The other day I got an email from a woman who wrote in part, “My husband has finally filed for divorce. Does this mean my marriage is over? I wonder if I should just throw in the towel and give up the fight, because frankly I have no more fight left.” He was a little confused as to what she really wanted the result to be. The words she was using almost indicated that she was tired of the whole thing and she felt that maybe it would be the right decision to let the marriage come to a natural end. But, when I asked her some follow-up questions, she indicated that she really wanted the marriage to work, but she felt that she had tried everything and that she was tired of going around in circles with no real resolution. Ultimately, I told her that since everything she had tried was only making the situation worse, she would have to completely change tactics if she wanted to save her marriage from divorce. I will talk more about this in the next article.

Your desire to divorce doesn’t have to mean that it’s officially over, but it does mean that you have no hope that things will ever really change.: There are many men who find my blog while researching divorce. Some write to me and share their feelings. I can tell you that the vast majority of them indicate that they give up because they just don’t know what else to do. They tried everything they could think of and there was never any lasting change. Over time, the harsh reality has set in that this is the way it is and that despite what either of you may say or do, nothing really changes for the better. Sure, there may be some temporary improvements, just enough to get everyone excited, but in the end, they both come back to sabotage patterns and behaviors that leave them dissatisfied and frustrated.

Women are often surprised to learn that it is the perceived ability to change that they must overcome, not the fact that their husbands do not love them deep down or the external stressors that many blame for their divorce. Often it’s the fact that you’re tired of mucking around and your hopes are low. The repetition of the moves and the disappointments begin to pile up so much that he begins to think that it is better to start over than to continue in the same way.

Change course and find something that works to save your marriage: Your first step is to identify what you’ve been doing that hasn’t worked. In my reader’s case, I had actually tried two tactics. First, she tried what I call the “hard ball” tactic. She had taken a somewhat combative stance and had insisted that her husband was quite wrong. The involvement was what I really expected from a relationship that was over a decade old. People get busy. Children and jobs require most of our time and energy. You’re doing the best you can and he shouldn’t be so selfish as to imply that you’re not.

Of course, unsurprisingly, this was not greeted with a warm welcome from her husband. Nobody wants to be told that he is wrong or that he is selfish. When it became clear that this was not going to work, she made a drastic change and tried what I call the drastic or desperate tactic. She began to act in a way that had not been typical of her telling her husband that she could not live without him and begging him not to leave her. The problem with this is that her husband knew that she was insincere because during her entire relationship, he had never been subservient before. He didn’t buy this and it didn’t ring true.

Try the middle-of-the-road tactic to save your marriage:To be successful in saving your marriage in the long run, you need to find a solution you can live with and be excited about. Remember when she said “she didn’t have much of a fight left?” Even using these words is a hint that what he was making of her was not desirable to her and certainly not giving her much pleasure or anything to look forward to. So she, in a sense, she’s defeated before she even starts playing the game.

You have to find a solution that is sustainable and credible over time. I often advise people to sit down with their spouses and agree that you are not happy either and agree that the marriage is stagnant and stuck. You can honestly see why she wants a divorce and it makes you sad to see how opposite this is to the way they used to interact with each other. In fact, this bothers you so much that you’d like to try taking baby steps and see if you can save the relationship, even if it eventually ends in divorce.

The reason you move so slowly is because if you are too strong, you are likely to meet resistance and hesitation. You want to appear as non-threatening as possible and set yourself up for success. He may agree that you just want to make it easy for both of you (and the kids, if you have any), since you’ll be working together instead of against each other.

He may resist at first, but if you show him instead of telling him that genuine change can happen, over time he will begin to change the perception that this is your real problem in the first place: that nothing will really change, so it is better than cut. your losses now.