“And above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins.”
Every marriage has hurt in it. What separates the ones that last is not the absence of damage. It's whether the couple knows how to come back.
Repair is a skill. Some couples fight hard and reconnect within the hour. Others have one cool argument and then live like polite roommates for a week. The second couple isn't fighting worse. They just never learned how to close the loop.
Peter says love covers a multitude of sins. Not one or two. A multitude. He's describing a love with enough give in it to absorb a lot of failure without coming apart. That's not a low standard for love. It's a high one, and it takes work.
Repair usually needs three things. Someone has to reach first, and it does not matter who. It might be a hand on the shoulder, a joke, or just walking into the room and sitting down. Second, the reach has to be received. If your spouse reaches and you make them pay for it, they'll reach less next time. Third, there has to be some acknowledgment that it happened. Skipping straight to normal, over and over, leaves things buried instead of healed.
The reaching is the hard part, because whoever goes first feels like they're conceding. They're not. They're the one with enough strength left to end the standoff.
Don't measure your marriage by whether you hurt each other. You will. Measure it by how long the distance lasts and whether you know the way back. And if there's a hurt that never got repaired, it's not too late. It's just overdue.
Talk About It Together
Talk about how you reconnect, not about who was right last time.
- After a fight, what helps you feel close again?
- Who usually reaches first, and how does that feel to each of us?
- Is there a hurt between us that never really got repaired?
- What do I do after an argument that makes it harder to come back?
- What would you like us to do differently the next time we hurt each other?
Tonight’s Challenge
Agree on a way to reach for each other after a fight. A phrase, a gesture, a cup of coffee, whatever works for you. Name it tonight so you don't have to invent it in the moment.
Prayer
Lord, we hurt each other, sometimes without meaning to and sometimes on purpose. Give us love that covers instead of love that keeps its distance. Make us quick to reach for each other and quick to receive it. Teach us the way back, and don't let us stay far apart. Amen.