When Is It Time for Divorce?

Marriage is supposed to be a contract for life, but there are times when the most responsible choice for both parties is to go their separate ways. How do you know when divorce is best? Here are some basic guidelines.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Ask yourself several questions about your well-being: Is your partner physically and/or emotionally abusive? Is he or she controlling of your life? If either of these are the case and if divorce is a requirement for living the life you want to, staying safe and/or retaining a healthy self-image, you must end the marriage. Physical abuse is easy to identify. If you are unsure about emotional abuse and control, look to your loved ones. If many of them have observed your relationship and firmly told you that your partner is abusive, you should listen to them.
2. Determine where you both stand on the relationship itself. The time for a relationship to end is the time when one or both of the parties is no longer willing to do the work necessary to keep both people happy. This is a simple rule, but its application is complex. You may be satisfied in the relationship while your partner is not, or vice versa. Both of you have a right to be happy with your marriage, so the first step will be determining why one or both of you is unsatisfied and if it would be possible to do what needs to be done for both of you to be happy.
3. Consider couple's counseling as an option. Counseling can open up new avenues of understanding and help you break out of bad habits in communication. However, counseling is a guide and will only help if both of you are already devoted to solving your relationship's problems.
4. Consider a period of trial separation. This will be an opportunity to gain some distance in order to think more subjectively about your marriage and determine the best course of action. It will also give you a chance to find out if being apart causes you to miss one another, or if you find yourself feeling better about life on your own than life with your spouse.
5. Remember that continuing a marriage is a two-way street, but ending it is not. Either of you has the right to divorce whether the other agrees to it or not. Often, if communication has truly broken down and the two of you are incapable of agreeing on anything, this will be the case. You may find yourself facing the end of a marriage that you don't want to see end, or trying to end it when your spouse tells you should not or cannot. However, if one person is determined to divorce, the divorce can and will go through.