Here in the US, divorce rates are getting close to 50%. Yeah 50%, that means that half of all marriages are destined to fail. Divorce is an ugly thing and destroys families. Not only do you have to give up half your stuff right off the bat, but the ones that end up suffering the most are your kids. Most of the time, dad gets removed from the equation completely and is left with the standard every other weekend parenting plan ordained by our lovely judicial system.

I’ve personally seen this happen too many times and even I myself almost ended up in a court room ready to file for divorce. But just like with anything else in life, these divorces don’t happen over night. There are patterns of behavior that lead marriages to become divorce statistics.

I want to share with you 10 Big Mistakes Married Couples Make that lead to divorce so that you can do an assessment of your own situation and make changes before it’s too late.

It’s important to have enough self awareness to recognize patterns of behavior within your marriage.

If you’ve been married a while and have a few kids under your belt, these 10 mistakes I’m gonna be talking about are easy traps to fall into. What’s worst is that they compound over time. They can start out seeming kinda harmless like they’re no big deal, but they turn into a bigger deal down the road.

I for one don’t want you to become another statistic,
So let’s get into it.

1. You Only Talk About The Kids Or Other People

Communication is a key component to making a marriage work. I think everyone knows that at this point. If you ever ask an older married couple that has like 40 or 50 years under their belt, you know that’s usually what they’ll say. And though it is true, I would argue that even more important is what the actual communication is about.

What is actually being communicated when you guys talk? You see, a funny thing happens over time. Because you’re so familiar with each other and you’ve been together a long time, you tend to believe that you already know everything about each other. As a result, you tend to no longer be interested in finding out more about each other, so instead you focus your conversations mainly about the kids or other people. Those conversations have the appearance of being more engaging because they’re about new things your kids are doing or interesting things happening to other people.

Yet, if we’re being honest sometimes you find yourself at home with your wife sitting on separate couches and both of you are on your phones scrolling through social media completely ignoring each other. Maybe not intentionally, but it’s happening. Or you become that couple on a date where while they’re waiting for their food to come, they are each on their phones not engaging with each other at all. It’s almost like you’ve run out of things to talk about with your wife.

If you want a way to get your communication back in your relationship. If you don’t wanna be that couple on a date night ignoring each other. If you never wanna run out of things to talk about with your wife, then stick around ’til the end of this episode because I got a special gift that I wanna give you that’s gonna completely change the game for you. You’re not gonna wanna miss out on it.

2. You Make No Time For Each Other

Everyone is busy, right? No one has time to do anything, at least that’s what it seems like in this day and age. But in all honesty, I don’t believe everyone is busy, I believe everyone is distracted. We’re bombarded with distractions all day long that deplete our time and energy and because we love these distractions so much, when we have something important to make time for, we excuse it by seeing we don’t have time.

Most married couples don’t make time for each other and this is a mistake. You remember when you were dating and you couldn’t wait to be around each other. It was something you longed for deeply because you enjoyed each other’s presence and you would do everything in your power to make time for her. You know this, your boys would call you up and be like “yo let’s go out bro” and you’d be like “nah, I’ma go out with my girl tonight.” And even if they gave you a hard time, you didn’t care.

That’s how intentional you should be about making time for each other. Now granted I know that with kids, that’s a bit more difficult, but it’s not so much the quantity of time you spend together, but the quality. For my wife, she knows that I remain busy with work and this business throughout the week. So when I make time for her, even if it’s just 20 to 30 min it makes a huge difference for our relationship. Sometimes it’s us just talking, laughing and having a good time. The point is I do my best to make the time I do spend with her memorable. She’s not concerned with how much time I spend with her, but more so that I make time for her and that the time we do spend together is enjoyable and memorable. That makes a huge difference.

3. No Intimacy

The lack of sex or intimacy in a marriage is a huge contributing factor to divorces. This is sadly why a lot of affairs happen. If you ain’t getting none at home from the person that signed up to be the one to give you some ’til death do you part, it becomes very motivating for the neglected one to go find somebody that’s willing. I’ve seen this happen a lot too with women in a marriage where they will use sex as a weapon. Like if the guys doesn’t do something around the house or fails to follow her orders, he don’t get none. It’s almost like a punishment and for men, this is one of the worst punishments because we are biologically designed with a high sex drive.

