Emotional distress is a normal part of marriage, and there are different stages of emotional healing for women in struggling marriages.
Marriages are bound to experience ups and downs, conflicts, and disagreements. This isn’t necessarily and automatically a sign of incompatibility or a failing relationship. Instead, it’s an indication that something needs to be fixed. Stages of emotional healing can vary depending on the challenges of that failing relationship.
However, and understandably so, this experience can be emotionally exhausting—and as the more emotional piece of a marriage, women are often more affected in this matter. This is where emotional healing for women comes into the picture.
When all else fails, often, the best way to transform a connection is introspection. Looking inwards and working on oneself becomes a foundation for marital repair.
Understanding the Hurdle: Signs of Emotional Struggles in Women
Marriage is a complex matter requiring love, patience, and resilience. Given the anticipated ups and downs and the expected choice of resolution, couples are primed to perceive struggles as normal and work through them to nurture a healthy relationship.
This is the ideal approach to facing issues, but it’s not always the best decision.
As frequent as conflicts become, it’s easy for couples to be so indifferent about them that they end up overlooking the signs they’re already struggling. The marriage, then, ends up merely following a survival cycle instead of thriving. This helps marriage stay afloat, but for a completely different motivation.
Recognizing warning signs of emotional distress is critical in taking action, but even these can be evasive. Books for women seeking healing in their marriage guide their audience throughout the healing process. However, they often fail to identify the signs to look out for.
Recognizing the Signs of Emotional Distress
Emotional healing for women is a profound shift that helps realign their marriages. It’s an empowering process that gives them back the control of their lives, which impacts how they approach relationships—and this starts with awareness of the signs.
How do women know they’re on the brink of compromising their emotional well-being?
Feeling Lonely (Even When They Aren’t Alone)
Being in a marriage shouldn’t be lonely. Hence, when being together starts to feel lonelier than being alone, it’s time to check the connection. Feeling lonely is a call for help. It signifies that a need isn’t being fulfilled and satisfied.
Maybe open and deep communication has been absent for a while. Maybe couples haven’t truly connected. These are common reasons to consider and address.
Emotional Numbness
Often, when emotions become too much, women end up shutting down. When emotions become distressing in marriages, they may end up experiencing a limited range of emotions.
Emotional numbness manifests in the difficulty of fully feeling and expressing sadness, joy, anger, or other emotions. It’s when feelings are diminished or, often, consciously muted, which leads to disconnection.
Constant Tension
When women start to feel like they can’t be themselves around their partners, it can be burdensome. Whether it’s because they have an issue they’re holding back or they start to feel unsafe in speaking with their partners, a resolution needs to be reached.
Walking on eggshells in a marriage is not easy, nor does it do good. If this occurs, they should reach out and communicate.
The Road to Women’s Emotional Wellness Begins with Acknowledgement
Women are often celebrated for their emotional strength and resilience. However, when it comes to healing their marriage, it’s best to recognize and embrace the fact that they’re struggling.
Denial only delays the action required to repair a connection. The stages of emotional healings seeks to confront the wounds and heal them.
When women hold themselves back from feeling down or distressed, matters end up unaddressed. This allows situations to happen again and for the resentment to grow until it ultimately tears the marriage down. A significant part of emotional healing for women is allowing themselves to feel, both the good and the bad, in their marriage.
Journeying Inward: Stages of Emotional Healing for Women
Emotionally healed women approach the challenges in their marriage differently. By looking inwards and prioritizing self-help practices, women learn lessons that empower themselves, influencing how they interact with their partners.
How do they achieve this transformation?
Step 1: Realizing the Need to Change
The first step has been discussed. Awareness that something needs to be addressed triggers a shift in perspective. This allows women to let go of any idealized versions they’ve held about relationships. This will enable them to recognize that it’s not the absence of conflicts that makes marriage fonder. Instead, it’s how couples reconcile and reconnect that measures the connection.
Awakening goes beyond acknowledging that something needs to change. It identifies which patterns need to be changed and which are only temporary issues. This first step helps them recognize any underlying problems that must be communicated.
Step 2: Making Space for Emotions
When emotional numbness is one telltale sign of distress, healing from it entails opening oneself to the full spectrum of it. It’s time to embrace the perception that women are “emotional beings,” allowing themselves to process and feel betrayal, anger, sadness, and anxiety.
A big part of emotional healing for women includes making space for all emotions that may occur. It’s accepting that marriage won’t only make them feel happy, but also a plethora of other emotions. Among the stages of emotional healing, this can be the most difficult.
Step 3: Reclaiming Their Voice and Identity
Emotional healing doesn’t only include being one with emotions. Instead, it’s for women to try to be one with themselves again. Marriage is a full-time job (although it shouldn’t be considered a chore). It requires effort, time, and investment, and when they don’t take care of themselves, women may often forget who they are while nurturing it.
When women feel unsatisfied with their lives, this rubs off on their relationships. Hence, the marriage may end up suffering as well. To repair the marriage, women need to repair themselves first.
Step 4: Finding Strength and Reframing the Narrative
Once women recognize they’ve let themselves go, it’s time to find the courage to step in the right direction. This can mean letting the connection go or reconnecting with their passions and rebuilding their lives again. This step entails reflecting on what they genuinely want to do and have moving forward.
Embracing What’s Next: Life After Emotional Healing
As mentioned above, emotional healing for women can end in two possible scenarios.
One, they may find growth within themselves, which nourishes the marriage. Or two, they may realize things are better if they let go. Whatever they choose, trusting and knowing it’s the best direction to pursue is essential.
A perfect reminder of how emotional healing for women looks like can be read in Tish Barnhardt’s So You Want to Be A First Lady? The author has written it to encourage women to make empowered decisions about their lives when their marriages or relationships are struggling.
To read more about it, check out the author’s website or grab a copy of So You Want to Be a First Lady? today!
