The question is how many of those marriages could be saved. Unfortunately, that is an invisible number. If your marriage stays together, it is hard to find in the statistics. As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.
Can your marriage be saved? If I could answer that, I would be a wealthy man. I can tell you that if your marriage is in trouble and you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed. If you do something, there is a much better chance that your marriage will be saved.
And I can tell you, in four simple steps what you can do to save your marriage. You can start right now. But you must understand that I said "simple." That is not the same as "easy." These steps are not easy. They do, however, give you a path that you must follow if you want to change the destiny of a marriage in trouble.
How to Prevent a Divorce
Divorce is very old school. It is what our parents did but not something you should ever do. Yes, marriage is hard. And yes there are times that even the best marriages have rough patches. And yes, there are times that you want to just walk away. But divorce is not the answer. It is almost never the answer. A big-news divorce is Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. It is a muddy, horrid mess as many divorces are. And the kids will be the ones to suffer in the end. How can they turn it around? Well, they can. They just need help from wise people who know the long term risks if they continue with the divorce. So read on to see how they could fall back in love and stay married for life.
Most people who want a divorce are in terrible pain. The pain can be emotional or physical, mental or spiritual but it is real pain they want to escape. This is only natural. Most every human being and animal for that matter hates pain. The body's natural reflexes, which were build in, make it retract from pain. Just try scaring someone without them knowing by flicking your fingers in their face: the eyelids will automatically close. Or if you accidentally burn your finger, your hand will retract even a bit.
The body, mind, and soul's desire to avoid pain is an incredible force and motivator. Especially when one feels that one's "needs" are not being met or that another, more attractive person is out there, is ready and is available to meet "one's needs," it can seem like an easy way out instead of going the long road of working on the marriage to make things work in the end. Getting out of the marriage can seem like an easy way to avoid the chronic pain you feel when you are in the same vicinity of the one you once loved and now despise. But it is a terrible quick fix which will lead to long term pain and misery, not just in terms of future "happiness scores" (and there is a great deal of data on how divorce makes you unhappier a year from now and in the long term), not just mentally and psychologically but most importantly physically (also many studies on your health after divorce and your kid's health after divorce) and spiritually.
Some friends have said to me, "I don't love him anymore," or "he does not love me any more," or "our love is dead." My friend has a real feeling when she says that, but that is all it is, a feeling. And LOVE is not a feeling, it is truly an action, and it has to always be an action for one to ever have a chance at happiness.
Love has to be an action verb in all situations. The reason is simple. If someone says, "the love is gone," well that will happen to your next relationship and the next and the next. That is what countless research shows. This is the reason why one is . It will not end with this current relationship if you treat love as a feeling. Feelings come and go all the time. It is impossible to be 100% of the time angry: eventually someone will tell you a joke and break you even for a moment. Similarly it is impossible to always feel like you want to smile or you want to love. There are moments in life when even the most saintly person does not want to love. What makes that person a saint is the decision that person makes to love others despite that person's desire to be alone and focus on "self" and no none else.
Loving till it hurts and beyond is truly the only way to happiness. And even if you know this and you truly believe this and even if you have offered your life as a victim soul and want to be a martyr and are trying to be a saint, it can at times seem like marriage is an impossibility. Yet the true right thing to do is to stick with it, fight the good fight, increase the love and keep loving. But it is very hard at times.
This is where you might need some cold hard facts to snap you out of the funk and help you realize that divorce or the affair may seem to alleviate the pain you are feeling, but actually it is only a mirage and the pain will come back full force when you see what it can do to your health and worse...to your kids! So if you have kids and you are completely selfish, there are still reasons to stay married and still try the best you can to smile every day to your spouse and each child and try to make your home a bright and cheerful home!
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