Getting divorced is a deeply personal decision, and you shouldn't make it in haste. If you are contemplating ending your marriage, you may be struggling to face up to the potential consequences of your actions. You may be wondering if it would be easier to stay married than to deal with the emotional turmoil and financial pressures of divorce. If you have children, you may want to stay together for their sake. Every situation is different, and ultimately, you are the only person who can decide whether divorce is the right choice.
Step 1
Ask yourself what would be your reasons for staying married. If you have an objective in mind that you could achieve if you were able to work through the problems in the marriage, your relationship is more likely to last, says Susan Pease Gadoua, author of "Contemplating Divorce." You could set a positive goal to maintain a secure, two-parent family for your children or to work through your trust issues to improve your relationship and your self-esteem. If your main reason for staying married stems from an avoidance of difficult emotions, the marriage is less likely to survive, says Gadoua. Staying married because you are scared of being alone or you can't bear the thought of spending time apart from your children is not likely to lead to long-term happiness.
Step 2
Make sure you have done everything possible to improve the relationship. If both parties are committed to working through issues to create a healthier relationship, the marriage may be salvageable, says Gadoua. If you both want the marriage to last, consider marital therapy to help you identify the problems and develop the skills required to solve them.
Step 3
Accept when the relationship is over. A healthy, fulfilling marriage should have honesty, trust, commitment, fidelity, care, respect and common goals. If any of these are absent, it may be better for you to go your separate ways.
Step 4
Put your own needs before those of your spouse, children, and anybody else who may be affected by a divorce. Children will be happier being the product of a broken home than living in one, says psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw. Don't stay together for your children's sake if that means living with stress and unhappiness. Look deep within yourself to find the answer. There is a part of you that will know whether divorce is the right option, says Judith Johnson, an interfaith minister who holds a doctorate in social psychology.
There are many things you can do to turn your relationship around when you find yourself on a rocky road, if you’re willing to team up and face reality together—and that will only happen if you both wantyour marriage to last. The key factor in getting back on track is turning things around as early as possible. It happens over different time frames for different people, but at some point, you reach the point of no return. Marriage therapists often describe five stages in the divorce process that start long before the D-word is ever mentioned by couples. Here, I'll describe each stage and explain how you might start to redirect when it's still possible. 1. Dissatisfaction:
This is a place of disillusionment, where you have a growing sense of disappointment about the way your relationship is going and how you feel around your partner. Maybe the spark has gone out of the relationship and it feels flat. Criticism may creep into your everyday conversations and actions. Ignore these warning signs at your peril—finding yourself regularly feeling disappointed and flat about your relationship is no small thing. Getting help at this point is likely to be beneficial because you’re probably still both open to change and not yet so resentful of each other that you stop wanting to try. Sadly, one of the most common mistakes couples make is to shut their eyes and keep careening dangerously towards the end of the road believing things will just magically fix themselves. Most of the time, they don’t. How to turn it around:
Turning around means consciously putting energy into your love like you did at the start, creating a shared focus on connecting, increasing awareness of your relationship vulnerabilities and strengths, seeking strategies to reconnect deeply, learning skills, and building generosity of spirit toward one another again. You must move away from dissatisfaction and back into happiness before too much damage is done to your relationship. Start by finding the courage to own how you really feel, without defensiveness or blaming. Consider getting couples counseling earlier rather than later, because that’s when it will be most helpful. If that’s too difficult or daunting, at least gather some basic resources that will help you start a new conversation together—some books or an online relationship class to prompt you to face your dissatisfaction head-on together.
