Is Your Marriage without Hope?

3. Bouts of the silent treatment.
“These long periods of the cold shoulder come as a result from the unresolved argument issue. If you are doing it for two days or more, repeatedly, once or twice a month, then tou have very poor conflict resolution skills.”

Puhn says you stop talking because you can’t think of anything else to say, and you just don’t know else what to do. You’re mad and disgusted, and “since you are at a loss and you just can’t make them see things from your point of view, you clam up. Basically, what you really want, is for that person to come to you and say, ‘Tell me why you are angry, and I will listen,’” she said.   

She added that the reason divorces happen in the first place is because of these poor conflict resolution skills, even if you believe that you have just simply fallen out of love. “Usually if you have fallen out of love that means that over time you have stopped communicating your heart’s interests, needs and desires.”            

4. Becoming focused on the relationship inequities. 
“The reason this is a problem is that no marriage has tasks and responsibilities that are divided up 50-50, but what happens is when people are happy with each other, they don’t dwell on the inequity of it. They don’t mind it,” she said. “When you do for him, it’s for the marriage.”   

But when the relationship sours, she says you don’t feel valued, then you dwell on the belief that you deserve better. “You focus on all ways you are giving out. The inequities wouldn’t matter if there were other ways of getting back what you are putting in,” she said.            

5. Daydreaming about being single.   
“Daydreaming often happens right before the divorce, and it may not be you that is daydreaming. It may be your spouse,” said Puhn. If you are daydreaming of living life without your spouse, that is the key that you are very close to making that a reality.” Basically, you have given up all hope and have already begun to move on in your mind.



Lenore Skomal is author of nine books and columnist of an award-winning weekly column in the Erie, Pa., Times-News, she also teaches college journalism in Pennsylvania.