Are You Holding Onto Your Spouse with a "Marriage Death Grip?"

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Such is the case for Valerie, a 39 year old woman who told me recently that only now can she admit that she was holding on to her marriage with a death grip. "Not something you do," she said, "when your marriage is working well. I lived in that state for so long that I had lost perspective."

Valerie even went so far as to admit how many people had been against her marrying Craig in the first place. "I don't understand how I could have been so blind! Everyone told me not to marry him, but I thought we had enough of what it took to make a marriage work - I loved him, he loved me and we shared many of the same core values. What more should we have needed?"

The answer to that question lies in understanding what went wrong for Valerie in the marriage. Things were humming along pretty well until they had their son, Benjamin. Then, as if someone cast a spell on Craig, he became all but physically checked out of the marriage and seemed to have no interest in being a dad to Benjamin.

via Are You Holding Onto Your Spouse with a "Marriage Death Grip?" | Psychology Today.