11 Nifty Ways to Lose Your Lover

Nitpicking. Door-slamming. Months without sex. It's not exactly champagne, roses and lingerie anymore, is it?

If your love has lost its spark, you're not alone. According to Divorce Magazine, 49 percent of U.S. marriages end in divorce. And if many couples who don't get divorced are unhappy but keeping it together for the kids, for convenience or for other reasons, that means most people who get married end up miserable.

Are we crazy? Love isn't the answer. Divorce is. So if you're left stewing each time, the wife heads to Anthropologie or "hubby dearest" takes his mother's side, don't accept defeat. Kick your spouse out of the house!

Sure, you and your bitter half could get all Dr. Phil about it and talk it out instead. You might learn what needy losers you both are and even come to some grudging reconciliation that'll make your lives almost tolerable for a year or two.

But isn't it wiser to make a clean break and hunt down another newly single person to shack up with while you've still got your looks?

Florida is the perfect place to do it. The Sunshine State is party town for the divorced, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An average of 155,023 people get married there each year, and an average 84,403 get divorced. That's 54 brutal breakups for every 100 blissful unions -- not bad!

But it's one thing to talk big about busting up your marriage. How do you pull it off?

"When it comes to relationships, there are so many ways to lose your spouse or to lose your partner," says Miriam R. Davis, a mental health counselor and sex therapist in West Palm Beach, Fla. "Finances, children and sex are the three trigger points."

So put your lawyer on speed dial and join "Generation X" with these tips to help you snip off that ball and chain before the year is through.

Nifty Ways to Lose Your Lover
1. Never compromise. Folks walking the road to Splitsville should expect their partners to see it their way every time. "It is a very deadly assumption to think that you and your partner are going to agree on everything," says sex therapist and counselor Miriam R. Davis.

2. Refuse to deal with conflict. Don't be pulled into the argument trap. While hashing out differences at the top of your lungs might seem on the surface to be a great way to destroy your marriage, experts say divorce will come even more quickly if you refuse to fight or even discuss problems. With each passing conflict, the resentment will build, says Davis, leading to the no-holds-barred blowout you've been hoping for.

3. Don't talk about sex. The soon-to-be-divorced almost always keep mum about their sexual desires and instead tell themselves, "If he/she loved me, he/she would know what I want."

"What's happening for a lot of couples is that at first, they took a lot of time; there was a lot of foreplay," says Davis. "Then they get into a committed relationship and it becomes more mechanical."

Not talking about your evolving needs is a one-way ticket to "Let's Get It Over With Sex," the best kind to bring boredom to the bedroom -- where it belongs.

4. Never take your spouse on a date. While searching for a one-way ticket to divorce court, avoid all the things you used to love to do together when you were dating: No beach picnics, no drive-in movies, no walks in the park. Above all, do NOT get a baby sitter so you can do these things one-on-one.

Not spending private time together is "a great way to increase the distance and lose the friendship in marriage," says psychologist Nancy Vrechek. "Usually, a relationship erodes over time as people become complacent."

5. Guys, don't be afraid to openly admire other women. Maintaining a strict regimen of viewing Internet porn is a simple and efficient way to ruin your relationship. Not only will it offer up unrealistic expectations of sex and intimacy for you, Vrechek notes that getting busted while enjoying this kind of entertainment could (bonus!) leave your spouse feeling insecure and disrespected. To drive that home, you might also head to [your local strip club] frequently for (insert exaggerated air quotes here) "business luncheons."

"Some women could care less, but a lot of women feel this is degrading, or they ask, 'What's wrong with us that you need to do that?'" says Vrechek.

6. Put your spouse in the back seat. Your job/family/friends -- almost anything -- should take priority over your spouse. Remember, you're married, so he/she is going to be there forever anyway. When your spouse begins to feel neglected, you're almost home free.

7. Assume sex and intimacy will be spontaneous. It seems like just yesterday, you were necking in the back seat of your SUV in a . . . parking garage. Now, the BlackBerry rings, the baby cries, and the bills continue to pile up.

What? That doesn't turn you on?

"I get a lot of people . . . that haven't had sex in months. And of course, they're not happy about it," says Davis.

Setting aside alone time to rekindle the flame is a big no-no on the divorcée highway. Turning off the cellphones and giving your lover a massage after preparing his or her favorite meal -- and cleaning up -- could put him/her at ease for a little old-school one-on-one. But does planned intimacy really count?

If you want less frequent romance, Davis says, keep telling yourself, "If you have to work at it, it must not be real."

8. Criticize each other in public. "That's a real deal breaker," says Vrechek. "The other person will feel completely humiliated, enraged, hurt or embarrassed. They will feel worthless."

9. Let your spouse do all the work. There's nothing like an unequal distribution of labor to really ensure that resentments smolder and eventually erupt.

"If somebody lives with you and they don't carry their share of the load, you feel you're being taken for granted, you feel used, you feel that the other person isn't willing to put in their half," says Davis. "Then people feel not loved and not cared for."

10. Keep the money to yourself. One quick way to destroy trust is to run up credit-card debts or drain a savings account behind your spouse's back.

"Let's say the husband has spent money on things the wife does not know about or has made investments the wife doesn't know about; that is a break of trust," Davis says, adding that the same goes for the wife who opens credit card accounts or spends huge amounts without her husband's knowledge.

"If you're married, any debt that you accrue is half-and-half, so you're involving them in financial commitments they don't know anything about," Davis says. "Whenever you have a secret between you and your partner, that creates a wall." And that's a wall you can hide behind all the way to singledom!

11. Adamantly insist you don't need marriage therapy. Marriage counseling could mean exposing your feelings in a friendly and neutral environment, where an independent party might just help you work out your differences and -- perish the thought -- have you feeling all lovey-dovey again. A better option? "Give all your money to the divorce attorney," suggests Vrechek.

Editor's note: Aime Dunstan is just kidding. We think.

Source: Palm Beach Post. Powered by YellowBrix.