HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO CALL IT QUITS? One of the questions I'm most frequently asked is, “How do you know when it's time to quit?” Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness, and in terms of when to give up on your marriage, here's what I recommend. If divorcing is a consideration for you from a moral perspective, then before you go that route, try first for at least one year. Did you hear that? Try for at least one year! And I mean REALLY try. You can always call it quits. You always have that option. But once you pull that trigger, it's over. No more chances. Your life will never be the same. Do you have kids? If you do, their life will never be the same. If you end your marriage, you don't want there to be a shred of doubt in your mind. You don't ever want to look back and wonder if things could have been different. You don't want to ask yourself, “What if this…and what if that…what if I tried this…what if I did that?” If you have to end your marriage, you want to know DEEP IN YOUR HEART that you did everything you could to make it work. If you have to end it, you want to be able to move on with your life and into another relationship with a clear head. You want to come to a place of healthy “completion.” THIS IS CRUCIAL! And to accomplish this, in my experience, it takes at least one year. I know it probably seems like a long time, but it's an investment in the rest of your life. Here's the key point. Listen carefully. It's a good investment for the rest of your life WHETHER YOUR MARRIAGE SUCCEEDS OR NOT. Obviously, it's a good investment if you turn your marriage around. But if you don't, it will NOT have been a wasted year. It will have been the most important thing you could have done with that year because of how your effort will impact the rest of your life AND YOUR NEXT RELATIONSHIP. I have seen too many cases of spouses ending their marriage prematurely, and as result of not reaching “completion” in one relationship, they find themselves in the same situation a few years later with someone else. The work I do with marriage coaching clients sometimes turns out to be more beneficial for them in their next relationship than in their current one. I remember once when the marriage of someone who registered for the Lone Ranger track of the Marriage Fitness Tele-Boot Camp ended in the middle of the program. This man asked me if he should continue with the final 3 weeks of the program. I said, “Absolutely.” He responded, “Why? What's the point? My marriage is over.” “You're not doing it for this marriage,” I explained. “You're doing it for the benefit of your next one.” Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that your intention while you're working on your marriage should be for the benefit of your life after your marriage. Your intention needs to be to restore your CURRENT relationship. But if you fail, your effort will NOT have been for naught. Bottom line is this. If you're asking, “When is it time to call it quits?” The answer is: one year after you think you're done. If after one year of trying everything in your power to make your marriage work you're still miserable, then you should consider moving on. Until then, hang in there and don't give up. This topic reminds me of my situation many years ago. I remember learning late one night that my wife had an appointment with a divorce attorney the next morning. We were hours from “done.” Who would have ever thought that we could turn things around at that point? It's NEVER too late! In fact (and here's real food for thought), very often the turning point in a marriage is when a couple hits rock bottom. Sometimes it's not until things couldn't get worse that they can get better. I wish you and your spouse the best. If you’d like further information to help with your marriage, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report "7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage" and get a FREE marriage assessment too. To subscribe, go here: Mort Fertel Marriage Fitness It’s FREE. Mort Fertel Author of Marriage Fitness Marriage Coach Add Comment Your marriage license didn’t come with a manual to help you navigate through challenging marital troubles—especially those that are related to dealing with a spouse’s infidelity. After the affair, you are faced with what may seem insurmountable problems. So, are you dealing with the infidelity, or trying to shove it away because the pain is just too great? In this blog, you will learn the 3 phases you will need to work through to recover from—and survive—infidelity. Devastated by the Affair, What Should You Do? You just found out you are married to a cheater. It may feel as if the world just came crashing down upon you. Now what? To find out about your spouse’s cheating is one of the most wrenching, emotionally-devastating events that can happen in a marriage—ranked up there with the death of a spouse. A common reaction from the cheating victim is, “I don’t know what to do.” What should you do first? Again, there was no marriage help manual provided at the altar. But here you are, trying to pick up what can feel like the shredded remnants of your life after you’ve had the wind knocked out of you. And infidelity truly shreds everything that was once whole: your relationship with and trust in your spouse, your sense of peace, your self-esteem, and your thoughts . It can be extremely overwhelming, especially since you have more going on than just tending your relationship. No doubt you are trying to run your household, take care of family members, and work, too—while in excruciating psychological and emotional pain. Most of us, when in pain, want a way to turn it off, immediately. But in the case of infidelity, the wounds run deep, and there is no quick fix. In an effort to escape the pain, you may have thoughts such as: “I’ll pack a bag and leave tonight,” or, “I’ll pick his bag and make him leave this afternoon!” While this may seem a reasonable response to an extremely unreasonable set of circumstances brought about by your spouse’s cheating, it does not actually help you to heal from this pain. After learning of the affair, you may not know exactly where to begin the healing process, but I want to give you a broad-based plan so you can break the process down into more manageable phases. Most people experiencing a crisis feel better with a working plan. It’s concrete, it’s logical—and it’s something solid to hold onto in an uncertain, emotionally-wrought time. Here are the 3 phases you need to know to help you survive infidelity and heal from the pain. Phase 1: The Cheating Victim: Your Pain Comes First Healing in the marriage can’t come until you have looked after yourself first. As has been emphasized in previous blogs, if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have an easy time taking care of anything or anyone else. If you want to survive infidelity, you first need to address the onslaught of thoughts and emotions that are overwhelming you. If you don’t have a firm internal foundation, you will be unable to rebuild a firm foundation in your marriage. As we have discussed in previous blogs—and will continue to address in future weeks—you have to deal with the negative impact of your spouse’s cheating actions. This includes effectively handling all of those negative thoughts and emotions, images of the affair, and self-doubts until you begin to feel some semblance of internal peace again. Putting solid ground down internally will strengthen your ability to put one down externally in phase two. Phase 2: The Couple in Crisis: Begin Working—and Healing—Together This is as challenging a phase as the first one in which you work on yourself—perhaps even more so. In phase 2, you need to work on communicating effectively with your spouse. No doubt, the early stages of this phase will feel very strained. You may have a lot of anger, and find yourself lashing out at your spouse, and your spouse’s response may be the silent treatment as retaliation for the discomfort he or she may feel over what they have done to your marriage. It will take effort on the part of you and your spouse to work together on your communication skills, and for you as the victim, to feel some sense of trust that your partner is truly committed to this process. There will be lapses into negative thoughts as you begin to work with your spouse, but it doesn’t mean your internal foundation is at risk—it’s just being challenged by the rawness of communicating after the devastation of the affair. Phase 3: Rebuild Your Marriage Once you and your spouse are in a place of being able to communicate again, when these talks can be characterized as more positive in nature rather than angry outbursts and recriminations, you are ready to begin rebuilding the foundation of your marriage. It is in this phase that you will work on transparency and building trust again. In essence, you are wiping clean the way things have “always been done” in your marriage, and recreating a stronger foundation with very clear-cut, defined rules. The work of a marriage never stops, so this phase will move from a period of rebuilding to one in which you are continuously solidifying. There will even be occasions where you step back into the first two phases, so don’t be thrown off your end goal, which is surviving infidelity. I would like to hear from you about your experiences in healing from and surviving infidelity … Does it help to think of recovering from infidelity in terms of a phased plan? If you are further along in the healing process, have you found yourself slipping back on occasion to an earlier phase? What triggered a return to that phase? Do you feel stronger today than you did the day after learning your spouse cheated? Does this give you hope that you will grow stronger yet? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Article from MarriageSherpa Affiliates  | Survival Guide
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