What could have saved your relationship?

Orlando1701 · 2022-04-24T15:45:41+00:00

Nothing. I didn’t realize she made up her mind years ago.

jaymo54 · 2022-04-24T16:08:53+00:00

More sex and less fighting about money. Current marriage: my wife has a sex drive equal or greater than mine, and we have seperate money. In 7 years we’ve bickered maybe a dozen times and it felt mild compared to my past. Not one
actual fight.

AreaGuy · 2022-04-24T16:32:31+00:00

Being married to a different woman.

half_brain_bill · 2022-04-24T17:25:51+00:00

I let her mother have too much influence on raising our kids. I also assumed she wasn’t lying on our wedding day. I married her forever. She married me until she felt like not being married anymore. She divorced me on the four year anniversary of a massive stroke I survived.I was 37. I don’t know how long she was planning on divorcing me but it was never something I ever considered.

flowingwisdom13 · 2022-04-24T18:04:15+00:00

It’s only in hindsight that one can tell these things, I think. Because a woman can tell you that she loves you and that she thinks you are the man of her life, just to change her stance a few weeks or months later.

Then only after the fact can you pick up (for the inexperienced) on signs or where things went wrong. Although the blame is often shared for a failed relationship, I find that men are most of the time willing to work through it while women pretend to and give up very easily. As such, men with their beliefs in working through hard times, do not appreciate that their counterpart are often just at those times preparing their exit.

akuvkdgm1246u · 2022-04-24T19:31:28+00:00

What could have saved my marriage is if both of us had been through personal therapy individually well before we got married - and did the hard work of addressing our core issues. We did so much damage to each other that by the time we realized we needed to heal ourselves individually, the damage was done.

TnBobber07 · 2022-04-24T21:21:17+00:00

Better understanding and goal alignment financially. Never stop dating, even when kids come... this will kill a marriage! Trust, communication, love are what should be key factors imo

Tyler-87 · 2022-04-24T17:00:16+00:00

Respect, the second she looses respect of you and your personal boundaries, you are in a death spiral. Women don’t want a subservient man, always remember that!

Falafelluvr1976 · 2022-04-24T18:27:41+00:00

She started changing significantly after giving Birth. She simply lost her love for.me It took her 2 years to acknowledge that therapy would help her. I launched 3x marriage therapies. But no change. Then I divorced.

awesomeroy · 2022-04-24T21:44:11+00:00

inability to own mistakes. and she was a ugly duckling, she really didnt become beautiful until college when i met her, and she got addicted to the attention.

NothingIsEverEnough · 2022-04-24T15:56:50+00:00

She could have been kind to the kids.

fixingmedaybyday · 2022-04-24T17:48:12+00:00

More weekends away without the kid, me taking better care of my myself and working on my own social life and actually building my photography business. I should have just made more decisions about things instead of consulting with her or caving into her desires. For instance, instead of waffling on the 3 things to do w/ the property, I should have just done what I wanted to do. I didn't lead enough and I hate myself for it.

JohnnyMnemo · 2022-04-24T18:02:13+00:00

I needed to be more aware of my emotional state, and actively manage it.

Leading with your feels in all situations without critical review of how it's impacting others doesn't make you a good partner. It barely makes you tolerable to be around by anyone, actually.

There was a lot of other mistakes I made, but it stemmed from that. Even when angry, stressed, etc you need to think about how those expressions will be received. Are they having the effect you want?

ZimBamBoodleOoo · 2022-04-25T02:10:39+00:00

Work To Defeat & Avoid The 4 Horsemen of doomed marriages.

According to Gottman, the 4 Horsemen of doomed relationships are: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness & Stonewalling.

These are marriage killers. Learn to recognize, preempt & kill these.

My (47M) marriage of 24 years died slowly for many reasons and both of us had plenty of blame. But the presence of contempt, defensiveness, and criticism prevented reconciliation and restoration. (Stonewalling was never really a thing for either of us.)

We are both highly educated leaders. What did us in was pride and a fighting for control over parts of the relationship.

Being "equally yoked" is important. Understanding partnership is vital. You cannot have one person who is domineering and one who is a doormat. One day the doormat wakes up and decides to not be a doormat anymore. I was the doormat. When I decided to stop being a doormat, I threw the entire relationship dynamic into chaos.

That chaos led to criticism from her, defensiveness from me, contempt from her and ultimately the end of the marriage.

So learn to recognize and avoid the 4 Horsemen.

https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

Edit: spelling like a grownup

Basic_Advance7627 · 2022-04-24T16:46:15+00:00

Who really knows? I tried to be a good husband and father, but in the day I wasn’t enough.

import_help · 2022-04-24T18:34:51+00:00

A single ounce of communication from her side of the fence. A willingness to have any kind of discussion so we could come to a shared understanding of reality.

whatskeeping · 2022-04-24T21:38:20+00:00

Having expeditions and getting angry. You have to ride out the storms. Stupid arguments mean nothing and are forgotten, what's said during is what lasts a lifetime.

SaltyPhilosophizer · 2022-04-24T22:40:54+00:00

The hard conversations. I just said fuck it and cheated and regret it to this day. I should of had the balls to tell her what I wanted or that it wasn't working. I was worried about keeping the relationship and pissed it all away rather than focusing on the relationship and making it better.

Gattsama · 2022-04-25T03:55:37+00:00

Lack of support and validation. My STBX is either incapable of doing or just would not for me. Avoid accusations and speaking from emotion. Speaking about emotion is good. But from causes drama. Look at I vs you statements for example: "you don't love me" vs "I don't feel loved". Same with always and never. Statements like this put the other partner into a defense stance, they have to defuse the often false claim before they can even deal with the issue at hand.

