At a glance
The question stays open because you want it to end and want it to work in the same week. What settles it is knowing what is actually wrong, what has genuinely been tried, and whether the relationship is harming you. Weighing good points against bad ones will not get you there.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- Certainty and unspoken need arrive together. The client who sounds most decided has a set of needs nobody has heard yet, and saying them out loud changes the shape of the certainty, sometimes loosening it and sometimes confirming it.
- It was never actually worked on. I meet couples who have been unhappy for years and have never once tried anything together on purpose, and others who were certain they had to manage alone.
- Both answers are liveable. The fear I hear is less about which answer is right than about whether the person will still recognise themselves afterwards.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
What am I really asking when I ask whether to leave?
You are asking 3 questions at once, and answering the wrong one is what keeps people stuck for years. They arrive as one lump of feeling, and they have to be taken apart before any of them is answerable.
- Potential. Is this relationship capable of being better than it is now? Evidence answers that, and feeling does not.
- Tolerance. Can I be content inside this, as it is, if nothing changes? Only you answer that one.
- Harm. Is it doing me harm? That question outranks the other 2 completely.
- The mix-up. You answer the tolerance question with a potential answer, or try to settle the harm question by working harder on how you communicate.
Where one partner controls the other, or where one of you is frightened of the other, nothing in this article is the right instrument and couples therapy is the wrong room. Joint sessions hand a controlling partner new words to use and ask the frightened one to be honest in front of somebody they then go home with. What belongs there is your own hour, with somebody who is not also treating your partner.
Why does a list of pros and cons not settle it?
Because the 2 columns are not made of the same material. On one side sits a life you can describe down to the noise the kettle makes, and on the other an absence you have never lived in, which looks either better or worse than it turns out to be. The list rewrites itself with your week as well: a good fortnight moves 3 items across, and so does one bad Sunday. What it does show is what you are frightened of losing, which is worth knowing either way.
Something more useful: write 2 pages, an ordinary Wednesday some years from now if nothing changes, then the same Wednesday if you have left, dull parts included. One page comes out in detail and the other stays vague, and which one went vague is worth sitting with.
Will I be happier if I leave?
Nobody can answer that for you, and the people who sound most certain know the least about your life. What I see is that leaving ends one unhappiness and begins a different set of difficulties, and that what matters afterwards is whether you understood what had gone wrong before you went. That is my clinical judgement rather than a finding.
The most quoted study on it re-interviewed unhappily married adults 5 years on and found no clear psychological benefit on average for those who had divorced1. The interviews date from the late 1980s, nobody was allocated to stay or leave, and it says nothing about relationships with violence or control in them, where it should never be quoted at anybody. What it does suggest is modest: how unhappy you are now is a poor guide to how you will feel in 5 years, in either direction.
Read more about growing apart in a relationship.
What if one of us has already half left?
Then ordinary couples therapy stalls, because it assumes the 2 of you want the same outcome. One of you leans in and wants to repair it. The other leans out, weighing the end without having decided. Sessions turn into an audition, and the one leaning out withdraws further.
- A different format. There is a short, structured approach built for exactly this position, with most of the work done in separate individual conversations2.
- 3 paths, named out loud. Carry on as you are, move towards separation, or commit to a defined period of couples therapy with the leaving question set aside for that time.
- A trial separation. About 6 months is a commonly suggested length, with clear agreements and therapy continuing3, and that is a suggestion rather than a clinical threshold.
- How separations fail. Time apart without agreements deepens the detachment, and the reunion finds the old patterns exactly where they were left.
Read more about when one of you wants to leave and one wants to stay and trial separation.
How do I tell a decision from exhaustion?
Exhaustion says I cannot do this any more. A decision says I do not want this any more. The difference shows in the body before it reaches your reasons. Exhaustion is loudest at 3 in the morning, it lifts after a good week, and it turns up at work and with friends as well. What sits under a decision is quieter, carries more sadness than anger, and comes through the good weeks intact. Read those as aids to listening to your own position rather than a score to add up.
- What exhaustion needs first. Rest and support, because a permanent choice made at the bottom of a bad stretch is the one people regret, in either direction.
- Children change the weight. They do not settle the question, and what children live inside day to day matters more than the number of addresses.
Staying is no proof of loyalty and leaving is no proof of courage. Both of those push you towards the answer that suits somebody else.
How do I decide whether to leave or stay?
You get evidence on the potential question first, then decide with it in your hand. A defined period with a defined effort, both of you trying and the leaving question set aside for that time, is the clearest way to get it. Some people already have it.
- Ask whether it was ever worked on. One heated conversation does not count, and neither do 3 sessions some years ago.
- Name what would have to be different. If nothing concrete comes to mind, stay with that for a while before you read it as an answer.
- Watch how your partner takes it in. Whether they can hear it without collapsing or attacking tells you what change would cost.
- Ask what not deciding protects. Not deciding is itself a decision. It holds off a grief you have not agreed to feel, and it charges you the years it runs for.
- Say it earlier than feels comfortable. People who stay silent for years and then leave are heard as sudden.
If the evidence moves, you have your answer. If it has not moved after real effort from both of you, you have your answer then too, and the harder place to stand afterwards is never having found out. A partner who refuses a defined period has told you something as well, though not always the same thing: some refuse because they have given up and some because they cannot face hoping again.
None of this is the right instrument when the thinking only ever circles in your own head at night, when the 2 of you cannot discuss it without a fight, or where there is control or fear between you. Those need your own hour, where you are not managing your partner at the same time. What stays open for many people even then is whether you want this relationship to change or want to be released from it, and that needs closer exploration than an article allows. A session, or the free 30-minute call, is a reasonable place to start.
Questions people ask
Can I come on my own to work out whether to leave?
Yes, and much of this work starts better that way. One person thinking clearly in a room changes what happens at home, whichever way the decision goes.
What happens in a session when I do not know what I want?
I slow the question down and separate what is wrong from what has been tried and from what harms you. Not knowing is a workable starting point rather than something to sort out before you come.
Will a therapist try to talk me into staying?
No, that is not my job and it would not hold anyway. My job is to show you what you are deciding with, so the decision survives the months after it.
Is there a form of therapy for a couple when one of us wants out?
Yes, discernment counselling is built for that position, with most of the work done in separate conversations. Ordinary couples therapy assumes you both want the same outcome, which is why it stalls here.
Is therapy any use if I have already decided to leave?
Yes, and the work then is leaving well. You understand how it came about so it does not repeat, and you separate in a way that costs everybody less.
If you are deciding whether to leave, I offer individual sessions about your relationship so you can think it through without your partner in the room.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings From a Study of Unhappy Marriages
- Doherty, W. J., Harris, S. M. and Wilde, J. L., Discernment Counseling for Mixed-Agenda Couples, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2016
- The Gottman Institute, Do Trial Separations Work?
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
