Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
The Truth About Saving a Marriage When Your Spouse Wants Divorce
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Are you the one fighting to save your marriage while your spouse seems ready to give up? Maybe they’ve grown emotionally distant, controlling, or even unfaithful. You feel the weight of the marriage on your shoulders, asking: “Why me? Why do I have to do all the work?”
In this video, Dr. Joe Beam reveals the hard truth about what it takes to save a marriage when your spouse wants a divorce. You’ll learn:
- Why focusing on your spouse’s mistakes often pushes them further away
- What you can control when it feels like everything is slipping through your fingers
- Why criticism, guilt, or pressure rarely bring a spouse back—and what actually can
- How choosing strength, grace, and perseverance changes the dynamic of your marriage
At Marriage Helper, we’ve worked with thousands of couples on the brink of divorce. Many felt hopeless, yet they discovered a proven path forward. If you’re hurting but still holding on to hope, this message is for you.
If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free
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Because you're watching this video, there's a good chance you're in tremendous pain right now. Maybe your spouse had been emotionally distant, shutting you out of their life. Perhaps they've become controlling or dominating, making you feel small and unheard. Or maybe they've been unfaithful. Whatever has happened, you're the one who wants to save this marriage. You're the one watching videos, reading articles, praying, hoping, and trying to figure out what to do. And your spouse? They seem to have checked out. They may even be pushing for a divorce. And here you are. Watching another marriage expert thinking he's probably going to tell you what you need to do to save your marriage. When inside you're screaming, Why me? I'm not the one who broke our vows. I'm not the one who gave up. Why isn't anyone telling them what to do instead of me? I get it. I really do. And before we go any further, I need you to hear this. Your pain is real, your anger is justified, and your frustration at the seemingly unfair situation makes complete sense. At Marriage Helper, we work with thousands of couples every year. And so many times a hurt spouse has said to me, Dr. Beam, it feels like you're putting all the responsibility on me. It feels like you care more about the spouse who's destroying our family than the one trying to save it. That breaks my heart every single time. Because nothing could be further from the truth. Please, let me be crystal clear. We care about you, your marriage, your pain, and your future. We have tremendous compassion for you. We work with somebody just like you. We know your strength during this devastation. We admire your love, persevering when most people would have given up. We have high regard for you because you're choosing the harder path. The path of fighting for your marriage would be much easier just to walk away. You're not weak for wanting to save your marriage. You're incredibly strong. It takes far more courage to stand and fight for love than it does to run away from pain. If ever your spouse and you come to our couple's workshop, both of you will experience our teaching, proving principles that explain how your problems developed and what to do to repair them. But what you will not hear is our chastising your strained spouse, using guilt, or casting blame on them. Why? It's because you're the only one we can actually help right now. Please understand. The reason we focus on what you can do isn't because we think you're responsible for the problems. It's not because we favor your spouse over you, and it's certainly not because we think you need to do all the work. Think about it this way. Imagine you're a doctor and two patients come to your hospital. One patient is conscious, alert, and asking for help. The other patient is running out the door, insisting they're fine and don't need any treatment, even though they're clearly bleeding. Which patient can you actually treat? You can't force medical care on someone who refuses it. And in the same way, we can't force marriage help on someone who doesn't want it. I know you might be thinking this, but Joe, can't you at least tell them they're wrong? Can't you make them feel guilty about what they're doing? Maybe if they understood how much they're hurting me and the kids, they'd change their mind. I understand that instinct. It seems logical, doesn't it? If someone is doing something wrong, we should tell them. We should make them see the error of their ways. But here's what 30 years of working with marriages has taught me. Guilt, criticism, and harshness towards someone who has already had one foot out the door doesn't bring them back. It pushes them further away. Almost every single time. Let me explain why. When someone is already leaning away from their marriage, they've built up a narrative in their mind. They've convinced themselves rightly or wrongly that the marriage is the problem, that you're the problem, that leaving is the solution. Now, when we criticize them, when we heap guilt on them, when we point out all their failures, what happens? So they look at themselves and say, wow, you're right. I'm the problem. I've witnessed that maybe twice in 30 years. But almost always it works the other way. They've convinced themselves that others, maybe, especially you, think that they're the bad guy. And that you have poisoned others to see them as evil. If we attack or guilt them, we become another voice siding with you. And that's why we're telling them that they're bad, they're wrong, and they're a failure. They feel misunderstood. They feel that people can't see the big picture like what your role is in the marriage problems. They feel attacked. And what do people do when they feel attacked? They defend. They justify, they dig in deeper, and most importantly, they run toward whatever or whoever makes them feel understood and accepted. And if there is another person involved romantically, guess who's providing that acceptance and understanding while everyone else is providing criticism? Years ago, I learned an important lesson from Dr. John Gottman at the Gottman Institute. They've studied thousands of couples over decades. They found that criticism is one of what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And did these predict divorce? Not infidelity, not financial problems, but criticism. Why? Because criticism attacks the person's character. It leads them to believe that you view them as fundamentally flawed. Is that a big deal? One of the three main motivations that leads people to want out of a marriage is if they feel disrespected. If your spouse feels that you, or we who try to help, see them as fundamentally flawed, they feel extremely disrespected and want nothing to do with you or us. That usually leads them to feel that you're trying to control them. That you or anyone trying to help is out to control them because we think they aren't capable of making their own decisions. There's a psychological principle called psychological reactance that comes into play here. When people feel their freedom is being threatened, when they feel someone's trying to control them or force them to do something, they instinctively do the opposite. It's why teenagers rebel when parents become too controlling. It's why harsh interventions often backfire with addicts. And it's why telling your spouse all the ways they're destroying the family often drives them deeper into the very behavior you're trying to stop. I know this isn't what you want to hear. You want justice. You want acknowledgement. You want them to take responsibility. And you deserve all those things. You really do. But timing is everything. Please understand. Focusing on what you can do isn't about letting them off the hook. It's about recognizing where your actual power lies. You can't control your spouse. I know you've probably tried. Most people do. We try logic, we try emotions, we try guilt, we try anger. And where has it gotten us? But you can control yourself. You can control how you respond. You can control the environment of your home. You can control whether you become bitter or better. You can control whether you model grace or revenge. And here's the amazing thing. When you change, it changes the entire dynamic of the relationship. It's like a dance. When one partner changes their steps, the other partner has to adjust, whether they want to or not. Look, I am not saying that you should become a doormat. I'm not saying you should accept abuse or ongoing infidelity without boundaries. I'm not saying you should pretend everything is fine. What I'm saying is this the spouse who wants to save the marriage is the one who has the motivation to do the work. You're the one who still believes in what you have. You're the one who can see past the current crisis to the future possibility. Your straying spouse, right now they can't see past their current feelings. They're in a fog. Whether it's an affair fog, a life crisis fog, or just the fog of believing the grass is greener somewhere else. And people in a fog don't respond well to logic. They don't respond well to criticism, but sometimes, not always, but sometimes they respond to consistent, patient, principal love that refuses to give up. The Bible says love never fails. It doesn't say love always gets what it wants. It doesn't say love can control another person, but it says love itself never fails. Even when the marriage fails, love doesn't fail if you do not let it turn to bitterness. If you're dealing with a good person doing a bad thing, then there's hope. Not a guarantee, I can't promise you that, but there's hope. You're not just trying to save a marriage. You're choosing to be the kind of person who doesn't let someone else's choices determine your character. You're choosing to love when love isn't returned. You're choosing to hope when despair would be easier. You're choosing to believe in redemption when everyone else is counseling revenge. That's not weakness. That's the kind of strength that changes the world. One marriage at a time.
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