When is it Time to Leave? | Q&A with Dr. Jennifer

When do I know that it's the right thing? I don't think we ever know that it's the most right thing. I think we know what our souls can bear. We know what is most meat, right? What is most right for us to do, which is different than saying everything comes together. There's this loss on this side and this loss on this side. There is no obvious right answer. What do I desire? What can I back up? That requires that we take moral responsibility onto ourselves. It's hard to do it. It's easy to want someone to tell you the right thing or wait for other people to do the right thing, as opposed to discerning and having the courage to do what you believe is most right. [MUSIC] Welcome to Conversations with Dr. Jennifer, a collection of interviews on the topics of relationships, sexuality, spirituality, and more, all featuring Dr. Finlayson 5. [MUSIC] Welcome everybody. I'm glad to be here. I'm sort of glad to be here. I'll tell you this is a tough topic. It's one I tend to avoid a little bit, and let me just talk out loud about why I do, because I feel like very often, people hear the wrong message. People hear the message that indulges them, rather than the one that asks them to have more courage. So I think I feel afraid if I talk about when it's right to leave a marriage that the wrong people grab that as validation to go do something that is ultimately indulgent and non-self-confronting. On the other hand, a lot of people use the clean up your side of the street's idea, which is important, and I'm going to continue to emphasize the importance of that, because it also gives you the strength to leave when you need to leave. But some people use that to not do what in their souls they know they need to do. That is that they have the idea that if I clean up my side, then it will get the other person to do what I wish they would do. Choose me, love me, do their part. And so it's actually a way of not facing some of the harder truths. So in a way, you're cleaning up, but not fully, because you're not dealing more honestly with your situation. In the fantasy that if I do enough, I will get this person to finally love me. And that's the wrong idea. So let me start with one thought out of the gate, which is this work requires self-honesty, and it requires courage. And a lot of times we can use the truth or enough of what's true to do really indecent things to indulge the worst in ourselves. And sometimes we can do what seems loving, but doesn't have enough truth in it. And those two have to go together. And if you're really-- one of the things is that no matter who you blame, no matter what story you tell yourself, you alone-- I wouldn't say you alone, because you're affecting other people. But you are the one who's going to live in the consequences of your choices. And that's a hard thing to do. It's hard to disappoint people. It's hard to deal with people being unhappy with you. It's hard to deal with invalidation. And so we often shrink from it in ways that can hurt our own souls and can hurt other people. So the hard thing about being an adult and knowing what it means to do, to love, knowing how to live in integrity, is it asks us to take deeper responsibility for ourselves and our lives and our impact on other people. And when we're in some distortion of that, we either straddle as in stay in indecision endlessly, which I will strongly discourage. I think that straddling, that indecision, is very, very hard on everyone. Or we move into kind of impulsive action, but we do a lot of telling ourselves stories about why we're justified, but it doesn't have enough truth in it to ground our choices. So let me talk first about indecision. The issue with indecision and a marriage-- and a lot of people are in a marriage, but they haven't chosen in. And you even may be the higher desire person for the marriage to work, but you're not really choosing to address your marriage and really deal with it and really work on it. But you're also not choosing to leave it. And I think that position builds resentment, builds in both people, the indecision, the straddling. And I don't mean that you can't go through periods where you're really trying to sort out what's right. But if you just stay there as a way to not have courage, to not assert a sense of who you are into your life, then it really hurts you. It hurts your partner. And it keeps you from either creating a life without your spouse or creating a life with them. And usually the way we justify indecision is either the idea that I'm not the problem they are. Or it's the false hope that they are going to change. If I just hang in here long enough, if I'm patient long enough, I think patience is a very misused idea. It's a way of staying in indecision while giving it a virtuous label. Rather than true patience is when you actually see something growing and evolving. And it's not perfect. But you see meaningful integrity-based steps. And you're patient with yourself, with your child, with your spouse, with the situation because something meaningful is happening. And growth takes time and takes our compassion. And it takes our kindness. That's a kind of patience that's actually creating something. But a lot of us use patience to not deal with what our hearts know is that nothing is growing here. Nothing is changing here. And so false hope is not a virtue. A lot of us stay in our marriages or stay in situations in the same static way because we live in the fantasy that someday this is going to be easier. My spouse is going to want something different than what they want right now. That something will change. And hope is a hard thing to let go of. But false hope, false faith, is important to let go of because it actually keeps us stuck. And so it's valuable to confront in yourself. Am I living in a kind of fantasy that-- let's just start with the idea that you really have done your part. You've been taking the courses. You've been doing the