The Signs of Divorce and How to Spot Them
Divorce can sometimes feel like it comes out of the blue—one day you are “happily married,” and the next, your spouse is asking you to sign on the dotted line. The world you’ve built together seems like it’s falling apart. Other times, there are clear signs of divorce, ones that you may have noticed and ones that you may be ignoring.
One of the biggest signs of divorce might just be that you’re here, reading this post. Deciding whether or not to divorce your husband* may be something that’s been weighing on your mind for quite some time. We get it. Before divorce, it feels like a giant leap to take, and it’s only after that you realize what you were always capable of—that you’re stronger than you realize.
Right now you might be in need of a friend who can make sense of all the competing emotions and choices at war inside you. We’re happy to be that person for you. The following six signs of divorce are good indicators that your marriage and your relationship with your husband are not in the healthiest place. If these feel familiar, it might be time to take a step back and reevaluate your marriage and to learn what else is possible.
1. The fighting has stopped
Yes, on the surface, the end of arguing might seem like a good thing—no fighting means you and your husband are on the same page, right? Not exactly. Whether you’re fighting over big things like how to manage finances or small things like which brand of toothpaste to buy, if the arguments have stopped without actually being resolved, it can be a sign that one of you has simply given up.
Having disagreements, expressing opposing or conflicting opinions, and then working them out means that you and your husband are invested in creating a lasting future together. Once your investment in your marriage stops, the possibility of divorce becomes more and more likely.
2. You’re arguing way more than usual
Yes, there is such a thing as fighting too little and fighting too much. Conflicts happen, but as adults, we must learn how to work through disagreements in a healthy way. If small arguments have suddenly become huge battles within your household, arguments that end with no resolution and tension that lingers in the air like a bad taste in your mouth, something has fundamentally changed between you and your husband—and not in a good way.
Once a relationship becomes so antagonistic that arguments simply never end, divorce is one way to find peace once again and escape from an unhealthy or potentially abusive situation.
3. Your finances are in a bad place
Marriage is hard, and money problems make marriage even more difficult. If one or both of you are having issues at work and your income isn’t what it used to be, that extra pressure can compound the problems in your marriage. You and your husband might not be on the brink of bankruptcy, but maybe you two have fundamentally different ideas on how a person budgets and spends money. You, for instance, might want savings safely tucked away in case of an emergency while he might prefer to spend any extra money he has on the latest gadget.
For whatever reason, you two are in a bad place financially, and you aren’t seeing eye to eye. We might not like it, but money is key to our survival and one of the biggest sources of stress in a marriage. This is one of those situations that isn’t likely to change without some serious communication and work on both of your parts, and if both of you aren’t willing to budge? It might be time to talk about divorce.
4. You don’t feel connected to your husband anymore
Fridays used to be date nights, but now things have changed. You can’t really remember the last time you two had a good talk, or the last time you’ve gone out and truly enjoyed each other’s company. At the dinner table, it sometimes feels like you’re sitting across from a roommate or, worse, a stranger who just happens to share the same space.
If it’s been a while since you and your husband have invested time in each other, then you’re not maintaining an emotionally intimate connection, and you can lose that spark you once had. This is called emotional disengagement, where one or both parties in a marriage have stopped investing in maintaining emotional intimacy. Once you and your husband no longer feel like a couple, divorce starts to make more and more sense. It feels like an inevitability and the only way to find someone else you do have an emotional connection with.
5. There’s a lack of physical intimacy in your marriage
Yes, sex matters. Especially in marriage. Emotional intimacy is important, and one reflection of strong emotional intimacy within a marriage manifests itself as a strong physical connection between two partners. If you can’t remember the last time you and your husband were intimate, and there’s a clear change in how often you sleep together, you might have something to worry about.
Sometimes the source of the change is obvious—it’s medical, for instance, or there are young children at home, problems at work, or another source of stress. But combined with other factors in your relationship, a lack of physical intimacy becomes a worrisome sign that divorce may be on the horizon.
6. Your or your husband’s focus is outside the relationship
You two are no longer working on building something together, but instead, you find yourself more invested in things outside of your marriage, such as a club, the gym, or a large project at work. Maybe your husband has been spending a lot of late nights at the office, or he spends most weekends working on his golf swing with friends. You find yourself spending more and more time alone. Marriage can get boring, just like anything, and sometimes instead of looking inward and finding interests to share, grow, or explore with a partner, we turn to people in our lives who we’re already engaged with (or who we’d like to be).
When you and your husband have stopped making time for each other, it’s a sign that something’s wrong in your marriage that neither of you are willing to look at head on and address. Without working together to form a solid marriage, you two are actively growing emotionally apart and that can lead you down the road to divorce.
If you recognize one or more of these signs of divorce in your own marriage, it might be time to think about the future—your future, specifically. Do you see your husband in that future? Do these challenges in your marriage feel like things the two of you can overcome together?
If you want to salvage your marriage and you think that it’s not too late, talking to your husband about going to counseling is one option. And if so, we recommend this kind of marital support. You can also reach out to a divorce coach to fully understand all of the options in front of you, no matter which path you take (even if you decide not to get a divorce).
The truth is that even if you want to salvage your marriage, once you start seeing the signs of divorce, things might already be too far along for you and your husband to work together to solve the problems in your marriage. Knowing your options is the best way to protect yourself, your children, and your husband in case divorce is inevitable. Together, you can work on what you must navigate near term, and what your post-divorce future will look like so you can start down the path to your divorce recovery. It might be even better than you expect.
Since 2012, smart women around the world have chosen SAS for Women to support them through the emotional, financial, and oft times complicated experience of divorce. SAS offers women 6 FREE months of email coaching, action plans, checklists and support strategies for you, your family, and your future.
“When a woman comes through divorce with the proper guidance and her questions answered, her life stands before her like something she could never imagine while she was is in the dark.” ~ SAS for Women
This article was authored for the all-women website SAS for Women by Melanie Figueroa, a writer and content editor who loves discussing women’s issues and creativity.
*At SAS for Women, we respect same-sex marriages, however, for the sake of simplicity in this article we refer to your spouse as a male.
