I’ve been a marriage and family counselor for more than fifty years now. I hear from men and women every day who are in pain and suffering because their relationship has gone downhill and is in danger of crashing. Though some relationships need to end for the good of the couple or their children, for most marriages, divorce is not the answer.
No one ever comes to me saying, “I feel loved and cared for. My relationship is passionate and exciting, and I can’t wait to be with my spouse. I want a divorce.” And no one starts out getting married expecting that they will reach a time when they want out. So, why do relationships that start out good, turn bad?
In my book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come, I talk about the Stage 3, Disillusionment, as the place where most marriages fail. Here, I’ll tell you why Stage 3 is the hope for the future of your marriage, not an indicator of its demise.
Looking at the world in which we live, Otto Scharmer, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Presencing Institute, says, “In most large systems today, we collectively create results that no one wants. What keeps us locked into patterns of behavior where we create misery and pain for ourselves and others?
In his book, Theory U: Leading From the Future as It Emerges, Scharmer describes three major divides confronting society where we keep getting results no one wants.
Read the rest of this article on Jed’s blog.
