Secrets to Surviving the Marriage Fog: Why marriages suffer, fail, survive and thrive.

John and Mary sat across from me and told me how they were on the brink of divorce. A young couple, he 23, she 22, had been married only a short while, three years. They had such great hopes for life, love, and family. But after about two years of being married, their love just started fading. Were there any life changing incidents? Emotional or physical abuse? Financial struggles or unemployment? No. We just don’t love each other any more. John and Mary arrived at a place where all married couples end up. They entered the marriage fog. They’re not sure how they got there or what to do to get out of it. Without hope or direction they, like so many other couples, just want to quit. The fog consumed another couple. Almost half of all first marriages in America end in divorce. And, most of those will end in the third or fourth year. Additionally, of those couples that live together before they marry, most of those will marry in the third or fourth year of cohabitation. Even then, those couples will have a greater than 50 percent chance of divorce in the third or fourth year of marriage. Statistics continue to point to an initial, normal downturn in most marriages around the third or fourth year. But no one seems to know how to explain it or how to stop it. Secrets to Surviving the Marriage Fog: Why Marriages Suffer, Fail, Survive and Thrive identifies the reasons why every marriage goes through natural downturns in the third or fourth year, the 10th year, and the 20th year, how to prepare before they happen, and how to survive when others will choose to end their marriages.