{"id":23337,"date":"2014-02-03T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=23337"},"modified":"2016-09-14T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T17:16:16","slug":"10-indicators-that-your-marital-ship-is-sinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/10-indicators-that-your-marital-ship-is-sinking-0203144","title":{"rendered":"10 Indicators That Your Marital Ship Is Sinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sinkingI remember deciding to leave my marriage<\/a>. After months and months of trying to make it work, I got to a point where I couldn\u2019t stay any longer. It wasn\u2019t my choice to end the marriage, but my partner made it impossible for me to stay. The decision to walk away from something I had been so committed to was torturous because there was a part of me that would not let go of the idea that it could be saved.<\/p>\n

I knew the ship was sinking fast, and I tried really hard to scoop out the water, but ultimately I got to a point where I had to jump. With no life raft waiting for me, I chose to plunge into the deep, murky waters of a new life that would be completely different than what I had planned.<\/p>\n

People in therapy often ask me how they can know when it\u2019s time to stop trying and give up on saving a marriage. My answer is always the same: There may come a time when you know you can\u2019t stand it any longer. It may coincide with a loss of integrity and a fear of losing yourself in something you intuitively know is not healthy for you. There is no set time frame; it\u2019s different for every person and every unique situation.<\/p>\n

It takes a great amount of courage to walk away from a marriage even if you have exhausted all avenues to try and salvage what\u2019s broken. Even when one partner refuses to work on things, the idea of leaving a marriage dead in the water is beyond painful and hard to overcome.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost always fear<\/a> and hope<\/a> that keep people in a terminal marriage for a little too long\u2014the fear of walking away from something too soon, and the hope that it can be resurrected.<\/p>\n

The limbo of whether to work on something or walk away can last for weeks, months, or even years. It\u2019s a personal choice that can come only from a place of deep certainty and a readiness to relinquish the fantasy of what could have been.<\/p>\n

I have seen many people who don\u2019t technically \u201cleave the marriage\u201d until well after they are divorced<\/a>. A signature on a page doesn\u2019t define an ending in the same way a marital commitment is much more than a piece of paper.<\/p>\n

No one can ever tell you how or when to be done with your marriage, but here are a few indicators that you might be staying in a marriage beyond its expiration date.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Your partner blatantly does and says things that hurt you.<\/li>\n
  2. He or she disappears for long periods of time without being \u201creachable.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. Your partner refuses to end the relationship he or she has been having outside the marriage.<\/li>\n
  4. Your partner no longer includes you in his or her daily life.<\/li>\n
  5. He or she has moved out of the house into his or her own place.<\/li>\n
  6. You constantly find yourself wondering where the person you married has gone.<\/li>\n
  7. You rationalize his or her behavior as a \u201cmidlife crisis.\u201d<\/li>\n
  8. You witness big discrepancies between what your partner says and does.<\/li>\n
  9. He or she refuses to go to couples counseling.<\/li>\n
  10. Your partner tells you he or she doesn\u2019t love you anymore.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some of these indicators may be hard to swallow or accept, but if they raise your awareness or give you a bar by which to measure the health of your relationship, perhaps it will be easier to put your marriage to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Andra Brosh, PhD – If these warning signals are present in your relationship, you’re likely going to have difficulty keeping your marriage afloat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[31,540,395,25,41],"class_list":["post-23337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-breakup","tag-divorce","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}