things. You've been looking at yourself. You've been having more honest conversations with your spouse. You've been growing. You've been loving differently. And this is all an assumption because many of you be like me, me, me. And it's not as much as you think. But we'll come to that in a second. But let's say that you really have. And some of you wrote in questions where, yeah, it sounds like you've really been trying to address the marriage in stronger way. You've been looking at your part. You've been trying to really revive a marriage that fell apart or died under both of your neglect. And you really tried to bring your better self to it. And you're not finding a willing partner. OK. A marriage requires two people-- a thriving marriage requires two people that want to make that marriage work, that want to grow into people that are better friends, more capable of friendship. You can't have a thriving marriage. You can't have an intimate marriage if you don't have two people that are willing to do their part to build a bridge, to say, who am I in this? Who are you? How could I be a better friend to you? How could you be a better friend to me? Like that we love each other. other enough that we're committed to do that work. That's what it is to be committed to a marriage. I promise God that I will love this person, right, and that we will create something together. And so I think false hope is that in your core, you know that that's not who your partner is or it's not who you are, that you don't want that enough, that your spouse doesn't want it. That you maybe don't want a divorce, you maybe don't want the social cost of it, you maybe don't want the disruption to your family, to your extended family, to that web of relationships, all of which is understandable and worth considering. Okay, but that you know that you don't want to create a partnership with this person enough or you know even if it breaks your heart that they don't want to do it and they're not going to do it. And that it's such a painful thing to acknowledge that we tend to not do it. We tend to tell ourselves stories that maybe I'll want to work on it later. Maybe they'll work on it later. Can't I change my wants though? Yes, people can change what they want. But me sitting around doing the same thing is not going to change anything. Me sitting around hoping that eventually something will kick in is not a good use of our energy, which is different than saying people cannot change or that no one changes or that we can't change. But when we stay in indecision with the fantasy that something is going to change, we often then keep ourselves from actually addressing our lives and doing and choosing more wisely. And a lot of us get involved in the process of trying to convince our spouse to change, to listen to the podcast, to do the thing because we don't want to deal with who they are. We want to get them to be someone that they aren't currently. And we get so busy trying to get them to change that we're not dealing with what we do have control of, which is ourselves. And they can resist us because as long as we're there trying to get them to want the right thing or want the thing that we want, they don't have to deal with their choices. And it actually obscures their choices. And so I think that the hardest thing for humans because we're so deeply connected to each other and we affect each other so much. And it's very painful to confront invalidation and people's anger at us or people's dislike of us or whatever the difficult thing is that we easily go into our ego protective positions. But we interfere with actually affecting our situation and affecting our lives because we're busy considering what other people should be doing or hoping we can get them to do the thing we want them to do instead of accepting that they are doing what they are doing. And they're probably not going to change what they're doing or I shouldn't be banking my life on it. That's for sure. I shouldn't be waiting for them to do differently. They're going to do what they're going to do. And I don't have control over it. I don't have control over whether or not my spouse self-confronts. I don't have control over whether or not my spouse will ever desire me or want to figure out their sexuality. I don't have control over whether or not people like me or will love me. And so the sooner you let go of the fantasy that you're going, I mean, to speak somewhat paradoxically here because you're going to be like, wait, I think you just said, okay. So the sooner we can accept that we cannot make people do anything, think anything, want anything, change anything. Right? The more we challenge false hope and the more we're able to figure out the next question, which is who am I in this situation? What am I going to do? Given that I can't, I'm going to let go of the idea that my spouse who's done basically the same thing for 20 years is going to do something different tomorrow. Now, and that's not saying that they won't, but I'm not going to keep imagining something that as long as we keep doing life the same way, the chances of us doing the same way tomorrow are very, very high. And so rather than I'm voting against them, that's not it. I'm figuring out given that I can't control that, that people are going to do humanity and self-justification and you know, perpetuates the same habits they've probably been doing forever. That's on them. What am I going to do that I can respect? What am I going to do that I can back up, that I can be proud of, that I can claim my life more deeply? And it's going to always take courage because it means breaking the stability, the self-justified stability that you have in your marriage or your other important relationships already. And by stability, I don't mean happiness and everything's great. I mean that we're in a kind of equilibrium with people around us because we do things in a pattern that keeps both sides justified doing relatively similar patterns. And