The answer to this question is so important to understand no matter what the outcome. If you want to keep your marriage then naturally you have to understand why it’s failing to fix it.
But did you know that if a marriage fails and why it’s failed is not fully understood then that person should expect problems to follow them.
Look at this awful situation of not knowing why his marriage failed and what it did to this man and his family.
Two years ago I spoke to a gentleman who had divorced his wife and left his family. At the time he felt this was the best decision for him because they had spent so much time in conflict and he felt the love had died for him.
Now he was single and it wasn’t long before he met someone new and fell in love, they both loved each other, he was feeling great and life was getting back on track.
He moved in with her and the relationship was great, but as life settled down with her he noticed he missed his children and something kept nagging him, something was wrong, but he didn’t know what.
She was so in love with him she started planning her future with him and she spoke about having a family. His reaction was not what she expected, he told her he didn’t want more children and this started to affect their relationship.
The pressure of more children, missing his own and that nagging feeling took him to decide to go back to the wife he divorced.
It was coming up to Christmas and he called me.
This man was totally lost, he was now back with the wife he divorced, he was loving the time with his children, but now he couldn’t get the woman he left out of his mind because he said he loved her and this was blocking him to reconnect with his wife.
So now he was stuck and in tears, he can’t put his children through leaving again and he can’t let his heart go to his divorce wife because he feels his heart belongs with the woman he loves, and yet he can’t go back to her because he doesn’t want more children.
You could hear the pain in his voice, he said “I have never felt so out of control of my life.”
It was clear, what we had to do. This man had left his marriage not really understanding why it had failed, he simply felt bad for too long and had left.
Now you can see whichever decision this man makes someone he cares about will get hurt and he is terrified he will make the wrong decision now he has lost confidence in himself.
This heart wrenching situation could have been avoided if this married couple had discovered why their marriage was not working.
If his marriage was really wrong and he learnt why, he would never have gone back to his ex wife.
If he had learnt how relationships work and why they fail would never have left the woman he loved and a new family wouldn’t scare him because he would know how to make sure that relationship lasted.
So many people are making decisions based on feelings they don’t understand and families are being destroyed in the process.
Building successful relationships takes real understanding and skill. Most are not aware that these skills are needed and so they are living in reaction to what they feel.
What they feel is fear, because they don’t have the skills and understanding to make their relationships work.
Relationships can either be the most pleasurable, or the most painful part of our lives. With so much emotion involved and so much at stake why do so many choose not to learn what’s really going on?