5 Things That Show Your Marriage Is Going Down by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Marriages don't just work naturally; they must be deliberately built. Every marriage moves through three stages: excitement, commitment, and fulfillment, the same pattern that shows up in a new job, a new church, even a new country. The excitement stage is where everyone celebrates with you. The commitment stage is where reality sets in and you go it largely alone, doing what needs to be done even when the feeling that started it all has faded. Many people never make it to fulfillment, not because the marriage failed, but because they mistook the fading of the excitement stage for the failure of the whole marriage, when it was simply the next stage arriving on schedule.

Whatever you did instinctively to win your spouse in the beginning has to now be done intentionally. Men in particular are project-driven: once the "project" of winning a spouse is complete, the drive that powered the chase naturally drops, and continuing to pursue a spouse after marriage has to become a deliberate decision rather than an automatic instinct. A marriage that has stopped being pursued is already showing the first sign of decline.

Five Signs a Marriage Is Going Down

1. Talk Is Declining

   If the talk in your marriage has gone down, the marriage itself is going down. When conversation shrinks to purely functional exchanges, transport fare, what's for dinner, pick up the child, the health of the marriage has already dropped. Genuine talk means meaningful, romantic, and compassionate conversation, actually finding out how each other's day went, not simply arguing. Scripture's account of the tower of Babel shows that when communication broke down, the whole structure being built came apart; the same principle applies to a marriage.

2. Touch Is Declining

   When a relationship is struggling, couples visibly avoid touching each other, deliberately leaving space when lying down or walking past one another. Touch has to go beyond the purely physical or sexual, holding hands, a hug for no particular reason, small physical affection through the ordinary parts of the day. Neglecting this kind of everyday, non-sexual touch is one of the quiet ways emotional distance builds between two people long before either of them names it directly.

3. Treats and Surprises Have Stopped

   If the surprises have ended in a marriage, something has already gone wrong. A treat doesn't require wealth, a favorite meal made without being asked, an unplanned evening set up with a little effort and thought. Small, unexpected gestures keep the sense of being genuinely delighted in alive inside a marriage; without them, a relationship can drift into feeling purely functional, two people running a household rather than two people still choosing each other.

4. Tenderness Has Turned Harsh

   Harsh words and a tender heart cannot coexist for long in the same marriage. How a couple corrects and speaks to each other daily matters as much as any major decision they make together; sharp, dismissive speech wears down a relationship gradually, the same way gentleness sustains it. Someone who has been hurt by a spouse's mistake is better served bringing that pain to God repeatedly than replaying it back at their partner every time it resurfaces.

5. The Chase Has Stopped

   Marriage was never meant to be the finish line of the chase, only a new phase of it. Whatever specific things won a spouse over originally, calls, compliments, deliberate time together, have to be sustained on purpose long after the wedding, or a spouse will quietly notice they are no longer being actively pursued. A relationship where one or both partners have simply stopped chasing each other has already begun the decline this list describes.