Tips to Save a Marriage — Avoiding Emotional Blackmail
Tips to save a marriage can be useful guide to help you engage and talk with your spouse to work out the problems threatening your marriage and leading it down the path towards divorce. Some may think that many of these tips in articles are common sense and this is true but often not adhered to. The real threat however is not knowing what top do but in knowing what NOT to do especially when you do not know you are doing it!
Emotional blackmail can be explicit or implicit meaning you can be letting it be known quite directly or you can simply imply it through less obvious methods. It can also be conscious or unconscious meaning you can know you are doing it or often you do not realize you are doing it too!
An example of an explicit conscious emotional blackmail is standing with the children and saying “if you walk out that door you are destroying their lives!” or something similar (please do not do this! Kids are not pawns in your game!)
An example of unconscious and implicit emotional blackmail can be as simple as saying “but I love you!”. If you think about it this is a raw spot when emotions are fragile and they may feel you are trying to force them to drop everything for the sake of love rather that work out a real solution even if you do not realize it and are very sincere in what you say.
Blackmail is an ugly word and causes uglier ramifications and at the simplest level you should not be overt or sneaky and go about trying to manipulate your spouse by any means because this does not solve anything, at best it can simply DELAY it because nothing has been solved and the problems will come back and the road to divorce will start again with a fragile marriage.
On a more complex level you must always be aware of what you are saying and what it might actually mean to your partner. If you want to save your marriage and stop your divorce you must be aware that simple things you say or do might not have the intended effect so if something you are about to say seems even slightly manipulative then stop. Think. Then rephrase it.
