Can One Person Save a Marriage? The 7-Step Path to Stopping Divorce

If your marriage has gone from "good" to "bad" and you’re terrified that you’ll be divorced in the next six months, you are not alone. Most people think it takes two to save a marriage—but at Marriage Helper, we’ve spent 30 years proving that one spouse can change the entire dynamic of a relationship.

In this video, Kimberly Beam Holmes breaks down the fundamental process that has helped thousands of couples—even those in "hopeless" situations—turn things around and build a dream life together.

In this video, you will learn:
The "Frantic" Trap: Why begging, pleading, and "acting crazy" (even if it’s out of love) actually pushes your spouse further away.

Symptoms vs. Root Causes: Why "quick fix" text messages don't work and why you need to "strengthen your core" instead of just treating the pain.

Pushes vs. Pulls: How to stop the behaviors that drive your spouse out the door and start the "dance" that pulls them back in.

The 7-Step Framework: A roadmap from total chaos to passionate intimacy.

The 7 Steps to Saving Your Marriage:
1. Calm Down: Moving from a frantic state to a place of peace.

2. Get Clarity: Identifying the real issues that have been simmering for years.

3. Stop Pushes & Start Pulls: Changing your "dance steps" to shift the dynamic.

4. Forgive & Reconcile: The internal work and the 5-step reconciliation process.

5. Build Back Trust: Restoring the foundation.

6. Reignite Passionate Intimacy: Moving past the "roommate" phase.

7. Create Your Dream Life Together: Designing a future you both love.

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

📞 BOOK A CALL WITH OUR TEAM: https://bit.ly/4fhb9Yz

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Transcript

Facing A Failing Marriage

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Tell me if this resonates. The past couple of months, maybe even years, your marriage has gone from good to bad. And if you don't do something now, you are scared that you're going to be divorced in the next six months. If that sounds like you, then what I'm going to talk about today is for you. Now, if you're in a happy marriage and you only bicker every once in a while about how to load the dishwasher, you're welcome to stay, but this isn't for you. I'm going to get deep into the issues that hurt marriages and what one person can do to save their marriage from divorce and keep their family together. I'm going to show you the seven steps that we take clients through at Marriage Helper and have taken them through over the past 30 years that has helped save even the most hopeless of situations. If it worked for them, it can work for you as well. During our time together, you may have to unlearn some of the harmful tactics that you've learned out there from people telling you how to save your marriage that honestly, half the time aren't even married. What you need to know is one spouse can save a marriage. I know this is likely not what you want to hear. In fact, we had one client tell us, I specifically went to Google and typed in, can one spouse save a marriage? Hoping the answer would be no, but then she found us. But right now, 80% of you are in a place where your spouse is being a jerk. They're having an affair, they're wanting out for no apparent reason, and you want them to change. I'll tell you how that can happen in a little bit. Or maybe you're like the other 20%, where you have been the one who has screwed up and now your spouse wants out based on what you've done and you feel shame and guilt and confused. So whether you're feeling, why should I even try to save it when she has no interest? Or if you're saying, he'll never forgive me for what I've done. Here's the fundamental process that can help your marriage turn around. And the first one is this calm down. You're begging, you're pleading, you're whining. You're like the woman that we worked with several years ago who said, I followed my husband out the door to the driveway as he was trying to leave me, and I banged my head against the pavement so hard that blood flowed like a river. And he still left. She was shocked. But of course he left because you're acting crazy. Now, your behavior hopefully isn't that dramatic, but maybe it is. There's no judgment here. But you're frantic. You're up at 2 a.m. You can't sleep. You're chat GPTing your questions, and you have no real clarity. You're finding people who are telling you what you want to hear, but you still don't feel total peace. Your anxiety is through the roof, your thoughts are consumed with the fear of losing the one you love, the life that you've built, and the family that you have. You can't think straight because you're not calm. Now you might be saying, that's crazy. Kimberly, how could I possibly do that? I am in a frantic state. Of course, I am obsessively thinking about what's going wrong with my marriage. How could I think about anything else? You need a coach and you need a community. Have you ever noticed how you feel less crazy when you know that you're not alone? When you find someone else who has felt the way that you do and gone through what you are currently going through and can help you see the other side and get there, yes, that's what you need here. You don't need theory. You need connection with others who have been where you are. The next step is get clarity. Now that you're calm and can think and see things a bit more clearly, you can get clarity on what the real issue is and what it's going to require from you. The truth that other people won't tell you is this your marriage didn't get to where it is right now overnight. According to the research, the problems you're experiencing have been simmering for six years before it got to the point where you decided to start doing something about it. So while a promise of send these six text messages to get your spouse