Leslie Cane Articles

Most of the people who contact me are willing to do just about anything to save their marriage and prevent a divorce. Sometimes, their spouse doesn’t want a divorce either, but this isn’t always the case. The situation that I most often see is that one spouse is considering a divorce, while the other spouse wants to do every single thing in their power to keep this from happening.

I often get comments like “I would consider divorce to be a failure. My parents divorced and I do not want my children to have to go through that. My husband used to feel the same way, but now that our marriage is in real trouble and struggling, he seems to be at least considering that divorce might be our only viable option. He doesn’t want to live this way anymore. I want to convince him that there are things we can do other than just give up and end our marriage without a fight. What can I do to prevent divorce when I just might be the only one who believes it’s possible?”

In the following article, I will try to address these questions and I will offer some tips on preventing a divorce.

Make Sure Your Focus Is On Embracing Opportunities For Improvement Rather Than On Avoiding A Disastrous Divorce: I understand that when divorce is a real threat, it’s very tempting to want to stop everything and to place every ounce of your energy on it. However, when you do this, it’s almost as if you give the threat of divorce more power and bring it into the minds of you and your husband as a real possibility.

I’m not saying that you should downplay the possibility of divorce or even ignore this threat. I am saying that you should shift your focus from one of thwarting a threat to one as taking an opportunity for improvement. Many people’s mantra will be something like “I am going to do whatever I need to do to prevent my spouse from divorcing me.” These kinds of statements put you in panic mode, which can inspire fast-moving, panic-induced, and ill-advised action that might make things worse.

A better mindset would be something like “I’m going to take this opportunity to reconnect with my spouse, take inventory of what is wrong in my marriage, and eliminate those things that are wrong while placing more focus on what is right.”

The thing is when you focus so much on and fear the negative (the divorce,) you give it much more power and make it seem much more immediate. But if you place your focus on improving the marriage with a positive slant, you will often get a better result, and you will have an easier time during the process while getting much more cooperation from your spouse also.

This doesn’t mean that you should pretend that the threat of divorce doesn’t exist. This isn’t what I’m implying at all. I’m saying that you address what’s wrong, but you focus on the positive and take an improvement-driven attitude rather than taking on an attitude of dread. If you are truly successful in improving your marriage, then this will automatically prevent a divorce. But if your sole focus is to prevent the divorce at all costs, then you often won’t make any changes to your marriage, and whatever reprieve you manage to gain will be short-lived or not enough.

It’s so important to understand that if you can reconnect with your spouse and get on the same page again, working things out becomes so much easier. But if you’re still divided and you try to force divorce prevention, the results may well be very different.

Make Sure That You Make The Process Of Improving Your Marriage One That Both You And Your Spouse Can Get Behind (Don’t Force Your Spouse Into Something That They Are Clearly Resisting:) Often, when people are trying to prevent a divorce, they approach this as though they need to save something that is dead, dying, or so sick that it needs immediate intervention. So they approach this whole process with sort of an attitude of emergency, but with a dose of dread thrown in. This idea doesn’t bring about fun or happy images for most people.

Many wives will insist on counseling or on slogging through their difficult marital issues and many husbands will resist this and secretly think that they’d just rather get the divorce over with then be dragged to counseling or have their marriage picked apart with a fine-tooth comb. That’s why it’s vital that you think about your spouse’s personality and comfort level when coming up with any plan to prevent the divorce.

Counseling is a wonderful tool, but not everyone is going to agree to it. If your spouse does agree, then work hard to find a counselor that you both like. It’s so important that you are both on board with whatever you decide. If your spouse is still resistant, I think it’s better to find something that your spouse can be enthusiastic about rather than dragging them to counseling when you both know they have a bad attitude about the same. You can always revisit the counseling issue later, when they are more receptive.

As an example, if your spouse would rather spend the day boating with you than sitting in a counselor’s office, maybe that’s a compromise you might want to consider – at least for the time being. The reconnecting that you did when you thought you were only playing or only spending time together might lead to improvements that might eventually make him willing to go to counseling (or might even lead to improvements that make it unnecessary.)

Never turn down the chance to improve your relationship or reconnect with your spouse even if it feels silly, vulnerable, or to be a waste of time. As I said, if you can begin bonding and communicating again, these things are vital to you being able to navigate or work through the issues that are leading to the threat of divorce.

If Nothing Else Works, Look At Acceptable And Temporary Alternatives To Divorce: If you are at the point where you or your spouse feel that a divorce is imminent and nothing is going to help, sometimes it’s advisable to look at another option. If you’ve tried everything that you could and your spouse still wants out, then sometimes it can help to try to offer them an alternative that gives them the time and space they need to avoid them filing for divorce immediately.

You can offer some time apart. If they don’t agree to this, you could then offer a temporary separation to give each of you some time to sort out your feelings and to decide how you’d like to proceed. It’s best if you can define how you expect and want the separation to go. Try to agree on how often you’ll communicate, check-in with each other, and get together to discuss how things are going. A separation that is well defined has a much better chance of succeeding than an open-ended one.

I believe that it’s entirely possible to prevent a divorce no matter how hopeless your marriage might seem right now. To me, one of the most important things to remember is to try to view this as an opportunity for improvement rather than the prevention of disaster.