When I got married, my new husband could do no wrong.W e would have the perfect marriage and live HAPPILY EVERY AFTER. He felt the same about me and made me the center of his universe. The perfect love story, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST……Right? And then reality set in. It’s all hearts and roses… until it’s not. Looking back on those years, I can’t believe we endured the struggle and conflict for so long rather than seeking out help.I guess we just kept thinking and hoping it would get better if we just tried harder.It really is amazing we stayed married.I think it is a testament to how much we really did love one another.I believe that most couples are probably the same as we were.

It took us a couple of decades to come to the place where my husband and I were unwilling to continue in our marriage any longer. Not the way things were.We both decided we were starting over.It simply WAS NOT WORKING ANYMORE.Neither one of us was happy. We were done.We were going to divorce and start over alone, or start over with each other.I think we both knew that it would be risky to start over alone and look for someone “new”. We might not be able to find someone we felt we could commit to or that felt they could commit to us. We weren’t that young anymore…and we had almost grown children. I think we also knew that we might still be taking some of the same problems with us and adding new ones to the mix.There was also the possibility for a lot of carnage if we divorced: feelings of failure, depletion of finances we had worked together to build up, being misunderstood or ostracizedby friends and family, isolation from our support and social circles, daughters who might or might not understand about our decision and who could hold resentments against one or both of us, maybe for the rest of our lives. We knew divorce was always messy. We also knew that even after our divorce we would still be “family” because of our children and because of our history. We could walk away from each other in our day to day lives, but we would still carry our history and our “ex” with us.After so many years of marriage, we WERE family.We had been married longer than we had been single.One thing that kept haunting me was the realization that when our daughters did marry and have children, we would never have that big, happy family picture with my husband and I, our daughters, their spouses and OUR grandchildren. Somehow, this gave a picture to my fears for my future and the realization of the finality and enormity of the cliff I was thinking about stepping off of.

We decided to take a chance.We had nothing to lose and a lot to keep if we were WILLING to try starting over with each other. Either way, if we gave it our best shot and we were still unhappy, then we would know we had tried.All these years later, I can honestly say we are happier than we have ever been.We love each other deeply and are each other’s “person”.We find our safe place in each other and trust each other totally.Our communication is stable and consistent and no longer hurtful and destructive.One of the ways we were able to reduce the conflict in our communication was to mend our physical relationship.We kept our communication authentic and real while we worked on rebuilding our trust.We are glad we had compassion for one another and softened our hearts just long enough to try and start over. When we decided to go and get some marriage counseling, things started to get better quickly.We were lucky that we were ready and found a counselor who could give us direction and show us where to go with our communication.That’s where I come in.

If you are unhappy in a marriage that feels HOPELESS, I hope you believe me when I tell you that it isn’t. If your spouse is telling you that he or she wants a divorce, it doesn’t mean that it’s time to give up. It means it is time to get serious about saving your marriage.I want to show you how you can fall in love with your spouse again…even when you think there is nothing left. Your marriage really can be a safe place and “happy ever after”.