Why Are They Afraid to Say They Want a Divorce?

He opens our meeting with these words: “I don’t know how to tell her I want a divorce. When I try to say it is over, she asks us to go to couples therapy and work on the relationship. At that moment I freeze, not knowing what to answer. Why doesn’t she understand that, for me, there is no relationship left to work on? The problem is that this keeps happening, and meanwhile nothing changes.”
Originally published on Ynet: https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5420371,00.html#autoplay
In another case, a woman tells me she wants a divorce because her marriage is not good for her. There is no intimacy anymore, but plenty of anger. She wants him to attend a meeting with me so that he will understand they are heading for divorce. “If possible,” she asks, embarrassed, “please tell him yourself, because I am really afraid of his reaction.”

Someone Has to Say It Out Loud

For separation to have a good chance of proceeding peacefully, the person initiating it must take responsibility for clearly stating that the marriage has reached its end. They must be sufficiently at peace with the decision that doubts will not stop them. When a woman or man says they cannot tell their partner they want to separate, I explore how settled that decision is. Otherwise, the partner senses the uncertainty and, if opposed to separation, will probably derail the conversation by saying things that deepen those doubts.
To understand what is really preventing them from beginning separation, I ask what worries them about it. The gap between feeling it is time to separate and turning that feeling into a decision and action can be very wide, sometimes almost impassable. It consists of various concerns troubling the person wishing to leave. Each matters in its own right. Here are some of them.

Feelings of Failure and Shame

Statistics showing high divorce rates offer little comfort to the individual. Personally, the collapse of a dream is profoundly painful. We grow up and live in a culture that sanctifies family life, where starting a family is a supreme, cherished value—consider the LGBT struggle for the right to establish a legally recognized family. Conversely, the expression “breaking up a family,” although it is the marriage that ends, reflects couples’ frequent feeling that they have failed at the social and cultural task of building a family.

Guilt

If the experience is that the family is breaking apart, someone clearly suffers, first and foremost the children. What does one partner’s decision to seek personal happiness mean? Does it come at the expense of the other partner’s or children’s happiness? If choosing to do something for oneself harms another, feelings of guilt arise and can be very heavy.

Financial Fear

It is much easier to fantasize about life without your partner while continuing to pay the bills together. Those preparing to separate also think about the day after, and often become anxious about the greater cost of running two households. Where incomes differ substantially, or family income is low, separation will clearly require cutbacks. One partner may face real financial hardship. Might continued emotional suffering be preferable to fear of material deprivation?

Fear of Loneliness

Loneliness within marriage can be masked by interactions with children, extended family and friends. After separation, loneliness may become harder to ignore. A glance at dating sites shows how intensely divorced people seek and long for a new relationship, and how difficult this is for everyone. Will I find love after divorce? Will I grow old with a partner or alone? These questions awaken deep fears within us all.

Loss of Social Status

As if fear of loneliness were not enough, people often wonder which mutual friends will remain after divorce. Will married friends still invite me? Will I belong to the same social circles, or need to seek groups for single people whose entry requirement is divorce itself? Before separation, people ask what it says about them: will they be labeled divorced, and how much will divorce define their identity?

The Power of Habit

When guilt, failure and financial and social fears accompany the decision, entering divorce feels like entering limbo. The “old world” of marriage no longer exists, but the “new world” in which one feels emotionally, socially and financially comfortable has not yet formed. The tasks required to feel at ease in the new situation are multidimensional and difficult. Staying married is easier: it is familiar, and even if unpleasant, its discomfort brings no surprises. There one can always fantasize that separation will happen after the holidays, the bar mitzvah, or the youngest child’s graduation or military service. Meanwhile, one just keeps going…

Is it any wonder, then, that partners of people who want to separate but hesitate to enter the unknown can delay the process, postpone the decisive conversation and often dissolve the discussion altogether? It is not the other partner who holds up separation, but the feelings, fears and anxieties of the person wanting to leave. These stop the process, postpone facing a new path and, when continuing becomes truly difficult, lead them to say: “I don’t know how to tell him/her I want to separate.”

Adv. Nili Shiloh is a family mediator at A. Shiloh & Co. Law Offices.