Are you thinking about getting a divorce?  Are you thinking about ending your marriage?

I want to ask all of you a question today.

Why do you want your marriage to end?  Why do you want to get a divorce?

Have you ever gone back through the timeline of your marriage, and thought about the way you guys treated each other in the beginning?  It’s such a beautiful thing, a relationship as it is unfolding and blossoming.

When you’re under the influence of love, that powerful oxytocin drug, when you’re truly in love with somebody, all you can do is think about them.  All you want to do is make them happy.  And all you want to do is get to know them in so many amazing ways like nobody you’ve ever wanted to understand before.

Everything is new, everything is fresh at the beginning of a loving relationship.  There’s no anger, there are no kids to distract you, nothing. It’s just you and your partner, and that’s it.

Falling in love is an amazing feeling. And falling out of love is an awful feeling falling.  Ending a relationship is very painful once you hit the point of no return.  Once you hit that point, you stop remembering all the beautiful feelings and times that you created together in the past, and you are consumed by the negativity that surrounds your relationship.

It’s so easy these days to leave relationships.  It’s much easier to leave the relationship than stay in it and try to make it work.  We think to ourselves, If I leave the relationship, I can be happy again.  I’ll find somebody who will appreciate me, who will love me or who I am.  I’ll find that person with whom I’m a better fit.

My question to you is:  Are you really going to find somebody who’s a better fit?  Have you gone back and processed the reasons why your relationship did not work out?  Be honest with yourself.  How much thought have you truly given it?  Have you taken full responsibility for all of your actions, or are you still blaming your spouse for all the things that have gone wrong?  They cheated on you, they neglected you emotionally, they got lazy, they refused to work on the relationship…

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find that there is a reason why they cheated and there’s a reason why they neglected you.  It’s because your actions caused it.

Every marriage, just like any relationship, is 50/50.  There’s no single person who caused the marriage to fall apart.  Life doesn’t work that way.

So if you’re thinking about getting a divorce, I want you to look back on the path of your marriage and take full responsibility for what you’ve done and what you’ve created along the way.  And instead of blaming your partner and pointing the finger, I want you to turn around and point it at yourself.  And really give that some thought.

Otherwise, you’re just going to repeat these same actions in your next relationship.  You’re going to get the same result because you’re going to jump into the next relationship without having grown and understood how to correct your own deficiencies.

Look at your marriage right now.  Go back to the beginning, and look at the reasons why you fell in love with that person.  Remember how it was and how you felt toward your spouse.  Spend a week treating that person the same way you did in the beginning. One full week.

Forget the animosity, forget the fact that they refused to pick up the kids at school, forget that they worked too late and didn’t call you.  Drop all the anger and just spend a week really enjoying that person again.  Write love letters, send great texts appreciating them. Whatever it was you guys did in the beginning, go back to acting that way for a week.

And for those of you who are divorced, take some time today to look into the mirror, look deep into yourself before you dive head-first into your next committed relationship.  Instead of trying to replace your old partner with a new one, I want you to look at yourself and I want you to take full responsibility for all the reasons why your last marriage did not work, all the reasons that you’ve told yourself were not your fault.

If you’re out there dating right now and are looking for somebody new, don’t tell the people you’re dating all about how your ex did this to you and your ex did that to you.  Take full responsibility and move forward.  Otherwise, you’re going to be heading straight toward another divorce in the foreseeable future.  You don’t want to do that.  You owe it to yourself to get it handled and have our relationships be a success this time around.

I hope this impacted you and I’d love to hear about your stories.