70 / 30 Rule with Love
Are you familiar with the 70/30 rule for love, marriage, or even a divorce?
When I was having difficulties with my ex-husband my sister shared this philosophy with me, she said “if 70% of the time you are getting along and 30% of the time you are not getting along then it’s a good marriage”. She continued “if 30% of the time is not good, then try therapy before rushing to get a divorce”.
This made sense to me so I pulled out my calendar, and started marking how many days in a month my ex-husband and I had issues. If we exceeded 9 days then I knew we had bigger issues than I thought. In tracking these “bad days” what I found was that as bad as I thought our relationship was, we never exceeded the 9 days.
When my ex-husband asked for a divorce, I asked him to work on our marriage, especially since I knew we hadn’t reached more than 6 days of issues and I personally do not believe in divorce. My ex-husband was not interested in staying married or continuing in therapy as he felt we had been “working on our marriage in counseling for most of our marriage”.
Any relationship, marriage or dating, is going to take work so put in the time to make it work. For me personally, I felt like “why rush to a divorce (especially if we are not exceeding more than 9 days of issues), let’s work on our marriage!” That did not happen, here are a few things you should know about divorce:
10 Things You Should Know About Divorce
- Your spouse will be willing to spend every dollar you have so you end up with nothing and if they want to be stubborn about it, there is nothing you can do
- It will break up your family/home life
- You will see your children less and miss out on holidays with them and in-laws
- It will create a barrier between you and friends, friendships you thought you would have forever will be destroyed
- Ultimately a judge will determine who gets what, no one is ever happy with the end results
- It can affect your health with all the stress
- Financially you will have to be creative in how and where you spend your money
- Your lifestyle will change
- Dating is not any easier than marriage
- The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence
If you are in a relationship that is abusive (physical, verbally or there is an addiction issue problem (with drugs, sex or alcohol) or your spouse has cheated on you, I would not use the 70/30 rule, I’d leave immediately.
Just remember there is a lot to think about when you are contemplating divorce, do what’s right for you! Please comment below so you can share your thoughts on this topic.
