Why bother?
If you fear your marriage might go under soon, why bother trying to save it? If you think it might take some effort on your part, you're probably right. Is this an effort that's worth making?
Ideally, you love your wife, and of course you want to preserve your marriage.
The reality may be a little different - your life together may not be a loving one at present. If you were asked, "Do you love each other" you both might answer "Yes". But what would you say if you were asked: "How does that love reveal itself - if a movie was made of you lives, would it look like a happy love story?"
So maybe you'd make the effort to stay together because you hope the good times can be rekindled. Ask yourself, "Has what I've been doing so far been successful? Is there any sign that it will suddenly become so?" Probably not. Or you wouldn't have read this far.
Consider this: 80% of relationships are ended by women. So chances are if your marriage is at risk, it's your wife who'll pull the plug. You can either lie back and accept the ending, if it's coming, or do something to prevent it.
What are the benefits of a succesful attempt to keep your marriage going? Of course, these will be different depending on whether you have children, and if so, what their ages and living arrangements are:
What are the disadvantages of working to keep your marriage going?
Both of us authors (now happily married to each other) have children, were divorced from our initial spouses, and coincidently both of us lost subsequent partners to cancer. Preventing the deaths was beyond us; we could not have avoided those times of grief. Was it beyond us to avoid the earlier divorces? Perhaps with more understanding we could in each case have taken actions that would have avoided the distress of divorce - and avoided great collateral damage to others as well.
Copyright © 2007 Peter Leon Collins