Hello

[Lonely&Married72]

I have been married for 5 years to my wife. I am previously divorced with 2 children from that marriage and another child from my current marriage. Recently my wife has expressed her unhappiness and her not being sure she wants to remain married. She hasn't been physically intimate with me in almost a year. We have made some progress and have been talking about future plans, but she is cold and not affectionate still, it is starting to affect me negatively.

[sunshineview]

To be more helpful, details have to be presented with your current situation. What has taken place to help create a closer bond between you two? Have you tried counseling before? Did the push away from intimacy happen after you two had your baby together?

[Anthonia]

The most common signs of a troubled marriage include abuse of any kind, infidelity, addictions, lying, lack of sex, intimacy or romance, no communication, constant fights, and basically withdrawing from the relationship. With the exception of abuse (sexual, physical or verbal) I believe the other problems, while serious, can still be overcome. I believe it because I have experienced healing in my own marriage and been witness to it many times over since I began writing on the subject.

So what is required to save a marriage and can it be done even if your spouse is not interested in saving the marriage? Through my personal experience I have learned that a number of things must take place:

1. You must remove negative emotions from the equation - arguing, yelling, crying, fighting, threats, begging & pleading will not put you in a resourceful state to do the work that will be required.

2. You must acknowledge that you need help to save the marriage - Obviously the attempts you have made have not been working and traditional counseling only has about a 20% success rate.

3. You must commit yourself 100% to doing whatever is necessary - especially true if your spouse isn't showing any interest in saving the marriage or is already talking about divorce.

4. You must be willing to take very specific action - This will require doing very specific things and saying very specific things and behaving in very specific ways. If you follow this approach you will see changes in your spouse, in yourself and in your marriage. It really works!