Marriages fail for many reasons and there is a case for saying that more marriages fail nowadays because splitting up is easy as there is no longer any stigma attached to divorce. Marriages often fail because the couple don’t try to save the marriage or don’t know what steps to take to save the marriage. As you are asking “can I save my marriage”, you are obviously willing to put effort into saving your marriage; here is some information to help you.
The first thing you need to do is make an honest assessment of your marriage to see if it is worth saving. If you and your spouse still care for each other, it is probable that the breakup of the relationship can be avoided. If there is still love in your marriage, your current difficulties could be a “bad patch” and getting through this time will serve to make your marriage stronger. Facing and overcoming adversity together almost inevitably works to strengthen the bond between the people involved.
This is not the time to start laying blame on your spouse, but it is the time for you to accept and acknowledge blame for your part in the proceedings. You must honestly evaluate what destructive behaviour on your part has contributed to the threatened breakup of your marriage. Maybe you thought your spouse was behaving in an unreasonable way. Could it be that your spouse’s behaviour was caused by you being inconsiderate?
If you can accept your faults and commit to altering your bad habits, you will have taken a big step towards saving your marriage, but it takes two to keep a relationship healthy. You can’t force your spouse to love you and, if that love has gone, your spouse might not be willing to try to save the marriage. Even if there are children or religious principles involved, a loveless marriage will not last. All you can do is tell your spouse that you recognise where you went wrong, you promise to change, and you are willing to work at making the marriage whole again.
If you and your spouse both agree that there is enough good left in your relationship to enable you to rebuild the marriage, this is the point where you might want to consider getting help from a relationship counsellor. There are many dedicated marriage counsellors to choose from, so you should make sure both you and your spouse are happy with a particular counsellor before you commit to a course of counselling.
If either party is uncomfortable with a counsellor, the counselling sessions will be wasted, so it is essential that you choose carefully. Working with the wrong counsellor can have an adverse effect. It can be particularly damaging if one party feels that the counsellor is taking their spouse’s side against them; this situation can create further distance between the couple. You and your spouse must both feel that your counsellor is offering impartial help and not criticism.