Work on meeting each others needs as best as able, safely and if not able or interested just say so. Give up trying to understand your partner's needs. If that happens great, but it truly doesn't matter. People think that understanding brings bonding and closeness. True if it happens. But you don't need to understand why your partner watches football, collects stamps, likes to dig holes, wants to run a marathon, etc. I've seen this mostly from women, this never ending quest to understand, and its cousin, the quest to change the person.

Here's a real world example. I want to complete a full iron man triathlon. She didn't understand why. She would ask is it because I'm competitive, I'm prideful, I want to show off, etc etc. I tried to explain several times but she didn't get it. This lead to all kinds of drama and BS. And for what?? All I needed was support, but instead it becomes a conversation about justifying my wants / desires / goals. I have a cousin that is nearly 50. He likes to collect anime statues. His wife never understood why, from her pov it's a waste of time, money and childish. She would acknowledge that it made him happy, and that they could easily afford them. But because she didn't understand it and thought it was stupid, she could not support it.

You don't need to understand each other. Don't do anything that compromises your core values. Just agree to support each other and be happy for their happy.

Do not make your partner your sole source entertainment or activity. Each person needs their own separate life.

ijustdontcare74 · 2022-04-25T09:44:50+00:00

Honestly, it started to go wrong when we had kids. I became almost an after thought to her, she was just focused on the kids. I because like a stranger in my own home, only there to pay for everything and provide babysitting duties so she could do whatever she wanted. She admitted yrs later (after the divorce) that after kids were born she couldn't see me any other way than "daddy" and it wasn't attractive to her. I did everything I could think of to keep her happy and make life easier, for example taking the kids for long periods of time so she could pursue hobbies so she wasn't just in "baby land" all the time, but nothing was good enough.

All this lead to a sexless marriage and eventually after yrs of little to no affection and sex, I checked out completely and focused my energy on the kids, work and hobbies. I was done with her and it was just a matter of time until divorce happened. There's only so much rejection you can take before all sense of love dies.

traveller1976 · 2022-04-24T19:03:36+00:00

Well that's a tough one, especially if your wife gets infected by latest wave feminism and the attraction of a no fault divorce cash cow. But essentially if you maintain your mystery and aloofness as a man, and avoid becoming a spineless simp, you'll continue to hold her interest. At the same time you have to fuck the shit out of her and show her you are attracted to her face, body, mind and heart. This duality will keep her chained to your orbit. All the best. Btw I'm married almost 2 decades and my wife worships me, and I continue to fuck her sore, we have many kids

Radical_Drip · 2022-04-24T17:45:34+00:00

Continue dating your wife, else somebody else will step in

Sum1StoleMyGamertag · 2022-04-25T04:11:25+00:00

Work on yourself in the marriage, learn to be a better person (in ways YOU know are needed/mutual) and hope she does the same. Rinse/repeat this until someone either passes away from old age and a long marriage, or leaves.

I have hope for you OP, not all marriages end badly, and not all women are terrible.

TheCritic · 2022-04-24T16:54:01+00:00

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeannie_suk_gersen_how_understanding_divorce_can_help_your_marriage?language=en

monster_dutson · 2022-04-24T21:38:53+00:00

Couldn't figure out why we weren't getting along. Found out she had been cheating on me with 7+ people through our 7 years together.

pegleg_legal · 2022-04-25T01:52:47+00:00

Not another child.

doing_my_best_co · 2022-04-25T02:15:13+00:00

Hey op. Hope it does not happen to you. But getting a divorce is like getting cancer. There may be some things that might help, ( like not smoking cigarettes) but you can do everything right and it just happens anyway.

Sure, stay away from the crazy stuff like addition, abuse, infidelity. Try to stay connected and close to your spouse. Best of luck to you.

Jeelab · 2022-04-25T02:16:04+00:00

DiffDoc · 2022-04-25T03:11:21+00:00

Simple.....either her being honest about intending to split her time and energy completely between work and anything remotely related to the kids SHE HAD to have (which would have led to no marriage). Or, in the alternative, when I begged and pleaded countless time for attention, time, sex etc ....to take it seriously and just give a FEW hours a month solely to us. That is literally all it would have taken.

Commercial-Pick-2264 · 2022-04-25T05:53:42+00:00

When you grow apart and the marriage becomes a dead bedroom and one sided relationship it's really hard. You can put all the effort into making the other person feel special but you can't give them more of what they don't appreciate or take for granted and expect a different outcome. Went to couples therapy for a year only to find out during exchange of Financials during the divorce process that she had lawyered up 6 months prior to serving me with my papers. We were in couples therapy right up until the day before I got served.

geraltofoblivia · 2022-04-25T14:14:02+00:00

I don't think anything could have saved my marriage either outside of a miracle from God himself. I've come to the conclusion that she had checked out a couple years prior and had probably been waiting for the opportunity. All evidence since the separation points to that being true.

Women are just different from us men. I was talking to a buddy last night who agreed it would have been easier and better to cohabitate with his ex for the sake of their child. Can you see many women agreeing to that? Of course not, they think with their emotions first and their brain last.

Title	What could have saved your relationship?
Author	plaguebabyonboard
Upvotes	12
Comments	68
Date	April 24, 2022 3:34 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/uaxbm0/what_could_have_saved_your_relationship/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/what-could-have-saved-your-relationship.1111315 https://theredarchive.com/post/1111315

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