so one of the real problems of being resentful and annoyed and a victim of the other person's bad behavior is it keeps that pattern stable. It just means you keep being the victim of their bad choices. I don't mean you really are, but you keep telling yourself you're the victim of their bad choices. And you keep telling yourself you're the good one and they're the bad one. And that whole idea just keeps that system stable while giving yourself a false kind of way to feel better than. And it keeps you from the question of, they're going to keep doing this thing I don't like. They're going to keep, you know, that's on them. Well, I didn't say they're going to keep you, I don't know, maybe they won't, maybe they'll change it tomorrow, but it's not mine to control. I cannot make them do anything differently. I can figure out if I'm going to keep being a part of this repeating pattern. And if I'm not, what does it ask of me? If I'm going to be honest with myself, what does courage ask of me? Do I want to create a different kind of marriage? And what is my part in creating it? Or do I know that I have tried and tried? And I don't have a partner that wants to do it. And I know the courageous thing for me is to break the pattern is to do something dramatically different. And what does courage ask of me? What does love ask of me? Because I don't think it's loving to be with someone that, well, I don't want to be too simple minded here. Because I think there's a lot more marriage isn't just to people, especially if you have children and you have a web of connections, it's more than that. And so, you know, there's a lot on the line to break a marriage. It impacts the whole web of relationships. It shapes everyone in it. And so it's not a small choice. And I sometimes courage asks of us that this marriage isn't going to be what I wish it were. I have a spouse that I think it's unlikely that they are going to address themselves in this marriage. I don't think they want that level of a marriage. And yet, I still believe that it's the right thing for me to stay not out of a heroic, like, false superior fear-based choice. Okay, so I don't mean costly accommodation. I don't mean victim entitlement, okay, to go to the losing strategies. I don't mean we use it as I'm the good one here, because I'm doing the heroic, self-sacrificing thing so other people don't have to suffer. I mean that it's an act of courage, that it's like of my horrible choices. This is what I believe is most right, and I'm asserting it, and I'm choosing it. And I may never be acknowledged for that choice. I may never be understood for that choice, but I know inside of myself that it's the choice I can live with, that I can back up, knowing that there's loss in it, that there's the loss of a hope of a marriage that will be what I wish it could be. For others, the courageous choice may be to break the marriage, to say that even though it will cost all of us on some level, it's really what I know is right for me to do. And there will be hard things about just as there's hard things in staying deliberately and courageously, there are hard things in going deliberately and courageously. There will be losses, there will be dark days. It is hard to lose hope. It's hard to lose history. It's hard to lose connections to other people. Your spouse's friends, your spouse's family that you may well be close to. Those are deep ruptures and they're painful. And they're painful for a reason, especially if you've really forged a life over time. I mean, that's why I think it's so unkind and indecent to not bring your courage to your marriage. Because when you involve another person in your life, but you won't self-confront, you won't be honest with yourself and love this person. You promise God you would love, right? You're pushing them up against really hard choices. It really hard choices because you are affecting their happiness whether or not you want to be. And so you may be like, yeah, but I was so young and I never would have chosen that person. And yet you did, right? And yet you did choose that person and you forged a life with them up to this point. Now, of course, it all matters. If you've been married two months, a very different idea, you've been married two years. This is a very different idea. If you have one child, it's a different idea than if you have five children. Okay. So that is to say, I'm not saying that that means the further in you are that you don't have choices. I'm just saying the level of loss and rupture is different the longer that you go. But it's also different if the kids are gone. If you know, you've you've fulfilled that part of the marriage in your life, it's a different choice, I think, to end a marriage. Then it still doesn't mean that there isn't pain for all involved. But we're always, whether or not we like it, making decisions within a web of connections, and our choices do impact others, including staying resentfully. Okay. So, so I think, you know, ending a marriage, even if it's the right thing to do, is deeply painful because you're you're breaking a life apart, a shared history, a shared reality. And it's very stressful, very hard. And yet can often be the right thing to do, the most right thing to do. I mean, I think if you stay with someone, but you resent them, that's not love. That's not loving. If you can't back up your choice and hold yourself to it, right, you have to sort out where you can stand with integrity, that you can push yourself to say, I will take this onto myself because I understand others will hurt, others will feel pain. And I still believe it is the right place for me to be. And, and if we shrink from it just to keep people happy with us, but we're not doing what we believe is right, it will create resentment, it will create, you know, just kind of low level pain throughout. And so we the more we can claim a position and bring our courage to that position, the more loving it is, the more we actually