Signs It’s Time to Leave Your Marriage

No tea leaves required

Introduction-the expectation for clear answers is fantasy

Get certainty! The billboard read. It was advertising for a local psychic. Hot damn! I thought. This person knows how to hit what is a hot button desire for most people. I mean, who doesn’t want certainty in their life, especially when it comes to desires?

I’ll get the job. A financial windfall is coming. The cancer will never come back. My dog will be found safe and sound. My dream partner is coming.

Uh, huh. Sign me up!

My background as an evangelical Christian has its own promise of certainty. Though that’s referred to as “standing on the Word” or simply having faith.

Bottom line: If you don’t get what you’re hoping for, you are clearly not appropriating the correct Scriptures. Or you are simply lacking faith.

Yeah, that dollop of shame on top of your dashed hopes makes it extra yummy, doesn’t it?

If there is one thing I am learning in my 60 years and especially on my spiritual journey and it is this.

There are no certainties. Not the kind we prefer, anyway.

Okay, I will concede the certainty of physical death. (Sorry Mark Twain, taxes aren’t on my brief list. We all know the rich find loopholes.)

Certainty is an illusion. And never is it more apparent than we are searching for it when we’re overtaken with worry. As a cancer survivor, I feel this deep in my bones. (While hoping that feeling is not from metastasis.)

I want the doctor to say with 100% certainty that the cancer will never come back. I want to know 100% that my bills will be paid. I want unwavering confidence my kids will live with success and happiness all their days.

I wanted certainty in my decision to divorce, too.

Was I doing the right thing? Would I regret my decision? Have I done everything that I can do to save my marriage?

They were agonizing questions because there were no clear answers. If only someone could read the tea leaves and tell me what I longed to hear. If only I had seen the billboard for that psychic sooner. Hell, I even flipped open my dusty Bible a few times, hoping to land on The Verse.

Ah yes, The Verse. (Cue to ethereal music.) Eyes closed, you place on your finger on a page and ta-da! There’s your confirmation.

Um yeah. That never worked either. Unless, of course, you can do the mental gymnastics needed to extrapolate wisdom for your situation out of a verse deep in the weeds from the Book of Leviticus. It did just occur to me that randomly landing on Exodus could be a sign, but I digress.

How do we move forward when our desire for certainty can paralyze?

I’m so glad you asked. Set down your machination of choice and let’s talk.

Why do we look for certainty?

First, understand our desire for certainty, particularly for comfort and security, is hard-wired. We want to know we will always be safe. Predictability keeps us from not always having to reinvent the wheel and saves us precious brain power.

There’s a survival instinct as well. From our ancestors knowing which berries were safe to eat to the modern Mr. Big Man making decisions in the boardroom. God forbid we made a decision that poisons us or (gasp) angers the shareholders!

Certainty provides shared norms and values that strengthen our social connections and sense of belonging. (Something that has been seriously eroding for the past several decades, but that’s a topic for another day.)

So yeah. The desire is normal.

And there is no shame in not knowing. For me, this also means unlearning what I once considered faith, which I now understand was as a grasp for control and attempts to influence outcomes.

Faith to me now means, I don’t know jack shit. (By the way, that verse is the first chapter in the Theresa version of the Bible that contains The Book of Shit Happens.)

And that is okay. It’s about surrender and accepting that I can control very few outcomes.

The cancer could come back. The country can go to hell in a handbasket (which is a deep concern). My kids will face difficult times. And so on.

What it means to me is learning to trust in my Higher Power, which includes its animating spark of life deep within my being. Not a person of faith? That is a-okay. We can call it intuition.

Just recall those moments of gut feelings and sparks of insight that appear out of the blue in your moment of need.

I know I’m taking the scenic route here in addressing the stay or go questions. But I feel it’s important to understand some of the foundational realities that guide and shape our decision making.

How do we break analysis paralysis when the stakes feel high and the potential for grief feels higher? I’m so glad you asked because I have some good news.

You can trust your gut

I’m referring to that spark within. It might not give you a to-do list, but it will offer peace when you’re on the right path.

But sadly, we are trained, especially in evangelical circles, that our gut is not to be trusted. (The misappropriation of the verse “The heart is desperately wicked” has done an excellent job of creating learned helplessness and self-doubt.)

Wisdom teachers tell us the key to tapping into our divine wisdom is through mindfulness. Sounds so easy, but stilling the spinning monkey mind takes both patience and practice. And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean assuming the lotus position for hours on end. (Which is a good thing given my hip’s inability to crisscross applesauce.)

There is not a single “correct” way to do this. (See that need for certainty again?) The trick it finding out what works for you.

For me, time in nature and playing music help me still my racing mind.

Other times, it means simply sitting quietly and observing. (Not to be confused with overthinking and rumination.) Then there are the times when a revelation smacks you upside the head while you’re clipping your toenails. (Eureka! I need to clip that person right out of my life!)

