No family is perfect. Even that big house in the suburbs with the perfect lawn and the expensive cars may still have their moments of chaos. Having some arguments in your more modest household is not something to be embarrassed over; however, if it’s all fight and no love every day, you may not have a functional family anymore.
Here are some indicators that your home has turned into a toxic place:
There Is No Emotional Support from Your Spouse
Marriage gives you tax breaks and other benefits. More importantly, however, a marriage is supposed to be a fountain of emotional support, especially if you are going through trying times. The idea of spending your life with another person sounds appealing because this means you will not be alone anymore. Someone should be there to take half the load that you are carrying by yourself if you were single. That’s the ideal situation, of course. In real life, your spouse may be there physically, but they may be somewhere else emotionally, and this makes you feel like you have no support system to count on.
People often leave the marriage emotionally before they leave physically, and if you feel like your spouse is already halfway there, perhaps it’s time to consider your options by talking to a divorce attorney. Though it’s ideal to have a solid marriage in Long Island, NY, where running a household is more manageable with two paychecks, the emotional strain may just be too much.
You Fail to Communicate Effectively with Your Spouse
Your spouse may not be aware that you feel neglected. This doesn’t immediately signal the end of a marriage. If you can sit down and talk to each other to come up with a way to fix things, the marriage may recover. Unfortunately, not all marriages can get back on track after emotional detachment. You were in love with each other once, but love may have left the house already, and there’s no certainty that you can bring it back.
You may try, through mediation, if you and your spouse still listen to each other and consider each other’s emotions. You’ll easily see if your spouse is not interested in reviving the dying marriage, however. If they refuse to change their ways despite you telling them you feel neglected or unloved, that love may have been long gone. If they choose to compete with you for the attention of the children instead of working with you as a team, it’s a divorce just waiting to happen.
Your Children Ignore Your Authority
You may not realize it, but your children see things you may take time to notice yourself. They see you and your spouse fighting all the time, or barely talking. They feel that the family is falling apart, and they are acting out by ignoring your authority. They feel as though the divorce means you don’t want anything to do with them anymore. If this is the case, the household becomes a contest of who can stand their ground longer to get their way. For children, this means acting out in hopes that they can keep their parents together.
You may struggle, but at this point, it will be better to sit the children down to tell them that the divorce will not change your devotion to them. Explain to them that even after the divorce, they can still rely on you whenever they need anything.
The family unit should be one cohesive unit, where each member contributes to each other’s well-being. Your family may have started that way, but when things have gone awry, it’s time to consider a way to end the problem and start over.
