You may think that your marriage is no worse than other marriages that you encounter through your friendships. After all, doesn't every man and wife have to go through the ups and downs of marriage? The problem is that without seeing the actual statistics, it's hard to see where stale marriages are heading. You need to be very aware of these because you may not be taking your marriage problems seriously enough. If you act now, based on these facts, then you could indeed save your marriage.
The American Psychological Association say on their website that between 40 and 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce. Think about it because it's a very scary figure and pumps a little bit of reality into the situation. That's a huge amount of people who are not committed sufficiently to each other to make their marriages last for a lifetime. They also quote that 90 per cent of people marry before they reach the age of 50. That means that they commit to each other and walk down the aisle and make promises that are expected to go hand in hand with marriage. On the day of their weddings, no doubt, these people believe in the relationship that they are committing to. So what goes wrong?
In a measurement of statistics, the interesting thing was that in recent years, the figure of 53 percent of people who married would end up in the divorce courts and of that number, 41 percent admitted that there was an element of unfaithfulness either by infidelity or thoughts of being unfaithful. That's positively scary. Before you blame the men, as many women do, the statistics went further and said that 57 percent of people who were unfaithful were men but wait for it... 54 percent were women.
These figures were analyzed even deeper and that came up was interesting. 36 percent of those who were unfaithful admitted to having an affair with a co-worker and since this is where the majority of adults spend their days, that's not really surprising. It may be encouraging to you, if you have found yourself in this situation, that 31 percent of marriages where one partner had been unfaithful were able to survive the infidelity.
The reason for introducing these stats at the beginning of the book is that they are relevant to marriages in this day and age and therefore relevant to you if you are married and that means that even if you don't see a problem in your marriage, the likelihood of you becoming a statistic is quite high unless you deal with problems which may be contributing to the divorce factor.
I would guess that you also need to take into the equation how men and women responded when they were asked if they would be unfaithful if they thought that their infidelity was never discovered. If you think that it's only men that have this kind of sex drive, then you may be way off the mark. Although 74 percent of those questioned were men who said that they would, women were not far behind at a rate of 68 percent.
So what are people looking for when they take that step into the world of infidelity?
You need to look at marriage realistically, but you also need to know what people are looking for in a relationship outside of the marriage. This list is just a cross sample of reasons why people are unfaithful and if you recognize any of them in your relationship, it's time to stop watching it happen:
• Lack of passion in the marriage
• Partner doesn't like sex
• Looking for excitement
• Wife/husband lacks understanding of partner’s needs
Relationship between husband and wife is going down hill.
Any marriage, at any stage, could be guilty of any one of these reasons why a partner may look for something outside of his/ her marriage. There are also psychological reasons why a partner may look for validation through infidelity and the reasons get deeper when you look this far:
• Husband/wife takes partner for granted
• No excitement left in the relationship
• Trust has gone
• Husband/wife won’t initiate any more
• Wife/Husband uses excuses because of self-esteem issues
If your marriage has reached any of these later reasons, then ifs time to do something because you are only one step away from a potential divorce. If you are not giving your partner the attention that your partner needs, you may need to change your tactics. A mate with no trust and no sense of self-esteem may seek validation elsewhere and that’s bad news for you because a new relationship with someone else will compare very favorably with a marriage gone stale.
Having communicated all of those statistics, you must see that there isn't any particular blame of the male or the female species when it comes to divorce. If a relationship is stale for you, that also means that it is stale for your partner and it’s only a question of time before either of you will question whether it's worthwhile continuing that relationship.
While it takes some people more time to make the decision to divorce, why not look at the problem the other way. How can you mend what you have? How can you work together to make yourselves more than a simple divorce statistic? Can your relation-ship really get back on track? Well, actually it can.
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