How to Handle Spiritual Attacks on Your Marriage
Marriage is a covenant relationship and, therefore, becomes a target for the enemy of our souls. Often, we find our marriages are the landscape for spiritual battle. Not only is it easy for us to view our spouse as the enemy, but we can also feel the onslaught of spiritual forces that seek to pull our relationships apart.
Amazingly, it's the simplest things that can cause the greatest turmoil in our marriages. Simple miscommunications can usher in hurt, angry words, division, and heartbreak. Busy schedules can lead to emotional distance, loneliness, and discouragement. The stress of parenting can result in personal weariness and tension in your marriage. The many good things we each are busy doing can be sources of disconnection, miscommunication, and exhaustion, leaving room for the enemy to sow conflict in our relationships.
If we aren't careful, the small things can become big things that, over time, threaten to pull apart the covenant relationship that we have. We have to be on guard, be proactive about living in unity as a couple, and pray against the endless lies the enemy so often fills our heads with about our spouse. Our marriages are so valuable, it makes sense that they are an easy target. When spiritual attacks target your marriage, you must respond with prayer and grace.
The Real Enemy
How often do you look at your spouse and think of the ways they could do better, have failed you in the past, or you just feel disconnected from them? It’s so easy to go down the “me vs. them” rabbit hole! Negativity is second nature for most of us. Often, it really, truly feels like they are personally against you, but we must remember that in marriage, you become one flesh. Meaning no matter what, you are on the same side! What impacts one of you always touches the life of the other one.
Shifting from “me vs. you” to “us vs. the Enemy” can protect marriage from divisions. The more aware we are of ways the enemy divides us, the better we can guard our marriages. Common strategies the enemy uses include constant misunderstandings, building irrational irritation between us, isolating us from the community, the gradual loss of intimacy, and increased temptation. Recognizing that the enemy is behind the strife we face in our relationship, and learning strategies to guard against these patterns, offers life and hope to our homes.
What the Bible Says about Marriage
Genesis 2:24 says, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” When we get married, our lives merge and are unified. We live together, our fates intertwined, our hearts spiritually intimately connected. God designed marriage as the foundation of family, community, and spiritual formation. The enemy does not want our homes, communities, or lives to thrive, so he uses all his resources to pull apart and undermine what God has put together. When Satan divides us, we are weakened. Unity keeps our marriages safe from attack.
Coming up with a mantra that reminds us that God placed you together as one flesh can be a simple way to pull each other back together. Verbally declaring “we are on the same team” when conflict arises can help de-escalate the situation. Or even a gentle touch, reminding you both that you are for each other, can stop divisions from growing.
Guard Your Thoughts and Words
2 Corinthians 10:5 states, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Oh man, over almost 20 years of marriage, there are so many words and thoughts I have unkindly directed at my spouse in frustration that I wish I could take back. It’s so hard to control ourselves when our minds have already run away from us, consumed with hurt and frustration, but once those harsh words go out into the world, they do damage that we have to find a way to reconcile and move forward as a couple. Thankfully, God’s love is great enough to cover our sins! He makes a way for grace and healing to flow in our homes, but we have to do our best to capture our negative thoughts because they so easily fuel marital discord.
Speak Life Over Your Marriage
Proverbs 18:21 states, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” When we get stuck in negative ruts or struggle with feeling hurt by our spouse, it’s easy to feel hopeless. Our lack of hope makes it harder and harder to speak life over your relationship. Failures begin to outweigh the wins, and negativity takes over the narrative about your marriage.
We have to avoid those dangerous, but so easy to spout out, “always” and “never” statements. Resist thinking that “maybe you were not meant to be” or “you would be better off without each other.” These types of statements invite darkness into your relationship. We start to believe that our relationships are broken beyond repair.
Replace Lies with Truth
Replace the lie that we can never fix this with the truth that God restores what is broken. Choose a scripture to declare over your marriage that offers hope and truth to the situation. This year, I made Isaiah 43:19 my phone background because I am clinging to this verse as a declaration that God is going to do a new thing in my marriage. We will not remain stuck in our old, unhelpful patterns. God will renew our love for each other, help us forgive one another, and help us believe that our marriage is a gift.
In conflict, bring those words of hope into the conversation. Let these words you have chosen to cling to offer a path towards a new narrative of grace for your marriage.
Pray Together
Prayer invites God into the conflict, and the enemy loses ground when we join together in prayer. We must diligently pray that we each remain humble, always considering our spouses' needs before our own. Pray that your hearts remain soft, that you give each other the benefit of grace when miscommunication happens. Ask God to protect your marriage against division. Let unity be your goal. Call on God when you need wisdom on how to act, speak, heal, or move forward. He is gracious in providing the wisdom we need.
When possible, pray together; this habit keeps you close to each other and to the Lord. If you don’t pray daily, set key times to pray during the week. We always pray on Wednesday nights and as a family at our weekly Sunday Brunch and devotion time. In more intense seasons, we’ve committed to praying together daily. Find a rhythm that works for you, but even if your spouse won’t pray with you, be diligent to lift your marriage to the Lord on your own. We can stand in the gap for our marriages, asking God to do only what he can on our behalf.
Marriage is a holy gift we are given. Hebrews 13:4 says, “ Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” We have to fight for our marriages. Keep ourselves pure and remain faithful to the covenant we made with our space and with God when we said “I do.”
Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/jacoblund
Originally published February 23, 2026.
