The rush of Christmas is over and the quiet of January is upon us. Couples everywhere are reflecting on their future.

Perhaps your partner didn’t pull their weight last year. Or the financial stress of 2024 shone a light on painful cracks. Some couples find themselves looking out into the long year ahead filled with anger, or at worst, resentment.

It is no surprise then that the highest number of divorces are filed in the New Year. The first Monday of January has long been known among solicitors and counsellors as “Divorce Day”, and in 2023, there were 28,865 divorce applications filed in the first quarter of the year: 16 per cent more than the number of applications filed between April and June.

But a divorce isn’t always the right solution to your problems. In fact, some come to regret it. This is a pattern Philippa Perry, psychotherapist and author of several best-selling books on parenting and improving relationships, has seen. “Regretting your divorce is quite common,” she says. “I get quite a lot of regret emails. We’re living in times of great stress, and wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. People will be looking to blame their partners for some of that stress.”

Perry has been married to artist Grayson Perry for 32 years. “When you get into a relationship, it’s a little bit like you become part of another person, and they become part of you,” she says. “You influence and shape each other. And if that other person doesn’t make you feel terrible, the relationship is probably OK. People have very high expectations of what a marriage should feel like and be like.”

Still, Perry believes that some couples are less bound to stay together than others. “I don’t really mind if people split up when they haven’t got children,” she says. “If they have children, couples should think long and hard. If they have still got goodwill towards each other, but they’re just on different pages or just bored, then that’s not a reason to split up.”

If you are thinking about divorce, Perry shares the questions to consider before taking the plunge, and the ways to bring marriage back from the brink.

Is it a you problem?

“When we become very close to someone, and suddenly something isn’t right, it’s in our nature to want to blame something external for it. We often blame the person closest to us, especially if we’re depressed and we think everything is bad. That’s not a good thing. Especially if you then divorce your partner, and you still feel the same but now you miss them too. That’s a terrible thing.

So is it you, or is it them? Try to separate how you’re feeling from your partner. Remember what got you together in the first place. What attracted you to this person in the first place?

It’s not a good idea to get divorced when you’re just depressed and stressed. You’re naturally irritated by everything and everybody. It’s too easy to take that out on your partner and think they’re the problem. If you’re on the receiving end of that, try and be understanding about it, and if you’re both on the receiving end of it, it might be your external circumstances rather than your relationship.”

Are you telling yourself a story?

“We can start telling ourselves a story in our heads about another person, and we never like to be wrong. We cherry-pick the evidence against them until we’re so set on them being the enemy.

It’s not bad to say I thought the problem was them and I didn’t want to be wrong. I followed it, and I nearly followed it right to the edge of the cliff. Then I realised it was just a hunch, and I was just listing the evidence against them. I was wrong.

Casting someone as the enemy is quite satisfying. It feels almost like tying up loose ends. But it won’t really solve the problem. It just makes it much worse. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s OK to make mistakes, and good relationships are full of ruptures and repairs.”

Is it just a mismatch of conflict styles?

“When we’re under stress, we have our preferred way of coping. Some people feel a lot. They might want to sit with the feeling, or talk about the feeling to process it. Some people think a lot, and these people are quick to find a narrative about their problem. Other people want to go straight to action and do a lot to solve their problem.

Now, if you’re a thinker or feeler sort of person, you might come back from work and tell your spouse you want to leave your job. The do-er spouse might then start to look at new jobs, but this will completely miss the mark. It just takes you back into yourself. You want a partner who’s on the same page as you, so that you have moments of connection. If a thinker or feeler is married to a doing person then they might easily have a row about problems. They’re just on different planets.

It’s good to be aware of the different modes. If you’re a thinker or a feeler, and you’re married to a do-er, it’s important to remind them that they don’t have to fix every problem. If you are a doer, you have to say something like: ‘We’ve gone round in circles three times. I’d just like to take some action.’ Explain your process and your thoughts a little bit more to avoid conflict.

When coming to these sorts of conflicts, ask yourself, have you got to open your thinking door, your feeling door, or you’re doing door? It’s good to have all three to avoid conflict.”

Do you believe the grass is greener?

“The dating apps have brought a change, especially for people who haven’t had good role models with solid relationships. They have got their idea of what a good relationship looks like from fiction or from afar. They haven’t actually lived in a house with a good relationship and so, for them, it’s harder to know how to stay committed to someone. Dating apps make this worse because they make us feel like we’ve got infinite choices.

In some ways, it was easier when we had very little choice of comparison. When I chose my husband, there was only the choice of people I met or knew. A limited choice makes it far easier to commit.

What makes it a good relationship is commitment. If you choose to be committed to a relationship and you’ve got a problem, you’ll work it through. If you haven’t got a commitment, it’s easy to just go and get another one. It’s treating people like commodities rather than people, which is encouraged by dating apps.

The great thing about staying with someone for a very long time – I’ve been married for 32 years and we have been together for 37 years – is that you get to new stages as you go on. If you broke up after a year with every partner and then started again, you might be just living the same year over again in terms of your personal development. You wouldn’t break the pattern. You’d start to get irritated with them around about month nine, and you chuck them at the 12th month.

If this is you, do some serious therapy on yourself. What gets in the way of a good relationship is thinking that the grass is greener and therefore having a lack of commitment. This is why we have marriage because you make a commitment and you promise to stick to that commitment so that you can work through stuff.”

Do you have moments of inclusion?

“Good relationships have ruptures and repairs. It’s not the rupture that matters so much as the repair. We have very high expectations of what a relationship should be, and I think that’s a shame.

People have difficulty accepting the other person as they are. They always want them to be a bit more this, or a bit more that. But the key to a good marriage is being able to be in the same place emotionally. This is what the philosopher Martin Buber called ‘a moment of inclusion’. These are the moments of when you both feel like you’ve both clicked and really get each other. This can be giving your partner a side eye when someone is talking, and they respond in a knowing way. Or it might be when you are going over a problem and you come to the same conclusion, or you’re both looking at the same sunset. If these moments are missing, we need to slow down our busy lives and leave space for them.

We also need to focus on goodwill in our partnerships. This means treating love as an action, as well as a feeling. Even when we’re not feeling very loving towards our partners, practice doing loving behaviours for them. Ask yourself, what can I do for them today? What can I do for the household today that would otherwise fall to the other person?

In arguments, this means not ascribing motivations to the other person. Look at an argument with curiosity. Slow it right down. Was it just one dig after another that has caused a spiral? See if you can turn that spiral the other way with goodwill.”