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why does my spouse want to leave

Out of Nowhere?
150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

Many times, people tell me that their marriage was doing just fine (well, at least OK), and then it was in trouble, “All at once,” that they “didn’t see it coming,” and that others thought they “were the ‘perfect couple’ — then this.”  In fact, many people tell me about love notes and loving cards last year, last month, even last week.

What happened?  How could the marriage fall about, seemingly out of nowhere?

The simple answer is, it didn’t.

Marriage crises do not come out of nowhere, and are far less sudden than you might think.

As one divorce attorney put it, marriages “fall apart little by little, then all at once.”

The hurts, pains, disconnections, lost opportunities, and slights build up over time.  And suddenly, they hit a threshold.  I call it the Threshold Problem.  You didn’t see the threshold coming, until it hits.  Until the marriage runs out of gas.  Then, you have a hard time seeing how you got to the threshold.  So it looks like it was out of the blue, out of nowhere.

But it wasn’t.  It didn’t happen overnight.  And saving it won’t happen overnight.  That is possible, slowly at first, as long as you move with intention in that direction.

Learn more about why a marriage crisis is not “out of nowhere” in this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.  Listen below.

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