Every day from around the world, I get emails from people saying they will do whatever it takes to save their marriage. They want to know what to do first.

But after talking to them, I come to find out that’s not always the case.

If you’re intent is to save your marriage by yourself, you must be a very strong and determined person and have no doubt that you will succeed.

• Do you have the inner emotional strength to save your marriage without the help of your spouse?
• Are you REALLY willing to do anything it takes to keep your family together?
• Are you willing to put aside nagging doubts, times of feeling alone and the ability to endure family and friends who want to protect you as they keep saying their favorite phrase… “move on with your life”?

I’ve seen marriages where one spouse has filed for divorce and one month later returned to the courthouse to tear up the divorce papers. It IS possible to save your marriage on your own, but you must first understand just WHO you’re really married to.

I conducted a study where I spoke with 210 troubled couples and discovered that 93% of those marriages had either one or BOTH spouses who grew up in troubled homes.

Only 7% of the struggling couples consisted of TWO individuals from fairly good childhood homes.

If your marriage is in trouble, chances are very high that you share something with these struggling marriages – one or both of you are “Chaos Kids”.

What is a Chaos Kid?

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “This is not the person I married!”, then this is your first sign you married a Chaos Kid.

You might even be one yourself!

A Chaos Kid can be instantly recognized in marriage when a troubling event takes place that drives your spouse to snap. In most marriages, it happens when that troubled spouse is between 35 and 45 years old.

The traumatic event could be…

• A lost job
• A parent moves in
• A sick child
• A depressed spouse
• An addiction
• An affair
• A move across five states

The Chaos Engine

When this troubling event arrives in your life, something I call the “Chaos Engine” is triggered in the brain of that spouse.

This Chaos Engine is a set of instruction installed in that spouse’s brain during their first ten years by the adults who raised him or her so when the Chaos Engine is turned on, you could say that “all hell breaks loose” because that’s exactly how it feels.

Recreating “normal”

This event then causes a dramatic change in the Chaos Kid’s behavior that pushes them to recreate the same conditions they lived in throughout their first ten years of life.

In essence, the Chaos Engine in that person’s brain is driving them back to a thing called “normal”, with normal being those same conditions of their particular childhood.

If your spouse was raised by a father who ignored his children and only spent time for himself, and a mother who endured depression, then being selfish and disconnected would be the normal way to live.

If your Chaos Kid grew up with an angry step father who blew up over the smallest inconveniences, then your Chaos Kid’s brain is urging them to recreate the identical fits of rage over the smallest issues.

Hopefully by now you’re seeing the potential of this Chaos Engine along with the damage it can cause to your family and none of it spells anything good for your spouse, or your children. Once this Chaos Engine turns on, you can expect a totally different person to appear.

Common behaviors to expect might be:

• Affairs
• Staying out with friends in bars and not explaining their whereabouts
• Throwing money away on shallow pleasures
• Taking off on trips without explanation
• And much more

One of the most frustrating features of a Chaos Kid in your marriage is that this kid is never wrong, but you will ALWAYS be wrong. That means you can never win an argument.

This is the reason I urge couples to not see divorce as an option. Divorce is very harmful to kids during their first ten years and if you’re married to a Chaos Kid, your children will adopt these destructive habits as their own in their adult lives.

In the case of a child who was raised in a stable, secure home, for the rest of their lives, they will find that they naturally gravitate towards successful choices in their marriage, social life and career. Success for them is relatively easy.

Not so for a child with a Chaos Kid for a parent.

So here’s what all this boils down to – if you’ve decided you’re going to save your marriage alone, it’s very important you first realize whether or not you’re married to a Chaos kid.

To get caught up on the concept of being married to a chaos kid, visit my blog to listen to my 4-part radio series I’ve conducted on this topic.

You’ll hear from chaos kids first-hand who share their stories of how they were able to turn their marriage around and positively influence everyone in their life.