8 Tips on How to Save Your Marriage From Divorce

1. Listen to your Partner

Listening gives you a chance to understand your partner before deciding how to respond. In counseling, both partners can work on this skill with support. If your partner is not ready to attend, individual counseling can still help you clarify your needs, boundaries, and next steps.

Sometimes, simply listening to the other person can help you understand what is wrong with the relationship, and you may even hear some recommendations on how to save a marriage from divorce. A communication breakdown is often the root cause of relationship problems, so repairing it can be extremely beneficial when learning how to save a marriage.

Listening to your partner also gives some understanding as to how he/she is feeling, and it may change the dynamics of the relationship once all the problems are laid bare on the table. This is at the heart of saving your marriage from divorce.

2. Express your Feelings

In addition to listening to your partner’s feelings, you also need to be able to express your own feelings, so your partner can understand your point of view. It is never an easy thing to express frustrations and difficulties with the person you love most dearly, so having a marriage counselor, who can mediate and also participate in these exchanges, can give you the confidence to speak your mind while keeping the discourse rational.

You should never disrespect or put down your partner because that will just create further animosity and resentment. Marriage therapy is designed to work through the problems you have with your spouse; it is analytical but never critical. How to save a marriage depends on many different factors, but the ability to listen and then share your own feelings can help to address some of the problems.

Marriage counseling is a great place to do that because the marriage counselor acts in guiding the discussion between you and your partner.

3. Be Willing to Compromise

As with any relationship, compromise plays a large role in the ultimate success or failure of the endeavor. Saving a marriage from divorce also depends on how much each party is willing to accommodate the other person. At the same time, your partner should also be open to your ideas and views. A result of two people willing to bend to the needs of the other is the discovery of a middle ground where they can both be pleased with the dynamics of the relationship.

A counselor can help you distinguish a preference you can negotiate from a need or boundary you should make clear. A workable compromise gives both people a voice; it does not require one partner to give up every goal to keep the peace.

4. Stop Blaming the Other Person

Focus on a specific action and its effect rather than turning an argument into a judgment of your partner’s character. “I felt left out when you made that decision without me” gives you more to work with than “You never care what I think.”

Taking responsibility does not mean dividing blame equally. Each person is accountable for their own behavior. Name the harm clearly, ask for a concrete change, and notice whether actions follow the apology.

5. Spend Some Time Apart if Necessary

Depending on the current state of the relationship, it may also be a good idea to spend some time apart, so you and your partner can organize your thoughts and feelings. Most people don’t realize that taking a break in a relationship can be exactly what is needed when thinking of how to save a marriage.

If the marriage has been stressful for quite some time, then spending some time away from each other can help you to reevaluate where things are in your relationship and what you would be willing to change in order to save it. Likewise, it can give your partner time and breathing space to think. After taking some time apart, it may be that you or your partner come to the realization of what it is like to be without the other, and this could be just the impetus needed for both of you to give the marriage another go.

6. Work Toward Forgiveness and Repair

Forgiveness can be part of rebuilding a marriage, but it does not require pretending that hurt never happened. An apology is more useful when it identifies what went wrong and what will change.

Talk about what would help restore trust: keeping an agreement, being more transparent, or returning to a difficult conversation without defensiveness. You can work toward forgiveness while keeping boundaries. Repeated harm needs to be addressed, not erased with a daily clean slate.

7. Find Some Common Goals

One method, when learning how to save a marriage from divorce, is by finding some common goals you share with your partner. Getting guidance from a marriage counselor can be very helpful because he can put forward some suggestions that are acceptable to both parties in the relationship. Of course, doing this may mean that some compromises will need to be made in order to preserve the relationship, but the ability to compromise is one of the anchors of a solid marriage.

There may no longer be many things you have in common with your partner, so agreeing to goals that are acceptable to both of you may take some hard work. Also, if you have kids or plan to have some in the future, it might be good to work out how that situation would play out.

In other words, who will stay home to look after the baby and who will continue to work, or will both of you continue to work, and the baby can be placed in childcare? Figuring out some of these key issues before they become a problem can be worked through in marriage counseling sessions.

8. Display Random Acts of Kindness

A small, thoughtful action can make care visible when words have become difficult. Offer help with something that matters to your partner, make time to talk, or acknowledge an effort you noticed. Kindness works best as a sincere gesture, not a test of whether your partner responds in the way you hoped.

Also, displaying kindness for your partner can also help to change your own attitude because you may start to see your partner in a different light. Kindness should be the foundation of any relationship, particularly when learning how to save a marriage.

And always remember what Joseph Campbell said:

“When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.”

Learn more on how to avoid divorce in our Marriage Counseling Guide.