Should You Keep Trying If Everyone Says Your Marriage Is Over?

Should You Keep Trying If Everyone Says Your Marriage Is Over?
Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack – Podcast Episode

On this episode of Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack, Christian psychologist and relationship coach Dr. Jack Ito helps you make sense of conflicting advice and emotional overwhelm. If you're questioning your path, this episode will help you evaluate whether giving up or pressing forward is the most loving—and effective—choice.

What You'll Learn:

• Why most advice you hear (even from counselors) isn’t helpful
• How to handle pressure from family or friends who want you to divorce
• How to avoid the two biggest regrets people have when deciding whether to keep trying
• Why changing your approach matters more than holding onto hope

Want to Work With Coach Jack?
If you're struggling to know whether to keep trying or walk away—and want a practical plan for rebuilding connection—my Re-Connections Coaching Package will give you the clarity and strategy you need. Learn more at: https://coachjackito.com/relationship-coaching-services/reconnections/

Key Takeaways:

• Advice from others reflects their mindset, not your situation.
• Feelings of hopelessness are common—but not reliable guides.
• The words you use when seeking advice shape the advice you receive.
• Your decision should be based on love, not fear or frustration.
• Trying again only works when you try differently.

Additional Resources:

• Free Downloads for Improving Communication with Your Spouse 
• Relationship Coaching Packages
• Consult with Coach Jack
• Contact Coach Jack

Work one-on-one with Coach Jack to repair your relationship using small, easy steps that rebuild connection quickly. Visit CoachJackIto.com to learn more about relationship coaching.

Transcript

Should You Keep Trying if Everyone Says Your Marriage Is Over?

[00:00:00] Introduction to Reconciling Marriages

[00:00:00]Announcer: On the reconciling marriages with Coach Jack, podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito will help you to build and restore your marriage by learning just a few relationship skills you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more while getting more love and affection from your spouse.

[00:00:20] Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love. 

[00:00:29] Deciding to Work on Your Marriage or Leave

[00:00:29]Coach Jack: Making the wrong decision about working on your marriage or leaving, it can lead to a lot of regret and wasted time later. What factors can help you decide? There are two risks when it comes to working on a bad marriage.

[00:00:43] One risk is the time and opportunities you lose if you don't let go of your marriage and move on. If you spend a year doing that, it's not too bad. But what if you spend two years, five years, or more? When the relationship eventually ends, you'll wish you had divorced much sooner and you'll never get back those years.

[00:01:04] Understanding the Risks and When to Give Up

[00:01:04]Coach Jack: The other risk is giving up on a relationship that can be saved. If you find something much better, then it won't make much difference. But what if you don't find anyone better and you are left missing the person that you wish you had just tried a little more with today, I will help you to know when to give up and when not to.

[00:01:24] I will also tell you what you can do to make your chance to reconcile with your husband or wife more hopeful. 

[00:01:31] Managing Hopelessness and Seeking Hope

[00:01:31]Coach Jack: Your feelings can fool you. Most of the people I work with already know they want to reconcile more days than not. They're having bouts of hopelessness, which keep them from sleeping at night and eating during the day.

[00:01:44] They constantly look for any glimmer of hope in the face of the one they love and don't want to lose. Often they don't see any glimmers of hope at all. Their hope is a fragile threat in danger of breaking. When they come to me and tell me their story, I can sense them holding their breath, waiting for my opinion about whether their marriage can be saved.

[00:02:07] As long as there is still contact, there is still hope. 

[00:02:11] The Power of Phrasing and Seeking Validation

[00:02:11]Coach Jack: If you do things the right way, what other people say is generally a lousy way to know whether to continue or not. Going online to find out whether you should work on your marriage or not will yield different answers. Some will say you should, while others will say you shouldn't.

[00:02:27] The way you phrase your question in the search engine will determine what kind of responses you get. Negative phrasing and positive phrasing leads to different results. The same is true for how you phrase things when you talk with your friends. If you say something like, my lousy husband is cheating on me again.

[00:02:47] Do you think I should keep holding onto such a liar? Guess what kind of advice you'll get? Everyone is going to tell you to divorce. How about if you asked, I love my husband, but he's being unfaithful. What should I do? That question will get you an entirely different set of answers from most people.

[00:03:06] Those, some people have their own biases no matter what you say. One man I worked with would often ask himself, how can she treat me so badly? After all I have done for her that kind of negatively phrased question to himself, helped him to feel right and removed his sense of personal responsibility. It kept him looking at what she should do rather than at what he could do.

[00:03:32] It kept him stuck. I helped him to change that internal question to how can I help her to get back to getting the best from me so we can both benefit that new question. Focused on a win-win led him to taking action instead of blaming. It also helped him make changes that improved his marriage. People think they are looking for truth when they're really looking for validation.

[00:03:59] That way they don't have to feel guilty. They can feel justified and not responsible. Most people will validate them for the sake of their relationship. Validation is a social skill, so even if your friends or family don't agree with you. They'll often support your decision anyway. Who can know what someone else really thinks and what they would actually do in your shoes?

