Divorce can result from a variety of complex factors.
While some couples may face significant hurdles like infidelity can abruptly end a marriage, others may experience less apparent breakdowns most people miss until it’s too late.
Determining whether your relationship is beyond saving and heading toward divorce is a difficult path to take, particularly if you have invested considerable effort in building and trying to repair your marriage.
So let’s look at the thirteen warning signs of divorce to help you analyze your relationship and decide whether it’s time to move on.
1. You can’t fully trust your partner.
For many married couples, infidelity is a breaking point of their relationship.
There are multiple reasons for cheating: lack of intimacy and sex, emotional disconnection between spouses, immaturity of the cheating spouse, etc.
A clinical expert in the treatment of intimacy disorders Robert Weiss, Ph.D., adds a few other reasons to the list, such as an attachment deficit disorder and a way of self-exploration.
Restoring trust between spouses can take years and requires a lot of mutual effort. Sadly, sometimes partners can’t return to the same happiness level they had in the past.
So, if bitter memories of the other person’s infidelity continue to hurt you even after a long time, and your partner’s every action, such as working late nights, makes you suspicious, think about whether you need such torment.
Maybe it’s time to find the courage to admit that the relationship is in serious trouble and that staying together is not the best option anymore.
2. Your marriage lacks physical intimacy.
Although physical intimacy is not paramount in a relationship and should not be in the first place, its complete absence can slowly undermine your marriage.
“Sex adds to the union’s longevity,” Sheri Stritof, the author of the Everything Great Marriage book says, “it also increases the level of emotional connection.”
Consequently, the lack of intimacy causes aggravation of other marriage problems and reduces spouses’ attraction to each other.
Thus, if you or your partner are sleeping in separate bedrooms and have little to no sex drive, it’s a sign that your union is falling apart, and divorce is only a matter of time.
3. You have little desire to communicate with your spouse.
When you first started dating, you could talk for hours about exciting topics. Now you don’t even want to ask your spouse about their day and eat dinner in silence.
Instead, you both stare at your smartphone screens and would instead scroll through photos of complete strangers than chat with your partner. Sound familiar?
If you have little interest in what your spouse says or have nothing to tell them, it could be a sign that you’re becoming alienated from your significant other. If left unaddressed, this situation will definitely lead to a major breakdown, such as divorce.
4. You push each other’s buttons.
Are you annoyed with having to see or talk to your partner every day? Have you noticed that everything they do makes you cringe or roll your eyes? Does the same thing happen to your partner when talking to you?
Constant annoyance with each other and conflicts over seemingly insignificant things may be a bad sign for your marriage, and, in some cases, that it is headed for divorce.
Although some relationship experts believe a bit of annoyance and frustration can bring positive reconstruction to relationships, never-ending dissatisfaction with each other is not normal.
You can try marriage counseling, where a licensed family therapist will implement several available conflict resolution strategies. However, it will only help if both of you genuinely want to save your marriage.
Otherwise, there could be trouble ahead when you push each other’s limits to the point of no return, resulting in a complicated divorce.
5. You usually feel disrespected.
The cornerstones of every successful marriage are love, shared interests, and respect. However, having only one of them is not enough, and respect is as important a criterion as mutual sympathy and intimacy.
In different couples, lack of respect occurs in different ways.
For example, one partner can constantly criticize the other’s tastes, work, and hobbies. Or If a spouse does not ask the other’s opinion when making important decisions and downplays their spouse’s competence.
These are warning signs of trouble that can lead to divorce—especially if you’re the spouse tired of disrespectful treatment and ready to move on with your new life.
6. Your Goals for the Future Don’t line up.
One of the most common signs of upcoming divorce in many couples is the incompatibility of goals and values between partners. One way or another, the aims must be mutual.
Otherwise, you will be stuck in an unhappy marriage.
In his article for Psychology Today, Stephen J. Betchen, D.S.W., says “that differences in interests can cause serious relationship problems.” He also adds that often these differing goals “mask deeper incompatibilities.”
One example is the desire to have a child. If one spouse is firmly against it and the other can’t imagine life without children, such a mismatch of goals can become a constant source of conflict and a deal breaker for the couple.
Sooner or later, they will understand the futility of staying together and will get a divorce.
