InnerSelf.com

by Vecchi Talarico.

The list was one I never thought I would make. I stared at the book titles I had jotted down for reference; each of them looked at divorce from a different angle. I felt I was at the end of my rope as I drifted farther and farther away from any hope of restoring the unity we...

While listening to the radio today, I heard someone suggest that the best way to deal with divorce was to never have one! I suppose there is some truth to that; however, it's a bit unrealistic. In America, close to 50 percent...

Here's a stunner: 64 percent of all marriages that began in 1990 ended in divorce by the turn of the millennium. Look behind the runaway divorce rate and you'll see what strikes us as an even more disturbing statistic: 70 percent of those failed marriages produced at least one child. Wow! That means that more children than ever before are being born into soon-to-be-broken homes. Roughly half of all children born in this country over the past 15 years have ended up being children of divorce.

Quite often, I spend time with people who are extremely critical of themselves for having multiple failed relationships. The truth is, they're missing the point: We can't fail, because there's no way to do these things wrong. A failed relationship, if you put it into its proper context, is a chance to...

A third party has no power to break up a healthy relationship. No one can come between you and your partner unless something has already come between you. A mate having an affair is not the cause of a breakup; it is a symptom of a breakdown in the fabric of the primary relationship. An affair can be the most valuable wakeup call of a lifetime.

At what point do you say, "I'm leaving -- he's been beating me for years and it isn't going to stop"? When do you stop believing a lie? You stop when you learn the truth. And you learn the truth by no longer believing a lie. When we stop believing the lie that our abuser will change after years of hitting us, we are left with the truth. Why should he change? Is there a need? Hasn't he promised after every beating that it will never happen again?

A divorce, separation or, in general, any loss of an important relationship is a painful experience. We can, however, use this inner discomfort for our spiritual benefit. Although we need to make every possible step to heal our relationships, if and when a relationship breaks down, there is still much we can learn.

While hundreds of studies exist concerning the results of divorce and separation, less than a handful have been conducted concerning the prediction or likelihood of divorce for a couple. Thanks to John M. Gottman, Ph.D., who has pioneered predictive research, there are many marriage and family therapists who conduct a premarital test to assess a couples' likelihood of marital satisfaction. One study Gottman conducted involved videotaping couples as they came together to resolve an area of conflict in their marriage.

People will ask you: I didn't know you were having trouble. What went wrong? You go over the confrontation script again, refining your grievances, sharpening the battles. The main thing is to get this over with and get on with life. It's finished, you think. After all, more than a million couples get divorced every year. But you had forgotten about the bad ghosts that go dancing in the night.