How to save a family on the verge of divorce: advice from a psychologist

Why do people get divorced

The husband and wife need to figure it out and understand why they want to separate. The investigation should begin by looking for the reasons. Although every couple is unique, problems in relationships always develop according to similar scenarios and have similar causes:

• Cheating is the most common reason for breakups, even among loving couples. The pain of betrayal is so strong that many are unable to overcome it and move on.
• Frequent conflicts and quarrels are another factor that can lead to thoughts of separation. A favorable atmosphere in the family is the main condition for happiness and mutual understanding in a relationship.

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• Alcoholism and other types of addictions also lead to separation. An unhealthy hobby of one of the spouses affects not only the relationship, but also the quality of life. Addiction destroys all areas of life.
• Lack of understanding of what is happening in relationships and lack of knowledge about how they can be restored. Due to the fact that the spouses do not see it possible to correct on their own what does not satisfy them, they decide to break the connection. But this is not a solution, because without understanding what is happening, you can encounter the same problem in future relationships.
• Lying destroys mutual trust - the foundation of a happy marriage. Divorce can be delayed for a long time, but it will still happen sooner or later, because deception does not provide the opportunity to get closer and be happy.
• The discrepancy between life goals is the reason why there is no point in working to restore feelings. For example, if one partner wants children and a house outside the city, and the second wants to devote his life to travel, then a full-fledged family will not work.
• In the case of protracted financial or housing problems, relationships can also collapse. If the spouses are unable to agree and reach a compromise, a breakup is the only way to improve the situation.
• A popular reason for divorce is cooling of feelings, lack of mutual sympathy. For example, dramatic changes in the appearance of one of the spouses.

• Often, separation is the result of long-term dissatisfaction with sex life. Passion leaves the relationship, so partners no longer want intimacy.
• Excessive interference in a marriage by relatives, such as parents-in-law, is a common cause of divorce, especially if the spouses live together.
• Lack of attention to each other, too different interests and hobbies lead to cooling and loss of love. As a result, divorce becomes only a factual confirmation of the lack of real intimacy.
• Dissatisfaction and disappointment in relationships due to inconsistency in everyday habits, views on raising children and other disagreements in which it is not possible to reach a compromise is another factor that provokes separation.

After discovering the root causes of a protracted crisis, you can understand how to restore a relationship on the verge of divorce. This will help you find the right direction and develop your plan to save your marriage.

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My wife cheated: is it worth saving the family and how to do it

This situation is more complex and, as a rule, the relationship cannot be saved. The point is not even that men are less capable of digesting betrayal than women. It's more about the woman who cheated - what exactly pushed her into the arms of a stranger? And this is where the difficulties begin - if women generally began to look in the other direction, instead of going to psychologists (70% of patients who want to save their marriage who turn to family psychologists are women), then, most likely, she has already reached the point of no return passed.

However, there is a class of women, adults, accomplished, happy in a long and stable marriage, successful in their careers, who simply do not have enough new sensations (a person is polygamous and this applies equally to both women and men). Usually such confident ladies, who have everything in their place in life, carefully hide their adventures, but if such an affair has opened, then there are considerable chances of saving the relationship if the man manages to behave wisely and realizes that his rival is not even his rival , but just entertainment for an hour, not even close to comparable in importance to a legal husband.

If one spouse wants a divorce

Regardless of who initiates the separation, if one of the partners wants a divorce, the other is not able to do anything alone. To restore harmony, joint efforts and mutual desire are needed. But not everything is so hopeless. The partner who wants to save the marriage has the opportunity to influence the situation. The advice of a psychologist will help him with this:

• it is necessary to begin constructive communication;
• you should find out why the partner initiates the divorce;
• It is important to say about your readiness to change, to make the relationship better.

You can involve a family therapist in working on relationships. Even if it is not possible to save the marriage, psychotherapy will make the separation less painful and will also help to avoid a repetition of the situation in the future.

Tips for women

Family is a huge value for women, so they are often ready to make concessions to avoid divorce. It is possible to influence your spouse’s decision; to do this, you need to take several steps:

1. Take care of your external attractiveness.
2. Try to rekindle the extinguished fire of feelings.
3. Do not impose, give the man the opportunity to analyze and make decisions on his own.
4. It’s worth whetting your husband’s interest and making him fall in love again.
5. It is important to forget about claims and criticism.
6. You need to start paying more attention to your relationship and your spouse so that he feels valued and important in a woman’s life.

