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Once you've found a therapist who meets these criteria, do give therapy a chance. Be open to the possibility that your marriage can be savedand be ready to do the work that entails. Remember, therapy is not always easy, especially if you are carrying excessive and painful emotional baggage from your childhood. But if you and your partner truly love each other, and are willing to alter some basic patterns, therapy can succeed. |
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When All the King's Horses and All the King's Men Can't Put Your Marriage Together Again |
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Sometimes the best-laid plans are laid to waste. Despite all your hopes and dreams in the beginning, and all your good intentions now, it seems impossible to continue your marriage. For many of us in the latter part of the twentieth century, the notion of till death do us part is an anachronism: When life becomes too painful, replete with too many battles and battle scars, few of us question the notion, at least intellectually, of moving on. |
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Sometimes, Dr. Baris notes, so much hurt has been engendered over the years that it is simply impossible to get beyond itat least in the context of your current relationship. When people harbor deep, abiding anger, and when, despite therapy, that anger cannot be resolved, it could be time to let go. |
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But even in the absence of anger, one or both partners may start to lose respect for the relationship and a spouse. That may signal the end as well. One couple we know, for instance, divorced after the husband made some poor investments and lost his business and the family home. The woman, who insisted she bore no anger, said she could no longer remain married to someone for whom she had no respect. |
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In another instance, a man divorced his wife, whom he'd met in the fiction writing workshop at the University of Iowa, after she threw in her artistic career for a high-paying job in a public relations firm. |
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Sometimes people divorce because they grow apart. A couple from the Chicago area spent 20 years in a very traditional marriagehe went off to work, and she stayed home in the role of homemaker. They had it all, from the two kids to the house in the 'burbs to the cars. But when the youngest child left for college and the couple had untold hours to spend together focusing not on child- or family-oriented issues, but rather, on each other, they found they had little common ground. His involvement in the politics of advertising was simply boring to her; and her interests in gourmet cooking and international travel were not things to which he could relate. Their taste in movies and even friends had become widely divergent. There were no affairs, and no long-simmering anger or resentment. It's just that when both reached this new crossroad, marked by the departure of their children, his arrow pointed East and hers, West. |
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