How Marriage Can Deepen as Life Changes

Laura Amador
3 days ago
4 min read

Week 8 of The Softening Series: 10 Weeks of Deepening My Marriage

How marriage can deepen as life changes

We welcomed our fourth child this week. A girl. Even writing that still feels unreal. My body is sore and my heart is wide open. My emotions are closer to the surface than usual, with tears coming easily, overwhelming gratitude, and joy braided in with exhaustion. Postpartum has always been a very vulnerable place for me.

But this time, I set my intentions ahead of time. I didn’t want to muscle my way through the change, or drag my marriage along by the reins, hoping to make it through unscathed.

Before, I used to believe that if I could just hold myself together, our marriage would stay steady. I thought strength meant adapting quietly, managing my emotions privately, staying capable even when my body and heart were asking me to slow down. I thought love required continuity, being the same woman through every season.

I no longer believe that. Now I know that as life evolves and changes, it's a beautiful opportunity for marriage to deepen.

There was a moment a few days in when I felt the familiar edge rise. My husband was moving through the house, caring for our children, learning this new rhythm with me again. And instead of letting myself receive it, I felt the old urge to correct, to manage, to take control, to make sure we didn’t lose each other in the disruption.

That’s usually where marriages tighten. Where we silently brace instead of soften. Where life changes, but the relationship doesn’t know how to change with it.

I could feel myself wanting to harden. To give my husband a to-do list. To quietly shut down rather than vulnerably share.

But that's not what I wanted. So I let myself receive without needing to justify. I let him do things differently than I would. I let myself cry without trying to make sense of it first. I let my body be slower. I let the house be messier. I let love meet me where I actually was, not where I thought I should be.

And something subtle but profound happened between us.

Not a big conversation. Not a dramatic breakthrough. Just a deepening. A quiet re-choosing of each other inside the change instead of fighting it.

I realized how often we expect marriage to stay familiar while our lives transform around it. And how much intimacy is lost there, not because love disappears, but because we don’t know how to let it evolve.

If you want to soften alongside me this week, here’s what I’m inviting you to try.

Notice a place in your life that has changed since you and your husband stated your life together, or that is in the middle of changing now. A new season, a transition, a version of you that no longer quite fits.

Then ask yourself gently:

Where am I trying to keep my marriage the same instead of letting it grow with me?

Just once this week, experiment with meeting your husband from where you are now, not who you used to be. Share a vulnerable "I miss you". Receive support without managing it. Slow down and nourish yourself instead of pushing through.

This isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about letting your relationship breathe inside change instead of bracing against it.

We’re practicing together. That’s all.

What I’m learning right now is that marriage isn’t meant to survive change, it’s meant to deepen with it.

This is the heart of evolution and growth for me. When life expands, through birth, loss, transition, or awakening, marriage is invited to expand too. But only if we’re willing to release the version we’ve outgrown.

So many marriages lose each other here. Not because of a lack of commitment, but because of a fear of becoming unfamiliar. A clinging to who we were instead of curiosity about who we’re becoming.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There is a deeper intimacy available when we allow marriage to evolve alongside our lives, when we stop asking it to stay static and start trusting it to grow.

This tender season isn’t something to get through. It’s something to grow into. And I’m learning that when I soften instead of brace, love doesn’t disappear in the change.

It deepens.

Always with you, softening 🤍

Xoxo,