I originally wrote this article during the COVID pandemic as a way to help people survive their time at home together with their spouse no matter what stage of their relationship they’re in. Even though many people are now back to work, the insight about the stages and the tips for each stage are still valuable as you try to understand and navigate the challenges of your relationship.

The Five Stages of an Unhealthy Relationship

If you find yourself spending more time at home with your spouse, this could be an extra difficult time for you. Without the reprieve that might normally come from time away from each other while you and/or your spouse are at work, the tension and the feeling of walking on eggshells might be constant.

Depending on what stage of your relationship you are in (and there are stages), you could feel desperately inadequate, hopeful for change, or hopelessly trapped (or any combination of those!). Here is some insight and support for you during this time.

Stage 1: Innocence and Passion

The first stage of an unhealthy relationship is characterized by a kind of innocent ignorance as to the reality of your situation and a fiery passion to defend your spouse, his character, and his willingness and ability to improve. Most people in this stage wouldn’t be reading this article. And, if you are, you will disagree with most of it. Also, those in this stage wouldn’t know they’re in it.

People who are Christians in this stage are passionately seeking God’s will and yearn for conviction in areas they can improve in. They also use Scripture to justify their actions as deep love for their spouse. Only later will they discover that their “loving” actions were enabling the destruction of their relationship and blocking any potential for healing.

If you’re in this stage and home with your spouse, you see your circumstances as an opportunity to spend time together and improve your relationship. However, the more you try to improve, the more it seems that you fail.

The expectations that your spouse have seem impossible to meet or to even predict. He gets upset at things that seem completely unnecessary to be upset at, and he makes you feel like the success or failure of the moment, the day, and the entire relationship is in your hands.

He has expectations that put his mood at the mercy of your ability to please him, setting you up for failure, because he is unpleasable. You desperately want a good relationship with him, but you are also desperately lost as to how to make that happen. You feel frustrated that the opportunity to spend quality time together is being lost on petty arguments and unmet expectations, but you continue to work on yourself to be more gentle, kind, generous, sacrificial, and respectful.

This is a wonderful and necessary stage, really. Wonderful because it is filled with passion and depth of love and humility (and often, unfortunately, self-deprecation). And necessary because it sets the foundation that will be needed to make the sacrifices and do the really difficult acts of love that come in the following stages.

If you are in this stage and are yearning to improve and be better by seeking wise counsel, the most important thing for you to do is prepare your heart and mind to start looking at Scripture differently. You are probably seeing it now as a place to find conviction about what you need to do differently in order to love your spouse more, and you find comfort in the verses that talk about sacrifice.

When it becomes clear that those passages no longer sustain you, God will begin to reveal to you what you have missed. Start praying for that and be patient with yourself as you see things in Scripture that you never saw before and that are confusing because of the template you’ve created for yourself up to this point. God will be developing a new template for you that will bring even more clarity and truth.

Relationship tip for Stage 1:

Start to allow yourself some personal space and time away from your spouse (even if it upsets him).

Stage 2: Confusion

The second stage is a stage of confusion. As you begin to realize that you’ve been missing the bigger picture of Scripture and even parts of the character of God, you will start to wonder “What IS ‘truth’?” The things that you thought you knew about the kind of wife God wanted you to be will be challenged by your own conscience, leaving you wondering what to believe.

Be patient with yourself during this time, too. It’s a necessary transition to the next stage. God is working mightily in you and through you. Don’t resist new insights, and search the Scriptures as often as you can.

If you’re home with your spouse during this stage, you will likely feel a lot of internal conflict as you vacillate between wanting to act on the things you are learning (which involve thinking differently than the way your spouse wants you to think) and clinging to what you’ve always done in an effort to bring harmony. It’s OK to feel this conflict. Just do the best you can with what you’ve got at the time you’ve got it.

Relationship tip for Stage 2:

Don’t try to enlighten your spouse with your new revelations and things you are learning. He will not learn from you, and your changes will feel like a threat to his leadership (aka: control). Rather than sharing the details of what you are learning, tell him that you need some time to process the changes that you are experiencing in your heart and mind, and ask him for some space while you go through this. Let 1 Corinthians 7: 5 be a way for you to request time apart (even in the same house) so that you can devote yourself to prayer. And don’t let your spouse be the one to determine the parameters of the phrase “for a time” in that verse. Let him know that the amount of time that you need is up to you and God. [Read my article “Do I Have To Have Sex With My Husband?”]

Stage 3: New Convictions

The next stage is new convictions. When you are in this stage, things start to make more sense. The revelations that you’re getting from Scripture are starting to line up with the reality of your situation. You start to see that Scripture has more to say about how to deal with conflict and difficult people than just “turn the other cheek” and “build each other up” (verses that you may discover don’t actually relate to dealing with difficult people at all but, rather, relate to dealing with people who don’t consistently present a challenge).

If you are at home with your spouse during this stage, there’s probably a lot of interpersonal conflict. You might be trying to get your spouse to see your new way of looking at things and convince him that he is not treating you biblically. [Read my article on communication]

When things really blow up, you might want to leave the house, but you can’t, so you feel trapped. You don’t want things to stay the same, but they feel impossible to change, especially as you try to implement boundaries within the restrictions of the stay-at-home mandate from the government.

Relationship tip for Stage 3:

Don’t spend time having discussions with your spouse (i.e. don’t READ: Reason, Explain, Argue, or Defend your point of view). Instead, take those discussions to God. Journal, seek answers in Scripture, and ask God for guidance on how to set reasonable boundaries during this time.

Also, determine your priorities. God cares more about your safety, sanity, and security than about your obedience to the mandate to stay home if your obedience means putting your emotional, physical, or financial security at risk. Ask God to help you develop a plan should you find it necessary to leave/separate from your spouse. [Read my articles about what the Bible says about separation and divorce]

Stage 4: Loneliness

If you are past the previous stage and have set boundaries to the point of separating from spouse, the current situation presents a whole different set of challenges for you. You aren’t stuck in the same house with a spouse, but you might be lamenting your situation and wishing it were different. You might feel lonely or abandoned or even having second thoughts about whether your separation was the right thing to do.

Relationship tip for Stage 4:

Take advantage of the time you have alone to seek more healing and a deeper relationship with God. It’s natural to want a relationship and to feel lonely or angry or to have questions about why things happened the way they did. Rather than reaching out to your spouse or seeking another relationship, look inward to heal those parts of you that long for others to satisfy you. [Get my guide that walks you through the process of healing]

Stage 5: Freedom

When you’ve done the work of getting emotionally healthy, you will experience the joy of walking in the freedom of Christ. Galatians 5: 1 says “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

You will find that you are able to discern who is emotionally healthy and who isn’t, and you will find that, while you have patience and compassion for those who are stuck in dysfunction, you no longer have the desire to fix them or be in close relationship with them.

You’ll also find that emotionally unhealthy people are naturally weeded out of your life and people who are emotionally healthy now gravitate toward you. Birds of a feather flock together!

Tip for Stage 5:

Enjoy being you!

Regardless of where you are in your journey, I want to encourage you with this: you are right where God wants you to be – but he doesn’t want you to stay there, because . . .

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The 5 Stages of an Unhealthy Relationship