What Do You Do When You Don't Want To?

It's not uncommon. We run into a friend. We exchange pleasantries about our lives and the smile suddenly leaves their face as they begin to describe their marriage.

In 30 seconds they make it terribly clear that they're very unhappy and no longer want to be married...at least not to the man or woman they're married to now.

What do you say? What can you say that might persuade that person to give it another try? What if they just don't want to do it any more?

We get married convinced that we've succeeded in marrying the perfect person. Truly. I've sat across from people who've actually said that to me. As a veteran of 24 years of marriage, I can tell you, my wife didn't marry the perfect person. And neither did I!

There are those times when lots of factors come into play at once and we find ourselves pondering the greener grass. We think it's greener. We hope its greener. Looks like it from here.

What do we do when we just don't want to do it anymore. When we don't want to deal with the same old personality flaws. When we don't want to put up with the same idiosyncrasies. When we've finally discovered that we'll never succeed in changing that other person as much as we hope and planned. What do you do then?

You've got some choices. You can keep on trying to change them...forget the fact that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again each time expecting a different response. You can give up...which is the equivalent of drugging the marriage until it dies in it's sleep. You can walk out...which doesn't solve the problem...just moves it to the next relationship.

Or you can give it time. This is probably the absolute hardest solution. Because every minute that ticks by seems like one more wasted minute in this relationship. And the truth is, it could be.

But the value of waiting is that it allows us to get beyond the moment and beyond what may be a very temporary state of mind. The nature of life for most of us is that we begin to think that however life is now is the way it'll always be. And that's NEVER the case.

Giving it time allows us to gain perspective on the situation and the individual problems. Giving it time allows us to have the conversations we need to have no matter which direction we're headed. Giving it time isn't easy. But it can save a marriage.

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