Can This Relationship Be Saved?

How to think clearly about what’s still possible.

When I was a kid, my mother used to pick up Ladies’ Home Journal at the grocery store. One of her favorite features was the advice column, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Each installment laid out a troubled relationship, usually written by a wife, and then offered a therapist’s take on whether it could be repaired.

The answer was almost always yes, unless there was abuse, addiction, or ongoing betrayal. Communication, empathy, and counseling were often the suggested path forward.

As a therapist now, I too think most relationships can be saved. In the absence of serious harm, most relationships can be saved, with effort and commitment on both sides.

But here’s what those columns often missed: just because a relationship can be saved doesn’t mean it should be. For many people, this is the harder question:

Is this relationship worth the effort it would take to save it?

Six Questions We Can Ask Ourselves about Our Relationship

There’s no formula, but there are a few questions that can help us clarify what’s happening and what might still be possible.

Years Together: How long have we been together? After the first few years of marriage, the shine begins to wear off and the reality begins to set in. At this point, we can’t ignore the chronic problems that keep arising or cover them over with sex and romance. The real question is whether we’ve had enough time in the post-honeymoon phase to see the issues clearly and to start forming a plan to deal with them.

Impact on Others: How many people would be impacted? Some breakups are relatively straightforward. But if we have others in the home such as young children or elderly parents, or if we own a business together, then more people will be impacted. These may not turn out to be strong enough reasons to stay together, but it’s still worth thinking through the potential impact on others.

Expectations: What were our expectations coming into the relationship? If our expectations were too low—perhaps we moved in together too soon or had a child and found ourselves in a long-term relationship we hadn’t planned—now is the time to think about what we really want. If our expectations were too high—maybe we thought we found our soulmate—we can ask whether we might be comparing our relationship to an unrealistic standard.

Past Relationships: Are there any past relationship patterns playing out for us? We can think all the way back to high school (or beyond) and ask ourselves how long those relationships lasted and why they ended. Who ended it? Have we pursued the same type of person repeatedly? These could be things to think about, journal about, or talk to someone about so that we don’t inadvertently repeat a maladaptive pattern of staying too long or leaving too soon.

Potential Changes: We can ask ourselves what changes could I make that might help the situation? When things feel stuck, we often find it easier to focus on what we wish our partner would change rather than what we could do differently ourselves. It’s an understandable instinct, but it tends to leave us stuck, especially when the strategy becomes trying to convince them that they are wrong. The place we have the most leverage is in how we show up.

Other People: Is there someone else influencing our thinking about our relationship? Perhaps a friend or relative who doesn’t like our partner, or a colleague who talks about how great life is since their divorce? And of course, if we are having an affair, that can certainly affect our thinking. Even so-called “emotional affairs” have the potential to do lasting damage because they not only take your emotional energy from our partner but also create an unfair comparison to an idealized partner.

Even after thinking through these questions, the answer isn’t always obvious.

Sometimes the real question isn’t whether the relationship can be saved, but whether it should be.

Seven Signs Your Relationship May Be Worth Saving

When a relationship is full of challenges, it’s easy to get stuck in a negative view of our partner, in part because we become too focused on what we don’t like about them. We no longer think about the good things. It can help to consider whether any of the following signs apply to our relationship.

Love and Friendship: We still have positive feelings for our partner, even if we feel them less frequently than we used to. We still love them and want to spend time with them. In this case, the opposite of love isn’t hatred; it’s indifference. An emotional connection is usually a sign that there is something meaningful to work with.

Breakup Threats: Some couples mostly talk about breaking up when they’re angry and reconsider after they’ve calmed down. Threatening to leave is often a way of saying my needs aren’t being met. Although it’s not the most effective way to communicate that need, it often points to something that might be more resolvable if it could receive the right kind of attention.

Self-Reflection: We are prepared to consider our own contribution to the problems. It’s easy to get stuck in blame, especially when we feel like we’ve tried everything. But when we begin to see our own part more clearly, we often regain a sense of agency without having to wait for our partner to change first.

Past Successes: If we’ve solved big problems before, this can be a cause for optimism. Having overcome obstacles in the past suggests that we could do it again, even if it seems like a much bigger problem. It’s also worth noticing how those changes happened, whether they came from pressure or from a shared willingness to understand each other differently.

Trust: We feel that our partner has our back and isn’t just in it for themselves. If we feel safe enough to be vulnerable, we can talk openly about how we feel and what we need. If there’s enough safety for that vulnerability to emerge, there may be something left to build on.

Patience: We don’t expect instant results. Relationship issues can take time to resolve, and the therapy process tries to do two things at once: resolve specific conflicts while also improving conflict skills. These two things together tend to shift not just the problems themselves, but how we handle them.

Commitment: We want the relationship to work, even if we’re not sure how. That uncertainty can feel discouraging—but it’s also a good sign, especially if both people feel this way. We can leverage our commitment to come up with new ways to make things work, whether it’s therapy or some other approach.

Is This Relationship Worth the Effort?

There’s no universal answer, but there are better ways to ask the question. If we can look past short-term frustrations and ask what’s possible, we get a clearer sense of what’s still alive in the relationship and what isn’t.

Not every relationship should be saved. But many can, especially when both people are willing to change how they relate, not just hope the other person will.