You Can Tell A Couple Is Headed For Divorce By These 10 Behaviors That Slowly Become Normal
Yan Krukau | CanvaThere are many reasons that couples consider divorce, including unresolved empathic ruptures, lack of compatibility, or lack of romantic connection. No matter the reasons underlying your marital dissatisfaction, divorce is a difficult decision to make, particularly if there are children involved.
Here are some of the most common decision points I see in my practice that make people feel that it is definitely time to move forward with separation and divorce.
You can tell a couple is headed for divorce by these 10 behaviors that slowly become normal:
1. You can no longer envision a healthy or positive future with your partner
You become increasingly aware that you and your partner have very different views of how the future would look, and you cannot imagine feeling fulfilled if you remained together.
Alternatively, you may not even be able to visualize a future with your partner at all, and you may even realize that you and your partner never spoke much about specifics of your future together (e.g., post-retirement, with kids out of the house, etc), probably because neither of you looked forward to this time.
2. You're not jealous when you visualize your partner dating someone else
Depending on the situation, you may feel anxious or angry at the thought of your partner introducing someone new to your children, but overall, you feel neutral or even relieved at the thought of your partner’s romantic involvement with someone else.
In the best-case scenario that foreshadows an amicable divorce, you believe that your partner could certainly find someone better suited to them than you are, and you hope that they do.
3. You can own your part in the marital dysfunction
If you can look at the narrative of your marriage and see why it hasn’t worked out, you are often at the stage where you are looking at the marriage objectively in the past tense.
If you are still very defensive, saying that the issues were all your partner’s, rather than an unhealthy interface between two people and their individual issues, this could mean two things: (a) you are still very emotionally caught up in the marriage, for better or worse, and/or (b) your divorce will be a lot more conflictual and bitter.
4. You can see the good and bad parts of your partner, with detachment
For example, you can think, “My husband is a loving father, but he is terrible at managing money.” You do not feel as much anger about the bad parts, and you do not get drawn in or emotionally compelled by the good parts. You are gaining some distance, which usually presages splitting up.
5. You've started researching divorce in-depth
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When you are looking into the laws surrounding divorce, finances, custody, and so forth, most people are in a different headspace. When you move away from googling things about unhappy marriages and more about second marriages or how to divide 401Ks, this is a sea change for most people.
6. Your present unhappiness is more compelling than your fear about the future
Many people fear their post-divorce future, wondering if they will ever meet someone else, if they will ever get their finances back on track, or if their kids will need therapy. Fear is natural and normal for any major life transition. When people are ready to leave, though, all of the fears feel outweighed by your distress in your marriage.
7. You feel completely different than when you met your partner
Many people who decide to divorce just do not feel like the same person anymore as they were at the beginning of their relationship. While you have sympathy for the person you used to be, you do not feel that you are still that person; they feel like a relative to you instead of a version of yourself.
You can therefore see why it can’t work out with your partner, since you have changed so much, and they either haven’t changed as much from your perspective, or have changed in a much different way than you have. This is why marriages often do not survive when there are tremendous life changes in one person but not in the other, e.g., illness, sobriety, treatment for mental illness.
8. You can make peace with changes in the time spent with your kids
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Many more couples nowadays have joint custody, and this will necessarily alter how often you see your kids. However, because you will be solo parenting whenever you do have your children, your amount of one-on-one kid time may not change as much as you’d think. This is especially true because so many unhappy couples basically hand off the children to one another, parenting in shifts, and do not have much joint parenting time.
Either way, if you are frantic at the thought of missing every other weekend with your children, this is often a major deterrent to divorce. On the other hand, if you believe that you are a less effective parent because of your marital distress, or you recognize that the children are witnessing conflict more often than is good for them, you may feel that divorce would allow you to be a better and more present parent.
I can attest that this is the case for many of my clients who were experiencing a great deal of depression and anxiety due in part to marital conflict. When they are out of a high-conflict marriage, their parenting style often becomes more flexible, laid back, and positive, not to mention that their time with their kids is something to look forward to rather than a constant stressor and source of worry.
9. You do not feel that your marriage could recover even if empathic ruptures were resolved
When you still wish your partner would validate your feelings about past hurts, there is still hope for your marriage. However, many people feel that the window for feeling better about certain major grievances (e.g., infidelity, violent arguments, insults, betrayals of other kinds) has closed permanently. People seem to go from wishing that a partner would empathize and/or apologize about certain key situations, to knowing that their partner cannot or will not, and trying to be okay with that.
After this stage, some people actually do become okay and can move forward productively in their marriage. Other people realize that they just cannot get over this past hurt and start wondering what it would be like to be with someone else with whom they did not have this bitter history. Going down this mental path is often a precursor to divorce.
10. You have had a lightbulb moment that you will never be happy in this marriage
Many people describe having one moment when they calmly recognize that they will never be able to have a healthy or sustainable marriage with their partner. They generally describe that this is something they knew for months or years, but it crystallized in one specific moment. Usually, this moment feels calm because you finally know exactly what you are going to do. Other emotions come up, like sadness, but generally, there is less anger when you finally make your decision.
If this article resonates with you, use it to introspect about what you want out of life and marriage. While I strongly encourage most couples to work on their marriages via counseling, many people are reading this who have either tried and failed at counseling or, for whatever reason, feel it wouldn’t work in their situation. In these cases, individual therapy is an ideal place to hash out and process what your next steps should be.
It is hard to be fully present in the rest of your life, as a parent, in the workplace, and in the world in general, if you feel lonely, sad, and angry in your marriage. If you choose to split from your partner, it takes determination and effort, but divorce does not have to be traumatic for your children.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice, Best Life Behavioral Health.