2. Emotional erosion:
This is where you stop caring as much about your partner—or worse, developing a sense of resentment and apathy about doing anything to improve your closeness and communication. The distance between the two of you may seem to increase every week. but you don’t pay too much attention. Couples who don’t turn around at this stage tend to increasingly distract themselves and hope the relationship will fix itself. It can last weeks or years depending on how much you can stomach. How to turn it around:
As you drive around the communication boulders on this rocky road, you start to clearly see why turning around sooner would have been a better idea. The less interest you have in healing the relationship, the more resistance you'll face when you try to turn things around. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily too late. If you care enough to save your relationship, that's enough to take the first step. At this point, professional intervention is your best bet. Try to start regular counselling on your own, if your partner isn't open to it initially—as soon as possible. That way, even if it doesn't work out in the end, you'll know you did everything you could to save the relationship. And you'll be prepared to move forward in a much healthier way. 3. Loneliness:
In this third stage of a fading relationship trajectory, if you open your tired eyes, you’ll realize that glaringly obvious danger signs have been all over the road for miles. The signs tell you to find each other again urgently—to reactivate intimacy or risk losing it permanently. This is a place of emotional detachment, to the point that other interests—children, friends, work, sports, or even another potential lover may become more important to you than each other. Instead of the disappointment and confusion of dissatisfaction or the anger and resentment of the erosion you may start to feel what Pink Floyd called "comfortably numb." This stage usually ends when something bright and shiny at the side of the road suddenly catches your eye and you feel alive again, awoken to what you’ve been missing. Trouble is, you’re likely to jump out of the car on your own to chase it, causing injury to every heart. How to turn it around:
Act now if you want to save the relationship with openness, energy, empathy, love, and most of all by teaming up again. This is your relationship’s trial by fire. It shouldn’t have come to this, but it has. Now, you must really fight for each other. Turn to one another with a shared focus, or keep gazing out the side windows, ignoring each other, at your own peril. Still haven’t managed to turn the car around?
If you've been trying your best and it still hasn't happened, know that it's not your fault. You can't do it alone. It absolutely takes two. Taking the best path is ultimately knowing in your heart that you did your best. 4. The fork in the road:
The fourth stage of the journey to divorce is the fork in the road. Here, single street meets the road you've been on, and your paths diverge. It’s here that you must make the final decision to turn the car around together. Otherwise, it's time to go on alone. Either way, it’s your responsibility to yourselves and any children you have to choose your path with dignity and handle the fallout with maturity and grace. People survive divorce, but abuse, unkindness, and chaos cause damage—whether a couple stays together or not. If you decide to go your separate ways, don’t let it be any more painful than it has to be. That's not easy to do when you feel (understandably) angry, lost, panicked, and hurt, but here's how you stay in control. Remember that behaving in any way other than with kindness and within your values will hurt everyone even more—including yourself. It will extend your recovery time and intensify the pain all round. If you haven't yet, get help now. Breaking up is hard to do. You must both get all the support you can and treat each other with compassion.
5. Mourning:
The final destination on the journey through divorce is a place of sadness and reflection, but maybe also relief. Here, you can finish this relationship journey, remember what was good, and strive to understand what went wrong. You can hope for a better future for all parties involved and do your best to create it. Acknowledge all the things you are mourning. The end of a marriage means changes to home and family forever, but you will survive and you can all thrive again. Get support. Allow yourself to feel pride for the mature way you handled things during such a difficult time in your lives. Then focus on growth and learning so that there will be less of a chance of repeating past mistakes in future relationships. Source: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/5-stages-of-divorce-how-to-stop-your-relationship-from-ending
Be no fooled – there is no such thing as a pain and anxiety-free and easy divorce. But, there are extremely difficult and ugly divorces, and there are those that are much easier on one or both sides. Ideally, the couple will agree on getting a divorce and on the terms of it prior to even filing for the legal dissolution of marriage. This article will show you a few things you can do to ensure that the divorce goes smoothly emotions-wise (as much as possible) and you get an ease divorce emotionally. 1. Talk about resolving problems as two cooperating adults Marriages tend to fall apart gradually. It’s rarely (we can say it’s never) some sudden unexpected bomb, it’s more of an erosion. Every argument that didn’t end in a resolution of the problems or kind words of understanding and apology chipped a piece of the relationship. And it is normal for couples to fight. As the matter of fact, not fighting about anything ever is an indicator of a potential emotional detachment and a lack of intimacy. But, there are good and bad ways to quarrel. Now that your marriage is close to being finished, there isn’t a need to resolve past issues anymore. Not those such as who will take out the trash and on which days at least. You also have no more right (or cause) to be jealous or angry about similar things. It just doesn’t matter anymore.
Yet, there are also issues you now need to tackle, ideally before you even seek out lawyers. You will have to get on the same page about a lot of pragmatic issues. The mortgage, the house, the expenses, the children, the time together, the future. So, now you need to learn how to talk to your soon-to-be-ex-husband or wife and how to resolve problems as two cooperating adults.
