When Leaving Looks Like the Only Option

There is a particular kind of woman who ends up in my office. She isn’t necessarily married to a terrible man, although sometimes she wishes he were terrible because it would make things easier.

Instead, she may be married to a perfectly decent person. They have history, children they adore, a home they worked hard for, friends, traditions, vacations, inside jokes. There may still be affection between them. Sometimes there is still very good sex.

And she is sitting across from me thinking:

"I love him. But I don’t want this life anymore."

She wants to know if the relationship can be salvaged, and further she wants to know if it is worth salvaging. If it can, does she even want it to be?

Sometimes she just wants permission to give up. Other times, she wants permission to pull the trigger on the radical transformation she has been imagining for years. She wants me to tell her it is okay to pursue the other version of herself because what she has here isn’t going to work.

I understand that longing.

Her feelings are valid, and more importantly, they are informative. She of course deserves the reflection she has finally allowed herself. She absolutely deserves a life she actually wants to inhabit. And she is certainly worthy of whatever it is she is longing for.

But I also want her to examine one very important premise: Why have you decided that having those things and staying married are mutually exclusive?

What we've done is equate "freedom" with leaving. And I want to know: Is leaving actually freedom?

Or is leaving simply the most complete opposite of the life you don’t want anymore?

If what you desperately want is adventure, sexual vitality, creative expression, meaningful work, a different social world, more autonomy, less responsibility, more intellectual stimulation, a different relationship with your body, or simply the opportunity to discover who you are now, then I want to take every bit of that seriously.

I also want to know why your spouse necessarily has to disappear for you to have it.

Because divorce is an action; freedom - an experience.

When we attach an action to a feeling, the fantasy can become incredibly compelling.

"There is another version of me out there -the one who took the risk. The one who moved, pursued the career, the one who didn’t spend twenty years taking care of everybody."

I understand this one personally because I can very easily construct a version of my life in which I made it to Broadway. Maybe I could have, and in my fantasy I would definitely have been enormously successful. Celebrated, in fact!

But I can fabricate another version just as easily.

Maybe I auditioned a thousand times and spent five years being rejected. Maybe constant scrutiny of my body contributed to an eating disorder. Maybe I developed a drug problem. Maybe I was mugged. Maybe I eventually gave up on the whole thing and ended up sitting in the same therapy office at 44, contemplating my life and wondering what would have happened if I had chosen differently.

Neither story is evidence. They are both just that: stories.

The life I didn’t live has one enormous advantage over the life I did: It never had to happen. It never had to become ordinary. It never had to survive a single burnt casserole or emergency car repair. It never had to experience the disappointment that comes when a child makes a poor choice, or the loss of a loved one.

That doesn’t make the fantasy meaningless. In fact, quite the opposite. The fact that I imagine Broadway tells me something about a part of myself I long for, and that has real value. The life you imagine may tell you something important about the person you want to experience yourself being. Maybe she is creative or adventurous. Maybe she is sexual. Maybe she makes things. Maybe she is seen. Maybe nobody needs anything from her for five freaking minutes.

Listen to her.

Just don’t automatically assume you have to destroy your current life in order to meet her. That is the distinction I think we lose when we rush too quickly from dissatisfaction to decision. The longing itself is information, but the explanation for your longing is a hypothesis. And the remedy you have assigned to it is another hypothesis.

We can test those things. Maybe you begin transforming in broad daylight, right in front of your spouse. Maybe you stop performing the role that no longer fits. Maybe you ask for substantially more room. Maybe the whole architecture of your marriage changes and maybe your husband has to give some things up too. Maybe he discovers that he actually likes the woman you are becoming. Maybe he doesn’t.

But now at least you know something you did not know before - you have evidence.

I am not interested in convincing a woman to stay inside a life she cannot stand simply because she made a promise twenty years ago. I am interested in making sure that before she sacrifices something of enormous value in pursuit of another life, she knows what she is actually pursuing, and whether the thing she is sacrificing truly stands between her and it. You were meant for a life you want to inhabit.

Absolutely.

But before you decide you have to leave your marriage to get it, I want to ask you one question:

Leaving is the thing you’ve assigned to freedom.

But is it actually?