As part of what you have been going through, eventually you will turn to people for advice. Common questions would include the following:
The trouble with advice is that there are lots of people who have it, and are willing to give it even if they haven’t been in a situation, but it can make matters worse if you do the wrong thing.
All of us try to play amateur psychologist to some degree. However, it has been observed that while you are under threat of divorce, if the object of your affection is continually rejecting you, eventually your emotions start to get the best of you. This may result in cloudy thinking depending upon how reliant you were on your spouse and can lead to a very undesirable effect. The effect is that you will tend to think almost exactly like the last person you talked to about this situation. So if you’ve got a friend that gives you advice on how to “win the battle”, but has never been through this, it is in all likelihood bad advice. Friends, parents, children and many others will try to influence your decisions and tell you what to do in many cases.
The simple rule about advice is that the proof is in the pudding. For example, If someone who got a divorce is telling you how to avoid a divorce, then perhaps they are not the best person to give counsel in that area. However, if someone who got a divorce tells you what mistakes they THINK they made - then it can definitely have some value for your situation. The most valuable advice is from couples who went through the worst of the worst and somehow survived it. Talk to those people. Find out what they did right. Hopefully, the solution isn’t becoming a swinger ;) however, it takes all kinds. This rule would even apply to your counselor (You did get a marriage coach or counselor didn’t you?). Ask them about the success rate of their advice before heeding it. If you’ve got a counselor who can’t help you in this department, it may be time to switch counselors.
The best advice then is that which comes from those who have been in similar situations and made it through to the other side. If you find that friends, family, etc. are advising you to get a divorce, telling you that you will be “taken to the cleaners”, “try to get the upper hand”, etc. then generally the advice that leads to these actions will back fire towards saving your marriage.
In addition, depending upon who you last spoke with, your mind in concert with others’ opinions will tend to concoct all sorts of scenarios and evils that simply aren’t present. There are exceptions to the rule of course; however, even if your partner is committing evils you must realize that it is a moment in time and you will stand a much better chance of putting the marriage back together by just accepting the worst case. Expect that your spouse is having an affair. Expect that your spouse is bad mouthing you. These things happen and couples get over them, but it takes one of you to stand upright and stop this nonsense. Unfortunately, it will be hell on earth for the one who stands upright for awhile until the appropriate internal transformation occurs.