6 Tough Relationship Questions You Need To Answer Before Getting Divorced
It's important to know when to leave.
Maksym Povozniuk | Canva At one time or another, almost every married person I know (including my husband and me) has questioned whether or not to get divorced. It's an incredibly painful question to ask yourself because the only way to answer it is to dig down deep, way past the superficial hurts. And for most of us, there's no black-and-white answer about whether you're ready to leave your marriage or not. There are just too many things to weigh and consider as you figure out what's best for you (and your kids).
At its heart, your question is really about values, respect, and what you fundamentally want for your life. (No one besides you will know how to answer this question for you.) Here are six key questions to ask yourself as you consider and determine the larger question of whether you're ready to end your marriage, work to make it better, or accept it as it is.
Here are 6 tough relationship questions you need to answer before getting divorced:
1. How is your love life?
Intimacy is an important part of marriage. At its best, it is a baring and sharing of both bodies and souls. At its worst, it's just another chore to either do or ignore. The two most concerning intimate problems to have are:
- You feel trapped, scared, or sad when you think about intimacy with your spouse (and you're not in an abusive situation).
- You've not been intimate for a long time (think a year or more without medical restrictions) despite wanting and asking for it.
In and of themselves, neither of these problems necessitate the need to divorce, but they are most definitely situations that you must address.
2. Do you still have basic respect for each other?
Mutual respect is critical for any successful marriage, yet there are moments in every marriage when respect, unfortunately, goes out the window. There might be a serious problem if you feel either of these two things to be true:
- You've lost ALL positive feelings for your spouse.
- You believe your spouse can do nothing right.
This isn't a one-way street though. If you (the "core you") truly believe that your spouse has lost respect for you, then that's a problem too. And you need to consider it as you determine your course of action.
3. Do you find fault instead of finding solutions?
Sometimes it's so much easier to play the blame game than to step up to the plate and admit your part in creating the current situation. It's normal to do this once in a while, but spouses who consistently blame their partner typically do so because they're too self-absorbed, too easily insulted, or simply ignoring the obvious situations.
4. Have you developed bad habits?
Now, I'm not talking here about the little annoying habits that we've all got. I'm talking about biggies, such as:
- You've become just parents instead of remaining lovers and partners.
- Deception, lying, and cheating (like feeling the need for a separate/private/secret phone) exist in the relationship.
- Bad/non-existent communication leads to fighting all the time or no fighting at all.
- You maintain a vice-like grip on the bad things that happened in the past and use them as weapons again and again and again.
- Every situation becomes a fight instead of asking how you can fix or deal with this.
- You're so tired of trying that you just can't force yourself to do so one second longer.
- You both refuse to meet each other's needs.
- You're living separate lives where you don't really know or care about what's going on with each other.
- You've stopped communicating about anything substantial.
5. Have you remained in your marriage solely because of religious beliefs?
For some people, this is enough reason to stay in a marriage and work on it for a lifetime. But for others, their religious beliefs may be masking one or more fears such as loss, the unknown future, or even judgment.
6. Are you and your spouse's visions for the future different?
Do you have incompatible ideas about whether or not to have children, where to retire, or even moral and ethical differences? These different visions could provide some interesting discussions (and maybe a few arguments) as you try to reconcile your different dreams and reach a compromise. Or, maybe they're the last straw. These 6 questions will help you more thoroughly evaluate whether leaving your marriage is the right answer for you or not. And that's all they can do.
Dr. Karen Finn is a divorce and life coach. Her writing on marriage, divorce, and co-parenting has appeared on MSN, Yahoo, Psych Central, Huffington Post, Prevention, and The Good Men Project, among others.