What are the reasons why you should work on your marriage and make sure it is healthy, blissful and sweet? A good and peaceful marriage will give you peace of mind, body spirit and soul. Whenever a marriage is not working, the couple can never reach their full potential in life, they will be both damaged and have a lot of negative incidences. They may be covering up with other activities such as work, friendship outside of their marital relationship and bury themselves in a religious activity such as prayers and groups etc. All of these may take their focus and attention from the immediate pain of living with a spouse they consider trouble, however, the toll it takes on the body is revealed in their physical, emotional and spiritual health.
I am not in any way trying to insinuate that everyone who has one illness, or the other is as a result of bad marriages, we are all aware our bodies are broken because we are all in a fallen state. Many factors can cause illness in one’s body, genetic and other issues. However, there are illnesses that are triggered due to marital stress which would and may have been delayed or not surface at all if the marriage was peaceful and loving.
“Stress doesn’t only make us feel awful emotionally,” says Jay Winner, MD, author of Take the Stress Out of Your Life, “It can also exacerbate just about any health condition you can think of.”
The people who advocate exercise state that, when the body is in a happy state it secrets a hormone called dopamine that relaxes the body and makes one be in a good mood. Also, when someone is constantly in a state of stress, the body release stress hormones (cortisol) that are harmful to the body. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose. When stressors are always present and you constantly feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on and this does great harm to your body.
Imagine if a wife or husband is constantly living in unhappiness and secrets these harmful hormones daily, an accumulation of these hormones will one day be a level that it will cause damage to vital organs in the body leading to the development of illness and diseases. Therefore, if husbands and wives are aware of these types of damage they can and maybe causing each other by living in an unhealthy marriage, shouldn’t they resolve their issues for their health sake? Many men and women have destroyed their lives and body because they refused to work on their marriage.
Your marriage is your health thermostat and you have the power to turn it up or down to give you a healthy environment to grow in.
We must decide to work on our marriages and make sure it is happy fun and full of laughter so we can increase the good hormones and live long.
These are some of the reasons why husbands and wives need to work for peace, it is a must, there should be no offence, conflict, or ego too big that you should allow to cost your life. Unforgiveness and holding offences in the mind has been a major cause of heart attack for some people. When you can release any heavy load, you are carrying in your mind, please do, your life, your health is worth much more than your reputation, image, ego, or position.
I have decided a long time ago to always release forgiveness to my husband or anyone at all who may hurt me, not only because God commanded me to do so as His child, but because I have made this quote by Marianne Williamson my mantra. When I came across this statement, it brought a light to my heart, I held onto it to help me know that when I hold grudges, I am not doing myself any favour. Let me share it with you today, it may help you realise that not holding grudges is more for your benefit than the other person who hurt you, even when they refuse to acknowledge or apologise.
“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die.”- Marianne Williamson
Have you noticed that when you are not happy with someone and they are around you, there is this uneasiness and you probably lose your smile too? Why would anyone want to be in such a state perpetually living with a spouse you are unhappy with?
Some of the physical illness that can result due to marital stress include: Cancer, lack of regular sex in men can cause prostate cancer. High blood pressure when the mind and body are always stressed. Sexually transmitted diseases for those who go into adultery because of bad marriages.
Studies have found many health problems related to stress. Stress seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.
¹ Below are 10 Health Problems Related to Stress That You Can Fix by working on your marriage. I have taken these from WebMD please visit the website for more information.
- Heart disease – Researchers have long suspected that the stressed-out, type A personality has a higher risk of high blood pressure and heart problems. We don’t know why, exactly. Stress can directly increase heart rate and blood flow and causes the release of cholesterol and triglycerides into the bloodstream.
- Asthma -Many studies have shown that stress can worsen asthma. Some evidence suggests that a parent’s chronic stress might even increase the risk of developing asthma in their children. One study looked at how parental stress affected the asthma rates of young children who were also exposed to air pollution or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. The kids with stressed-out parents had a substantially higher risk of developing asthma.
- Obesity – Excess fat in the belly seems to pose greater health risks than fat on the legs or hips — and unfortunately, that’s just where people with high stress seem to store it. “Stress causes higher levels of the hormone cortisol,” says Winner, “and that seems to increase the amount of fat that’s deposited in the abdomen.”