2. Grieve your failed marriage You surely heard about the need to grieve your failed marriage a few times. But this is not just a phrase. You do need to go through all the same stages of mourning as you would if you lost someone close to you. As you did. You lost your future plans, your home is changing, you won’t be having your spouse there by your side in all life situations. This may sound scary, but, it is all a matter of perspective. What you do need to do is spend some time deliberating about your emotions, and let yourself feel sad, scared, devastated, angry, or however you might be feeling. You will probably be bouncing between different emotions at different times, and this is all right. The main thing is to understand where you are emotionally at any given moment and to adjust your actions to that. For example, don’t make any big decisions when in rage. Know that, this too shall pass. Getting a divorce is a trauma and a very stressful event. However, the moment you step into the process, your healing also begins. Which is why, if you want an easy divorce emotionally, you need to be aware of this and not push yourself into feeling great before you’re ready.
3. Change your perspective Yes, divorce is tough, without a doubt, however well executed. It has a potential of destroying your life. It will most definitely change it to its core. You may be very sad for a very long time, you will be more prone to depression and anxiety, you will be stressed, scared, and uncertain of what the future brings. However, there is also another perspective on things. One that can make this stressful event become a positive thing that had happened to you. This is the perspective of growing. Western culture promotes the belief that things have to be a certain way for us to feel good. More precisely, we feel strong aversion to change and have an inclination towards keeping the things as they are. And we sometimes prefer unhealthy relationships over being single, just for the sake of that false sense of security. However, if you move your viewpoint just slightly, you will notice that the Universe is constantly changing. And it is unwise to expect our lives to stay the same all the time. You are about to experience a big change in your life. A small change in perspective can make a difference between a ruined life and a beautiful future. Source: https://www.marriage.com/advice/divorce/how-to-get-an-easy-divorce-emotionally/
The gray area between staying married and divorcing is separating. What does this mean and what does it look like? There are more variations on this theme than any other, but most people don't usually opt for separation as a long-term solution. When we hear that a husband and wife are separating, most of us think that they are on their way to the divorce court. Couples who have reached this point have usually tried various interventions and tactics to get the marriage back on track, but nothing has worked. The marriage is in a state of disrepair, so now there is nothing left to do but split up, separate, and then divorce.
However, rather than a means to an end, separation can be a helpful tool to stay together. This seems counterintuitive when a marriage is troubled and relations are fragile. Most of us believe that when we feel our spouse slipping away from us, we should merge together more, get as close as we can, and do more to "make the marriage work".
The thought of creating distance at such a time instills a great deal of fear of losing control of your spouse and your relationship. This option is especially challenging if the bond between the two of you has been weakened by a betrayed trust. But employed carefully and skillfully (and usually with some type of professional support), this tool can be quite effective in bringing two people closer together.
In this article, we'll explore the three main reasons why couples separate: to enhance their marriage, to gain perspective on their marriage, and to take a first step in the divorce process.
Separation to enhance the marriage
Separation between spouses does not always have to be incorporated just when the relationship is heading south. It can be used as a tool to improve relations. We're living in a time when there are many more variations on marriage than the traditional ideas we learned about in fairy tales or from older TV shows like Father Knows Best. Contemporary trends include couples living in separate towns for part of the time or living in the same town but in different homes.
Tom, a college professor, leaves his wife Laurie every September to teach the fall semester at a college in another part of the country. When he finishes teaching, he returns home to Laurie. Both Tom and Laurie cherish this arrangement because they have enough alone time to feel autonomous and enough togetherness to feel married. They describe their marriage as very strong and state that it would probably not be as good if they lived together 365 days of the year. Living apart enhances their relationship.
Another couple, Jane and Sam, live in northern California. This couple seriously considered divorce because of different parenting styles. When Jane was offered a job in Los Angeles, she took it. Unsure whether marital dissolution was going to be the end result, Jane was reluctant to completely move out of their home in Napa, so instead she rented an apartment in Los Angeles. She stayed in Southern California Monday through Friday and commuted home to the wine country each weekend to be with Sam and the kids.
What they soon discovered was that, even though their parenting styles never quite meshed, there was less conflict, because Jane was away most of the time. Sam, who was a househusband, had charge of the kids during the week, and Jane wasn't there to contradict his parenting style.
There are other married couples who choose to live in separate residences, whether a town away or down the street from each other, to simultaneously maintain individuality and partnership.