are creating something better. Okay, somebody just said, what if this spouse is making small changes, needing small requests when encouraged by our therapist, but it's still not verbally self-confronting in front of me or in session, I'm not sure he can. How can I know? So first of all, I don't know, I don't know that this is your situation, but let me just speak to this. I don't know that it matters that much. I've worked with people that are like, yes, yes, that was terrible. I'm very sorry, but they don't go do anything different. And then I've other people that won't acknowledge that that their spouse is saying something that's true and needs to be dealt with, like they don't really come and say, you're right, but they go change things. Okay. And to be absolutely certain, I would much rather have spouse that just goes and does things differently, goes their way and sends no more. Okay. Because that's where that's where it's at. Like, am I going to take that information and and have it hit something in me and self-correct? Now, you can wonder, like, why wouldn't you just acknowledge? Right? But okay. But I think that if it's really like, I understand it's a problem and I'm going to do it differently, that's the most important thing. A lot of us are good at saying, sorry, but then we just keep justifying ourselves. But going back to this question, I think, so if they're making small changes, I think the question for me would be, are they in fact changes? Are they changing? Like, are they growing or are they capitulating or accommodating the therapist to look good so they can come back and say, I did this good thing. Be proud of me. Or are they, is it something deeper? Is it a deeper self-authorship? Is it a deeper reflection of something in them? So that's what I would be looking at. Is this a person that's just trying to make me happy by going to therapy, but they're not actually willing to deal with themselves? And if they're not, do I have anything to do with that? Am I less heroic here than I think? Okay. Am I as good or as willing to look at myself as I think? And you may be. Okay. So I'm not saying it's always comes back to you're the, you know, you're ultimately the cause of that. I'm not saying that. But we have to be careful because we are very quick to tell ourselves we're the good ones. When we're a part of that, that stabilized system. And so we have to look at ourselves in it. But if you are with somebody who either can't or won't, I mean, this is just probably deserved its own topic, even though I don't know the answer. Okay. Because there was a lot of times when I sat with people in session and I've thought, is it that he can't or he won't self-confront? And I often don't know the answer. Is does this person have enough trauma that they can't or is it that they won't? Okay. And I think you have to feel that out in your heart and resentment is a piece of it. Because if you're going to say they can't. Okay. Well, let me, let me go back to this for a second. I think one thing is that do you see the person really trying to understand their role, trying to see the other person's experience of them? Or do they just come in with a bunch of excuses about why they're bad behavior was justified? Why, you know, they're not really the one to blame? Why it's really your fault? Okay. Not theirs. Why if you had done a B and C they never would have done D you know? I mean, can't or won't then they're not going to change that is to say they're not trying to look at the question of how could I do better? If you think you have someone who is trying to do better, who does want to do better? Okay. You've got a chance and any good therapy or any good coaching or any good process of change is going to ask for each of you to break painful patterns of relating and grow into a kind or wiser way. It is also true if you look at, okay, well, my spouse is always full of excuses. And yet I also know that I've been critical, that I tend to blame them, that I've also tended to focus on them a lot. So I have set up a spouse who's guarded and defensive and self protective. Okay. Then you might say, like, let me deal with my part and get clearer because then I can see what they will or won't do. Then I can see. But the idea is not if I change it, then they'll love me, is that I have to make sure I'm not a part of the problem. And then I can see more clearly what it is that I need to do, how it is that I could change. You know, when I was dating John, he was the higher desire person for the relationship. I could lean out because I had the comfort or the reassurance of his focus on me. I also used critique as a kind of protection against really stepping in. So I wanted his love, but I didn't want to bring my full self there. And John was slow to share his feelings, slow to speak his mind. And I didn't like that. I wanted to know him more. And I would often use that. Like, I just don't know if I can be with someone that's so quiet, that doesn't share what he thinks and feels. And yet, that's a fair point. But I couldn't see at the time, but and so when I would see him that way, I would lean out more, which would make it easier for him to be self protective with me. And so I couldn't see like I am actually in this ecosystem. And I'm creating a reality. And so I was seeing a therapist at the time as smart one. And I'm so grateful for her because she's like, you know, you're leaning out like this is there's no way for you to know what this relationship is capable of in the posture that you're in. You know, everything you can know from the leaning out discerning position, you don't seem able to leave it. You also don't seem willing to choose it. And you're you're causing him pain and you're causing yourself pain. And you've got to either just step out or step in. Okay, if you want something different than this pain ambivalence, you've got to do one courageous thing or the other. And I did step out, you know, because it was easier than I'd