are not alone in it.

We offer free consultations. If you're in this, sit with us. We'll be honest with you about what we see, and if we're not the right help, we'll point you to someone who is.