Don’t be discouraged at how difficult it can seem to access this inner wisdom. It is there as much as the nose on your face is. And when you find it, I can almost guarantee your ego is going to speak up and cause second guessing. This too is typical.

It can be uncomfortable as well learning to flex the intuition muscle. But with practice and time, it gets easier cutting through the fog.

What is your gut saying about your marriage?

While I absolutely love those flash of insight moments, it is not the only way intuition/heart wisdom reveals itself. Many times, the things are staring at us in plain sight but we can’t see it because the reality is too painful to acknowledge. We want to become those three little monkeys.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

There are several signs that it is time to move one. Look at those signs through the lens of your intuition. Some of these signs may not resonate with you. Others may smack you right upside the head and you just KNOW.

Using the filter of intuition, you may understand the behaviors beyond face value. The constant conflict over which way the towels should hang in the bathroom (tags inward, duh) isn’t about the towels.

And that funny feeling about the “working late at the office” is trying to open your eyes to a most unpleasant truth. I encourage you that if you are feeling this, do not do what I did and dismiss it as a paranoid musing.

Your gut knows. It is trying to tell you. Here are some signs it may use to get your attention.

Signs it’s time to move on

Is it chilly in here or is it just me? Um, it is chilly, my friend. Not gonna gaslight you. If any of these signs resonate with you, there’s a good starting point. Let’s go!

Physical and Emotional Disconnection-Feeling like roommates instead of partners? Conversations are limited to the necessary. And those daily hugs you once enjoyed are hanging out with Elvis. Conversations became terse. I felt like I was walking through a minefield many days, unsure of what comment might spark more conflict.

The Same Ole Same Ole Discussions-We had this on repeat for a few years. No new discussions. No new questions. No resolutions. Just the same ole same ole conflicts that showed up at the same ole same ole time. It’s an exhausting Not-So-Merry-Go-Round.

Pervasive Unhappiness-One morning I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, what the hell happened to this once happy woman? I felt like a shell of my former self. And then I would beat myself up for not keeping a good attitude, which only added to the misery.

My physical health was screaming at me. Chronic pain and severe IBS kept me hurting and running to the bathroom. I might mentally fool myself about the lack of happiness, but my body cannot tell a lie. Nor can yours.

Conflicting Core Values-Holy shit. This was especially hard for me. The day he told me he wasn’t sure he believed in marriage anymore should have been my “don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya” revelation. Sure, we all grow and change, but when that change is foundational, the fur’s gonna fly.

Our values guide and direct our actions. I still believe in the forsaking all others bit for marriage. But if one no longer believes in marriage, why not cast-off old restraints and have an affair? I imagine this is part of what he needed to tell himself in order to justify the forbidden fruit.

Therapy Becomes a Waste of Time-The first several months of therapy were a waste of time because of his stonewalling. He opened up more after the confession, but it was still clear we were going nowhere fast. It was incredibly discouraging.

Practical Concerns are Dismissed-When we discussed the nuts and bolts of divorce, a huge issue for me was how the hell was I going to support myself? Especially after most of my life was spent raising our family. My concern over this was dismissed. “You could make more money than I can, he said. Yeah. That didn’t feel so good. (Spoiler alert, as 60-year-old woman with health issues related to breast cancer treatment, that statement is even more silly to consider, especially since he is a CPA.)

We also agreed how, if we had health issues, we would be there for one another, even post-divorce. No small matter, since we were both in our late 50s. When the divorce was in the proceedings, I cued him in on my suspicious mammograms; I felt waved off. After the divorce and breast cancer diagnosis, I was ghosted. Yes, I know it was after the divorce, but it certainly underscored the feeling of dismissal.

I need to pause on this and point out that I minimized these dismissals as a good codependent does. I made excuses for him in order to soften the pain the indifference caused. (He’s in a lot of pain and, for fuck’s sake, how can I expect him to offer me any support, anyway? I’m “not his problem” anymore, was a script that played on repeat. Ow, ow, ow.)

If your needs are being dismissed…this is your sign, dear ones.

Conclusion-It’s a Tough Decision but Not Deciding is Even More Difficult

Choosing to end your marriage is likely one of the most difficult decisions you will ever make. This is so even for women leaving abusive marriages. Or, in my case, leaving a three decades plus marriage that had many happy years.

Learning to get back in touch with your inner wisdom is only the first step in recognizing and reclaiming the glorious essence of who you are at your core. It can feel frightening… but it’s also liberating.

Remember to get the support you need because the only thing worse than going through this is going through this alone. Your friends and family are rooting for you. A good therapist is imperative is well. (I understand therapy can be difficult to access because of financial constraints, so the next best thing would be to find a support group that is led by a mental health professional.)

If you know that you know it’s time to move one, here is your sign:

Take action. Do it.

And I wish for you great peace and grace as you move forward.

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