It is a woman who is able to create the most favorable emotional atmosphere in a marriage, so her actions will not remain without results. But if the spouse has already made the final decision, it will be extremely difficult to convince him. In such a situation, there is no question of choice - to get a divorce or save the family, because the partner does not want it.

Tips for men

If a wife wants a divorce, and a man wants to save the family, he is also able to influence his wife’s decision. Overcoming problems in a marriage is the responsibility of two, but the husband is able to change what he can. Here's what a man can do to protect his family from divorce:

• find out what exactly does not suit your spouse;
• give her more attention;
• make her feel loved and valued;
• give her what she lacks.

You can do something alone so that a family on the verge of divorce does not fall apart. If the wife notices positive changes in the man, she may reconsider her decision.

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Final decree of divorce

In order to make the final decision on divorce, and then not be tormented by doubts about the correctness of the chosen decision, it is enough to imagine that the spouse has died. He was completely gone. Not just in sight, but nowhere on earth. There will be no possibility of reconciliation, emotional swings, quarrels. This must be presented clearly, in detail. Funeral, coffin, children crying. Did it get creepy? Did you at least feel pity? At least pity for the common children?

It is important to analyze your feelings and sensations. Regret or liberation? Sadness or even sudden gloating (that’s what you want!), if he managed to “annoy” a lot? If you realize that a gap will form in life without this person, no matter who he is, it is better to postpone divorce. And if life becomes easier without him, then you shouldn’t delay the divorce.

If the marriage rests only on children, it is important to decide how advisable it is to maintain a difficult relationship just for the sake of them. Despite the fact that children need a complete family, they also need a sense of stability, a calm life without the daily hassle and endless quarrels of their parents.

Conflicts happen in every family, but it’s a common thing when mom and dad sort things out in a raised voice once a month, and it’s completely unacceptable when a father terrorizes the whole family every day, tyranns or even beats.

If both want to save the relationship

A protracted crisis is easier to overcome if the couple starts working on it together. You can save a marriage when both husband and wife want it, as follows:

• start spending more time together;
• pay attention to each other;
• restore romance, arrange surprises for each other, go on dates;
• join forces to solve everyday problems;
• agree to discuss any problems and not be offended;
• stop criticizing each other, changing the pretentious tone to a constructive style of communication;
• find common interests and common ground;
• eliminate routine and boredom from relationships;
• harmonize sex life.

When two people are working on a relationship, it is important to learn to reach a compromise. These are solutions that do not completely satisfy anyone, but are the arithmetic average. The ability to give in is the basis on which you can build a happy marriage, even if the family is already on the verge of divorce.

Lack of attention

The couple's busy schedule leads to shifting priorities. Spouses get so bogged down in solving everyday problems that they stop being interested in each other and forget about basic signs of attention. If a wife and husband want to save the family, then it is worth reconsidering their attitude towards marriage. To do this you do not need to have any specific knowledge or skills.

It's simple - you can make your tired wife her favorite tea and help with housework. The wife may begin to become more interested in her husband's affairs and offer support and care. Elementary simple signs of attention in everyday life can save a marriage on the verge of divorce and even make it happier.

Extra control

Married relationships should be close, but without violating personal boundaries. If a husband or wife wants to divorce, the family can be saved by changing the attitude towards the partner’s personal boundaries. Excessive control is a sign of a trust deficit and low self-esteem. It is possible to eliminate this negative factor - you need to start working on developing trust and increasing self-esteem.

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What to do if your husband cheated, but wants to save the family

What a woman should know in this situation:

1. Emotions of anger, resentment, humiliation are natural . For all this to pass, it takes time – most often at least a year.
2. Under no circumstances should a wife turn her husband’s guilt into a tool for manipulating him (many women get carried away with this and the relationship eventually falls apart). Blame can only be made up for by actions.
3. It is necessary to receive compensation from the husband and from life for the damage caused . In one case, as compensation, the husband was assigned a year of impeccable attention to his wife (gifts, beautiful leisure time together, compliments, in addition, the husband always went straight home from work). The man accepted these conditions, and after a year his wife was really able to trust him again.

What not to do

All efforts aimed at avoiding a divorce from his wife and protecting his family can be annulled by mistakes made in the process. If the husband wants to save the family, you should not shift responsibility for problems in the marriage only to him. It’s the same with a spouse—in an unhappy marriage, there is no one person to blame, both partners are responsible. There are other mistakes that can provoke a deterioration in relationships and speed up divorce:

• silencing complaints, unwillingness to speak openly about them;
• unwillingness to give in or compromise;
• mutual reproaches and complaints instead of a constructive search for solutions to problems;
• reluctance to take the initiative in reconciliation.

