How to tell if your Marriage will Fail.

Do you want to be an exceptional partner? I certainly set out to be an outstanding husband. Nobody stands at the altar promising to be perfectly average—no one says, “I pledge to be mediocre in every way.” Yet, despite the best intentions, after seven years many marriages end; roughly half of them do. Sometimes relationships shift from passionate to hostile in only a few years. I meant well, but intentions alone don’t change outcomes. It isn’t what you plan that matters so much as what you actually do—the habits you form, the choices you make, the consistent actions you take. Men, in particular, often do very little deliberately to deepen emotional connection, assuming things will sort themselves out—until one day they don’t.
What I eventually realized, and what perhaps some of you have not yet seen, is that I wasn’t on a course toward being an excellent husband; I was sliding toward distance and separation, and I didn’t even notice. As relationship researcher John Gottman put it, marriages collapse because conversations never take place. You could also say marriages fail because essential questions are never asked. That’s exactly what happened in my marriage—we avoided the hard questions for fear of starting a fight. Is that how it looks in yours? Avoidance led us to drift apart until the relationship withered.
There’s a reason half of marriages end and another portion of the ones that remain leave at least one partner feeling unfulfilled. It’s not that people don’t want a good marriage. My marriage fell apart in large part because I didn’t know what I didn’t know—and that ignorance still hurt my partner and destroyed the bond between us. Apathy, selfishness, pride, and simple unawareness are quietly killing marriages every day, and almost no one admits to being guilty of them. So we repeat the mistakes of our past relationships or the patterns we witnessed growing up. Busyness and letting the marriage drift on autopilot are destructive. Emotional laziness, self-centeredness, pride, and neglect will rot a marriage whether you recognize it or not.
The first hard question I had to ask in order to save my marriage was this: Is it possible I am neglecting you or acting selfishly without realizing it? Are you willing to consider that as a possibility in your relationship? Most men want more physical intimacy and less conflict. Most of us want a mutually satisfying marriage, but few know the route to get there. Few stop to wonder why apathy isn’t working, and even fewer are humble enough to face the tough questions with their partner.
So try curiosity instead of confrontation. Try listening instead of arguing. Make an effort to learn how your partner experiences the relationship and to understand her point of view—this is what creates the closeness we all crave. First, accept that many of us were set up to fail: we inherit habits and defaults that undermine the very things a healthy marriage needs. Many men don’t even acknowledge having emotional needs; if you really think about why you got together in the first place, it was to meet certain needs—companionship, appreciation, intimacy. If you find yourself complaining about lack of appreciation or sex, maybe those things matter to you more than you admit.
Let me warn you: empathy, vulnerability, intimacy, validation, consideration, healthy communication, and constructive conflict resolution are not instinctive for most men. What comes easily is anger, defensiveness, blame, criticism, contempt, sarcasm, laziness, and emotional avoidance. It doesn’t take effort to minimize her feelings, call her sensitive, or neglect affection—those are the default for many of us. I won’t spend time exploring why someone tends to respond destructively; what you need to take away is simple: these behaviors are cancers in your marriage and they will destroy it, even if you feel neutral about them. You and I both have harmful habits to stop—first among them is failing to recognize what they are.
If you want to be successful at marriage, you need humility. Pause your usual habits and be open to a different approach. Ask yourself what conversations you’ve been avoiding and what questions you have dismissed as unimportant that might actually matter deeply to your spouse. Have a genuine desire to know them again. Show the courage and humility to ask questions—questions that will strengthen your marriage rather than weaken it. No one ruins their marriage by sincerely asking and then listening with empathy, understanding, validation, and respect instead of arguing, interrupting, or correcting. Most people won’t make that effort—I suspect only a tiny percentage of viewers will actually follow through—because many are not truly committed to becoming a great husband. They’d rather keep doing what’s familiar and failing.
