7 Strong Steps to Stop a Divorce
7. Learn the skills that everyone needs if they want to be good at marriage partnership
You wouldn’t expect to walk into a courtroom to conduct a trial without first learning the skills of a lawyer. Yet how much training did you get for the job of spouse? Probably very little, even though the skills you need to succeed at the job take most people significant training to do successfully.
Learn the four skill sets essential for sustaining a loving relationship: 1) talking together cooperatively 2) making win-win decisions together 3) preventing anger from spoiling your relationship and 4) pumping up the positivity you emanate to each other. Self-help blog-posts and books or an online course can get you there; sometimes a couples counselor can also be a reliable mentor, but pick carefully to be sure the one you choose can teach you the skills you need.
What happened to Ted and Maria?
Maria decided that she would fight with all her energies to win back Ted’s heart, repair the marriage, and give both of them and also their children the strong family that they all, at heart, longed for. She launched immediately into this seven step plan.
The strategy worked. There’s still more healing to go. At the same time, within days of Maria’s having launched her campaign, Ted called his lawyer to tell him to withdraw at least temporarily the divorce papers he had filed.
To his credit, Ted realized that a divorce would not heal his years of built-up resentments nearly as effectively as working together with a wife who now was giving her all, with him, to building the marriage of his and her dreams.
Eventually, despite having been unwilling in the past to go to marriage counseling, Ted began joining Maria at her therapy sessions. To his surprise Ted found the help of a therapist more useful than he’d expected, especially for guiding healing from the many major hurts they both had suffered over their years together.
A newly loving spouse, an intact marriage for their children, and no loss of half of the financial assets they both had worked for years so hard to build brought Ted and Maria a joyful outcome to Ted’s having filed for divorce, The turnaround took multiple months of focused attention on making changes, fueled by on-going determination from Maria and willingness to give it one more try from Ted.
There will be further upsets for sure for this couple. Ted’s having filed for divorce followed by Maria’s campaign to save the marriage though definitely turned their catastrophe to a blessing. The earthquake is over. Both Ted and Maria, for the first time in many years, are standing arm in arm on solid ground, and their therapist is beaming.
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Denver clinical psychologist Susan Heitler, Ph.D, a graduate of Harvard and NYU, is author of Power of Two, a book, a workbook, and a website that teach the communication skills that sustain positive relationships.