Relationships cannot always be restored. You need to be able to understand when everything is over and stop in time, without wasting your emotional resources on futile attempts.

Stages of relationship restoration

When starting to work on relationships, you need to develop an effective strategy. Consistency and taking into account all the nuances will help bring love back into the family and avoid divorce:

1. Someone has to take the first step, so the change starts with yourself. Seeing a positive example, the second partner will also begin to advance in development.
2. It is important to decide on the vision of happiness in marriage. When you realize what it should be, you can direct your efforts towards creating the relationship of your dreams.
3. Next you need to tackle conflict resolution. They cannot be suppressed, hidden or avoided. Constructive communication and clarification of relationships will help identify marriage problems and eliminate them.
4. It is important to be positive and create a favorable atmosphere. You can change the environment, for example, unwind on a joint vacation, or simply harmonize the emotional background.

Going through these stages in a relationship, partners will become closer, gradually eliminating all the shortcomings in the marriage. This does not mean that quarrels and conflicts will completely disappear from the family; on the contrary, they will be present, but will no longer be able to have a destructive influence on the relationship.

Alcoholism and family: is it worth saving the family if the husband drinks?

About 40% of all marriages break up due to alcohol abuse. However, here we will not talk about situations where the husband’s alcoholism is accurately diagnosed and the social, material, and personal losses of the family are obvious - this is a separate broad topic.

It’s better to talk about those situations when a woman herself provokes her husband to run away from her into alcohol . Alcoholism is a disease and should be diagnosed by a specialist. There is a concept - standard consumption, and it is calculated based on the patient’s body weight. It is also important what impact alcohol has on a man’s life. After all, it is quite likely that he drinks a lot, but does not suffer from a hangover, and calmly goes to work in the morning.

Women who have experienced childhood trauma associated with alcohol begin to fear even one drink. Seeing the ill-fated glass in the husband’s hands, they take it, control it, saw it, make a comment, worry. The reaction of one husband of one of our patients was: “Why are you making me an alcoholic!” And in that situation, the successfully earning family man was absolutely right. His wife persecuted him with her control and inadequate attitude towards alcoholic beverages.

This terrible word is treason

Betrayal by one of the partners is an objective reason for divorce. There is no point in thinking about how you can save a marriage from divorce under such conditions:

• the spouse continues the relationship on the side and does not plan to end it;
• there has been no love and mutual respect in the family for a long time;
• the spouses do not want to continue the relationship.

But if the deceived party has the strength to forgive, and the cheating partner is ready to correct himself, then everything can be restored. To avoid rupture you need to do the following:

• start with forgiveness;
• work to restore trust;
• find out the reasons for the betrayal;
• eliminate them.

The betrayal of spouses is driven by dissatisfaction with family relationships. We need to look deeper for the reasons and begin to work through all problematic areas of family life in order to avoid a repetition of the situation in the future.

What to do if the husband has grown cold and the wife wants to save the family

Surprisingly, this situation is much more favorable than the reverse. In very rare cases, restoration of relationships is impossible, in others there are chances. If, of course, both parties are determined to save the marriage.

The work is carried out, of course, individually for each couple. Everything that could lead to distance and cooling is analyzed. And the list of actions for each case can vary significantly : in one case, the wife will have to go to work and become a more interesting person, in another - learn to seduce, in the third - master new images of femininity, and not just “woman-commander”.

In any case, such work is not easy and takes more than a month or two. However, the timing is also individual.

General recommendations: how to prevent divorce

A marriage doesn’t fall apart overnight, and if you work on your relationship regularly, you will be able to avoid separation. Here's how you can get your relationship back on track with your wife:

• you need to talk more often and not avoid problematic topics;
• it is important to learn how to conflict;
• it is necessary to value each other’s personal boundaries;
• it is worth diversifying family life, refreshing emotions;
• need to take a break from each other.

Love is not always a solid foundation for a relationship. To prevent a family from falling apart, you need to put in a lot of daily work, patience, respect and understanding of each other’s needs. This is the only way to prevent divorce and build a happy relationship.

Long-distance relationships, husband on business trips: how to save the family

There is a common phrase: “Being the wife of a sea captain is a calling .” This is true. A long-term relationship, when one partner is forced to leave the family home for a long time, is a special way of life with its own laws. Ignoring these laws leads to divorce. Therefore, the first step to preserving such a family is a conscious choice. If a woman marries a man who will lead a parallel life, she should be one hundred percent prepared for this. Ideally, if she herself knows how to lead a parallel life: she is self-sufficient, has deep interests, a circle of good friends.