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Common habits can fuel marital malaise. The remedy is identifying and stopping them.

Stubborn silence, nitpicking, and clinging to old pain are a few of these relationship-harming habits.

Breaking the silence and sharing feelings openly and respectfully is an important first step.

“We love each other. I think we’ve just lost our way somehow,” Dave, a middle-aged husband, married for 26 years, said at the beginning of their first couples counseling session with me. Sitting beside him, his wife Melanie bit her lip to stop the trembling before adding, “I never thought it would come to this.”

Their reason for coming to therapy wasn’t a major problem. No one had cheated or gambled their savings away. Friends and family saw them as a loving couple with a solid relationship. They both loved their young adult children and were doing fine with the transition to an empty nest. And yet something felt off.

I’ve seen many couples like Dave and Melanie coming for therapy, battling a malaise that is sapping the loving energy out of their relationship.

At the heart of this malaise may be some habits that couples can fall into during their years together. Breaking these habits may inject new life and energy into a relationship.

What are these habits?

Beyond the notorious “silent treatment” one angry spouse may inflict on another—a negative habit indeed that blocks communication and conflict resolution—there can be the silence based on feeling you have nothing safe to say to each other at this point. One long-married client complained, “We don’t talk about our son because we’re both terribly upset about the estrangement his new........

© Psychology Today