Before You Leave Your Marriage, Consider These 6 Subtle Reasons It Might Still Work
Delmaine Donson | Canva When couples come to me for marital therapy, there is a sense of urgency and despair. Many of them have talked about ending the marriage, and a few of them are using marital therapy as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage.
A common question that is asked within the first half hour of meeting with them is, "How do we know when it is over?" This is a tough question because anyone who has been married for some time and hit unexpected problems in their marriage has at least fantasized, if not thought about, how much easier it would be to just end their marriage. Half of these couples end up calling it quits, but the other half hang in there. As a psychotherapist and marriage counselor, my recommendation is to commit to at least one more year and really try to make it work when you hit that point where you want to quit.
Before you leave your marriage, consider these 6 reasons it might still work:
1. There is a 50/50 chance you won't end the marriage after the year is up
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Just like there's a 50% chance of it ending in divorce, there's also a 50% chance you get back together. A landmark study by the University of Chicago found that two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier on average than unhappily married adults who stayed married, and only one in five reported being happier in a new marriage.
2. The newfound effort may re-spark the marriage
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It's important to remember all the reasons why you fell in love with your spouse and keep the romance alive. Research involving 16 studies found a notably strong correlation between reminiscing about good relationship memories and marital satisfaction. And it's not just about passively remembering: When couples actively discussed positive memories they shared — the honeymoon in Palm Springs, the birth of your first child, etc. — there was a noted increase in comfort and intimacy.
3. If you can make it work, you may be better off money-wise
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Getting a divorce takes years. Imagine all the lawyer bills that add up to? Divorce isn't cheap, and we're not just talking about the attorney fees (though those range from $6,500 to $23,000 depending on how long the process takes).
Economist Jay Zagorsky's research tracking Americans over time found that divorce cuts a person's wealth by roughly 77 percent compared to staying single. Marriage, on the other hand, nearly doubles it. Perhaps the most sobering part? The financial decline actually starts about four years before the divorce is even finalized, and a full decade later, median wealth still hovers below $10,000.
4. Even if the marriage doesn't work, you will have peace of mind you tried
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Even if it doesn't end up working out, don't you want to know you gave it everything you had? Researchers studying regret discovered that in any given week, we're a little more likely to regret what we did than what we didn't do. But zoom out to the end of someone's life, and it's a completely different story. At that point, people regret what they didn't do five times more often than what they did.
5 Couples who work on their marriage have a 50/50 chance of developing a friendship, even if it fails
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Maybe you two weren't meant to be married, but a great friendship could still be possible. Sure, the success rate for marriage therapy lands somewhere around 40-50% if you're only counting couples who stay together. But that stat doesn't capture everyone who left therapy with better tools, more clarity, or a genuine understanding of their partner for the first time. Therapists often say real success is about learning to actually communicate and treat each other with empathy, no matter where the relationship ends up.
6. Things might seem more manageable with a set time frame
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It doesn't seem as overwhelming, and working together helps bring a common vision to share. Working on your marriage for one more year can also teach your children the value of their parents’ marriage. Talking to your kids at their level about Mom and Dad and learning better ways to communicate helps everyone. When marriages are in the ending stage, there is often resentment and anger. Working with a therapist to minimize those feelings, replacing them with understanding and forgiveness, many times leads to healing.
Working with couples, I have heard over and over numerous people tell me, "If I had known then what I understand now, I think we could have worked it out." Why not take one more year when you feel you are at the end of your rope, and instead of ending it, work toward restoring your marriage? You have nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain.
Mary Jo Rapini, MEd, LPC, is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and intimacy counselor.