- Diabetes – Stress can worsen diabetes in two ways. First, it increases the likelihood of bad behaviours, such as unhealthy eating and excessive drinking. Second, stress seems to raise the glucose levels of people with type 2 diabetes directly.
- Headaches– Stress is considered one of the most common triggers for headaches — not just tension headaches, but migraines as well.
- Depression and anxiety – It’s probably no surprise that chronic stress is connected with higher rates of depression and anxiety. One survey of recent studies found that people who had stress related to their jobs — like demanding work with few rewards — had an 80% higher risk of developing depression within a few years than people with lower stress.
- Gastrointestinal problems– Here’s one thing that stress doesn’t do — it doesn’t cause ulcers. However, it can make them worse. Stress is also a common factor in many other GI conditions, such as chronic heartburn (or gastroesophageal reflux disease, GERD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Winner says.
- Alzheimer’s disease- One animal study found that stress might worsen Alzheimer’s disease, causing its brain lesions to form more quickly. Some researchers speculate that reducing stress has the potential to slow down the progression of the disease.
- Accelerated ageing– There’s evidence that stress can affect how you age. One study compared the DNA of mothers who were under high stress — they were caring for a chronically ill child — with women who were not. Researchers found that a particular region of the chromosomes showed the effects of accelerated ageing. Stress seemed to accelerate ageing about 9 to 17 additional years.
- Premature death– A study looked at the health effects of stress by studying elderly caregivers looking after their spouses — people who are naturally under a great deal of stress. It found that caregivers had a 63% higher rate of death than people their age who were not caregivers.
¹ (source WebMD Feature Reviewed by Joseph Goldberg, MD on April 01, 2014) https://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/features/10-fixable-stress-related-health-problems#1
Given this staggering evidence of stress and illnesses, I hope men and women would be informed and start working on their marriages.
Apart from physical illness, there are also spiritual implications that are even costlier for anyone living in disobedience to God’s law of living at peace and offering forgiveness to each other.
Couples who live in disobedience to God’s law of love and holiness will experience a broken relationship with God, they may be praying but God does not listen to such prayers. There are numerous bible passages that talked about prayers being hindered. They will be exposed to attack from the enemy because God’s law has been broken, when the accuser of the brethren shows up because they are still in sin, God cannot justify them. They will just be religious and have no power over the enemy. They will lack God’s special blessings for His children, they may be doing well but that is the common grace God gives to everybody. They will lose their glory and honour that God has prepared for those who obey Him.
The implication of living a life that does not please God in a marriage is enormous and it bleeds my heart to see that some husbands and wives are not informed nor aware of these, they live in oblivion and expect their lives to be ok. I pray for God’s mercy on us all. Amen.
Now we have only just scratched the surface of what stress can do to a married couple who chooses to live in sin. If you refuse to work on your marriage and choose to disobey God’s law that says in John 13;34-35. “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” Then you have your reward as you choose.
I hope you can allow God to work on your heart, whatever may be the cause of strife in your marriage, let it go and save your health for a long life of joy, peace and happiness.
If this post has helped you in any way, please leave me a comment and you can also send me questions, I will do my best to answer them with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Are you longing for inspiration for your life and marriage? Learning new skills and acquiring knowledge can greatly improve your relationship with your spouse. When you know better, you can do better and make a big difference in your relationship. Subscribe to updates from Abi here!
Abi Apalara loves sharing insightful information that helps couples flourish in life and their marriage relationship. I have enjoyed both good marital pleasures and challenging times in my marriage. I came to realise, the points where I missed it, were areas I lacked information on how to.
Making it up along the way, only meant I was going the wrong way. Desperately seeking to get back into marital bliss, I started exploring and reading about those areas of challenge. I also reached out to counsellors and began to see what I was missing.
After a surprising move into relationship study, I have found peace of mind and happy with my marriage. I have authored the book Are you ready? Marriage expectation versus realty to share my experience and encourage men and women to work on their
marriages, by seeking knowledge and apply it to their marriage relationship.
My latest book, Are you ready? Marriage expectation versus reality focuses on discovering some of the unrealistic expectations we bring into a marriage. It comes with practical advice and a guide on how to get it right before and after getting married. You can also preorder the book here
