6 Ways to Kill Your Marriage

Marriage counselors, pastors, and wise sage-like couples will tell you the same thing over and over again. You don’t typically kill your marriage with one catastrophic blow, but with a thousand cuts that eventually lead to death. 

Nobody stands at the altar, looks into the eyes of the person they love, and thinks, I can’t wait until we resent each other! Nobody plans to become roommates, keep score, weaponize old sins, neglect intimacy, or spend twenty years putting everyone else ahead of each other. It just happens slowly…one little cut at a time. 

Maybe you find yourself looking back on your marriage and beginning to see where the cuts started to appear. You’ve realized that you stopped doing certain things the way you used to, you started tolerating certain sins, you listened to the wrong voices, you let the kids take over, you pushed intimacy to the side, you stopped forgiving so quickly, and you lost your appetite for selfless service. 

Somewhere along the way, the covenant you once cherished starts functioning more like a contract you’re constantly renegotiating.

Solomon warned of this when he wrote about “the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards” (Song of Solomon 2:15), because marriages are often ruined that way. Little things become big things when they are allowed to go unchecked. 

In today’s article, I want to take a counter-intuitive angle (even if you find it provocative!), because this can be a helpful way to stir us toward action. Like the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, you can imagine demons strategizing to assault your marriage with these ideas.  

If you’d like to slowly kill your marriage, you don’t need an affair, an explosive scandal, or a dramatic exit. Just start doing these 6 things over and over:

1. Don’t Forgive

If you want to kill your marriage, make sure the gospel stops at your front door. Celebrate that Christ has forgiven your enormous debt, but demand payment from your spouse for theirs. Keep receipts. Rehearse old failures. Reopen closed cases. Make repentance insufficient. Forgive with your mouth while maintaining a detailed mental record of every offense. Ignore Scripture’s commands to forgive “just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13). Never mind that biblical love “does not take into account a wrong suffered” (1 Corinthians 13:5). 

When sin has been genuinely confessed and repented of, be sure to resurrect what your spouse has buried at the cross of Christ. 

2. Get Lots of Worldly Advice

When marriage gets difficult, surround yourself with people who will always take your side and tell you what you want to hear. Find friends who validate every feeling, reinforce every suspicion, and assure you that your happiness is the highest priority. Better yet, build your marriage philosophy from TikTok, Instagram, celebrities, secular therapists, and influencers who don’t share your convictions about God, Scripture, covenant, sacrifice, or holiness. Scripture warns that “bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33), but Paul was just being dramatic and legalistic! Don’t pay attention to the fact that “the companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20).  Eventually, the voices you repeatedly listen to begin shaping the way you think, but we don’t want to overthink that truth at the expense of people who make us feel so good about ourselves. 

3. Put Your Kids at the Center

This one sounds noble because good parents sacrifice enormously for their children. But if you want to slowly hollow out your marriage, make the children the center of the family. Let soccer, dance, homework, tournaments, activities, birthday parties, and their emotional universe consume everything. Stop dating your spouse because the kids need you. Leave no room in your heart for intimacy with your spouse because the kids are your ultimate idol. Stop talking about anything except schedules and logistics and become outstanding co-managers of children while gradually becoming strangers as husband and wife. 

Your pastor has warned that even though children are an extraordinary gift from God (Psalm 127:3), they make terrible gods, but that kind of counsel just seems so narrow-minded. Even though children were never designed to carry the weight of being the center of your home, it’s important for the death of your marriage that you load up their little shoulders with all your worship. One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is a front-row seat to a faithful, affectionate, Christ-centered marriage, but if you want to kill your marriage, just believe the greatest gift you can give your kids is your worship. 

4. Treat Sex Like an Optional “Extra”

To kill a marriage, you must stop pursuing each other. You need less touching, flirting, wake-up hugs, and good-night kisses. Stop talking honestly about what is happening in the bedroom and your hearts. Let exhaustion, excuses, resentment, insecurity, busyness, work, and children consume whatever energy remains and then gaslight your spouse into thinking it’s their fault! 

Eventually, start living like roommates and then act surprised when you feel like roommates. Because Scripture treats sexual intimacy in marriage far more seriously than our busy lives often do, you will want to avoid any biblical teaching on sex, intimacy, and serving the needs of your husband or wife. Generous marital affection and heeding Paul’s warning not to deprive one another except temporarily and by mutual agreement (1 Corinthians 7:3–5) will only lead to sexual fulfillment, so it’s best to ignore those truths. Do not fight for intimacy, do not fight for privacy, and most of all, do not bring this up. Brush it under the marital rug. 

5. Stop Putting His or Her Needs Above Your Own

Marriage becomes remarkably easy to destroy once both people start keeping score. We think, I initiated last time. I apologized first. I do more around here. I make more money. She hasn’t done this, so I’m not doing that. He stopped trying, so why should I?

Now, when every act of love becomes a transaction, we’re well on our way to the final breath! 

The Christian vision of marriage moves in the opposite direction, so we must at all costs steer clear of the model of Christ. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit…?” (Philippians 2:3) Never! Unless you want to have your marriage begin to thrive.  

6. Treat Marriage Like a Contract Instead of a Covenant

This may be the fastest way to kill your marriage. A contract says, I’ll fulfill my obligations as long as you fulfill yours. A covenant says, I gave you my word. One breathes life, the other ushers in death. 

Contract marriage keeps score, covenant marriage keeps promises. Contract marriage asks whether the other person is still meeting expectations, while covenant marriage asks how I can remain faithful before God. Contract marriage is built around protecting my interests, while covenant marriage is built around giving myself away.

Marriage began with covenant language in that a man leaves father and mother, holds fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Scripture explicitly calls marriage a covenant before God (Malachi 2:14), and Paul ultimately points marriage beyond itself to Christ and His church (Ephesians 5:31–32). Therefore, in order to kill a marriage, resist such realities and choose a business-like transactional union rather than a covenant commitment. 

So, if you want to kill your marriage, turn those vows into terms and conditions. Only give when you receive, only serve when you’re served, only stay tender when they deserve tenderness, and only keep your promises when they keep theirs. 

But if you want a marriage that survives changing bodies, changing bank accounts, difficult seasons, disappointments, suffering, sin, failures, and decades of life together, just do the opposite of these six covenant killers.