On your wedding day, I bet the furthest thought from your mind was “What happens if this marriage does not work out?”

As time goes by things change. You find that you are not in the same place as you were when you got married. Things have happened in your marriage. You do not communicate the same way you used to. Perhaps your partner hasn’t been faithful.

What do you do? Do you consider divorce?

If you are like most Americans, you do. Divorces are common these days. In actual fact, ½ of our marriages end in divorce now. What will happen when you get divorced?

Quite a bit, actually. First of all, one of you needs to find a new place to live. Second of all, if you have children, you must create a plan for when the children will be with each parent. Does one parent get full custody with visitation for the other? Is custody shared? Holidays, vacations, they all have to be planned out ahead of time & put into a calendar.

Next, you have to split up everything you own. Remember all the flatware & dinner plates you received as wedding gifts? Well, your sixteen piece service just became an eight piece service. Your spouse got the vacuum cleaner, you kept the stereo, your spouse got the Christmas tree, & the list goes on.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. One you may be paying child support, alimony or both. 401k’s & other investments get divided up. Perhaps other properties or expensive belongings you have must be sold. Hope you were not attached to anything.

Finally, you have to have some sort of legal proceeding involving attorneys, mediators & a judge to do the final divorce decree. I have never known anything involving the word “legal” to be cheap.

Now those were all the things involving money… Really the money is just a small part of it… Divorce’s biggest impact is on people, especially children. Picture in your mind that conversation when you sit the children down & tell them that Mommy & Daddy do not love each other the way they used to & one of them will not actually be living here anymore. The children, who may be too young to fully grasp the concept of divorce, are now being shuttled back & forth between two homes every few days. They need clothes & toys for Mommy’s house & Daddy’s house. They need to get used to the fact that their bed at Mommy’s is more comfortable, but Daddy has better TV.

The kids at school may say things & look at them differently. They probably need to start seeing counselors to work through alot of their questions & feelings about what has happened. What if your ex starts to say things about you, that are not very nice, to your children? What if you start dating again & your ex says means things to them about your new “friend”?

Your parents are effected too. Now they may need to become more involved in child care or assisting you financially. Your parents also have to deal with issues they have about the divorce. “What did I do wrong? Did I put too much pressure on my child to get married? Did I alienate their spouse or cause some kind of friction? Am I the reason they split up?”

These are all very deep issues & I hope you never have to tackle them in your lifetime. But ½ of you’ll & the numbers get worse every day. There’re resources available to you that can assist you start repairing your marriage immediately. You may not want to acknowledge your marital difficulties to your pastor, friends, or even a licensed marriage counselor. If you don’t, there’re things you can do, on your own & right now, to stop hurting & start saving your marriage.

First, sit down & talk with your spouse. Be honest about your feelings. Now isn’t the time to hold back.

Second, invest in a good book. There’re great resources available that can give you practical tips to start using today. These techniques work, even if only one of you is committed to working on them.

Third, get your family involved. Maybe they can take the children for a couple days while you start working things out with your spouse. Maybe a sibling or another relative has gone through the same thing but never really talked about it… The information they provide could help more than you expected.

Just remember, you have options & you have resources. You can decide right here & now to stop the damage, stop the pain, & stop the slow decline of your marriage. If you do something, you may be easily able to recapture the love & remember why you got married in the first place. If you do nothing, your marriage will fail & many of those things we talked about above we start to become a reality.

Todd Marsha is just a regular guy who loves being married. He & his wife, Jennifer, are committed to helping couples on the brink of divorces. Visit We Want to Help Save Your Marriage for many more information.