We are always talking about divorce. If we are not talking about divorce we are talking about who is getting married. Well, I want to talk about and write about how to stay married.

I talk to couples who have marital problems every day. While the people that I talk to are different, the problems within the marriages are very much the same. The problems are the same because the solution is the same. The solution is a technological advancement in relationship problem solving and conflict resolution that I created and developed called, “The D.I.N.A.O. Project,” short for “Divorce Is Not An Option.” We can save our marriages if we are taught, if we are trained, if we exhibited and if we all believed that divorce is not an option as a solution to a troubled marriage.

What is unique about D.I.N.A.O. and why it’s light years ahead of all relationship therapeutic treatments is that it looks at the end result of a relationship problem first, and then works its way backwards to the root of the problem.

The end result of too many marriages today is divorce. I start off all of my relationship counseling sessions explaining to couples why they don’t want a divorce. I have been there. Divorce sucks. Divorce hurts. Divorce is for losers. You don’t want to be a loser do you? Divorce means that you quit, that you failed, that you are a failure. You don’t want a divorce. D.I.N.A.O.

The second thing that I say to couples is, “How long would it take to get your life back to where it is today?” You are married and you have a family, a home, savings, a financial plan, goals and dreams. You have built some things from the ground up to what you have today. How long will it take you to rebuild the life that you have right now if you decided to divorce and destroy it? Let’s say it takes you two years minimum to emotionally recover from getting a divorce. The time it takes for you to go and find a new mate could be two more years. The time it takes to get engaged and get married, another two years. The time it takes for you to get back on your financial plan, buying a new house, rebuilding your savings could be years, but let’s just say two more years for the mathematically challenged. In total, it could take you up to eight years to get back to where you are today. Instead of taking eight years to rebuild your life, how about taking one year to re-evaluate your life and fix what you started?

Think you can’t fix a marriage in one year? If Divorce Is Not An Option you can! People learn best by example. The D.I.N.A.O. Project is about providing couples with examples from which to learn and executing this new learned behavior in their own marriages. Luckily for me, there are enough bad marriages out there that I don’t have to make any of this stuff up.

For those of you who are wondering about my credibility to write a column about saving marriages, I will have you know that I am in possession of the absolute best credential necessary to be successful as a relationship expert:  I have actually saved a marriage – my own. And it only took me a year to do it! So before we dive into the first couple in The D.I.N.A.O. Project next week, we are going to talk about “How To Save A Marriage In One Year.”