dudesndivorce.com

One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever have to make is the one involving if and when to leave your marriage.  Here at DudesnDivorce.com we believe in marriage and that it is the best possible institution upon which to base a family and raise children.  The best that is as long as both parties are reasonably emotionally healthy adults who are committed to working on the marital relationship.  Russ and I both know very well that sometimes that’s not the case and that when things degrade beyond a certain point that it is sometimes necessary for someone to finally say “enough is enough” and at least temporarily leave the relationship.

But how do you know when that time has come?  That truly is the nexus of the problem!  Having been there myself and having heard many other men wrestle with the same question I know very well how torturous it can be.  If you leave are you leaving too soon?  Is there still maybe some hope for the relationship?  Are you leaving for the right reasons?  Do those reasons justify the impact this will have on the children?  If you stay can you live with things if they don’t change?  What will the home life be like and what will that do to yourself and the children.  On and on and round and round the questions go with no resolution in sight.

Of course there is no way for someone outside of the marriage to answer those questions definitively for you.  While there is never a shortage of “friends” or family who will eagerly counsel you to leave they are really doing you a disservice since they won’t suffer any of the consequences of leaving and can’t really know all the factors to be considered the way that you do.  Contrarily there are also usually a few people who will tell you to “stick with it” no matter what – again this isn’t always the best advice since it’s frequently based more on ideology that on an accurate assessment of the costs of leaving vs. staying (emotional, financial, physical). 

While sources of balanced and helpful advice may be few and far between there are, I believe, some general principles that can serve you well in making a choice about when to leave and when to stay.  I’d like to briefly introduce each of these and then we can discuss them in greater length in following posts.

1.  Commitment – What is the commitment level?  Obviously since you’re thinking about leaving there are some problems in this department – how pervasive are they?  It’s normal and natural to entertain doubts about any relationship as your level of commitment to your partner ebbs and wanes over time. Relationships go through periods of boredom and the spark can seem to go out as the daily grind extinguishes meaningful communication – is that what is happening?  Or is it something much deeper?  Is there an active disregard for one another’s needs or just a passive one?  If you’ve gotten too lazy to serve one another then it’s probably fixable – but if you are both actively doing things that intentionally disregard the good of the other . . . well then the problem is much deeper.  Not unfixable – but much harder to do so.

2.  Trust – Without trust a marriage can not survive long.  This is why affairs are so deadly – they undermine the most basic level of trust between husband and wife.  Of course infidelity is not the only source of distrust.  A couple can be completely faithful to one another and yet still have issues in this area.  Reckless spending, undependability and lying are all trust destroyers.  How long has the trust been an issue?  The longer the pattern of behavior the harder it is to change and the more difficult to rebuild trust.

3.  Respect – Spouses should seek to build up and encourage their mate, not pull them down.  They should also not take each other for granted and expect a one way street in terms of meeting each others needs.  This is often a common problem when the wife is a stay at home mom who cooks and cleans and cares for children while the husband earns the daily bread out in the workforce.  Quite often we men tend to take the situation for granted and just expect a clean house and a hot meal . . . without thinking too much about our wife’s needs.  Of course that shoe fits either foot and women sometimes expect a lot from their husbands without much consideration.  While it’s easy to slip into with the daily grind a lack of respect for the contributions of each other can quickly undermine the satisfaction either spouse derives from the marriage – and that introduces a multitude of potential problems.

4.  Communication – Okay, for clarifications sake let me just say right here and now that “pass the salt” does not qualify as “communication”.   Communication involves actively seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the other person and their thoughts, beliefs, feelings and desires.  It’s not a debate, it’s not a fencing match and it doesn’t always involve you doing all the talking.  Communication isn’t something that comes naturally, believe it or not, and takes practice to learn how to do effectively.  If communication in your marriage is limited to long monologues by one person interspersed by a few grunts of acknowledgement by the other – or by lots of fighting – then you’ve got a problem.  If you can’t communicate then preserving the relationship is going to be hard – but if you CAN learn to communicate then any problem is instantly 5 giant steps closer to a resolution.

5.  Safety – Sometimes a relationship can become so toxic that it becomes literally dangerous to stay in it.  Most commonly this is a product of substance abuse, domestic violence and/or mental health issues.  If you find yourself in a situation in which either you or your children are in danger of physical or significant emotional harm then you need to get out – you don’t have to divorce but you need to put yourself and them out of immediate danger.

Those five general principles are a good starting point as you weigh your options and consider which road to take.  They can’t predict the future but they do help you gauge the possibility of restoring the relationship.  Not a simple answer but no simple answer is going to be worth much at this point.  If you are considering a divorce or separation then things have already become much too complicated for a simple solution.

My next post will concentrate on looking a bit more deeply into the idea of comitment.

Until then – Be Well!!

Bill