grow up with them and stuff. But then I'd always just be tracking him, I didn't want him out of my life. That was the thing. But I couldn't see that at the time, because I also didn't want to step in. I just wanted him revolving around me. What a treat I was, right? But so at a certain point, I just knew I had to step in more fully, stop the ambivalence, like just give it my whole heart, make a commitment, choose in, don't lean out every time I'm disappointed. And what was so amazing about that was, for example, how afraid I was of the exposure and the investment, how much courage it took, it took far less courage for me to just break up and kind of feel like I deserve better or kind of thing, took way more courage to step in with my whole heart and to bring myself there and to stay in it, even in the face of invalidation. And in the face of John sinking and desiring different things than me. And, you know, just to not to say like I'm here for it, I'm here for this process. And then that courage and that willingness to stay and started to change the ecosystem in which we were relating. And as I stayed constant and I kept pushing my own growth, I remember my therapist saying to me, if this is the wrong relationship, you will know it at a different level when you bring your full self there. When you choose in, okay, if you're going to do that, you'll know and you'll know that you can leave it and really leave it instead of straddling all the time. Or you'll be able to choose in. But if you keep doing this, you're going to be stuck forever in misery. And so when I stepped in, what happened is, first of all, I realized what a fearful person I was, how much I was focused on John's limitations in love, not my own. I mean, and then when I stepped in and I could see how really loving another person pushed me to be more courageous, to be more honest, to be less focused on what other people think and more focused on who I am. And so that growth was good for me. Even if I had determined in that, this isn't the right place for me. What instead happened is as John could see that I really wasn't going anywhere, that I really was bringing my full self. He started opening up more. He started sharing more. He started, you know, I mean, it just, I started feeling more reassurance. I felt more loved by him. I felt more clarity that we were a couple. And so by the time I got to the actual wedding, I had very little residual doubt. I mean, I can't say that I had no moments up like, you know, like you, but, but my confidence just kept growing as we got closer and closer to the wedding. And so I think that's the thing is if you look courageously at yourself, it will help you know, I also have couples where they said like I have to end this. And I think they were right. Like they needed to say, I cannot do this anymore. And, you know, I worked with a couple where he was uninterested in doing anything, uninterested in looking at himself. And she came alone. She was ready to call it quits, but she was so preoccupied with whatever anybody else thought. And she also wasn't sure that she was at peace enough with herself in the relationship. And so she actually said, I'm not sure I want to do this. I still want to see if we can create anything. If you're willing, if you're willing to come to therapy with me. And at that point, he was because he'd really looked at death store and he didn't want that. And so when they walked up to death store, they were able to choose in a different way where when they had been in this stable miserable pattern of her pursuing and him distancing, nothing shifted. And to be clear, she didn't do that as a strategy because some of you may be like, oh great, I'm going to tell my spouse. Yeah, it's not a strategy. It's not about trying to control the other person. It's as you control yourself, sometimes new possibilities emerge. But it's about doing what you can respect, what you can live with. I've worked with people for whom that was about leaving the marriage. And especially, you know, where people are more in a one down position. And they're with someone who won't self confront, who's always critical, who's always the victim. And the one down person tends to feel like, okay, maybe if I try harder, maybe if I do this, maybe if I'm more patient, maybe if I say it in this way, maybe then they'll grow, maybe then they'll look at themselves, maybe then they'll want to be different. And so they persist in that idea and they're listening to my stuff and they're like, yeah, okay, I could try harder. I could try harder. The problem is, is that it's trying harder in a way that's fueling the idea that if I give a little more, this person will eventually face themselves. And the harder truth is I'm married to someone who won't face themselves. I'm married to some both he and I or she and I want to believe that I am the problem. And we want to believe it because then if I, you know, if you're the one down person, then I can change it. Then I can solve it. And it's always fit with how I feel that I'm not really as good as other people. So it seems to fit, you know, that if I just were a better person, I would get loved and it's wrong. It's just that you have a one up spouse that's taking advantage of your one down feeling and one down disposition. And so to grow is to see through it. To grow is to understand that to have courage is to no longer take on the idea that I alone can make this a marriage that I alone am going to get that person to self-confront. Because they're not interested in looking at their part. They're not interested in forging a marriage. They're interested in the idea that they're owed a good marriage. They're interested in the idea that if I would clean up my side that everybody would be happy. And that's just never true. People create dynamics and systems of relating and to grow that system up. Both people must be willing. And if you don't have another person who's willing, the one who is on the other