Living apart doesn't absolve either party from having to work on the relationship. What is crucial to understand is that these arrangements succeed only when there is good mutual communication and honesty about what works and what doesn't. Each spouse trusts the other and shares the same expectations. They both enjoy a sense of autonomy while sharing the goal of creating a healthier connection with each other. Separation to gain perspective on the marriage
In 1999, Joan Anderson wrote a book called A Year by the Sea, in which she tells the autobiographical story of living by herself at her summer house for a full year to determine whether or not she wanted to remain in her marriage. Ultimately, she decided to reconcile with her husband, and the clarity she gained by taking care of herself in this way had a positive and powerful impact on her and the rest of her family.
Sometimes couples actually gain this perspective through their willingness to let go of the relationship. Living apart allows them to step out of the muck and mire, and get onto higher ground. Couples can choose to implement such a nuptial time-out informally and on their own, or more formally and with professional guidance. In her book Should I Stay or Go?, therapist Lee Raffel helps couples create what she calls a "controlled separation." Following particular parameters (not unlike how an actual divorce situation would look, complete with temporary financial support, child custody visitations, and separate living quarters), each person agrees not to file for divorce during the controlled separation and to give the other as much distance as needed to get perspective or to heal past hurts. At the end of the agreed-upon term of separation (usually six months), the couple can reassess their goals with the hope of getting back together.
Of course, not everyone undergoing a controlled separation arrives at the decision to reunite, but it is a different spin on resolution that can be quite helpful to many couples.
Curt, the husband in a couple I worked with, told me that after his wife, Dianne, moved out, he felt such a sense of relief and renewed energy from being apart from her that he had no idea how he had lasted in the marriage for close to 30 years. For him, the break validated that leaving the relationship was the right decision.
The internal reactions people have to separating can be quite varied. However, this process will almost certainly bring you valuable information and insights about yourself and your relationship.
Separation as a step toward divorce
This is the form of separation that most people are familiar with. Couples who know they want to divorce have often lived with a great deal of discomfort or lack of fulfillment -- and usually for a very long time -- so being apart from their spouses can be welcome relief.
The split may be prompted by the fact that one or both partners have changed (or not changed), they are no longer in love, they no longer share common interests, a trust has been betrayed, or a crisis has caused them to reexamine their relationship.
These individuals or couples have crossed an invisible line of no return. While they may struggle with the "shoulds", such as "We should stay together because of the kids," they know in their hearts that the relationship is over.
When asked if there is any chance of reconciliation, they will give it anywhere from a 10 to 30 percent chance. It is a rare occasion when someone says that there is zero possibility of turning things around.
I surmise this, because with every major decision in life, there is a list of pros and cons that comes with the territory. Getting divorced is not necessarily a clear-cut or easy decision, even when there is tremendous abuse or neglect. Most people understand that they are trading in their uncomfortable "knowns" for some "unknowns", with no guarantee of any more happiness than the situation they are letting go of, but it is a chance they are willing to take to be more in alignment with their truths.
Once a couple is on the divorce track, the separation is not implemented with the purpose of getting a better perspective on the relationship (although this can happen); rather, it is part of the natural course as each party prepares to go his or her individual way. This is the "in-between" stage of the process.
Sometimes, living apart is necessary. The husband and wife can no longer reside under the same roof due to the level of anger, distrust, or animosity between them. Sometimes it just makes sense to begin the separation process by having one person move out. It can soften the contrast between being married and being divorced.
While not all couples live in separate dwellings during divorce proceedings, most do. In areas of the country where the cost of living is relatively high, some spouses have to live in the same house for economic reasons. This is often a temporary situation, and it's a rare couple who can actually continue living together after their divorce is finalized.
One housing option many parents choose these days to minimize the upheaval for their children is commonly referred to as "nesting". This is when each parent rotates moving in and out of the family home, while the children stay put. Each spouse may have his or her own apartment, separate from the other's apartment, or they may share the same apartment (since they aren't living there at the same time).
When you are considering ending your marriage, it is important to imagine what life might be like once the divorce actually happens and both spouses move on. Be as honest as you can with yourself and your partner, and try to maintain good relations. However, be aware that trying, at any cost, to preserve the sense of family to avoid hurting someone or maintain constancy for the kids can come back to haunt everyone later on. Source: http://www.divorcemag.com/articles/contemplating-divorce-separation
