The spouse who wants to separate usually does so for one of three reasons:

• Fatigue – The spouse who wants to leave feels that he/she cannot take it any longer. The browbeating, arguing, accusations, criticisms, and nonstop drama eat into the individual to the point that he/she primarily thinks of escaping the relationship rather than healing it.
• Facilitation – The spouse who wants to leave desires separation to make it easier to pursue a relationship with someone else or a lifestyle that the current marriage prohibits.
• Fear – The spouse who seeks to leave does so because he/she fears for the emotional, physical, or spiritual safety of self or children.

If your spouse wants to separate from you because of fear of you, you would do well to find out what you do to cause that fear and then do everything possible to change your behavior to remove that fear. Otherwise, it may well be that your spouse must leave for safety’s sake.

If your spouse wants to leave and you know that the reason isn’t fear or fatigue, then there is a likelihood that it is to facilitate his/her embracing a lifestyle that isn’t good or godly. (Be very careful here not to ascribe facilitation as the reason when the truth is that you refuse to face the reality that your spouse is afraid of you or is fatigued by all the pain in your relationship.) I generally advise a person whose mate wants to leave for facilitation to fight strenuously against the separation. So should friends, family, and church members. When someone wants to leave a marriage so that he or she may abandon responsibility and righteousness for self-gratification or a new relationship, everyone who knows the person who wants to leave should place every barrier possible in his/her way. Will that anger the person wanting out? Sure. But anger may be overcome much more easily than divorce and remarriage.

While understandable for spouses to want to leave because of fatigue, it nearly always is the wrong thing to do, as explained earlier. Instead, find an effective counselor, visit your pastor, or see our web site at http://www.savemymarriage.com/. Don’t run from a painful relationship or you may never do the things that may heal it. If you think it beyond repair, be aware that our success rates for couples in crisis – we love to get the ones that everyone else has given up on – is three out of every four couples who spend a weekend with us.

As Vince Lombardi said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Don’t let it do it to you. Don’t run. Fight. And by so doing save your marriage and make a wonderful future together, no matter how bad things are now. We see it happen thousands of times a year. Make sure that you see it at least once – in your own marriage.

To contact Joe Beam: Joe@GiveAndTakeRadio.com.