This is How Your Marriage Ends: When is it Time to Leave?

In our first reader Q&A post, we explore once again the impossibly difficult question of whether to end a marriage. Sometimes, when Mandy's husband drinks, she and her kids get hurt.

Image/Brightview Health

Reader Mandy C. asks:

How do you know when it's time to leave? How can you tell if this time, the spouse is sincere about making a change?

Until I read your book, I really thought I was just being a wimpy (insert misogynistic name here). “This is just marriage,” I thought (and as he had told me numerous times) after I watched him grab yet another beer after I had just told him how much his drunkenness had hurt me and his children. Or, when I questioned my resolve and sanity after he told me he “didn't mean” whatever hurtful thing he said, and I was just “being too sensitive.” The list is long.

Now that I've said I'm really going to divorce him this time, he swears he's going to change. (I've threatened to leave before. However, always got wooed back over the course of a couple of months—until he got comfortable again.) He claims he gets what I'm saying, he “sees it now.” The problem is, I've seen this before.

Is there any way to know when leaving—or staying—is the right decision?

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This is the hardest kind of question to answer. Because who am I to say?

For those not inclined to read until the end, I’ll say this as simply and plainly as my hyper-wordiness allows: In a mutual relationship like marriage or a long-term committed partnership, it is NEVER okay for you to consistently experience pain because of your partner’s behavior that he or she could have somehow avoided. There are a finite number of days you will subject yourself to that (or that your partner will subject themselves to) before deciding there’s a better way to live out our fleeting time on Earth than experiencing a steady diet of pain and suffering from the person who promised to love us most.

Most painful behaviors in most relationships are, in my estimation, blind spot behaviors. Should they be blind spots? Should we be able to call them “accidents”? Probably not. But this is the uncomfortable truth of human relationships. I don’t realize something hurts you because that same thing doesn’t hurt me. Therefore, you don’t experience care and thoughtfulness and sensitivity from me around that type of thing. “Accidental” wounds.

It is what happens after that pain is felt and communicated which dictates the quality of a marriage or romantic relationship between any two people. Sometimes the me in the story will listen and take it as seriously as possible and make efforts to mitigate similar situations or “injuries” in the future. The single most common toxic condition in marriage and relationships as I see it, though, is invalidation by one partner to the other. Which means the invalidator never actually takes the problem seriously, and the hurt person is never actually made whole or treated with actual love and care. All of that will build mountains of mistrust and resentment over many years between otherwise excellent, nice, smart, well-adjusted people. And again, as I see it, this is the most common story of how a marriage ends.

I pretty much always assume this dynamic is part of any ailing relationship. This inability of one person to tell the other: “Hey! Something’s hurting me! Please help!” And then have the person who promised to love them actually provide love and support. It’s pretty sad how often this seemingly simple and correctable dynamic is the root cause of marriage and families falling apart. That is the story of how my own marriage ended. My failure to listen. My failure to seek to understand rather than be understood.

But back to Mandy’s question. How do you know when it’s time to leave?

Let’s start with the really ugly stuff and work our way down to my typical wheelhouse. To do so, I need to take a little detour.

Is Intimate Partner Violence—Physical Abuse—a Factor?

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting by phone the very professional, very sharp, very no-nonsense feminist writer Zawn Villines (who everyone should be reading regardless of how much you agree with her or how uncomfortable her work might make you).

Zawn Villines

suffers no fools (though she was very kind and patient with me when we spoke).

As many of you know, I approach relationships—namely marriage—from the potentially naïve angle that MOST long-term relationships are comprised of two people who genuinely care about one another, are generally smart, are generally well intentioned, and are what most of us would consider to be “good people.” (Regardless, as a relationship coach, I don’t believe I’m in a position to help someone who is mindfully, intentionally mistreating their partner. I don’t spend much time on more obvious abuses. But maybe I should.)

I posit that most people’s relationships sour slowly over many months and years through a series of blind spots, misunderstandings, and shitty communication skills. That no one necessarily does anything “bad,” but that pain is experienced by one or both partners nonetheless, which dooms the two people to a lifetime of tension, disconnection (often loneliness within the relationship), and conflict; or a painful divorce or breakup—both people feeling like they’ve lost or wasted many years. My work is about making the invisible visible. It’s about two people not accidentally harming one another or their marriages/partnerships.

Zawn, on the other hand, wastes little energy on subtlety and nuance. Women are physically, emotionally, and sexually abused in their relationships, often in very non-nuanced ways, and Zawn’s mission is fighting for them, making her a staunch advocate for women, and sometimes leaving sensitive men feeling unfairly attacked, labeled, accused, etc. because of it.

I have a low tolerance for hypocrisy. Most of the men I encounter—even the most decent of us—often believe and/or accuse the women in their lives of being hyperemotional, or too sensitive. So, I’m not going to be too patient with men who play the tough-guy card the vast majority of their lives, only to get caught up in their feelings when they encounter ideas or people like Zawn that make them uncomfortable.

All of this has resulted in me thinking more about overt forms of hurting one’s relationship partner. Because very real people out there are suffering intensely at the hands of someone who promised to love them, and it’s happening behind closed doors where no one can see, so there’s very little any of us can do about it. But if we were able to watch it happen somehow, we’d all collectively agree to light some of these fuckers on fire.

Intimate partner violence is the single greatest cause of injury to women in the United States, and presumably everywhere.

In the United States alone, a woman is assaulted or beaten every nine seconds, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Domestic violence occurs in 20 percent of marriages and intimate partnerships, according to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.

One in four women (and one in seven men) have been victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner. One in 10 women are raped by their intimate partner, according to this data.

