5 Ways to Keep Your Marriage Strong While Raising Teenagers
Ohhhh, the joys and woes of raising teenagers! With the teenage years comes an entirely new batch of experiences and facts you may not have been expecting. Traditionally, we’re used to hearing all the advice for new parents and parents of young ones. You won’t sleep, you won’t eat, you’ll be stretched thin, your patience will be tested, and so forth. For some reason, there is an unspoken magical quality about the teen years that gives an improper expectation. Your teen is independent; they can think for themselves, you don’t have to watch them as closely, and they develop their own minds.
If you’re like me, you can read that last sentence and go, “There’s a recipe for disaster!” It’s true. I’m raising teenagers. No one warned me. Yes, my teenagers are independent, and with that comes more arguments than I care to count. No longer is “because I said so” even an adequate response. It’s like they don’t even hear it. Sure, they can think for themselves, which means nine times out of ten, their thoughts don’t align with mine. Insert arguing again. Oh yes, and we don’t have to watch them closely? HA! Just wait until you hand the car keys over to your teenage son, or send your daughter cross-country on a plane by herself. It’s not uncommon to rationally conclude that your son probably will drive too fast and risk his life, and your daughter is being watched by people with ill intent. It’s just the world we live in. So no, the “watching your children closely” part doesn’t go away; it just takes a different style.
Because of this, our marriages are taxed! Yes! And let’s not address it, but at least acknowledge the elephant in the room. You’re living with almost-adults. So how do you “adult” in your marriage when your kids stay up until 1 AM? Alone time is essentially non-existent, and PDA of any shape or form is not only gag-response-inducing to your teen but potentially traumatizing too.
So, in marriage during the teen years, we struggle with lack of sleep, a severe deficit of patience, a shortage of relaxation, and not as much time together as we thought we’d have by now.
Here are just a few things you can do to keep your marriage strong and survive the teen years:
1. Prioritize Time Alone as a Couple
1. Prioritize Time Alone as a Couple
I know! It sounds almost ridiculous. Between the running teens here, there, and everywhere, monitoring their activities, negotiating terms of living together, bumbling through ushering them into adulthood, and giving them relationship advice for their own dating experiences, we tend to sacrifice our alone time.
And we’re not just talking alone time of the physical nature of things. While important, what’s even more critical, is time to communicate! To be together! To maintain the most important relationship in your life next to your relationship to the Lord.
The truth is, once your kids hit the tempestuous teens, they will only be with you for a few more years. Sooner than later, the house will be quiet, the evenings long, and guess what? You’re going to have time together! So don’t be strangers when that happens. Prioritize time together now and, in doing so, teach your teens that the marriage relationship and foundation are just as critical for them to have a healthy teen life as it is for you to have a healthy marriage.
Date nights, long walks, an hour here, and an hour there? Take what you can get, but make sure you take it.
2. Present a United Front on Discipline
2. Present a United Front on Discipline
This cannot be emphasized enough. If anyone knows how to play parents, it’s a teenager. A wife can completely emasculate her husband by undermining his leadership and giving in to their teenager when he’s put his foot down. Alternatively, the husband can completely defeat his wife’s authority in their teenagers’ lives by demeaning her intelligence or abilities in front of them. The teenager interprets that as a lack of trust and therefore they disregard their mother as untrustworthy or “stupid.”
Be sure that you are both on the same page when it comes to disciplining your teen. And yes. They should be disciplined. It may look different, now that they’re older. But you’re still their parent, and they are still growing. Determine as a couple how you will handle the argumentativeness, the lack of respect, the disregard for house rules, the daring of dating, and so on. There is nothing more effective in parenting than two parents on the same team.
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3. Speak Your Spouse’s Love Language Daily
3. Speak Your Spouse’s Love Language Daily
Don’t forget to love your spouse. For real. This one gets forgotten in the busyness of raising kids. Love languages can catapult you to the front of the line, too. If you’re trying really hard to love your spouse in a language only you understand, the labor will be very intensive before they hear what you’re saying.
What do I mean? Well, if you always need to hear “well done” from your spouse in order to be affirmed that they truly love you, and that’s how you communicate back to them, if they don’t need that, they’ll just hear the telephone lady from Charlie Brown droning “wah-wah-wah-wah.”
Instead, they may need you to take out the trash and sweep the kitchen. It sounds menial and often, not even romantic. But if acts of service are your wife’s love language. Watch out! The water works might even start when she sees her crumb-less kitchen floor.
4. Give Grace When Emotions Run High
4. Give Grace When Emotions Run High
The emotions in a house of teenagers and adults is usually in the red zone on the meter. Yes, you get those beautiful days and maybe weeks, if you’re blessed, where you all get along. But inevitably, heads will butt against one another, and the warning alarms will go off.
Interestingly, even though the teenager probably initiated this emotional supercharge, it’s often the spouses who take the brunt of their partner’s feelings. We snap, we yell, we stomp away, and we often will blame the other parent for a shortcoming that supposedly contributed to the problem. And maybe it did! But during these times of heightened emotion, opting toward grace with your spouse is better. This isn’t the time to blame; it’s the time to form a unified front. Your teenager is a powerful force, and you really don’t want to stand alone.
5. Laugh Often and Don’t Take Everything Seriously
5. Laugh Often and Don’t Take Everything Seriously
It’s true! Laughter is some of the best medicine. While you definitely want to experience this with your teen, this article is about you and your spouse. And oftentimes, laughter is the last thing we tend to share with one another. That and the idea that “this too shall pass”. Because it will, barring a critical issue evolving with your teenager, many of the tense moments are around smaller things that will be worked through.
Learning to laugh about them is one thing. First, we have to not take them so seriously as to redirect our angst against our spouse. That is really, really important! How do we do this? I have no idea. I just know it’s a good thing when it happens. How’s that for helpful? Keep it in the back of your mind. Try to allow your emotional reactions to dissipate in exchange for objective thinking. Don’t be afraid to cast a wink at your spouse in the height of things so you can remember to laugh later.
Raising teenagers? It’s not for the faint of heart. But it can be extremely rewarding, not just as parents, but as married couples. Join forces, brave souls! Ride into the fray with the intent not to forget the one at your side! Raise your banners high and prepare for battle! Draw your swords and—no. Fine. I’m being extreme.
The point is, we need our spouses. The last thing we want to do is damage our relationship with each other while trying to preserve our relationship with our teen. So communicate, spend time together, prioritize each other, share thoughts and emotions, and don’t criticize the other—even if they are overreacting.
And just imagine…one of these days, not long in the future, you’ll be rocking on your front porch, coffee in hand, talking about the “good ol’ days” when your phone rings, and your now adult child calls to ask you: “What do I do? My teenager is driving us nuts!”
Originally published July 29, 2025.
