Ten Reasons People Consider Divorcing
Getting married is often an easier decision than getting a divorce. Marriage brings pleasurable feelings of excitement, passion, and desire. But divorce stirs up feelings of anger, rejection, and betrayal. Severing ties with a person is difficult and great consideration should be given. Here are ten reasons a divorce should be considered.
- Abandonment/neglect. There are several forms of abandonment or neglect. Physical desertion is leaving a spouse for an undisclosed period of time without an agreement for return. Emotional neglect is telling a spouse they are unloved, refusing support, rejecting intimacy, or controlling behaviors. Financial negligence is denying the basic needs of a spouse (food, shelter, and clothing) through withholding resources.
- Abuse. An abuser uses cruelty, neglect, or violence to dominate others. Abuse is not about love; it is about control. There are seven areas a person can be abused: physical, mental, verbal, emotional, financial, sexual, and spiritual. All abuse is destructive, devastating, and harmful.
- Adultery. Think of adultery as anything that comes between the marriage partners and becomes more important than the marriage itself. It pulls the partners away emotionally, sexually, or both. For instance, work, porn, alcohol, or another person all can be mistresses of a sort.
- Addiction. A long-term untreated addiction usually brings about abandonment, abuse, and adultery. When the addiction becomes the center of the marriage, both spouses participate in unhealthy behaviors: the addict uses and the non-addict enables. This downward spiral is damaging.
- Mental illness. Mental illnesses vary in severity, duration, prognosis, and treatment. It is best to get an accurate diagnosis by a trained professional before determining that this is an issue. A person who refuses to get treatment for a severe mental illness does not make a good marriage partner.
- Criminal activity. Not all crimes are the same. But misdemeanor or felony charges that involve harming or threatening to harm another person are particularly dangerous. Anytime a violent act can be committed against another person means the same violation can occur to a spouse or child.
- Negative change. Ideally, as a marriage matures, the couple grows together in healthy and productive ways. However, some changes can be detrimental when an individual becomes dominating, isolating, controlling, detached, angry (aggressive, suppressive, or passive-aggressive), obsessive, abusive, or resentful on a regular basis. This often leads to abandonment or adultery and could be a visual manifestation of an untreated mental illness.
- Finances. Couples arguing over money are a common occurrence. But when an individual steals money, extorts funds, cheats on taxes, bribes others, commits fraud, incurs excessive debt, or has a spending addiction, this is more than a simple disagreement. In a marriage, both individuals can be held financially responsible for the misappropriation of funds. A divorce might be the only way to protect an individual.
- Child maltreatment. Abuse, cruelty, or neglect of a child is inexcusable. When one parent mistreats a child and the other parent looks the other way, they are both guilty of harming the child. Allowing a child to grow up in this environment can cause severe mental illness for the child with life-long effects. Or, worse, the child could become an abuser as well.
- Many couples argue. This is both normal and helpful. However, disagreements that lead to physical violence, withholding of sex or intimacy, silent treatment, or non-stop bickering are destructive. Long-term unresolved conflict often leads to resentment, bitterness, or isolation. This is not a marriage, it is a roommate.
To get your copy of the book, Abuse Exposed, click here.
Posted under: abuse Divorce Writings from Christine
Leave a Reply