“But Matt! If you’re with an overt abuser, just leave! It’s so simple and easy!”

Maybe sometimes. With trusted family or friends nearby, and the requisite amount of money and income prospects, it might be. The numbers tell a different story.

Women are 70 times more likely to be killed in the two weeks after leaving than at any other time during the relationship, reports the Domestic Violence Intervention Program. If the abuser is also a gun owner, the risk of homicide increases 500 percent.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the nearly 5,000 women murdered in 2021, 34 percent—one out of every three!—were killed by an intimate partner.

All of that to say, Men Who Feel Entitled to the Benefit of the Doubt and Deserving of Sex and Women’s Affection in Dating and Relationships, it’s wild that you were the fastest sperm.

When is it time to leave, Mandy? If violence and/or abusive behavior is a threat to you, and you’re in a position to safely exit to a secure place with the support of family and friends, just one instance of physical abuse should not be tolerated.

When we are hurt in nonobvious ways, it’s time to leave.

Is He a “Different” Person When He’s Drinking? Is He Battling Addiction?

I’m not an addiction specialist, nor do I have any meaningful experience on the subject. But I understand it to be MUCH more complicated than some weak or lazy or selfish person choosing substance over everyone and everything else.

So we’re going to set addiction aside with this one major caveat: If I have a condition—no matter what it is—and you and your children suffer because of it? And I refuse to take any meaningful steps to address the condition in the spirit of wanting to protect you and the children? Then it might be time to leave. This isn’t a judgment or referendum on people struggling with the many things we humans struggle with. For me, a hard boundary should be not allowing oneself and/or one’s children to be hurt because of the actions of someone else, even if they’re sick and need help.

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Now, if addiction is NOT a factor? If he just likes drinking and escapism and doesn’t really give a shit what you or anyone else thinks about it? Then this isn’t any different than most of our relationship ills. Here’s someone who, in word and action, says unequivocally: “I choose what I want, and what I think, and what I feel over everything you want and think and feel. I choose me over you.”

This can manifest in a conversation about leaving the toilet seat up or leaving a dish by the sink just as easily as it can about consuming alcohol.

You’re allowed to have any personal values and any boundaries you want.

The measure of a relationship partner is the degree to which you can trust them to honor those values and boundaries. Often, I believe, we “accidentally” dishonor them through thoughtlessness and general inconsideration. But sometimes it’s a choice. And drinking as a middle finger to your feelings about it might be one of those choices.

I’m not a very judgy person. I don’t have enough information to feel one way or another about Mandy’s husband. But Mandy, if you or your children experience pain because of those choices he’s making, I think you have not only the right, but perhaps a duty to yourself to say: “No more.” And if the response is: “Ehhh. Sorry if you don’t like it, but I do what I want!” I believe building a healthy relationship with them (in their current form—people CAN evolve if they choose to) is a bridge too far.

When Is It Time to Leave?

I just said it, but it bears repeating:

If you are in a relationship with someone who overtly, or more subtly, communicates in word and action: “Whenever what you think and feel comes into conflict with what I think and feel, I will always choose my thoughts and feelings and experiences over yours,” then I believe you’re going to have a pain-filled, conflict-heavy, non-intimate partnership with someone you grow to resent and not trust.

It almost doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. Alcohol. Pornography. Timeliness. Cleaning habits. Working long hours. Literally ANYTHING can emerge as a competing value between two spouses or partners in a relationship.

And my job as someone’s partner is to learn their relational needs and wants and do my best to honor those. (And the same is true of them toward me.)

Because we’re human and ridiculous half the time, on our very best days, we will sometimes fail to notice how our actions or inactions are affecting other people. And that’s when they’ll say something about it. That’s when they’ll try to tell us that something is wrong.

I can try hard to validate and seek to understand.

Or I can dismiss them as petty complaints from someone who is being a little too crazy or a little too sensitive.

One way of responding can restore trust and repair our intimate connections with the people we love.

The other way of responding reinforces that—whether or not we realize it—we continue to be people who always choose ourselves over our partners whenever they’re being “inconvenient.”

Whether overt and intentional, or more subtle and seemingly by accident, there is simply no path to a healthy relationship in which both partners’ needs aren’t being met AND there is no recourse because all requests for help or change are summarily dismissed one way or another by the other person.

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I don’t think of myself as qualified to tell someone whether they should remain married. That’s above my paygrade.

But I’ll reiterate my very strong belief that it’s not okay for you or your children to be hurt because of something someone else is doing. He probably denies that his behavior actually hurts you. He probably doesn’t believe he has a problem, or that anyone else should think so either. That level of disassociation and cognitive dissonance is probably how we are able to sleep at night even when others are hurt by our actions.

And I’ll close with this.

Mandy, nothing has to be permanent.

Most of my meaningful personal growth occurred after my wife chose to end our marriage and start a new life.

In my experience, most people who leave aren’t playing games or entertaining the idea of coming back to the very relationship that hurt them so much. But IF you’re feeling some hesitation related to the finality of it all?

Nothing has to be final. Sometimes, people who overtly or accidentally violate your values and boundaries, will learn how to stop doing that because they choose you over whatever is getting in the way.

Separation is a viable path to both a new life AND relationship repair. And either scenario offers a path to experiencing the safety, peace, and contentment that healthy living provides.

You’re worthy of being loved and cared for in a manner YOU experience as love and care. Anything less is a broken promise from someone who has already broken a bunch of promises.

That doesn’t necessarily make them bad. It doesn’t make them unworthy of love. But it might make them an awful relationship partner.

And we need not agree to be in relationships with awful partners.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.

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