Even new marriages can fall apart. Sometimes, the stress of the wedding or the pressures of living together, making ends meet, and avoiding temptations can make cracks in a marriage. The key to saving the relationship is recognizing and repairing those cracks before the whole thing completely shatters. Here are the warning signs that your marriage is in trouble:
1. Lack Of Communication
If you and your spouse are no longer speaking, you have a problem. This lack of communication could be on purpose, meaning that you have argued and now one or both of you has ceased speaking to the other. Or you might have stopped talking simply because you don’t seem to have anything to say to each other. Either way, you have to figure out what led you to this point and how you can start communicating again. If you have argued, you must find some sort of resolution, so that you can discuss what you’re feeling and how you’ll prevent this lack of communication in the future. If you’ve just lost touch with one another, you should try a date night. Find something fun to do and bring up the things you have in common to start the conversation.
2. No Sex
Once upon a time, the two of you were having sex every chance you could, sometimes twice a day. Now, you’re lucky if you have sex once a week. Any sort of dramatic change in the amount of sex you’re having is a red flag. There could be numerous reasons, including having different libidos, health problems that prevent one of you from having sex, insecurity, infidelity, or simple exhaustion and stress. You have to be honest with one another about what’s going on. And you have to be willing to make an effort. If you feel too tired to have sex, for example, try making out with your spouse. The act of kissing and touching might excite you and put you in the mood, thus outweighing your exhaustion. If all else fails, you might consider sex therapy or seeing a medical professional.
3. Cheating
Whenever someone in the relationship is having an affair, the relationship is in danger. Some people have a zero tolerance policy for cheating. Others are willing to work on the relationship after finding out about the infidelity. But the relationship is rarely the same and it can remain on shaky ground for a long time afterward. If one of you is cheating, there have to be reasons you were able to succumb to temptation. And the person who has been cheated on has a right to know what’s happening. At the very least, the cheating spouse will have to fess up and find a way to regain the trust that has been lost. Often, couples seeking to overcome infidelity go to counseling for help.
4. Leading Separate Lives
When couples have been together for a long time, they sometimes begin to grow in different directions. For instance, you might be going back to school and seeking a better career, while your spouse maintains his plumbing job. Now, you find yourself hanging out with a whole new group of people and your spouse is feeling left out. He’s spending time with the friends you have always had. And you’re deep into your books and study groups. If this is what’s happening, you need to try to integrate each other into your separate lives. In other words, you should bring hubby to the campus’ spring mixer, and he should invite you to dinner with your old friends. Make sure to make these kinds of events a regular event and talk to each other about what’s happening each day, and your lives shouldn’t always feel so separate.
5. Fiscal Failures
Money is often the cause of rifts in marriages. At the basis of these disagreements lies differences in beliefs about spending and saving. As a result of these diverging ideologies, spouses might commit financial infidelity, which is when one spouse hides purchases from the other. This can cause trust issues. When you both have fundamentally different ideas about money, it can get in the way of your personal finances. Once you start to have money trouble – inability to pay bills, no savings, etc. – you will start to get stressed and you will turn on each other. Communicating about money and setting reasonable fiscal goals and having money will help your marriage remain intact.
6. Fighting
Couples who argue all the time usually question their relationship. You might be fighting about little things, such as whose turn it is to wash the dishes or big things, such as whether to have a baby. Regardless, there’s always some sort of larger issue nagging your relationship. The key is to determine what that issue is, be honest about it, and find some sort of resolution. Realize that couples are going to argue in any healthy relationship. It’s when the arguments become incessant or get in the way of loving each other that you should address them as a problem. No matter what, you should always fight fairly and give each other respect.
7. Extreme Change In Behavior
Obviously, if either you and your spouse begins acting completely out of the ordinary, there might be ramifications in your marriage. Say one of you always checked in with the other twice a day and then just stopped making contact. Perhaps, he is also keeping quiet at dinner and forgetting to kiss you good-bye, all things that are strange for him. Address the change and talk about it. Sometimes, change is for the better and you can support your spouse. Sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes, the reason is a simple distraction, such as stress that is a result of a project at work. Other times, it is something more. It could be a sign of cheating, illness, or unhappiness in the relationship. Whatever it is that is causing this change, you and your spouse must recognize the problem and determine its root.
