Top 5 Signs You May be Heading for Divorce

Studies show that people typically wait six years too long to get into couple's therapy. I am an eternal optimist, but waiting to get help is a dangerous undertaking. It allows too much time to build up new experiences of hurt, resentment, or alienation; experiences that can weaken the long-term bond of a relationship.

Top 5 Danger Signs

1) You Often Fantasize About Divorce

Fantasizing about divorce may provide a needed feeling of freedom. During a crisis or during a particularly bad time in a marriage, reminding yourself that you can always leave can be a reassuring thought. However, chronic fantasizing about divorce may indicate that you're stuck in a dynamic from which you don't know how to escape and need more help to solve.

2) The Frequency of Your Negative Experiences Far Outweighs the Number of Your Positive Experiences with Each Other

Marital researcher John Gottman found that in successful marriages, there are five positive exchanges for every negative. If the negative consistently outweigh the positive, then your marriage may be in trouble.

3) You Never Confide in Each Other

Confiding in your spouse and having your spouse confide in you is an important way to relieve stress, strengthen your bond, and maintain a healthy "us against the world" mentality. A lack of confiding may indicate that there's an insufficient amount of trust in the marriage.

4) One or Both of You Engages in Ongoing Contempt, Criticism, Defensiveness or Stonewalling

Research shows that couples who frequently use these defenses are more at risk for divorce than couples who rarely use them. While conflict is unavoidable, couples need to learn healthy ways ot expressing their complaints.

5) You Engage in the Pursuer-Distancer Dynamic

In this dynamic, one person in the marriage constantly pursues the other for more closesness, confiding, or time while the other constantly avoids interaction. Over time, the pursuer gets more desperate, hurt, and angry and the distancer gets more sullen, shut down, and rejecting.

What to Do?

* Take responsibility for your part of the problem. This means learning how to communicate, being assertive, being generous, and owning your character flaws.

* If you're often having a conversation in your head about divorce, you should let your partner in on it while there's still time to save your marriage. Sometimes too much water can pass under the bridge.

* Make efforts to confide in your partner. Even if you're frustrated with the state of your marriage, confiding is a demonstration of need and trust; this may help to get your relationship on a better footing.

* If you engage in the pursuer-distance dynamic, try switching your role: If you've been a pursuer, back off for the next two months and see if your partner comes to you. If you're a distancer, try approaching your partner much more consistently.

* Be appreciative every day of the little things. Appreciation is the oil in the machinery. It makes all of the moving parts of a marriage operate with a lot less friction.

* Get into couple's therapy. Don't wait until your marriage gets past the point of no return.

Sign up today for Dr. Joshua Coleman's free monthly ezine at www.drjoshuacoleman.com or whenparentshurt.com. Dr. Coleman is an internationally known expert in parenting, couples, families, and relationships with a practice in SF and Oakland. A frequent guest on the Today Show and NPR, he has also appeared on ABC 20/20, Good Morning America, the BBC, and numerous news programs for FOX, ABC, and NBC television. His new book, When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along (HarperCollins) was released in July, 2007.

Comments

[dadw5boys]

Never allow the person you married to place you in the position of makeinf all the desicion for the whole family.
Make sure they are not losing their idenity as a person by avoiding taking responsibility for their lives with decisions.
It is easy to allow someone to take control but never a good idea because no one wants to become a slave in a realtionship.

[KellyJadon]

Dr.Coleman,
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't know how many couples I've met,and knew that they were headed toward divorce, one before the marriage even occurred. In each case, the ominous signs were present.
It is important to be able to recognize these warnings, both from within oneself and from a spouse.
Thank you for your post.

[drjoshuacoleman]

Thanks for the thanks. And good point. Studies show that couples wait 6 years past the point that they should before entering couple's therapy. Another large study on divorce found that 25% of men were completely surprised when their wives served them with divorce papers.

[Charity]

"Another large study on divorce found that 25% of men were completely surprised when their wives served them with divorce papers."

most likely the surprise was due to all of their needs being met by the other spouse.

i know a married man who has the best of all possible worlds - he has a "long term" marriage with a woman younger than himself, they have two kids under the age of 16, they live in a nice house with a pool, he has a high powered job in a medium size city that allows him to travel about two weeks of every month, she doesn't work outside of the home and keeps everything running ostensibly "smoothly," and he hits up on any woman who he thinks he wants.

he once told me (and i must be the only woman who has ever refused his advances - in his entire life) that said and i quote: "dear god, i want it all."

yep. he's got it all. i do wonder if he will be in that 25 percent you mention here once the younger kid graduates from high school.

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[larry278]

This proves that marriage is an old institution & that those who marry must be confined in an institution with high, secure walls & which is far from the sane who avoid marriage.

[dadw5boys]

Old instutition or not if your broke from paying child support being married has it hands down by having a warm body next to you in bed and sure beats a lonely apartment with not food or heat.

[Jane]

I prefer that study that shows that men and women who live together have more egalitarian relationships than married people.

[drjoshuacoleman]

I don't think it's one or the other. There are many married people who have egalitarian marriages. Of course, there are also many that start out that way and then begin to divide the household and parental labor along traditional lines once the kids are born. In general, we see that younger couples prefer more egalitarian marriages and relationships and are more successful at them than older couples.

[Qbear]

I thought(according to the latest scandals) number one would be don't tap dance in a cop's toilet stall, and number two is never anger a prostitute who applies your diaper.

[drjoshuacoleman]

I think those are recommendations 7 and 8.

[Desiderata]

And keep in mind, the lovenest of the bedroom is not to be shared with the children nor the pets.