According to news, this is one of the busiest months of the year when it comes to dealing with relationship fall-outs after the tensions of the Christmas period. Family Law Firms can be inundated with enquiries from struggling couples who are wondering about divorce.
For those seriously seriously thinking about separation the festive period, it seems has only highlighted their plight and the new year resolution mentality means that it's finally time to deal with it. These relationships will have been on tender hooks for some time no doubt. For others it may be merely a reaction to a bad season and they are wondering about their options.
But divorce causes more problems than it solves, according to Michelle Weiner-Davis who wrote 'Divorce Remedy.'She calls it the 'Not-So-Great- Escape.' It impacts the adults involved and spills over into subsequent relationships. And it can have a devastating effect on children. If not immediately apparent, it can have a sleeper effect and surface later in life.
It was the High Court Family Judge, Sir Paul Coleridge who said recently, 'Mend it - don't end it!' with reference to marriages in difficulty, as he launched his 'Marriage Foundation'with the aim of working to avoid the chaos in children's lives as a consequence of divorce and failing relationships.
Perhaps the better New Year resolution, rather than high-tailing it to the Lawyer to discuss break-up, would be to seek out help to put the relationship back on track. The majority of couples who chose that route and work at the marriage and stay together, report five years later, that they were glad they did not follow through with their divorce intentions.
Marriages can be saved. It is not an easy road back from the brink. It requires a change of mindset at the personal level and also in our wider culture. As Weiner-Davis says, " I believe that the constant barrage of negative data about marriage takes its toll on society. We start to believe that divorce is one of life's normal rites of passage..........when the going gets rough, we just leave.............Just think about how our collective unconsciousness might be altered if the media spent a fraction of the time investigating why marriage works instead of informing and warning us about the death of marriage."
The resources of 'X plus Y' are available to help couples on the road to recovery. And equally important, they are available to those who want to spend some time giving their relationship some care and attention before things become critical.
'Divorce Remedy' Michelle Weiner-Davis (Publ. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks) Quoted by permission.
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