Is my relationship worth saving?

The question has been coming back for weeks now, usually after a bad stretch. Maybe nothing dramatic has happened. You just notice you’re relieved when your partner works late, or that you’ve stopped telling them about your day. Or maybe something big did happen, and the question is whether the two of you can get past it.

Often a relationship can be saved, as long as both of you still want it to work. Researchers have spent decades following couples to see which ones make it, and a few signs keep turning up. None of them is a guarantee, and none of them can make the decision for you. They can tell you whether you’re in a bad patch or a relationship that’s ending.

What couples who pull through have in common

One of the biggest attempts to answer this pooled 43 long-running studies of 11,196 couples, gathered by 29 research teams. The researchers let a computer sort through a long list of things people had said about themselves and their relationships, to find what best predicted how happy and committed they felt. Five came out on top: how committed you think your partner is, how much you appreciate them, how happy you are with your sex life, how happy you think your partner is, and how much you fight.¹

Once people’s own view of the relationship was known, nothing else added anything: not their personality, not their attachment style, not even what their partner said. And almost nothing could predict whose relationship would get better or worse while the studies ran.¹ So your own read on the relationship carries real weight, and no quiz can tell you where it’s heading.

A second large review looked at 137 studies of unmarried couples, nearly 38,000 people in all. The strongest signs that a couple would stay together were commitment, love, feeling that your partner is part of who you are, and needing each other. Simply being satisfied counted for less.² That suggests how committed you both are says more about where this is going than how happy you feel right now.

The best-known warning sign runs the other way. The Gottman Institute, set up by the American psychologist John Gottman, who has studied couples for decades, calls contempt “the single greatest predictor of divorce”. By contempt it means mockery, sarcasm, name-calling, eye-rolling and treating your partner as beneath you.³ That’s the institute’s own claim, and its page doesn’t show the numbers behind it. But Gottman’s published work points the same way. In a study that followed couples for 14 years, couples whose fights were full of bad feeling were more likely to divorce in the early years. The couples who divorced later had shown little warmth when the study began, both in their arguments and in ordinary talk about their day.⁴ If the fights are the problem, why the same fight keeps coming back goes into how to have them with less damage.

How to know when a relationship is over

A rough patch usually has a cause you can name: a new baby, a job loss, an illness, a move, a parent who needs care. The bad mood follows the strain, and on the better weeks you still like each other.

An ending tends to look different. Two researchers, one in Germany and one in Switzerland, used national surveys from Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia that had followed people for 12 to 21 years. They picked out 11,295 people whose relationship ended and compared them with similar people whose relationship lasted.⁵

In the couples who split, happiness with the relationship slid slowly for years. Then came a turning point, and after it a steep drop that lasted about 7 to 28 months before the split.⁶ The people who stayed together never went through that steep drop.⁵

The partner who ended it usually reached the turning point earlier. The one who was left reached it later and then fell faster.⁶ If you’re the one asking whether it’s over, your partner may be further along, or further behind, than you are. The lead researcher, who also works as a couples therapist, said many couples look for help only after the steep drop has begun, and that acting during the slow part may work better.⁵

Which of these sounds like you?

• You still get on, but the warmth has gone
• Most talks end in a fight
• One of you already has a foot out of the door
• You’re afraid of your partner

You still get on, but the warmth has gone

You run the house well together, you’re polite, and there’s very little left between you. In Gottman’s 14-year study, this lack of warmth, not the shouting, went with the later divorces.⁴ Warmth can be practised, though. Start small and on purpose: ask about their day and listen to the answer, laugh at their jokes, touch them when you pass. In the pooled study, feeling grateful for your partner was one of the strongest signs of a happy relationship.¹ That study can’t show which comes first, so think of it as a direction to try, not a promise.

Most talks end in a fight

Lots of couples fight and stay together for decades. The question is how. If you can still complain about what your partner did without attacking who they are, and if one of you can still make a joke or say sorry and the other takes it, there’s a lot to work with. If the arguments have turned to eye-rolling, sneering and “you’re pathetic”, that’s the contempt the Gottman Institute warns about.³ It can change, but only if the person doing it sees it and wants to stop.

One of you already has a foot out of the door

Being out of step like this is common, even partway through a divorce. One American survey asked 2,484 parents in the middle of a divorce whether their marriage could still be saved with hard work. About 1 in 4 thought it might. In only about 1 in 9 couples did both partners think so. People whose partner had started the divorce were far more interested in help to get back together.⁷

So if you want to save it and your partner is leaning out, you’re not unusual, and you also can’t do it alone. A relationship needs both people to want it back. A blunt conversation helps here: ask your partner straight out whether they still want to try, and listen to the answer, even if it isn’t the one you hoped for.