You know it’s true, your wife could tell you that she’s tired or not in the mood, and you’ll say it’s ok babe I understand, rain check, even though you’re ready to go. But if the scripts are flipped and you’re the one that’s tired and exhausted after a long day of work, if she gives you the signs that she wants some, all of a sudden you feel energized and ready to go. It don’t matter if you’re tired, sick, sore, or recovering from the ‘rona, you will fulfill your husbandry duties, am I right?

Women are a little bit different in that regard. You should definitely never force or demand it of her, but if she’s using it as a weapon against you, that’s a bad sign. And you wanna address it quick because it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a bigger issue. This should be topic of communication for you. If she’s not using it as a weapon and she’s just constantly not in the mood, then you definitely wanna dig deep and find out why? There might be a deeper issue there that she’s not openly sharing.

4. No New Experiences

Your sense of adventure might be gone. Remember when you were dating and you would plan out these amazing dates or trips for just the two of you. Well, she does too. And I can almost guarantee you that she’s yearning for those types of experiences as well. The problem is we get comfortable in the monotony of life.

Get up, go to work, come home, feed the kids, get them in bed, maybe spend some time together and you’re back at it again tomorrow doing the same old routine day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking routines as I do feel like they have their place in your life, but in a marriage you have to shake things up a bit to keep it interesting.

Creating new experiences is important and it doesn’t have to be a trip to Bora Bora, unless you got the money for it, then by all means make that happen. But if you ain’t strapped with cash, then I would recommend you find some new things to do within your local area. Whatever you guys are into, go create new memorable experiences to show her that you can still surprise her.

5. Shifting Core Value

You ever seen this happen where you start off with a girl thinking you guys align in core values, then all of a sudden after a while she starts to change and she no longer believes the same thing you believe. There’s a reason why the Bible states that you should not be unequally yolked. It’s because you gotta have the same core values or it doesn’t work.

If I believe that abortion is wrong, but my wife is cool with it, there might be a big disconnect there especially if we get pregnant and she doesn’t want the baby. Let’s be realistic, in modern day society, who’s gonna back that man up? It ain’t gonna be a political party, planned parenthood, or big Pharma I tell you that much right now. The sad thing is that this is happening to many married couples out there.

Where maybe at the beginning of the marriage, they were aligned in core values and over time, outside influence came in and jacked things up for you. Either you started to shift in your core values or she did. This causes a disconnect in a marriage that sometimes blindsides you. It’s the very reason I encourage you guys to aim to be the biggest influence in your family. If your wife spends more time watching reality tv shows then she does with you getting pumped with all sorts of crap, don’t let it come as a surprise later on that her values start to shift. As the leader of your home, you gotta be vigilant of the outside influence you allow to enter your home.

6. You Talk Smack Behind Each Other’s Back

How do you talk about your wife when she’s not around? How does she talk about you when you’re not around? Have you ever witnessed a married couple that’s never on each other’s side. It’s like they’re always in competition with one another over who’s right and they will talk smack about the other to rally support for their cause. It saddens me when I see this because it’s like poisoning your own well, why would you do that?

There’s been times where we’ve been around couples playing games and having a good time. But one of the couples will start bickering back and forth over the dumbest thing. They start talking smack about the other’s inability to do something right. Making sly comments like, “oh he ain’t gonna get this one right, he sucks at this” or “she don’t know nothing about that, just move on to someone else.” There’s a way to poke fun at each other in a playful way, but with certain couples you can tell that there’s actually animosity there.

If you find yourself doing this, you gotta stop. Use words of encouragement to uplift your wife instead of words that tear her down. You have to operate like a team that’s aiming for the same goal in life with regards to your family. Imagine you were on a basketball team, it’s the final game, your down ten points, final quarter, championship game. Are you gonna talk smack to your own team mates or are you gonna encourage them to give it their all so you guys can win this thing? Your words carry power and with them you can tear down or uplift each other in a marriage, even when you’re not physically in each other’s presence.

7. No Personal Growth

Have you ever met someone with no ambition for anything? Like they just cruise through life doing the same thing over and over again, being the exact same person they have always been. You’ll see this with friends that are always constantly talking about the past and recalling the good old days. They talk as if the best part of life has already happened to them and they make no use of their potential to make the future even better than the past.

In a marriage, if both of you are not aspiring for any personal growth, you might end up feeling unfulfilled in your relationship. And if only one of you is growing, then that person tends to feel alone. Little by little there’s distance that’s created because that person wants to be around other people that are constantly growing.

