10 Ways To Tell If Your Marriage Is Heading For Divorce
Written by Drs. Evelyn and Paul Moschetta of Mid-town Manhattan
Despite divorce being so common many couples are caught off guard when it happens to them. They believe if they start off loving one another then everything will turn out okay.
This myth lulls them into missing warning signs that their relationship is in trouble. Here are 10 ways to tell if your marriage is heading for divorce.
1. Sex is consistently boring and mechanical. Research says a satisfying sex life is vital to health and well-being. Long term frustration of this basic human need can signal the end of a marriage.
2. Many problems, few solutions. The inability to compromise and find workable solutions to common relationship issues turns partners into bitter adversaries.
3. Character assassination. Name calling, insults, belittling put-downs and personal attacks aimed at humiliating and embarrassing a spouse are a sure path to divorce.
4. Divorce by anger. Accumulated anger kills love! If you don’t know how to handle anger and it piles up like a mountain in your relationship divorce is inevitable.
5. Cheating. Most marriages survive (with a lot of professional help) when a partner cheats once. Repeated affairs cause so much pain divorce is a sought after relief.
6. Selfishness. Marriage is about sharing and caring, about making your partner’s needs a top priority. Self-centered husbands or wives have partners who feel ignored and neglected and eventually want out at all costs.
7. Needing to be right. When your partner’s always right you're always wrong and that feels suffocating. Not having a voice that’s heard and respected turns marriage into a dictatorship. Divorce and the freedom that goes with it become irresistible.
8. The kiss is gone. When you would rather have sex than passionately kiss, your marriage is in deep trouble.
9. The conversation is over. How do you get happily through marriage? You talk your way through it. This means sharing thoughts and feelings so that you’re emotionally in sync. You feel understood and connected. Without this bond marriage is an empty, lonely place partners want to leave.
10. Money, either too little or too much. When both partners need to work and one earns significantly more than the other (especially if it’s the wife) control issues can sabotage a marriage. Too much extra cash, when partners are not careful, can fuel a “party on” life style that invites temptations damaging to marriage and the lasting values that remind us of what’s really important in life.