by Heather Novalis-Clark

No doubt, there will come a time in your marriage where you will be convinced that your relationship is in serious crisis. Hopefully, you will not delay in seeking a path to relationship repair. While there are many marriages that are irreparable, due to deal-breakers like abuse or abandonment, most marriages can definitely be saved. This is true for most people, even in the case of infidelity. There are many resources available to help a couple in this situation work through the issues that may be eating away at their marriage.

What exactly constitutes a marital crisis? One person’s crisis might not even represent a bad day to someone else. Many times an acute event signals that it’s time to deal with some insecurities or misunderstandings; in other cases, there are issues that have been brewing for years that could result in an irrevocable explosion that immediately dissolves any hope for reconciliation. Intervention by experienced marriage professionals can be successful in keeping a marriage afloat if it happens before any such explosion, or other deal breakers take hold.

A licensed therapist, social worker or religious leader can all provide the kind of the counseling that might keep you and your partner together. Whether or not you are interested in communicating with your partner at the point the counseling begins, a good counselor will try to get both of you to face the realities of your relationship without the sessions deteriorating into arguments that further disrupt opportunities for reconciliation. The counselor will help you focus on the real issues and create a plan for resolution.

In the pre-crisis stage, some of the self help books, ebooks and courses teach individual skills in communication, understanding, and impulse control. Most such material recognizes that arguments about things — such as casual shopping or not helping out around the house — are just surrogates for different or much bigger problems. Note, however, that arguments about lack of sex are non-trivial, and are usually NOT about something else.

For a reasonably small amount of money spent on a self-help marriage course, a couple could avoid a marriage crisis altogether. Then they can spend their time doing what they claimed they were going to do when they first got married. Presumably, this involves trying to make each others’ lives better, and happier — not introducing new sets of problems and unnecessary sources of misery.