May 2008

You may be thinking: “what is this guy doing? He is all about staying married, and suddenly he is all about how to save money!” Well, bear with me for a minute. And remember what Ben Franklin said, “a penny saved is a penny earned.” So, if you follow this advice, you can basically write yourself a check for $20K. If that doesn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what would!

OK, to be honest, you may actually save less, but you MAY save WAY MORE! Are you interested? If I could tell you how to save $20K, therefore adding $20K to your worth, would you do it? I would!

Are you ready for the secret? Because I am giving it away for free.

Two sentences will reveal the secret: Stay married. Don’t get divorced.

The average cost of a divorce in the U.S. is now $20,000. That is the average legal expense and related costs, court fees, and loss of assets. It does not include the lost future earnings potentials, does not take into account the added expense of two households, does not get near the emotional costs to the spouses, children, or families. It does not address any of the collateral losses.

So, if you stay married, you have just saved at least $20,000.

I don’t really expect that too many people will opt to stay married purely on financial reasons. But this is one factor that tends to be completely overlooked. And no wonder! Attorneys would rather you not know this! An attorney’s job is based on that cost.

Now before you label me another person digging at attorneys, I do know many attorneys that try to get the couple to reconcile. But I also hear the stories where the client says “can we stop the process?” and the attorney pushes the client to keep going. I recognize that, just as I (a marriage therapist and preservationist) have a vested interest in helping to keep marriages together, attorneys have a vested interest in helping to take them apart.

So if your marriage is in trouble, write yourself a check for $20K, then figure out if your marriage can be saved. Ask yourself: “Have I done everything I can to get us back together? Have I done what I can to improve the relationship? Have I really worked to get back together?”

You see, I think our culture just takes divorce too lightly. We pretend that it solves problems. In reality, it creates many more problems than it solves. It increases human impact on the environment, impacts the children of divorce for a lifetime, creates painful emotional conflicts for the couple, destroys finances, divides the social circle of a family, and happens to almost 1 in 2 marriages.

I always reflect on the beginning of a marriage, the marriage vows. Usually, they amount to love, honoring, and respecting someone in good times or bad, sickness and health, poverty and wealth. There isn’t much left over after that! We have full control over the love, honoring and respecting as ways of relating when the things we can’t control (good, bad, sick, healthy, poor, wealthy) come our way.

By building a healthy marriage, you have just improved your finances by $20,000 or more. That may be enough rationale to give it a try!

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.

Now we have the million-dollar question. If I could answer that, I would be wealthy. I’m not.

The reason this question is so important is because you really don’t care if marriages in general can be saved. You want to know about yours!

In fact, this is an incredibly complicated question. Plenty of marriage advice is out there, some helpful and some hurtful. But in the end, your marriage is where “the rubber hits the road.”

First, let me say that there are marriages that I believe should NOT be saved. Marriages that involve abuse are those marriages. When there is physical abuse, I cannot support working on the marriage. It is time for the abuser to get help on his or her own.

Unfortunately, abuse rarely ends, and almost always escalates, placing the abused at risk of injury and death. So, I draw a strong line there: abusive relationships are not ready for intervention.

Many people expect me to then place marriages where an affair occurs in the same category. I don’t. In fact, the majority of marriages that suffer an affair do survive. Since barely a majority of all marriages survive, most people are surprised by that. However, in a marriage where an affair occured, often, the marriage becomes stronger after the affair.

So, my belief is that the vast majority of marriages CAN be saved. That is not the same as WILL be saved. Unfortunately, people are stubborn creatures, often unwilling to make changes, forgive, or move forward. We end up “cutting off our noses to spite our faces,” as my mother used to say.

So, let’s ask this instead: should you try and save your marriage?

That is a much more manageable question, because it is actually in your control. You cannot MAKE your marriage stay together. As I often say, it takes two to make a marriage, but only one to take it apart.

While you can’t control what ultimately happens to the marriage, you can make a choice to work on the marriage. And I have never met someone, failed marriage or not, that is sorry he or she tried to save their marriage. When they have tried and failed, they can at least look in the mirror and be proud that they put forth the attempt.

It is easy and tempting to just give up and quit. But to make an effort, to work on the relationship, that is the challenge. As you work on your relationship, you are guaranteed to learn more about yourself and your strengths. As you read advice, you learn about relationships.

Your marriage MAY be saved. Your choice is only to do your part, to make the effort, so that wherever the relationship ends, you can feel good about where you are and who you are.

So change the question (“can it be saved” to “what can I do”) and you will come out much better.

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More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.