Some of you have drifted so far that you no longer really know your spouse—she has long stopped hoping you’ll change, and that fosters distance, disconnection, and eventually divorce. If you do have the courage to ask these questions, be warned: you may stir up strong emotions. You might uncover wounds or frustrations. She may speak angrily or say hard things that make you feel accused or attacked. You may want to avoid future conversations because you think conflict harms a marriage. But the truth is these talks are necessary if you truly want a thriving marriage. Conflict itself is not the problem—how we handle conflict is. Criticism, blame, invalidation, and contempt drive people further apart. There is a better way, but you must be willing to change your approach.
When conflict arises—when she speaks passionately or angrily about being hurt—remember that “winning” an argument costs the marriage. Stop trying to win. Treat conflict as an opportunity to learn more about your spouse: her needs, her fears, what leaves her feeling neglected or unvalued. Learn to listen with the goal of understanding instead of defending. This isn’t about being right; it’s about being present for the person you say you love. If something matters to her, it should matter to you. When she expresses hurt, prioritize her feelings as much as her words. Take the spotlight off yourself—let her talk, don’t interrupt or correct. Search for the pain hiding behind the anger; look for the unmet need beneath the complaint. Try to understand her position so well that you can restate it back to her. Say something like, “I can see how you would feel that way,” even if you don’t fully agree. You’ll be surprised how much that diffuses tension and reduces complaints over time when she feels safe to share and genuinely heard and validated. Give this a try instead of whatever defensive pattern you currently use.
That kind of response requires practice, emotional maturity, self-awareness, and humility—qualities many people don’t prioritize in a marriage. Now, here are the questions I believe can make or break a relationship. If you dismiss them as trivial, you’re missing the point—and maybe you’re frightened of the answers you’d hear. If you think they won’t deepen connection, you don’t understand what a marriage needs to survive and flourish. Strong marriages are built on honesty and transparency.
1) How do you feel most loved and prioritized?
I didn’t understand that the ways I naturally show love aren’t necessarily how she best receives it. I could give plenty of physical affection or gifts, but if she feels most cherished through acts of service or words of affirmation, my efforts miss the mark. Men like to point to the energy they put in, but rare is the husband who stops to ask whether his efforts actually land. There’s no excuse for not knowing the primary ways your wife feels loved and then consistently doing them.
2) Can you recall the last time you felt neglected, abandoned, or taken for granted in this relationship? If nothing comes to mind, what are things I should avoid that would produce those feelings?
You will at times unintentionally hurt or neglect your wife—that doesn’t make you a monster. What makes things worse is dismissing her when she points it out. There’s no excuse for not knowing what behaviors lead her to feel overlooked and then intentionally working to avoid them.
3) What concrete things can I do to help rebuild trust and emotional closeness?
The husband who ever asks this question tends to get more follow-through than most. Trust isn’t only about believing your partner won’t be unfaithful; it’s a felt sense of safety and reliability—a belief that you will respond with compassion when she’s hurt, even if you unintentionally caused that hurt. When trust erodes repeatedly, the relationship will follow. Many men undervalue emotional connection, but you chose a partner who likely needs empathy and closeness to feel secure and wanted. If she needs affection, be more affectionate: hold her, touch her, kiss her more, but don’t make it feel like it’s only about sex. If she believes you value her beyond physical desire, you’ll often receive the intimacy you want in return. Tell her why you love her instead of just saying the words. Tell her she’s beautiful regularly—when you leave or come home. Spend five full seconds in each other’s arms when you leave for work and when you return. Spend five seconds kissing and hugging before sleep. She should never go to bed without hearing how much she means to you. That’s only fifteen seconds each day, and those seconds can change your marriage profoundly—yet many men still won’t do it.
4) What can I do to help carry some of your burdens?
