Countless couples wonder if getting a divorce is better than staying in an unhappy marriage. Paul Friedman discusses it, then offers a better question to ask. Even when you are experiencing troubles that make it seem impossible to turn around your marriage, it still CAN be turned around! You can gain the happiness you first sought when you wed, and this video will both encourage you and offer some practical steps to take.
This is a good question however, it's not the ultimate question you should be asking.
First of all, if you have children it's not better. Honestly, you are better off for the children's sake of staying together even if your marriage was unhappy. Granted that is my personal point of view. It is based on statistical evidence of what happens to children, who have to go through a divorce.
However, I'm going to admit it's my personal point of view but what this is really all about isn't a question about whether you should get a divorce really it's a question about what you should do now that your marriage is unhappy. I'm going to move this over to that.
You got married to be happier than you were otherwise, right?
And in the beginning, when you got to know each other, you realized, "This is the person who I feel good enough about that I want to spend the rest of my life with", and most people think this is your soulmate.
They feel a connection at the heart level and in the mind, they've already done an evaluation to determine, "Oh, this is a good person. This is the right person."
And then you get married and things start slipping. Sometimes slowly, sometimes it's indiscernible in the beginning, but it's surely slipping.
You don't have that happiness that you expected and rightfully so.
You don't have that happiness that you expected. Let's take a look at that first, shall we? Let's examine, why not?
I'm going to fill you in on what I've discovered to be the number one unhappiness causing problem that occurs in every single divorce.
It's called "over-familiarity." This actually is the root of all your other problems, pretty
much.
When you first got together you were very careful to be considerate, to be polite, to want to know what your spouse or soon-to-be spouse liked, and what they didn't like. You were careful not to step on their toes, to make sure you didn't say things that would hurt their feelings.
But what happens is, we all go into a marriage with expectations that are frankly not reasonable. We have expectations that our spouse is going to make us happy and I'm telling you that's an unreasonable expectation because only you have the power to make yourself happy.
When you put that expectation on your spouse you're setting yourself up for failure.
You're also setting yourself up to fall into a cycle where they don't deliver your happiness and so you become dissatisfied with them. You start finding flaws, you start criticizing and this cycle builds, and you have a descending situation, and you have a marriage that's falling apart.
Until at some point, you're going, "Man, this just sucks. I want out. Am I going to be happier when I get out?" Well, no because as someone who I knew once said to me wherever you go you bring yourself with you and this is what happens to couples when they get a divorce.
Generally, they're going to get more than one because they haven't learned how to be married and here I'm getting to what I think is the most important point of this whole video and that is that unless you know how to be married.
Watch the video for more!
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