If you have seen the movie Fireproof, then you know it is the story of a man who decides to fight to save his crumbling marriage. Despite the strong religious message in this movie, the most hotly debated topic of the film seems to be centered around its message that just one person's efforts can save a marriage. Proponents of this view believe that if only one person is committed to saving the marriage, then their spouse will follow suit as they come to appreciate the effort that the other person is making to save the marriage. Opponents strongly believe that it takes two people to have a successful marriage, and therefore it takes two people to save a marriage.
After delving into the arguments from proponents of both these positions, there is validity to both of these points of view. As long as the marriage was strong at some point, then just one motivated spouse does seem capable of starting the journey of saving a marriage all by themselves. Here are some of the key reasons why it is worth trying to save a marriage even if your spouse does not want to try.
A Good Marriage is more than just what you have put into it- Like any strong relationship, a marriage consists of all the love and effort that you put into it plus the love and effort that you have received in return. Even in friendships, we fight fiercely to keep our best friends while we are willing to let casual friendships fade away. This is because even in bad times we recognize that relationships that both parties have put effort into, have a special bond that is worth working to save. If your marriage has a history of both of you putting effort into it, then it is worth trying to save even if the other person is not currently putting any effort into it. For those unfortunate marriages that have perhaps always been one sided, then I can see why someone would decide that it is not worth attempting to try to single-handedly save the relationship, and they are probably right.
Marriage is never 50 / 50- Because a marriage consists of 2 people, many people wrongly assume that a successful marriage is one where all the tasks are shared evenly in a 50/50 split. If you look at a marriage at any given point in time, the split is often nowhere near 50/50, and it's not uncommon to have times where the split is more like 80/20. Of course if you look at a marriage over a longer period of time, it should be a fairly even split when it comes to the effort and energy that you each put into it.
In other words, even though the split may hover around 70/30 or 80/20 there are times when you will find that you are the one giving much more than half and there are times when you will be the one giving less. If your marriage falls into crisis when you are at a point where you are giving more than you are receiving, then it may also fall on you to be the one who makes the effort to try to save your marriage. If you take a good look at the history of your relationship you may even realize that there have already been times when your spouse was responsible for turning around your marriage, but you did not realize it at the time because you were at a point where you were giving your 20% when your spouse was giving 80%.
When we improve ourselves we improve our relationships- One of the biggest barriers to people believing that they can start the process of repairing their marriage on their own is that they have a preconceived notion that fixing a marriage involves couples therapy. Some people plan on doing this by seeing a counselor, while some plan on talking about their problems and agreeing on a plan to fix them without involving a therapist. The idea of attempting "couples therapy" alone does seem silly, yet nearly everyone agrees that whenever we improve ourselves we improve our relationships. If you do set about working on your marriage by focusing on how you can be a better person and on treating your spouse better, then like the main character in Fireproof, you stand a good chance of starting to turn around your marriage. Even if your efforts do not turn out to be enough, at least you can know that you tried and your efforts will have made you a better person.
So there are the main reasons why a marriage is worth trying to save even if your spouse is not interested in saving it. It is easy to assume that you can not make a difference in saving your marriage without the efforts of your spouse, but it can be done. There are no guarantees that your marriage will be saved by the efforts of you alone, but it is guaranteed that your marriage will never be saved if neither spouse takes that first step towards getting the marriage back on track.