to come crawling back to you sounds really enticing in a culture consumed with quick fixes, it won't work. Not long term. Honestly, most people I encounter are still so scared that they're afraid to do anything to save their marriage. They don't want to do the wrong thing, so they do nothing. And while waiting seems like the noble and mature thing, it rarely is. Let me say it this way. In college, I kept throwing my back out, doing the most random things, like literally putting clothes up in my closet. I would throw my back out, couldn't walk. The doctor put me on strong medication. He treated the symptom because that's what was hurting me the most. But it wasn't until I finally found a doctor who gave me a second opinion and got to the root cause. And he said, your back's gonna keep going out. Medicine isn't gonna make it better. It just eases the pain, but it won't fix it unless you actually fix your core and strengthen it. Now I haven't thrown my back out in maybe a decade or more because I did the hard work. There's a current major symptom in your marriage that you want to treat. Maybe it's your spouse's affair, your communication issues, the fact that you feel like roommates, but all of those are symptoms of a much deeper core issue that I'm going to talk about next. And until that is fixed, the symptom will keep happening. It's like taking pain meds, expecting it to strengthen your muscles. It's impossible, but it's easier to take the pain meds. It's harder to do the workout. And the same is true for your marriage. That's the only way you can get clarity is to get moving. Now, the third point is to stop your pushes and start your pulls. I shot a quick video to help you understand what this looks like. Most people who are trying to save their marriage, they do things like nag and whine and plead and just annoy the crap out of their spouse who's wanting to leave the marriage. And sometimes it kind of feels like it's no wonder that the other spouse wants out. It's not because you're a bad person, it's because you haven't known what to do. You haven't known how to actually do the things that will pull your spouse back to you instead of doing the things that push your spouse away. It looks like this. In a marriage, when we are doing these nagging and pleading behaviors, no matter how hard we try, it's just going to push our spouse further and further away. There's nothing we can do. Our begging, our pleading, our crying for them to come back is just a push. You can't even force the two things together. But when you start to do the things that will pull your spouse back, it's almost impossible to pull them away. They want to be around you. And then when both of you are doing things that will pull you towards each other, that's what it looks like. And I know what you're thinking. Why is all of this on me? Why am I the one responsible for doing all of this work? Think of marriage like a dance, a predictable dance. If you keep doing the same steps that you have always done, the dance is always going to be the same it's always been. All it takes is one person to change their steps for the dance to ultimately change. You, by beginning to dance some different steps, can shift the dynamic just enough that ultimately your spouse can end up changing too. Now the fourth step is forgive. Forgive yourself, forgive your spouse, forgive others in your life. Unforgiveness keeps you stuck, angry, and resentful. It keeps you in a victim mindset. Step four is technically two things. It is forgive and then reconcile. So everything up until and after forgive, you can do yourself, no matter what headspace your spouse is in. And you need to forgive in order to reconcile anyway. But the second part of step four is reconciliation. And there's a five-step process that we guide you through when you're a part of our process and a part of our program to help you and your spouse reconcile in a way that sticks. And then step five is to build back trust. Step six is to reignite passionate intimacy. And step seven is to create your dream life together. Right now, I know that you want to get to steps five, six, and seven. But you can't get there without going through steps one through three and a half. And we can help you do that. In the programs that we have at Marriage Helper, you can start as a solo or as a couple. Either way, we can help you get from step one to seven. No matter what you do, stop making things worse and start doing the right things in the right order. You're not crazy, you're also not powerless, and you don't have to guess on what to do anymore. These seven steps that I have walked you through literally are the steps that we guide our clients through. And our program, where our couples workshop has a 70% success rate at saving marriages. Now, if it sounds like it could be a good fit for you, then we would love to just have a conversation with you. Our team is amazing. You can book a private conversation with one of our advisors so we can hear more about your story and see if the program that we offer and the seven steps that I've guided you through here fits and makes sense. We keep our program small, the workshops that we do inside of our program, we keep them small and intimate in order for you to get the attention that you need, the space to be taken care of, and to honestly be seen and heard. We care about the results of what you get in your marriage. And even if you end up not choosing marriage helper to work with, I hope you end up choosing somewhere that can help you truly get to creating a dream life together, to having the family that you've always dreamed of, to having your family back together, to being in a loving, stable, fulfilling relationship. Because ultimately that's what we all want. No matter what your situation, I just want you to remember there is always hope. And if you've lost yours, you can always borrow some of mine.