Each year in America alone, nearly 1 million marriages end in divorce.
This is an incredible number!
That would be as if all the citizens of Houston Texas were divorced (each divorce leaves 2 people).
The question is how many of those marriages could be saved.
Unfortunately, that is an invisible number.
If your marriage stays together, it is hard to find in the statistics.
As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.
Can your marriage be saved?
If I could answer that, I would be a wealthy man.
I can tell you that if your marriage is in trouble and you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed. If you do something, there is a much better chance that your marriage will be saved.
And I can tell you, in four simple steps what you can do to save your marriage.
You can start right now.
But you must understand that I said "simple." That is not the same as "easy." These steps are not easy.
They do, however, give you a path that you must follow if you want to change the destiny of a marriage in trouble.
Here are the 4 steps:
1) Quit the blame game.
Stop blaming your spouse and stop blaming yourself.
This is the first step because marriages get frozen into a pattern of blame that immobilizes any prospect of progress.
Instead, the momentum gets dragged down and down.
Blame is our way of avoiding seeing ourselves clearly.
It is much easier to point the finger somewhere and say "It's their fault."
But in marriage, you can just as easily turn that pointing finger on yourself and place the blame there, saying "it's all my fault."
Unfortunately, blame feels good in the short-term, but in the long-term, it prevents any shift or change.
So, even if you can make a long list of why you or your spouse should be blamed, forget it.
Even if that list is factual, it will not help you put your marriage back together.
Blame is the fuel of divorces.
2) Take responsibility.
Decide you can do something.
Change always begins with one person who wants to see a change.
Understand that taking responsibility is not the same as taking the blame (see above).
Instead, blame is saying "regardless of who is at fault, there are some things I can do differently, and I am going to do them."
Each year in America alone, nearly 1 million marriages end in divorce.
This is an incredible number!
That would be as if all the citizens of Houston Texas were divorced (each divorce leaves 2 people).
The question is how many of those marriages could be saved.
Unfortunately, that is an invisible number.
If your marriage stays together, it is hard to find in the statistics.
As Marian Wright Edelman wrote, statistics are stories with the tears washed off.
Can your marriage be saved?
If I could answer that, I would be a wealthy man.
I can tell you that if your marriage is in trouble and you do nothing, the outcome is guaranteed. If you do something, there is a much better chance that your marriage will be saved.
And I can tell you, in four simple steps what you can do to save your marriage.
You can start right now.
But you must understand that I said "simple." That is not the same as "easy." These steps are not easy.
They do, however, give you a path that you must follow if you want to change the destiny of a marriage in trouble.
Here are the 4 steps:
1) Quit the blame game.
Stop blaming your spouse and stop blaming yourself.
This is the first step because marriages get frozen into a pattern of blame that immobilizes any prospect of progress.
Instead, the momentum gets dragged down and down.
Blame is our way of avoiding seeing ourselves clearly.
It is much easier to point the finger somewhere and say "It's their fault."
But in marriage, you can just as easily turn that pointing finger on yourself and place the blame there, saying "it's all my fault."
Unfortunately, blame feels good in the short-term, but in the long-term, it prevents any shift or change.
So, even if you can make a long list of why you or your spouse should be blamed, forget it.
Even if that list is factual, it will not help you put your marriage back together.
Blame is the fuel of divorces.
2) Take responsibility.
Decide you can do something.
Change always begins with one person who wants to see a change.
Understand that taking responsibility is not the same as taking the blame (see above).
Instead, blame is saying "regardless of who is at fault, there are some things I can do differently, and I am going to do them."