Marriage invites us to see our spouse’s failings better than anyone else can see them. And it’s far easier to see another person’s fault than it is to see our own.

So it’s really disappointing to read this gem that you’ve probably seen and heard many times:

You can only change yourself.

It’s a truth that used to frustrate me quite a bit. I could so clearly see what my husband needed to work on in order for me to want to have sex with him. And after I worked hard on sex and had made a lot of progress, I sometimes felt irritated that I had done all the work while he was just relaxing and reaping all the benefits of my effort.

A couple years had passed before I was able to see that there is a truth beyond “You can only change yourself.”

Here’s the truth: Working on myself was good for me.

Sure, my husband was benefitting from my effort. Our marriage was benefitting from my effort. But you know what?

So was I.

My guess is that even if your husband isn’t making any effort at improvement, working on yourself would be good for you too.

Let’s take a look at what this means and why you’ll benefit.

What does it mean to work on yourself?

Working on yourself simply means that you are pursuing growth. You’re trying to be a better version of yourself.

We don’t all have the same paths of growth, but when it comes to sex, four pathways are especially helpful.

1. Find your identity in Christ.

So many of us find our identity and meaning in what we do and how well we do it. We volunteer at church or the kids’ school. We take on more than we probably should, and we stress about doing everything perfectly.

We struggle with body image, concerned that how we look determines our value. We suffer from low self-esteem. We let other people’s words define who we are and what we are worth.

Our sense of our identity and value spills over into every other area of marriage, including sex.

Finding your identity in Christ and in what He did for you is the most important thing in this whole list. I really like how these two articles approach the idea of identity: Women, Trade Self-Worth for Awe and Wonder and Who Am I? A New Way to Define Identity.

2. Pursue healing.

Most of us carry some brokenness, sexual and otherwise. Whether it is childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault as an adult, growing up in a dysfunctional family, or whatever other experience has wounded you, find help. Develop tools to deal with difficult memories. Learn to identify habits and thoughts that grew out of this brokenness and create new ones that are healthier.

Along the same lines, deal with baggage you brought into your marriage. If you had a promiscuous past, repent and accept God’s forgiveness. If you made bad choices, learn to lay them at the foot of the cross and be free of the guilt and shame.

You need and deserve healing. You are God’s precious daughter, created in His image and loved so much that His Son died for you. Sure, a healed version of you is going to be a much better marriage partner than a wounded and broken you—but pursue healing for yourself regardless of whether it will help your marriage.

Pray, seek counseling, share your story, write in a journal, or draw your thoughts or feelings. Do what you can to release the hold of your wounds and memories on your heart. You may not be fully healed until Heaven, but even getting to a point of less pain can make a big difference for you.

3. Learn about God’s plan for sex in marriage.

Most of us grow up without accurate teaching about God’s design for sex in marriage. Whether we have absorbed messages from the church or from the world at large, we have to relearn a lot of what we think is true about sex.

To begin, we need to unlearn negative messages. (See Silence the Lies for help.) Then we need to learn to absorb the truth.

You could try reading the Song of Songs, going through a Passion Pursuit study (I’ll be doing one again this fall), joining a community of Christian wives, or ask for help.

4. Reflect on and change your own actions.

Identify how you may have contributed to your marriage difficulties and work to change those things.

Even if your husband is 99% of the problem, you are still responsible for your 1%. One of the earliest changes I made was to simply take a deep breath before responding to my husband about anything, whether or not it was about sex. That helped me stop my automatic “no” and actually think about whether I would like to have sex. Taking a breath sounds like a small change, but it made a big difference.

If you see areas where you have been sinning, repent and ask forgiveness. If you see something where you could better show love to your husband, do that.

Why is your effort worthwhile for you?

You are not responsible for what your husband does. If he is in unrepentant sin against you, your problem is not your relationship but your husband’s actions. Work on yourself because it’s good for you, but also be sure you are seeking support for what else is going on.

Working on yourself is good if for no other reason than the fact that growth is good. As a Christian, working on yourself is part of your ongoing spiritual formation. We should always be growing.

You’ll become a healthier version of yourself. When you see everything through the lenses of pain and heartache, you’re bound to see things from a perspective that expects more hurt. When you are more healed, though, you can see things more clearly and joyfully.

It helps your marriage, too.

Even if your husband doesn’t make any effort to grow, your marriage can still be positively affected by your effort to work on yourself.

As you grow, you change the dynamic in your marriage relationship. When you are different, the atmosphere in your marriage shifts too. (See Climate Change for more about this.) Even a small change can lead to new and better interactions between you and your husband.

If your husband has been frustrated with your sex life and you focus your effort in that area, you may well experience benefits in your sex life and in your marriage overall.

If sex has been a source of tension, every step of progress you make whittles away at a major hurdle in your marriage. Fewer arguments about sex means that you are arguing less in your marriage. Less resentment about sex from either of you means less resentment in your marriage.

When you work on yourself, it allows you to respond to your husband from a place of health rather than a place of hurt. When I was hurting from emotional disconnection in our marriage, every conversation about sex became a mutual flinging of accusations. As that faded away and I had a better understanding of why sex mattered so much to my husband, I was able to address his lack of effort from the perspective of someone who was still doing hard work on herself.

It’s basically a matter of removing the plank from my eye so I could see clearly to remove the speck from my husband’s.

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If your husband is a part of the problem in your marriage, clearly he needs to do some work too. And if your husband is generally a good-willed guy who wants a better marriage, he may just surprise you with some effort of his own down the road.

Until then, remember . . . you can only change yourself.

Fortunately, working on yourself is always worth doing. You are worthy of your own effort, my friend.

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