The Meaning of Marriage, Chapter 5

Loving the Stranger
p.160
Serving your spouse also means showing that you are committed to his or her well-being and flourishing.  This kind of love is given when you seek to help you spouse develop gifts and pursue aspirations for growth...
One of the greatest expressions of love is the willingness to change, to make a commitment to change attitudes and behaviors in yourself that trouble or hurt your spouse.  There must be an ability to take correction and to be accountable for real concrete changes.  This kind of change is always hard, and nearly impossible without the grace of God, but it is also one of the most powerful signs of love in a marriage.

It means being tenderly affectionate and transparent with each other.  And you hear your spouse lifting you up to God for blessing.  if you do that every day, or most days, it seasons your entire realtiionship with the love of God and of one another.
The Power of Grace--Reconciling
The solution is grace!
p,.164 you are not really telling the truth for their sake; you are telling it for your sake, and the fruit of that will be grief, bitterness, and despair.
One of the most basic skills in marriage is the ability to tell the straight, unvarnished truth about what your spouse has done-and then, completely, unself-righteously, and joyously express forgiveness without a shred of superiority, without making the other person feel small.  This does not mean you cannot express anger.  In fact, if you never express anger, your truth-telling probably won't sink in.  But forgiving grace must always be present, and if it is, it will, like salt in meat, keep the anger from going bad.  Then truth and love can live together because beneath them both, you have forgiven your spouse as Christ forgave you.
The Ultimate Power
And marriage has the unique power to show us the GRACE OF WHAT GOD DID FOR US IN JESUS CHRIST.  In Ephesians 5, Paul tells us that Jesus laid down his life for us, forgiving at great cost us to make us something beautiful.  And because he has done it for us, we can do the same for others,.