Does your wife feel supported, or are you absorbed in your own world? Is “not my problem” your default when dishes need doing, diapers need changing, or chores pile up? Maybe you know you should help but keep forgetting. Either way, it erodes trust. For many men, household tasks won’t feel natural—you’ll have to remind yourself daily—but failing to step up chips away at the relationship until there’s almost nothing left. It’s rarely about the dishes themselves; it’s about whether she subconsciously believes you have her back. If you repeatedly blow off requests for help or respond with “I work hard, she should be grateful,” or postpone and then forget, she will conclude she cannot trust you as a partner and gradually pull away. By the time divorce becomes reality, you’ll be surprised, though the signs were there all along and you missed them.
5) Am I a safe place for you to be vulnerable?
Many men don’t even recognize what vulnerability means. It’s exposing your true self—fears, struggles, needs, desires—to your partner. Sharing is risky because we fear being judged, but refusing to be vulnerable or to receive vulnerability destroys intimacy. When she opens up, your response matters. The fastest way to harm a relationship is to hurt someone while they are trusting you with their vulnerability. Unfortunately, many boys were taught to shut down their emotions—“stop feeling, feelings are for sissies,” except for anger, which is somehow acceptable. That’s why men default to anger: it was the only emotion they were allowed to express. Self-awareness and emotional maturity are crucial because healthy marriages are formed by two people who want to be fully known and to know each other. If you don’t know yourself, you can’t truly know your partner—that’s often the reason she says the relationship lacks depth or closeness. If unresolved childhood wounds remain, they’ll show up in relationships. The best move is ongoing self-reflection, developing emotional intelligence, and getting outside feedback about blind spots that might be harming your marriage.
6) Are there past hurts I’ve caused that you never mentioned because you were afraid I’d respond with blame, defensiveness, or dismissiveness?
Unresolved pain and secrets are powerful drivers of distance. We should offer forgiveness and assume good intent, but if you’ve hurt your partner in the past and when she tried to disclose it you responded harshly, the wound deepens and trust erodes. The healthiest step is to “settle accounts”—ask about past transgressions from a posture of humility, compassion, and remorse, and be ready to repair the harm. Men often see themselves as leaders, but who leads first in apologizing and seeking repair? Great husbands step forward and say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. How can I make this right?” That’s what heals, not simply hoping time will fix things.
7) When something matters to you, do you feel I actually listen and prioritize it, or do you feel I downplay and dismiss you?
We repeat, “If it’s important to her, it’s important to me,” but how many wives genuinely feel that’s true? Marriages rarely fail because there was too much thoughtfulness; they fail because those qualities were absent. Affection, consideration, friendship, intentionality, and selflessness are not optional—they’re essential.
8) What is it like to be married to me? What is it like to be on the receiving end of my behavior?
Do you know what it’s like to be on your own side? Most people never ask that question—then later they blame the other person when things fall apart. Very few partners ever ask these crucial questions; if you were to inspect divorce filings, you’d find most couples didn’t have these conversations before it was too late. Yet nearly everyone claims they want a great marriage filled with friendship, connection, and passion. Stop saying you want a great marriage if you have no clue what it takes to build one. Stop demanding more sex if you’re not creating a daily climate of connection, consideration, closeness, compromise, or whichever “C” word you prefer. Stop saying “I love you” when you’re not showing love through sacrifice, selflessness, and service—because that’s how love is demonstrated.
Asking these questions does more than temporarily embarrass you; it signals that your partner’s perspective matters more than your ego. It says you’re invested, that you value her view of the relationship, that you want to prioritize her, that you care about her more than any argument, and that her hurts matter to you more than your pride. Is your spouse confident you feel that way? If not, they need to. Humility, intentionality, and consistent compassion are hard, but you’ve done hard things before—you fixed your truck, earned your degree, built a house, advanced at work, or became an elite athlete. Stop acting as if understanding your wife is too difficult. Some of this may feel unfamiliar or even silly, but it’s exactly what builds or destroys marriages. You can wait until your second divorce to learn this, or you can start applying it today.
When I ask men about their intimacy goals, most shrug and say, “I don’t know.” Great husbands don’t shrug; they take it seriously and try to figure it out. Start asking the questions that lead to the marriage you both deserve. You’ll be glad you did. Thank you for listening. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.