The old saying "they mix like oil and water", which of course means they never go together, often defines a marriage. When at least one of the parties in such a relationship takes off the rose colored glasses and looks at the past 2,5,7, 10 years of the marriage and realizes there never was a relationship where both parties were committed one to another and they shared a common vision of the future where happiness was the goal and every word and gesture between them was based on the positive and never the negative, it is time to either get serious about repairing the marriage with professional counseling including life coaching and individual focus on goals and achievements. The variable that often imprisons parties in a dead-end relationship is a child or children. Children, however, are egocentric and are never going to grow into healthy adulthood when their upbringing is centered around a false, dead relationship from which they learn by observation that they never, ever, want to get involved with someone because it will be like being Mom or Dad. They need to be told once that the divorce was never about them but about Mom and Dad being at a dead end in their relationship. They will remember that and it will be the defining memory of the divorce: it wasn't about them. Children absorb everything they see, feel and experience: every nuance, gesture, sarcastic gesture, all the negative, unhappiness and bad going on between their Mom and their Dad. Sometimes the expense of ending a dead marriage is the best money ever spent not just for the liberation of the spouses but for the sunshine it can bring to a child in the middle of the "dead-zone". Learn, grow and be fulfilled. After divorce is a time when the parties should redefine what they want out of life, set goals, reacquaint themselves with who they really are. All that takes time and self reflection and professional life coaching and counseling.