[00:04:24] Advice from Counselors and Coaches

[00:04:24]Coach Jack: What about advice from counselors and coaches? Just like your friends, most counselors and coaches will prioritize validating you over helping you take responsibility to change. Why is that so that you will enjoy their sessions and come back. That's not the way that I work. I've had a few people get coaching from me.

[00:04:44] Sure. That I would validate their belief that their relationship was hopeless. When I told them there was a path to reconciling, they got pretty angry. It's not what they wanted to hear. They then dropped out of coaching. Getting validation from a reconciliation specialist about your marriage being hopeless is looking in the wrong place.

[00:05:05] It's like expecting a pastor to say it's too late for you to be saved. If you want validation about your marriage being hopeless, a divorce lawyer would be happy to tell you that. 

[00:05:16] Handling Pressure from Family and Friends

[00:05:16]Coach Jack: How should you respond to family and friends who encourage you to give up on your relationship? I'll tell you what I tell my clients.

[00:05:23] Don't argue or push back. Instead, use good social skills to show appreciation for their attempt to help then quietly make your own decisions regardless of what they recommended. Some people feel pressured by their parents to either reconcile or divorce. While their parents have good motivations, they don't always have good advice.

[00:05:44] People in this situation need help managing their relationship with their parents at the same time they're managing their marriage. It's easy to be pulled in two different directions and to make a hasty decision that will lead to regret. Getting hasty about trying to reconcile is not as big of a problem as being hasty to divorce.

[00:06:05] It's much easier to change your decision. If reconciling doesn't go well. It's much harder to change your decision if you have filed for divorce, though it can still be done a real life scenario for you. My client, Brooklyn was feeling pressured by her parents to give up. The husband she loved because he was treating her badly.

[00:06:24] Now, if he was physically abusive, I would've agreed with her parents, but many times a spouse's bad behavior is a result of relationship problems. And can be turned around. Brooklyn and I worked together to find a way for her to validate her parents and use some of their advice while still working on the relationship.

[00:06:44] It was a delicate balance, but as her relationship with her husband started to improve, her parents softened Brooklyn even helped them feel like they were part of the solution. I was proud of her and proud to help her too. 

[00:06:58] Learning from Success Stories

[00:06:58]Coach Jack: We can learn from people who struggled until they succeeded about when to have hope.

[00:07:03] Let's say if we can learn something from Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb creating a working light bulb had never been done and he had not succeeded in thousands of attempts to create one. Can you imagine the advice he would've received if he asked his friends about what he should do?

[00:07:23] I've tried 3000 times to get this light bulb to work. I've failed every time. Do you think I should keep trying? I'm sure Edison's friends would've suggested that he needed some rest and relaxation and deserved a better life than getting frustrated all the time trying to make something work. That obviously wasn't.

[00:07:44] What if Edison said instead, I found some ways to make light bulbs glow a lot longer than others, although it has taken a few thousand attempts. I think I'm onto something, although it's actually the same situation. Everyone would encourage him to continue his research. They might still think he should give up, though sometimes we can see the potential when others only see the problems.

[00:08:08] If you're never saying good things about your spouse to others, they will advise you to end your relationship. This is why one of my personal rules is to never say anything bad about my wife to anyone. There's an important thing to note about Edison. 

[00:08:24] Edison's Lesson: Trying Different Approaches

[00:08:24]Coach Jack: He didn't succeed because he kept doing the same thing over and over.

[00:08:28] He succeeded because he threw out what didn't work until he found. What did some people get stuck in pursuit mode trying over and over again to convince their spouse to improve or work on the relationship? Of course, what doesn't work one in 10 times isn't going to work at a hundred. Edison didn't keep trying the same filament over and over.

[00:08:52] He tried different filaments until he found one that not only worked but worked better than those he had partial success with. Have you given up hope on your marriage because of what people have said or because you keep trying the same approach without any lasting results? Maybe because of both of these reasons, they're the most common reason people divorce, even when the love in their relationship could be restored.

[00:09:18] Encouragement and Resources for Rebuilding

[00:09:18]Coach Jack: I encourage you to look for positive ways to rebuild your relationship, even if you'll become very comfortable just blaming your spouse for everything. If everything is your spouse's fault, there are productive things you can do to make your relationship better. I have some free downloads on my website for helping your husband or wife to enjoy talking with you more.

[00:09:39] That will help you as you work to build your relationship. The link is in the description. 

[00:09:45] Final Thoughts and Loving Decisions

[00:09:45]Coach Jack: What would I tell a friend who couldn't decide on whether to work on reconciling or divorce? I would ask which decision would be the most loving thing to do for their spouse. A decision made out of love is less likely to lead to regret, and far more likely to be the right one as God has told us in one Corinthians chapter 13, verse 13, and now these three remain faith, hope.

[00:10:12] And love, but the greatest of these is love. 

[00:10:18]Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.