How to Save a Marriage

Can a broken marriage be fixed? Often, if both partners are willing to do the work the answer is yes.   In a recent article for CNN author Eileen Kelly recounts her own experience with couples’ counseling.  For Kelley and her husband the end began on a Caribbean vacation with their three year old twins.  She writes about how she has seen several friends try to use a Caribbean getaway as marital duct tape, often with disastrous results.

For herself, she writes, “When we returned home I told my husband I was either calling a therapist or a lawyer. It was his choice.”  Off to counseling they went and it was…awkward.  She writes about sitting there, with her husband and sometimes without him when he was traveling, staring at the therapist but finding that there was a lot to talk about.

I was intrigued by what the root issue turned out to be.  Kelley explains that:

The main thing, though, was that we weren’t seeing each other. You can be sitting right next to someone on the sofa, sleeping next to him every night, but when that someone — the person you’re supposed to mean more to than anyone else — doesn’t see you, you can be the loneliest person in the world.

It looked really bleak for us for a very long time. But this past fall we turned a corner, and we haven’t looked back.

Kelley and her husband managed to refine their relationship into something stronger than it was before. Some marriages take a long route to get better.  For Tom Archibald and Suellen Beatty it took a divorce – two for her – before they realized that they really could be together.  Tom chuckles now at Suellen’s habit of introducing him as her first and third husband, but it’s true.  You can read their story in the article How to Heal a Marriage.

If your own relationship you use a little more sparkle, try our free life lesson Rekindle the Romance to get you back on track. If you would like to talk to someone, we have mentors available by email seven days a week.  Just use this form to request a mentor and someone from our team will be in touch.

Tags: advice, divorce, help, husband, marriage, prevention, relationships, sex and love, wife

2 Responses to “How to Save a Marriage”

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• The Tech-Obsessed Clutter in our Lives | Marcus Bertrand says:

  February 19, 2011 at 6:45 pm

  […] take calls, play with your gadgets or do email when on vacation or when you are with your family and children. Do not send the message that they are less important than the people whom you’re trying to […]

• The Tech-Obsessed Clutter in our Lives | The Talkative Man says:

  July 20, 2013 at 4:09 am

  […] take calls, play with your gadgets or do email when on vacation or when you are with your family and children. Do not send the message that they are less important than the people whom you’re trying to […]