Probably not.
Most relationships that feel this bad are not over. They're stuck in a pattern, and patterns can change.
The hard part is seeing that while you're inside it. When bad weeks keep coming, they start to feel like proof it's over.
This book helps you tell a rough patch from real trouble, and then shows you what to do about it.
You can read it in a few evenings. And your partner doesn't have to agree to anything, or change first, for it to make a difference.
One of you moves toward the problem to feel safe. Bring it up, say it again, don't let it drop. The other moves away to feel safe. Shut it down, say I'm fine, go find something to do in the garage.
Nobody is doing it wrong.
Both of these are completely reasonable from the inside. That's what makes it so hard to climb out of. Your reaching feels like love from where you're sitting and like pressure from where they're sitting, so every honest try pulls the knot tighter.
Three signs it's a rough patch, and three signs it's real trouble. Most people read their own backwards.
The Autopsy Questions™, including the one I ask in my office that makes everybody squirm
Your Internal Movie™, and why "can we talk?" means something completely different in their head than it does in yours
The runner and the chaser, and how to step out of it without giving up on them
Four reasons a partner goes quiet, and only one of them is "they don't care"
Twenty seconds that decide where a fight goes, and the exact words to say when you feel yourself flooding
Stay, go, or the Third Option™, plus a thirty day plan you can start this week
The four things real repair needs, so you can tell a real apology from one that just wants the subject dropped
I'm a relationship mentor, and I've been a divorce mediator for 13 years. Which means I've done a lot of sitting with people on the worst day of their marriage, and a fair amount of sitting with people on the day they found out it wasn't over after all.
I wrote this book because of what I kept watching with my clients. People burying a relationship that was still breathing. People waiting years beside one that had ended a long time ago. Both of these are avoidable, and both of them start the same way, with a guess.
So, I won't promise to save your relationship. Nobody can, and anybody who says otherwise is selling you something. Saving one takes two people. Getting clear takes one, and that part I can help with.
None of this is just theory for me. My husband Tom and I have had to learn every one of these skills ourselves, mostly the hard way, and we talk about that every week on our podcast, Love Shack Live. Come join us :)
Is My Marriage Dead?, a 148 page PDF, downloadable the moment you buy
Seven worksheets built into the book, with about forty pages you write on
A printable worksheet pack, and a fillable one you can type into and save
Yours to keep, and to download again any time
