You all step into your marriages with the hopes of foreverness, yet per American Psychological Associations report 50% of marriages find themselves in a break of that fantasy. Divorce does not happen in one day. It brews slowly. Watch for the following signs that deteriorates your relationship every day toward divorce. Shift to healthier skills before it’s too late.
Miscommunication
When you have more monologues than dialogues. If you experience that you and your mate are from two different planets, as if whatever you say goes to a waste land never to be found by your mate, while whatever he says appears to be off margin for your, and most dangerously you no longer have the desire to listen and understand each other. Red Alert.
*Communication is the only and most important tool that you have to understand, cooperate, negotiate, resolve and set forth action toward your life together.
Unmet expectations
Marriage is the most encompassing partnership where you have to join in decision making, managing tasks, and creating results in almost all aspects of life. It is obvious that you will hold many expectations from each other. Some talked about and agreed upon, some agree to disagree, some disagreed by your mate but you assumed that was agreed upon since you said the last sentence, and some never talked about but expected anyway.
*Expectations need to be communicated clearly, negotiated and agreed upon for it to be handled. Realistic expectations are the ones that can be negotiated and agreed upon.
Unresolved matters
This is when the resentment for all the miscommunications and unmet expectations continue to store up. With every incident you add a negative strike to your hope for this marriage working. With every little fight you bring up all the past similar incidents in order to remind your mate that you are putting up with a lot and it is still unresolved. Resentments becomes personal and end up being a character assassination.
You either make it mean something negative about you or your mate. Feelings of sadness and sorrow for the relationship that you hoped for will creep in, anger at your mate for not being who you want him/her to be and angry at yourself for choosing this mate will surface.
*Sharing and releasing pent up emotions is crucial to becoming peaceful, connected. You need to learn problem solving and negotiation skills to resolve matters.
What’s in it for me?
This is when you are no longer enjoying the relationship as a partnership, it becomes a chore to keep and survive. You go into protecting yourself, no longer feel safe and don’t see added value. Create individualized activities to reclaim the self under the umbrella of couple hood destroys the “US”. *Marriage is about the togetherness of the “US” and you draw what you put in it. Remember when you stop giving into the relationship there is nothing to gain from it.
Assigning blame
Since you no longer feel the togetherness, you now tend to blame your mate for a character that they have, actions they do, a circumstance that has gotten created for this separateness. You tilt the relationship by focusing on the negative attributes of your mate than their positive virtues. You may think that you have done all you could to fix it and give up.
*Not taking responsibility for your own role in creating this result in your marriage will end your marriage. Seeing the bigger picture of the marriage might help balance your view and create motivation to work on your marriage.
It is important to seek professional help as you see any of these signs. There is always a chance to work on what you have invested on so far. If divorce is chosen, seeking help is still important to keep a healthy relationship with the other parent of your children, since they will always be your relative from here on, and to heal yourself from the ill marriage, regain your sense of healthy sense to move on with your great life.