People usually keep doubts about their marriages to themselves—at least for a while and often from their partners. I’m not talking about ordinary concerns about your relationship or dealing with a difficult, but manageable issue, but about a real concern that the marriage will even survive.

This is a really scary place to be. The doubts hide in the shadows, sometimes for years. They might pop into the open every so often when there is a particular challenging event but, once things calm down, they return to being background noise. 

You talk your way back, reminding yourself that you love your spouse, and that divorce would hurt a lot of people. But hours, days or weeks later, the doubts creep back. It’s anxiety-provoking and extremely uncomfortable. This limbo state of anxiety can seem to go on forever, draining your energy and impacting your emotional wellbeing.

It’s important to understand that marital doubt is a private emotion. You may not be experiencing it, but your wife could be. And it’s impacting how she sees you and her future.

Maybe she’s asked you to change a behavior and you’ve misunderstood how important it is to her.

Maybe she’s mentioned getting help for the relationship and you’ve minimized her concerns.

Maybe she secretly “tests” you and your commitment to her. When you fail the test you didn’t know you were taking, her doubts are confirmed.

Because she isn’t sharing her concerns openly, you have no idea how serious things are. Even if you hear her words or know she is dissatisfied, you might not see any threat to the marriage itself. After all, every marriage has ups and downs. You may even have some gripes of your own about the marriage but divorce is seen as too drastic of an option.

And because humans tend towards either/or thinking, the only options she may see are things staying the same—or getting worse, and ending the marriage. This is because she has “tried” all she knows. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.

With no new information, the old patterns continue. Both on her side and on yours.

Even if you do get outside support as a couple, the average number of sessions attended by those who later divorce is four. Just four sessions.

To state the obvious here, that’s not enough time to dig into issues and start to work on them. For these couples, often the excuses are that life gets busy, someone gets sick, someone feels on the spot in counseling. Basically, there is no real momentum to keep plugging away, particularly for the clueless spouse who thinks things are basically okay.

The truth is that if one spouse is not okay with the marriage—the marriage is not okay. If it’s not working for both of you, it’s not working. The time to make it better is now. Even if you think “it’s not that bad.”

If you want to know what’s possible, let’s talk.