How to know if your marriage is over? As somone who left her marriage in 2016, who has coached 1000's of women through this changing season of their life I need to share with you my personal experience, professional experience and findings that have been supported by studies.
The average time for a person between beginning to feel that their marriage is over and knowing it is over is around 18 months.
Professionally I witness women cycle in the limbo space of is my marriage over or can it be saved for varied periods of time. Sometimes many years without resolvement or improvement in the marriage.
Personally I began to feel discontent in my marriage and in myself in 2014 before expressing it in September 2015. My ex-husband moved out into his own place mid 2016. (You can read the more detailed timeline of my own personal journey here.)
No one ends a marriage overnight.
Even those people who out of the blue walk out on their partners or marriages.
They had been processing it in their head, sometimes for years. Only they never shared it. And they hadn't the courage to fully express their truth before they walked out the door, often with little to no deep explanation given.
The first step to a marriage ending is clarity - this is why our marriage isn't working, isn't evolving and won't change. This is the wound cycle of our marriage.
The second step is acceptance - we fully own that the marriage is over and we can now express how we feel in a forthright way that our message is heard.
A wound cycle is the argument, the patterning, the behaviour that lies at the foundation of a marriage not evolving and growing with us. It is something we circle back on as a couple without the 'issue' every really resolving. (You can learn more about wound cycles here).
Identifying yours is key to helping you understand if your marriage can be fixed, perhaps if you even desire for it to be fixed.
Because so often when we heal the wound the relationship ends because the relationship was chosen from the point of the wound.
Of course every couple's situation is unique and to help you understand the process, in such way a way to help you understand your own situation, I'd love to share with you a session I had with a recent client.
She came to me unsure if she should stay in her marriage or accept that it was over. They had been together/married for over 20 years. They had two children, one was special needs. And she was the stay at home Mum because of her son, but also because she had always desired to be that role.
When she came to me she shared that she had caughter her husband out by going through their bank records and discovered he had been having an affair with a woman from work for four years. He had also rented an apartment which was where they spent their time together. This aparment was rented under the guise of being needed as he often 'worked late.'
He was not being forthcoming with the details or the depth of the affair which was clearly to my ears way past just being physical, despite her husbands assertions that it was not. He was deeply sorry and wanted to save the marriage. But he refused to be transparent, answer any of her questions that she needed answered to feel any degree of safety/trust or security and he was expecting her to just move on, 'I've said sorry and I'm now working on our marriage and seeing a psychologist.'
My client understandbly had mixed feelings about it all.
On deeper questioning she finally revealed that he had had other marital affairs and one night stands related to his work environment, but also if she was honest with herself, perhaps even before then.
Reading this you are perhaps thinking that their wound cycle is one of dishonesty, or lies, or affairs.
But as I asked my client deeper and deeper questions, leaning her more and more into her shadow (the side of herself that she is unwilling and unable to see, true for all of us without someone like myself probing your psyche in such a way that I shine a bright light on it) it became very clear to me.
My client's marriage was based on a wound cycle of a lack of self-worth.
As soon as she healed her lack of self-worth she would have believed herself worthy of something more loving, deeper and connected from a heart space, not from a facade of nice home/nice family/look at my nice new coat space.
Her lack of self-worth was the only thing holding her marriage together. By a thread.
As soon as she stepped into having self-worth, the marriage would end.
And her husband subconsciously knew it, playing on it and manipulating her to stay in this energetic space on cycle, not realising that he was doing this, but doing it.
With this realisation came deep clarity for my client. Which has lead to acceptance. And now starts the pathway of bringing a marriage to an end with a man who would never have parted with half his money on his own accord.
*If this share has resonated with you and made you wonder what is my marriage wound cycle then please explore my online mini program 'How To Know When Your Marriage Is Over' here. This program is entirely private, no one will see you inside other than myself. It is self lead over 90 minutes and you will have access to me inside to help you further bring clarity to your wound cycle if you need my support to do so.
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