Everyone grows at their own pace based on their capabilities, so you can’t rush or pressure growth. The key is, you both have to want to grow. There has to be genuine intent and effort driving you forward. Doesn’t mean you both won’t drop the ball from time to time, so long as you get back on it and keep pushing forward. Strive to live to your fullest potential both as individuals and as a married couple.

8. You’re Not Leading

I always get flack for this because feminists get mad at the idea of having a man lead in any area of life. However, I am a Christian and I do believe that when the Bible states that the man is the head of the household, there’s a reason for it. He was designed to lead his family and when a man is not doing that, he’s out of alignment. Or when he’s doing a horrible job, the family suffers.

There’s a structure to family, just like in any other area of life. Whether it’s a company with a CEO or a sports team with a head Coach, there’s always somebody at the front leading the pack. Does that mean that you as a man need to be bossy or demanding of your wife and your family? Does that automatically give you the right to tell everyone in your home what to do? No, that’s not what leadership is.

You gotta earn the role through your decisions and actions. My wife follows my lead not because she has to, but because she wants to. Because I show up every single day to make sure her and our kids have all their needs met and more. They are loved and cared for by me and every decision I make is for the purpose of giving them a better quality of life. If I was just bumming it, playing video games all day long and going out and getting drunk every weekend, you better believe my wife would be less inspired to follow my lead.

It’s not rocket science guys, become the man, husband and dad worthy of being followed and your leadership will be established. Do not let yourself be emasculated and robbed of the role you were designed to fill? If you allow that to happen in your marriage, you may be heading towards becoming just another statistic.

9. Settling For Your Financial Situation

This is kind of a tough one for a lot of married couples. How good are you with money? Do you spend it the minute you get your paycheck or do you have a habit of saving or investing? Or do you buy things with money you don’t have by using credit and are now inundated with debt? Have you done anything or do you have any plans to make more money in order to improve your financial situation?

A lot of married couples live paycheck to paycheck and settle for that lifestyle. They become complacent with the amount of money they make and the job they have, never really aiming for anything bigger. Like building a business of their own or acquiring skills that companies pay high dollar for. Sadly, this doesn’t cross a lot of married couple’s minds.

Living paycheck to paycheck does not provide your family with a lot of options. And when your family doesn’t have a lot of options, your marriage suffers. If this is your current situation right now, I would encourage you to not settle. Eliminate as many distractions from your life as possible to get focused on the skills that can push you into a better financial situation. You’ll be surprised at how far you can go.

10. No Common Authority

This last one goes sort of hand in hand with the core values mistake we talked about earlier. Yet it’s a little deeper because it has to do with fundamental beliefs. And both you and your wife being aligned in those beliefs. For example, both my wife and I subscribe to the Christian faith. So whenever we have a disagreement or trouble in our marriage, our common authority is the Bible and what God instructs us to do with regards to the issue we’re having is how we solve the problem.

If you’re not religious, no big deal, this can be any set of rules that you guys have set within your household that can ground you when either one of you is off track. Common authority is like the laws we have here in the US. We all know that a red light means stop and a green light means go. If anyone forgets that law and breaks it, well there’s a black and white car with pretty blue and red lights that comes to remind you very quickly.

If you don’t have a common authority in your home that you both abide by, it’ll be difficult to ever see eye to eye on anything. Especially in the way you raise your kids. If you don’t have a common authority in your home now, I would encourage you to establish one and make sure that you’re both completely on board.

So that’s it those are the 10 Big mistakes married couples are making that could end in divorce. Please take note of these and do a real assessment in your own marriage to see if any of these red flags are present. It’s not too late to try and make changes.

One of those changes you can start to make is better communication. I told you I would have a gift for you at the end of this episode, so here it is. The best way to improve communication between you and your wife is to ask her great questions.

Questions that make her open up about deep thoughts and intimate emotions. This works like magic, trust me I know because I’ve used these on my own wife and it always causes her to engage and light up. You will never have another date night without figuring out what to talk about when you use these questions I put together for you.

It’s called 101 Date Night Questions. 101 questions that you can deploy on your next date night that will have your wife engaged in strong communication with you.

Just go to alphadadconsulting.com/101 to claim your FREE gift.

May these questions serve you like they’ve served me to develop stronger communication with my wife.

Until next time my fellow Alpha Dad,
- G. Vidal