Deciding Whether or Not to Divorce
The lead feature in each issue of Ladies Home Journal is a column entitled "Can This Marriage Be Saved?", which the Journal bills as "The most popular, enduring women's magazine feature in the world."
The feature has three sections. The first section is "The Wife's Turn" in which the wife recounts the frustrations of her marriage and why she is considering leaving it. Second, the husband takes his turn and talks about his unhappiness. (The husband usually comes across as being more at fault than the wife.) Third, the counselor takes a turn and analyzes how the couple reached an impasse and what can be done to save the marriage. In Ladies Home Journal, the marriage always is saved.
In real life, marriage counselors, of course, do not save all marriages, but they can help save some marriages, and they also can help wives and husbands with individual growth regardless of whether they decide to divorce.
The decision to divorce usually is not an easy one. It is common to go through periods of ambivalence when deciding whether or not to stay with a marriage. The ultimate decision may based on a combination of logic, intuition, and gut feeling.
Placing structure on the decision-making process can be helpful. If you are considering divorce, you might benefit from making a series of lists. The first two lists could be reasons to stay married and reasons to divorce. The reasons would include what you like and don't like about your spouse as well as other factors, such as impact on your children, impact on your relationships with extended family and friends, financial security, and day-to-day needs and services provided by your spouse.
You'll note that not all items on the list are of equal weight. You might try a quantitative approach--assigning a number value to each item on the lists ("five" for high importance; "three" for middle importance; and "one" for low importance). Add the columns. See how the numbers compare. Put the list away for a while, and then look at it again to see if there are other factors or changes in the importance of items on the list.
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Guide to Family Law
Copyright © 1996, 2000 American Bar Association
