Stop My Divorce

You have been married for a number of years but your relationship is headed for divorce. The romance is gone, but you have both invested a lot of time in your marriage and you would like to stop the divorce if possible.

A world authority on the psychology of relationships, Mort Fertel, says that the key to a long-lasting, successful marriage is “not finding the right person, it is falling in love with the person you selected.”

Falling in love is an emotional response to a strong attraction to an individual. It is a spontaneous response to a physical, emotional and intellectual appeal between two people.

Loving someone, on the other hand, is something at which you have to work actively. In order to sustain that loving feeling towards the person to whom you are married, you must apply time, energy and effort to the relationship.

If the “bloom is off the rose” in your relationship it is likely that you and your partner are responsible. By not applying yourselves to the marriage, you have lost or misplaced the promise of what began with such great passion.

It is very possible that you can recover that passion and rekindle the romance in your lives with each other. You can stop your move towards divorce and end up being happier than ever with the person your heart originally chose as your mate.

In order to stop your divorce you must address those factors that are pushing you towards that action. You have to eliminate as many negatives from your relationship as humanly possible.

Sure, you can let your divorce occur and you will probably connect with someone else and possibly fall in love again. If you don’t learn the lessons you need to about sustaining your love, then you will be in the same boat as you are now, heading for another divorce.

What was it about your partner that first attracted you? Chances are they are still the same person underneath all the baggage that one or both of you have added to the relationship by not doing the things necessary to stay in love.

If you are both amenable, you should each make a two-part list of what you like about your partner and marriage to them and then all the things you dislike. If your partner doesn’t want to take part in this exercise, do it yourself.

Sit down and discuss each of those lists, or just yours. When you expose the good and bad sides of your marriage, many of the negative issues will seem trivial. When taken together, however, they become like a millstone around your necks.

Make a joint commitment to change the facets of your relationship that you don’t like. Or commit to reduce them as much as humanly possible so that the positives in your marriage far outweigh the negatives.

Make a pact to think and talk positively about your partner and your marriage to each other and to other people. Expose the good side of each of your characters and each of you tell the other that you love them, often.

It sounds rather simplistic, but if you practice being in love, you will be in love. You will be able to sustain that relationship and fan the fires of your passion once more. If you spend your time dwelling on the negatives of your marriage, then your marriage will be a negative one.