Trying to save a marriage when your spouse won't try

How do I get my husband or wife to actually try?

Nobody here found a way to make their spouse start trying, and several of them kept at it for years before that became clear. What people tried was more or less the same set of moves: asking directly and repeatedly for honesty, arranging counseling, showing more of the appreciation or care the other person said was missing, and naming what would happen if nothing changed.

The response that came back was silence, deflection, or a promise that did not turn into anything, and in some cases a brief improvement of a week or two before the old pattern returned.

The ones who found any footing did not find it by getting the other person to move; they stopped organizing their days around whether the other person would, and put that effort into their own recovery, work, or a place to live, and the ground under them got steadier week by week even though the grief stayed.

Ember’s view. The question of how to make them try is usually a way of asking whether the effort you have already put in counts for something, and the people here who got clear did so by looking at the answer they had already been given rather than for a better way to ask. Years of not-trying is itself a reply, and the people who let it count stopped losing time to waiting for a clearer one.

If you want one thing to do, set the condition you actually need and attach a date to it, then decide in advance what you will do when the date arrives, because the people here who named a condition without a date simply watched the same months repeat.

How do people know when it's time to stop trying?

Several of them describe the moment not as one clear proof but as noticing that continuing to try was costing them their own sense of self. They stopped when they realized they were the only one still trying, explaining, or asking, while the other person kept promising, forgetting, or going silent. For some, it was the sheer repetition — the same conversation, the same excuse, the same cycle — that finally made continuing feel pointless.

A few stopped without a dramatic break: they simply lowered what they gave, stopped chasing answers, and let the silence stand. Looking back, some saw that the other person's withdrawal had already been happening quietly before they noticed, so the final moment only confirmed what was already true rather than causing it. None of them found a single sign that made the decision certain; what tipped it was exhaustion and loss of themselves outweighing whatever hope was left.

Do the people who stayed regret it? And the ones who left?

The people here who stayed for decades without the other person changing describe the same two things: an unhappiness that became the weather of the house, separate rooms, no intimacy, talk only about work, and a wish, now that the children are grown, that they had done things very differently long ago. What kept them was not confusion about the marriage; they saw it clearly and stayed for their vows, their faith, their children and the dread of divorce itself.

The ones who left did not describe relief first: the first week they could hardly sleep or eat, the other person's messages tried to guilt them back, and part of them still wanted to go back because there had been good moments.

What both groups share is that the change they had waited for never came from the spouse; the ones who found any footing found it in something of their own, quitting drinking, physical therapy twice a week, a job search, a new town, done without the other person and belonging to them. The regret people here carry is not about having tried; it is about how long they kept trying after they already knew.