Should I leave my partner? How to decide well

What am I really asking when I ask whether to leave?

You are asking 3 different questions at once, and answering the wrong one keeps you stuck for years.

• Potential. Is this relationship capable of being better than it is now? Evidence answers that, and feeling does not.
• Tolerance. Am I able to be happy inside this, as it is, if nothing changes? Only you answer that.
• 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 harm by working harder on communication.

Where one partner controls the other, or one of you is frightened, the rest of this article does not apply, and couples therapy is the wrong room. It hands the controlling person a new vocabulary and asks the frightened one to be honest in front of somebody they go home with.

Why does a list of pros and cons not settle it?

Because the items on the 2 sides are not comparable, and the list changes with your week. You hold one future you are able to describe and one you are not, and the undescribed one always looks better or worse than it is.

• Concrete against hypothetical. The house, the routine and the family Christmas sit on one side, and an absence that has not happened yet sits on the other.
• Mood. A good fortnight rewrites the list, and so does one bad row.
• What a list is good for. It shows what you are frightened of losing, which is worth knowing whichever way you go.
• Two pages. Describe an ordinary Wednesday some years from now if nothing changes, then the same Wednesday if you have left, dull parts included.

One page is usually much harder to write than the other. That difficulty is the information.

Does leaving an unhappy marriage make people happier?

One much-quoted study found no evidence that it does, and that study has serious limits. A team led by Linda Waite used a survey that followed 5,232 married adults. Of the 645 who called themselves unhappily married, those who divorced were no happier 5 years later than those who stayed.

• Old and unreviewed. It dates from 2002, and an advocacy organisation published it outside the peer-reviewed journals.
• Groups compared. Nobody was assigned to stay or leave, and the people who stayed differed from the people who left.
• Silent on violence and control. Nobody should quote it at a person in a relationship like that.
• Averages. A study of 645 people tells you nothing about what happens to you.
• What it does suggest. Being unhappy now poorly predicts being unhappy in 5 years, in either direction.

Growing apart is among the reasons people most often give for divorce. Among 886 divorcing parents in Minnesota, those who gave that reason were the least likely to consider stopping. Drift is one of the more workable things a couple brings, and it is also the explanation that makes people feel there is nothing to work on. 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 you both want the same outcome. Therapists call this a mixed-agenda couple: one partner leans in and wants to make it work, and the other leans out and considers the end without having decided.

• The audition. Sessions become a performance, and the partner who leans out withdraws further.
• Discernment counselling. William Doherty and colleagues built a short approach for this position, with most of the work done in separate individual conversations.
• Three paths. Carry on as you are, move towards separation, or commit to a defined period of couples therapy with divorce off the table.
• A trial separation. The Gottman Institute suggests about 6 months for couples who keep working on the relationship while apart, with clear agreements and continued therapy.
• How separations fail. Time apart without agreements deepens the detachment, and the reunion finds the old patterns where they were.

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”, and a decision says “I do not want this any more”.

• Exhaustion. It is loudest at night, disappears after a good week, and shows as flatness at work and with friends too.
• A decision. It is quieter, comes with sadness more than anger, and survives the good weeks.
• The next step for exhaustion. Rest and support come first, because a permanent choice made at the bottom of a bad period is one people regret either way.
• Children. They change the weight of the decision without settling it, and what they live in day to day matters more than the number of addresses.

Staying is no proof of loyalty and leaving is no proof of courage. Both framings push people towards an answer that suits somebody else.

How do I decide whether to leave or stay?

You get evidence on the first question, and then you decide with it in hand. A defined period with a defined effort, both of you trying and the question set aside for that time, is the clearest way to get it. Some people already have their evidence.

• Ask whether it was ever worked on. One heated conversation does not count, and neither do a few sessions years ago.
• Name what would have to be different. If nothing concrete comes, stay with that before you read it as an answer.
• Watch how your partner hears it. Their capacity to take it in without collapsing or attacking tells you whether change is possible.
• Ask what not deciding protects. Staying undecided is a decision, and it often protects you from grief.
• Say it out loud early. People who stay silent for years and then leave are heard as sudden.
• Slow the speed. A decision that formed over years does not need carrying out in a fortnight.

If the evidence has moved, you have your answer. If it has not moved after real effort from both of you, you also have your answer. The harder position afterwards is never having found out. A partner who refuses a defined period has given you evidence too: some refuse because they have given up, and others because they fear hoping again.

These steps fail when the thinking only goes round in your own head in the small hours, or when the 2 of you are no longer able to talk about it. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

How do I know if I have tried hard enough?

You have tried when both of you have made a sustained, deliberate effort over months. A series of arguments and apologies does not count, and neither does one of you trying alone.

Should I tell my partner I am thinking about leaving?

Usually yes, and sooner than feels comfortable. A decision made entirely in private arrives as a shock and a verdict.

Is it wrong to stay for the children?

No, and it is not automatically right either. What matters is what the children live in day to day and how the 2 of you behave.

Is therapy any use if I already know I am leaving?

Yes, the work then is leaving well. You understand how you got here so it does not repeat, and you separate in a way that costs everybody less.

What do people regret afterwards?

The most common regret is never having tested the relationship before leaving. People who left after a real attempt describe the decision as sad, and people who left without one describe it as unfinished.

Sources

• Waite, L. and colleagues, Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings From a Study of Unhappy Marriages, Institute for American Values, 2002
• Institute for Family Studies, Reasons People Give for Divorce
• 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. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.