You’re afraid of your partner

If you’re scared of how your partner will react, if they check where you’ve been, cut you off from friends or family, control the money or threaten you, that isn’t a rough patch. In England and Wales, a pattern like that can be a crime called controlling or coercive behaviour, and the official guidance lists exactly these examples.⁸ The advice in the rest of this piece is for two people who both feel safe. Better communication isn’t the fix for fear, and nobody owes a relationship that frightens them another try.

Questions to ask yourself

• If my partner stayed exactly as they are, would I still want this?
• Do I believe my partner still wants it? What makes me think so?
• When did I last feel glad to see them come home?
• When we argue, do we still treat each other with respect, or has mocking crept in?
• Has this been sliding for years, or since something happened that we could name?
• Am I looking for a way to make it better, or for permission to leave?

Write your answers down rather than turning them over in your head. Seeing them on paper often shows you which way you’re already leaning.

What to try before you decide

• Say how serious it is. “We need to talk” can be heard a dozen times without the other person grasping what’s at stake. Tell your partner plainly that you’re not sure the relationship will last unless something changes.
• Agree what better would look like. Pick two or three concrete things, such as one evening a week together or no more jokes at each other’s expense, and a time to look again, say three months.
• Go back to the small stuff. Thanks, interest, a hand on the shoulder. In Gottman’s long study, a lack of that kind of warmth went with the later divorces.⁴
• Try couple therapy while there’s still something to work with. The researchers who followed couples through the slow decline said help may work better before the steep drop.⁵

Too far gone for couple therapy? Very unhappy couples often weren’t

It’s easy to assume that a couple this unhappy is past helping. A trial in Los Angeles and Seattle took 134 married couples who were seriously and steadily unhappy, and turned away almost 100 couples who weren’t unhappy enough to qualify.⁹ Five years after treatment, about half of the couples were clearly better off than when they started, and about a quarter had separated or divorced.¹⁰

By then about a third had become, in the lead researcher’s words, “normal, happy couples”. The couples had up to 26 sessions within a year, and he added a warning: “If couples do not improve in 26 sessions, that is a bad sign.”⁹

When it’s time to go

Some relationships should end, and leaving one isn’t a failure of effort. If you’ve both tried, with a clear plan and enough time, and the warmth hasn’t come back, that’s an answer too. The same goes if only one of you was ever trying.

Even the pooled study of 11,196 couples could hardly predict whose relationship would get better.¹ What you can do is decide what would have to change, by when, and tell your partner. Then watch what actually happens, rather than what either of you promises.

Sources (10)

1. Joel, S., Eastwick, P. W., Allison, C. J., and others (2020). Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(32), 19061-19071. Read the study Back to the text
2. Le, B., Dove, N. L., Agnew, C. R., Korn, M. S., and Mutso, A. A. (2010). Predicting nonmarital romantic relationship dissolution: a meta-analytic synthesis. Personal Relationships, 17(3), 377-390. Read the study Back to the text
3. Wilde, E. (2013, updated 2026). The Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. The Gottman Institute. www.gottman.com Back to the text
4. Gottman, J. M., and Levenson, R. W. (2000). The timing of divorce: predicting when a couple will divorce over a 14-year period. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(3), 737-745. Read the study Back to the text
5. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (2025). Transition point in romantic relationships signals the beginning of their end. Press release on Bühler and Orth. press.uni-mainz.de Back to the text
6. Bühler, J. L., and Orth, U. (2025). Terminal decline of satisfaction in romantic relationships: evidence from four longitudinal studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, online 20 March 2025. Read the study Back to the text
7. Doherty, W. J., Willoughby, B. J., and Peterson, B. (2011). Interest in marital reconciliation among divorcing parents. Family Court Review, 49(2), 313-321. Read the study Back to the text
8. Home Office (2023). Controlling or coercive behaviour: statutory guidance framework. Issued under section 77 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. www.gov.uk Back to the text
9. University of California, Los Angeles (2010). Therapy can help even very distressed married couples, largest study finds. ScienceDaily research summary. www.sciencedaily.com Back to the text
10. Christensen, A., Atkins, D. C., Baucom, B., and Yi, J. (2010). Marital status and satisfaction five years following a randomized clinical trial comparing traditional versus integrative behavioral couple therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 225-235. Read the study Back to the text

About these sources. The figures for Le and others, Doherty and others and Christensen and others come from the published abstracts and summaries, because the full papers are behind a paywall. Joel and others is from the open preprint and the published summary. For Bühler and Orth, the phases and the 7 to 28 months come from the abstract, and the 11,295 people, the four countries, the 12 to 21 years and the point that couples who stayed together had no steep drop come from the University of Mainz press release. The contempt claim is the Gottman Institute’s own and its page does not show how it was measured. The one third of couples who became normal, happy couples, the 26 sessions and the quote are from the UCLA research summary on ScienceDaily.