When people come to seek divorce, there are so many questions, many are about assessing marriage breakdown. If you are assessing marriage breakdown for yourself, and whether you are in the process, this section will help you look at realistically what kind of relationship you have currently. If one or more of the following sounds like your relationship, seek counseling assistance quickly. There can be a point of no return, where so much damage has occurred that divorce has become inevitable. Work on these things before it is too late.
Sit down with your spouse and talk over whether these things are issues. If you cannot talk about them, they ARE issues, and you need to seek counseling or mediation to help facilitate communication. In many cases, we have had one spouse in a couple who says they never saw it coming. Have you been listening carefully to your spouse? Do you really know their feelings and emotions? It doesn’t matter if you are making long-term plans for travel, life insurance, or other future endeavors. A breaking point does not know the future. It knows the present, and that the pain in the present has become too much to bear.
#1: Communication, Part 1, Respect
Good communication in marriage is respectful. Good communication avoids such disrespect as sarcasm, judgement, and put downs. Disrespect of your partner causes a slow chiseling away of love and passion. Is your communication respectful, or does it show grave disrespect? Good communication in marriage is a two-way street. Respectful listening is also important. Good communication in marriage is honest. Lying causes long-term consequences in the marriage relationship. Honesty is not merely avoiding falsehood. Honesty also means that we do not avoid sharing information that our spouse has the right to know and would want to know. Good communication also takes time. Spending time together talking and listening can be done in many ways in addition to sitting down face-to-face. How is your communication? Is it respectful or full of disrespect?
#2: Communication, Part 2, Listening
If you spend a lot of time in your head, you probably are not really hearing your partner. When one partner says, “I did not know anything was wrong,” it is usually because they were really not listening. Body language can even be louder than words. If you are not taking times to learn visual cues, and paraphrase back to your partner, what you think you heard them say, you are not exhibiting active listening. Do you know how your partner likes to be listened to? Some people like to vent. It is important to hear the underlying message in the venting. Some partners want help resolving an issue. It is important to ask questions, get facts, and brainstorm solutions.
Are you asking your partner what she/he needs in the moment? You can learn a lot from listening, as this is a form of active listening. How you ask questions is key to getting a person to communicate with you honestly. There is a lot more to listening than you think. How well are you really listening to your spouse?
#3: Commitment
One of the worst things in a relationship is to do things that turn away from or push away our partner. The most critical time to move closer to your spouse is when things are at their most difficult. When you are in a fight, the manner in which you engage with your spouse can be the difference between contributing to marriage breakdown or to building up the marriage. Deadly phrases like “maybe, we should get a divorce” (while not necessarily meant) are the types of words that contribute to the biggest wounds. Words can build up or tear down. Actions that don’t demonstrate commitment can be the biggest contributor to growing apart. Many times, when people say they have grown apart, it is because they have done things over time to distinguish the flame. What kinds of things do you say or do that might be diminishing the demonstrated commitment you have with your partner?
#4: Making Your Partner a Priority
In today’s world, we have so many competing priorities. You cannot put everything else in your life before your relationship and expect it to survive. Just because you think your spouse will always be there does not mean they will if you neglect them as a priority. It is the little things that count: the handwritten notes left around the house, greeting your spouse when they get home, or the show of affection every day, several times a day. Romantic gestures can go a long way toward keeping the kindling burning. We hear that everyone is so busy. Do you know what busyness gets you? It gets you to more busyness. You have to take the time out to focus on your partner. Is your partner the number one priority in your life?
#5: Forgiveness
Forgiveness can sound cliche. However, just because it sounds cliche does not mean it isn’t imperative. Forgiveness does not mean you are condoning the “wrong”, but rather being willing to move on. What is really important is not allowing the power of the emotion behind a grudge to hold you back from an expressive, loving life. Do not forget to forgive yourself as well.
If you haven’t forgiven, remember a lack of forgiveness leads to resentment, bitterness, and blaming. These emotions can consume you in ways that are not evident, but cause pain that create deep roots over time. How do you stop the blame game? What support do you need in order to take part in forgiveness?
#6: Infidelity is Often not About Sex
Many things contribute to infidelity, and it is important to keep in mind that infidelity is an indicator that something is not working in one or more parts of the marriage. Infidelity is the single most powerful sign of a relationship’s dysfunction. When you begin to confide in another person with whom you have an emotional attraction, the risk of attention being diverted away from your primary relationship is huge. If you are more emotionally connected to someone other than your spouse, are you willing to give that up?
The point of this section isn’t to place blame or guilt, it is about assessing whether you can go back and fix what has contributed to the emotional or physical breakdown with your partner. Is it too late to go back and repair the rift in your relationship?
#7: Distractions
Healthy relationships require presence by both parties, and if we are caught up in many distractions by “things” other than our partner, marriage breakdown is likely. I think distractions are different for each couple, and this goes back to communication. What kinds of things does your spouse consider a distraction? Or how would we like our focused time together to go?
At one time, Facebook was implicated in over 20 percent of divorces in the US (Huffington Post, 2012). Common Facebook issues include gossip about your partner, rekindling old romances, and flirting with new prospects while married or committed to another. Similar to infidelity, Facebook issues like these often contribute to marriage breakdown. I would like to think that in the last decade or so, we have gotten wise to the risks of social media. But, distractions can be a powerful force.
#8: Acceptance
We all have our own personality, our own love language, and our own cultural conditioning. In any relationship, we can either learn to accept or even cherish these differences, or try to change the other person. First, it is important to understand what those differences are. Second, it is critical to talk about how these differences show up in our relationship, how they trigger our partner. And most importantly, how to go about accepting my spouse for his/her differences.
This does not mean you cannot challenge your partner to grow or to stretch beyond cultural conditioning. But, you have to accept that fundamentally your partner is not going to change. Hopefully, you accepted them for who they are, not who they can become. Can you accept your partner for who they are? Because if you cannot, it is better to walk now. I have found that not accepting your spouse is probably the biggest driver of marriage breakdown, more so than any of the others. Because no one wants to live in a judgemental relationship where they are not respected.
#9: Emotional Baggage
Everyone has his/her own emotional baggage. The question is how well you manage that baggage within your relationship. We often select partners who can help us work on our childhood wounds, yet what often happens is that our partner’s behavior just become triggers for expression of baggage. We expect that the other person will carry our baggage for us. For example, you may be sensitive to criticism, so you expect your partner to walk on eggshells around you. Instead of dealing with our own insecurities, we expect our partner to work around them. If we were conscious enough to identify our own baggage and what triggers us, we could manage our reactions before they spill out on to our partner. Do you and your spouse take time to identify what triggers one another?
In extreme cases, it may be important to talk to a counselor or even a psychologist to see if things can be managed with personal growth tools or if medication might even be needed. When was the last time you unpacked your baggage in the light of day to see where criticism, dishonesty, or anger is holding your relationship back?
Use this information to assess how many and how much of an issue you and your spouse might have. Also, checkout more of A Good Divorce overview for additional topics.