By Jen Glantz of Woman’s Day Magazine
(Features Attorney Amy Saunders)
Images courtesy of GETTY Images
While there are obvious indicators a marriage is headed for the trenches — infidelity and irreconcilable differences — there are other, less noticeable problems that can chip away at a relationship over the long run. Divorce lawyers hear it and see it all, oftentimes noticing a common thread between their clients. Here are the top signs that your marriage won’t work according to the pros.
1. Money deception
2. Silent Treatment
Everyone communicates differently, but how a person reacts to a situation that gets them upset, angry, or all-around frustrated is important. According to Evie Jeang, the founder and managing partner of Ideal Legal group, giving your partner the silent treatment is a tell-tale sign of the relationship’s poor communication. “This is essentially the kiss of death for couples because it leads to feelings of resentment. Being able to work through issues that arise paves the way for resolution,” says Jeang.
3. Keeping lots of secrets
Honesty is usually the key to a relationship’s good foundation, but what happens when one spouse keeps a few secrets of their own? Will Medlin, an attorney at Horack Talley, says that one secret can turn into another and before you know it, there’s a break in the relationship. “A spouse suddenly becoming secretive – changing passwords to online access to bank accounts, changing email accounts, or changing or implementing phone passwords — can be a sign of infidelity,” says Medlin.
Shaolaine Loving, a Las Vegas lawyer, says that one sign a relationship won’t work is when one spouse controls everything. “When one spouse controls the money flow in the house, 
this tends to breed resentment and a feeling of inferiority from the other spouse,” says Loving. “For instance, where a husband makes more or all of the money in the marriage and does not allow access to the money to the other spouse without the husband dispensing it. Inevitably, women in this type of arrangement feel enslaved in a negative way, where they feel like they don’t make choices over their own lives.”
5. They’re never around
If you feel as though you hardly see your partner anymore, that they’re spending more and more time away from home, that’s a red flag. “There are generally not work meetings/non-spouse work parties overnight,” says Amy Saunders, Esq. at the law office of Amy Saunders. “If your spouse is buying lots of new clothes, losing weight, going to the gym, and abnormally focusing on their appearance, while also having missing gaps of time, chances are there is an affair, or a potential for one.”
6. Addiction issues
Even if the two of you are incredibly compatible, if addiction is present, there’s a chance your relationship may have problems down the line. “Some of my clients have knowingly married a troubled person with the idea that he/she could be saved. Usually they can’t,” says attorney at law Jeffrey J. Kash. “Marriage does not fix mental health or addiction problems and often an addict needs to lose the support of his or her loved ones in order to decide to get help.”
7. Growing apart
Though it’s normal for the relationship between two married people to ebb and flow, with moments of extreme closeness and some of distance, Eric Klein of Klein Attorneys, says when couples consistently grow apart, it usually means the marriage won’t last. “Over time people evolve, develop, and learn,” says Klein. “At some point in a marriage, the couple reaches a fork in the road where one spouse goes to the right and the other goes to the left, to the point where they have nothing left in common. These are the couples you see at restaurants sitting across the table from each other in silence.”
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