When you think that your marriage is falling apart, it’s easy to feel helpless and devastated. You’re probably asking yourself how you can tell whether your marriage is beyond repair, if you can ever recover from your spouse’s infidelity, or whether you’ve grown too far apart to come back together. There are many reasons why marriages run into difficulty – broken trust, poor communication, lack of intimacy, conflicting goals, and the list goes on. With the right support and commitment, you can overcome all of these problems. There is, however, one primary reason a marriage cannot be saved: the unwillingness for one or both partners to change.
When your marriage is at risk of falling apart and you’re contemplating divorce, you will need to make profound and fundamental changes to your relationship. If you or your partner cannot commit to making these changes, your marriage will likely not survive. Change is hard, and requires substantial time and effort. But it is achievable. Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to make lasting changes in your relationship, and save your marriage along the way.
Marriage Requires Continuous Care
Your marriage, like your brain, will reinforce the state that you put it in. If you tend to fight, your marriage will be full of conflict. If you practice kindness, your relationship will feel close and secure. Unfortunately, many couples assume that their marriage will take care of itself, or things will just work even when they are living in a state of chaos. In truth, marriage requires care and replenishment.
Any long-term relationship is a delicate ecosystem. It needs nourishment and balance in order to thrive. Long-term relationships evolve over time. The relationship you have at the start of your marriage is not what you’ll have 10, 20, or 30 years later. Therefore, it’s important for both partners to monitor the health of their marriage and make investments along the way to becoming happy and fulfilled together.
Resiliency Will Help Save Your Marriage
As you and your partner grow, raise a family, tend to careers, and deal with life’s ups and downs, your marriage will need some adjustments in order to stay strong. The first step in making any significant changes in your relationship, is having both partners agree what changes are needed. You may have a clear understanding of the problem, but your spouse may not. Or you may both acknowledge what needs fixing but only one of you is willing to make an effort to turn things around. To better gauge you and your partner’s willingness to change, see if you can apply the Stages of Change model below.
Stages Of Change
The psychologist and researcher Stephen Rollnick developed a Stages Of Change model to help assess a person’s readiness to make a change. There are 5 stages in this model:
Precontemplation – a person has little or no motivation to change their behavior as they do not view themselves as having a problem
Contemplation – a person is willing to change their behavior but has not put in the necessary effort
Preparation – a person acknowledges the need to change their behavior and is working to identify the best steps to take next
Action – a person is actively working on changing the problematic behavior
Maintenance – a person has adapted a new behavior and continues to practice and build upon it
As you can see, change is a complex process, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. So if you and your partner want to move your marriage in a new direction, it will require much work, collaboration and communication.
How Therapy Can Help Save Your Marriage
Couples therapy provides 3 main benefits when you want to save your marriage:
1. Teaches skills – Almost no one is ever taught how to have a successful marriage. Sometimes couples simply lack the skills needed for their relationship to run smoothly. With the right training, you’ll see improvements virtually overnight.
2. Keeps you accountable – Most couples lead busy lives. It’s easy to forget to put in the work to your marriage. Having someone else hold you accountable is like having a personal trainer. You will get better results.
3. Provides a third party perspective – it’s tough to be objective and maintain perspective when you’re going through a difficult experience. A third party provides a much-needed objective point of view.
If you’re concerned that your marriage cannot be saved or are thinking about divorce, consider working with an experienced couples therapist to see whether your relationship can be fixed. About 40% of couples that get divorced regret it, so make sure you give your marriage the best chance of success before making a significant life decision.