7. Your spouse can’t stand your family.
One sign that a relationship is falling apart is your significant other’s unwillingness to get on with your relatives. Is there an objective reason for this in your relationship?
If there is not and your spouse makes absolutely no effort to get along with your parents and other family members for a long time, this indirectly shows their feelings for you are not deep enough.
We all understand how difficult it is to reach harmony with the in-laws. Discord between your relatives and your spouse does not automatically mean that divorce is coming.
However, if a person is genuinely in love, they will at least try to treat and talk about their spouse’s relatives with respect.
If they don’t make an effort, this is when even a healthy marriage may go in the wrong direction and eventually fall apart.
8. You fight about money often.
While it’s normal to fight about buying overpriced goods, like vacation trips or cars, having fundamentally different views on money is one of the typical marital problems.
According to research, money issues are among the most frequently cited sources of conflict between newlyweds.
However, it’s not always about the financial hardship or smart choices, says Sonya Britt, an associate professor of family studies and financial planning at Kansas State University.
More often than not, money arguments represent a lack of trust and different life values. Sooner or later, these differences will start taking a toll on your marriage and could lead to divorce.
9. Your relationship is no longer a priority.
Can you remember the last time you and your partner spent an evening or a weekend together at the expense of meeting friends or surfing on Facebook and Twitter?
If you’ve noticed that you keep choosing other activities instead of having weekly date nights as you used to in the early days, there might be something wrong with your relationship.
For instance, your constant preoccupation with more important things at hand may be a sign of deeper communication problems.
To be clear, spending time outside marriage, e.g., with your best friend or your family, can provide more emotional support and smooth out friction in your relationship.
At the same time, lack of quality time together often leads to growing apart.
If your partner is no longer your go-to person when something happens, it can be a sign of marriage trouble leading to a divorce.
10. You have lost interest in arguing.
Occasional arguing can serve as a crucial means to reach an understanding and fix deeper relationship problems, gradually polishing the communication and connection in the couple.
Typically, by confronting and addressing conflicts, partners can identify and alter the factors keeping their relationship from reaching its fullest potential.
A crucial aspect of a healthy relationship is to maintain mutual respect when you argue about something. All will end well only if you fight the right way and honor each other’s principles and convictions, even when they differ from yours.
However, silence is as detrimental to marriage as destructive squabbles.
Avoiding arguments might be the opposite of fighting all the time but it is also indicative of not caring, which can be one of the key signs of divorce.
11. You can’t be yourself.
Expressing your personality without hesitation is an integral part of any healthy relationship.
However, if you try to “behave” and show only good qualities to please your spouse instead of being yourself, think about the reasons.
Will your spouse leave you if you show your true self? If the answer is yes, it’s another sign of divorce.
Losing yourself in a relationship creates many negative feelings, says Suzanne Lachmann, a licensed clinical psychologist, in her article for Psychology Today.
Among them are anxiety, resentment, and hopelessness. Eventually, these things can threaten the connection between the partners and lead to a marriage breakdown.
12. Your partner starts crossing your boundaries.
Healthy marriages are unimaginable without boundaries established for both partners’ comfortable co-existing.
When one partner starts crossing these boundaries, especially if it’s intentional, it may be one of the first signs of divorce.
Some examples of this behavior are minimizing and mocking your requests, ignoring your opinion, and gaslighting. The extremes even include emotional and physical abuse, a major sign of relationship trouble.
In this case, think carefully if you want to stay married to someone who is willing to continually cross your boundaries.
13. You have no desire to fix your marriage.
Most marital problems can be fixed if both spouses are willing to work on the relationship. These days, family therapy deals with everything from poor communication and childcare issues to stress and trauma.
Research shows that almost 70% of couples who receive treatment see positive changes in their relationships.
However, couples tired of each other do not usually rush to see a family therapist or a relationship expert; some even secretly imagine themselves as already unmarried.
So, if mending your marriage is the last thing you or your spouse want to do, what other signs of inevitable divorce do you need?
Finding one common thread in troubled marriages is complicated since every couple has its history, life views, and values. The factor forcing one marriage to break down may not affect others in the same destructive way.
However, some of the most notable signs of divorce in a relationship include lack of trust, intimacy, mutual understanding, and overall loss of interest in each other or keeping a marriage afloat.
