Next month the children will return to school after a long, hot summer. Camps, vacations, and just having the children home all the time is enough for any parent to worry about. Having the children around all day, all summer, no matter their age, is time consuming and requires your full attention.
But what happens when they go back to school? You have more time to focus on the state of your marriage. Is it worth saving? Does she want to save it? Does he want to save it? What do we have to do to save it?
Or, conversely, if you conclude that divorce is inevitable, what do I do now? What am I facing? Will I survive? Will the children survive? Most family lawyers will tell you that they see an increase in new clients within a month or so after Labor Day for just this reason. The children are back to school and the adults have more time to focus on their very real personal concerns.
So, what should you do if the state of your marriage has you preoccupied or even causes you to lose sleep at night? The threshold decision to be made is whether you think the marriage is worth saving and whether your spouse agrees. If so, counseling is required because a relationship that reaches this point will require professional help if it is to have a chance of being salvaged. And, of course, this requires the unqualified commitment of both spouses to do the hard work that counseling requires. Without it, any attempt to reconcile is doomed to fail.
And if you conclude that your marriage isn’t worth saving or can’t be saved, what do you do? First, don’t panic. You may need to consider individual counseling to help you get through the emotional rough spots or to navigate the bumpy stressful road ahead.
Second, try to put aside emotion (easy to say, hard to do) to realistically consider life (the children’s, your spouse’s and yours) after divorce. Which parent should the children primarily live with? Think about what makes sense for them, not about an emotional need to win or to get revenge. How much support is needed? How much can be afforded? Every need and desire can’t always be met. Two people have to live – in separate households – after the divorce. That adds expenses with generally no increase in income
These are just a few examples of the plethora of issues that intersect divorce. Divorce affects every family member and every family member’s needs must be considered when trying to reach a resolution. You’ll need the guidance of an experienced family lawyer to help you answer these questions, to make sure you haven’t forgotten important issues, and to set reasonable expectations for you. Thinking about a broken relationship and the possibility of ending a marriage is daunting. It isn’t pleasant, but ignoring it doesn’t change the fact that you are unhappy. So once the children go back to school and you have time to think – THINK! And then engage professionals to help you down the path you choose. Life is too short to live in a broken marriage. You can either work to fix it or work to end it, but ignoring it doesn’t work at all.
