6 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You End Your Marriage Once And For All
Before you call it quits for good, ask yourself these questions to see if your marriage can be saved.
Dmytro Zinkevych | Shutterstock Taking a lifetime vow and then feeling disconnected can feel lonely, confusing, and frightening. Simply asking, "Is my marriage worth saving?" speaks to the fragility and potential demise of the union.
Sometimes, people are afraid to dig into the question because the answer might determine an uncomfortable or inconvenient course of action. If you've grown uncomfortable and unsure in your marriage, how do you decide if your marriage is worth saving? If you feel deeply unhappy, how do you know if you should stay or get a divorce?
Here are six questions that can help you determine if your marriage is worth saving:
1. Do you or your children feel unsafe?
Some things are non-negotiable, and safety tops the list. If you or your children are experiencing physical or emotional abuse, you must get help and get out. Seeking expert help is an essential adjunct to leaving, as the guarantee of your safety may require numerous forms of intervention. Research shows women often leave due to fear of harm, protecting their children, and having strong external support.
2. Has your spouse cheated?
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This is not a carved-in-stone reason to end your marriage. After all, more than half of those marriages rocked by infidelity manage to survive.
But affairs don’t happen in a vacuum, and both spouses will have their roles to take responsibility for. And at the heart of all the introspection is the question, “Is my marriage worth saving?”
3. Is the trust gone?
No marriage can survive without trust. Trust is as foundational as love and respect. If you feel in your gut you just can’t trust your spouse — what they say, do, and promise — your marriage might not be salvageable.
Research has shown that long-lasting marriages usually share key protective factors like commitment, open communication, intimacy, and a strong sense of partnership. When those pieces are missing — especially trust — it becomes almost impossible to keep the relationship stable or satisfying.
4. Are your values still in alignment?
People change over time. Circumstances and personal experiences shape and reshape thought patterns, beliefs, and even values.
A couple that works on emotional intimacy will usually evolve together. They will still have their individuality, but they manage to coexist alongside a common set of values, priorities, and goals.
If you and your spouse don’t even agree on the fundamentals anymore, you'll find yourselves in constant turmoil.
Raising children will involve ongoing conflict. Charting your future will be stalemated. And if you don’t end up arguing all the time, you may end up drifting apart out of self-preservation.
5. Is addiction taking a toll on your relationship?
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The presence of addiction isn’t a reason in and of itself to end a marriage. People with addictions enter into marriage, and addictions enter into marriages. It’s what the addict and those around them do about the addiction that matters.
No addiction can thrive unless it can feed on denial and co-dependence. And no one can thrive if the addict is still “using” and denying the need for help.
6. Do you see contempt in your relationship?
There's more than just subjective reasoning behind contempt ranking as the number-one predictor of divorce.
Marriage researcher John Gottman has determined it to be the worst of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when it comes to destructive communication styles in relationships. It is vile, hateful, demeaning, and seething with disrespect.
While contempt can be reversed and worked through, it is the most foreboding sign of a marriage’s demise.
It's about more than how you feel in the moment.
Answering the question, “Is my marriage worth saving?” involves more than jumping ship based on current feelings. Couples get bored with one another, life piles on stress, and energy becomes a coveted commodity.
Chances are that you have plenty of days at work when you “hate your job.” But what are the chances you just throw up your hands and quit, even when you’re not getting everything you want?
What kind of process do you go through, and how much effort do you invest to improve your situation before leaving? Isn’t your marriage worth even more than what you would give to your career?
If nothing else, picture yourself on the other side of the fence 10 years from now. Now look down at the grass you’re standing on. Chances are, it’s no greener than the grass you’re standing on right now.
Mary Ellen Goggin offers relationship coaching for individuals and collaborates with her partner, Dr. Jerry Duberstein, to offer private couples retreats in Portsmouth, NH.
