“I have some sad news. Sam* and I filed for divorce. We have been separated for some time now and tried to reconcile but to no avail. Sam is a very good and honorable person and I wish him the best. As you know I am a very private person and do not discuss my private life.
I will email everyone that needs to know. If anyone should ask please let them know our marriage did not work out and I prefer not to discuss this loss in my life. As you can imagine I have a very high passion to see that this will not happen to anyone else.”
This is an email sent to a friend. To say the friend was blindsided by the news would be an understatement. She had no idea her friend’s marriage was in trouble and apparently neither did anybody else. This couple had been in distress for a couple of years, but didn’t want anybody to know.
Unfortunately this is not usual. Many couples in America today find themselves at this same turning point. They are experiencing distress, yet they don’t tell anybody due to a variety of reasons including embarrassment, fear, pride, and admitting failure.
Research indicates that people wait on average seven years before asking for help. Can you imagine all of the craziness that can go on in a healthy relationship, much less one that is in distress, over seven years? It is not surprising that people feel hopeless about getting their marriage back on track. What most couples do not realize is they usually have a very limited knowledge of the resources available to help them restore their relationship. They don’t know what they don’t know.
Once the word was out about Sam and his wife many friends rallied around them encouraging them to seek help and to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sam and his wife found a number of resources readily available to them that they were not aware of including skills-based classes and marriage intensives. They jumped at the chance to participate in something that could help them transform their relationship.
Marriage Intensives are typically a multi-day experience designed for couples whose marriage is on the rocks. Issues such as infidelity, feeling disconnected and not “in love” anymore are just a few of the things couples cite as reasons for attending a marriage intensive. Away from all of the typical daily distractions, couples have the opportunity to focus on the issues tearing away at the fabric of their marriage over the course of two to four days.
The skills-based classes give couples a chance to learn why they do the things they do that get on each other’s nerves, how they may be sabotaging their marriage without realizing it and how to do something different to positively impact their marriage.
Are you in a relationship you believe is destined for divorce? Do you know someone who is hanging on by a thread to a marriage that is in shambles? There is hope.
A national study of 10,000 couples asked them to rate their marriage from life in hell (1) to heaven on earth (7). The couples were interviewed twice, five years apart. The study found that eighty-one percent of the couples who rated their marriage as life in hell were still together five years later. Out of that group the majority said they were very happy after five years.
Sam and his wife will tell you they learned a valuable lesson – keeping their marital troubles a secret only made things worse. Going it alone made them feel even more hopeless. Once they shared their news and people started offered encouraging words and support their entire outlook changed. If your marriage is in trouble, instead of keeping it a secret seek wise counsel and take advantage of the excellent resources available.
*Name has been changed
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