side of that, then figuring out what courage looks like for you, figuring out what is loving for you is a hard choice and takes a lot of self-honesty and discernment. Let me just say one more thing about that. How can you know if you're being honest with yourself? I would say if you go around telling yourself a victim's story and getting people to buy into it, your position's full of crap. Sorry. But the reason it's full of crap is because you need to keep telling people a simple story that bolsters your victimhood and then that gives you the energy to leave the marriage. And if you need that, there's something dishonest in it. There's something limited in it. We like the idea that I'm all good and you're all bad. And that's a fallacy, right? Or I know all about love and you know nothing about love, fallacy. You're the perpetrator. I'm the victim. If you're telling yourself that story, it's too simple-minded. Okay. So, what am I pretending not to know about my role in our situation? Okay. Why might a reasonable person respond as my spouse responds to me? Those are questions to get you at what's real. And as you get closer and closer to what's real, you need less people to validate your victimhood. And you're more able to say, like, this is what I really believe is most right for me. This is where I can stand. And I don't need to vilify anybody else. I don't need to justify myself even though people will judge me. I can stand by this position because it's what I desire and/or because it's what I believe is most right. But you're not busy trying to get everyone to validate your position. Okay. Good. Let me just go to some of these here. I see. How can you decide whether it's healthier for each partner and any children for the relationship to end or healthier for the relationship to continue? This is a very hard question. I have to say, I mean, if it's abusive, it's better for it to end. You know, it's a hard question because I don't think it's the right idea to say, I'm staying for the kids. Like, Jean-P Ceres, who's a comedian, and I think a therapist, he was saying something like, being with your father is like acid on my soul, you know, but I'm staying with them because I love you. You know, I don't know. So my point is, speaking ill of the other person or feeling contempt for your child's. father or mother, while saying I'm doing it for you. It's often an act of cowardice and is a way of kind of keeping hate just sort of infused into the family, which is different than I don't want to create this instability for my children. I can choose this honestly for now, even though it's limited and not resent because I think that's the thing you have to keep track of. Am I choosing it but then resenting as if I'm a victim of it, as if I'm a victim of my children's needs? Or am I choosing it because I really believe of my choices. It's the most right thing in the book. I wrote about a couple where it was a relatively sexless marriage. It was a second marriage for him. And out of a place of integrity, he came and said, "I'm going to stop trying to make this into something. It's not. I'm going to tell you don't want it to be an intimate marriage. I don't want to keep trying to convince you to want that. It's bad for you. It's bad for me. And I'm not going to go anywhere until the kids are gone. I'm here for it." And he really meant it. He really meant it. He wasn't happy about what he was saying. But he was like, "I've thought about it a lot. This is really a position that I can stand by." And so he was prepared to co-parent and to push himself on that decision and to live in the truth of that, of what she wanted, even though it disappointed him and still do what he thought was best for the sake of their offspring. And that ended up creating a seismic shift because him standing in more integrity then pushed her to have to self-define more deeply. And for her, and it was no guarantee of this, it was to say, "I don't want to. I want us to have something special. I don't want to just be co-parents." And so that shifted her out of a kind of victim accommodation into a self-authoring position. And so the marriage dynamic shifted. But even if it hadn't, I think he was somebody who was prepared to really choose that for the kid that he thought of his choices, this is the best thing. But he probably would have left the marriage after the kids were gone because they would have at least owned what it was and what it wasn't. They wouldn't have been pretending and resenting. What does it mean to you to be all in on your marriage? I don't know if my wife is all in because of her fears and my past. Well, I think that if someone has been unfaithful, there can be an understandable ambivalence for a period of time. But you can still be all in in that you are addressing the marriage. You're addressing the fears. You're addressing the infidelity or the dishonesty. And you're working on it. And you're staying in honest conversation and you're dealing with those fears as two people who want to build a marriage, even though there have been losses. Now, a lot of people understandably when there's been infidelity of some kind or some kind of deception, you can lean out and can say, you're the reason I'm leaning out. Why would you expect me to lean in? And I'm not saying leaning is to trust. Leaning in is to say, right or wrong, I still want to marriage with you. And I'm here to work through this. Okay. A lot of us, though, use the idea that I was a victim of your dishonesty to never step back in to keep using the idea, I'm owed because you hurt me. I don't have to step in. I continue to be ambivalent because of you. And there's enough truth in it that's an understandable position. I'm not saying you need to trust somebody, but if you want a marriage to grow again, it requires to feed in, dealing with what's real. That's what is a marriage. You're dealing with what's true and what's loving and you're dealing with it and you're dealing with what your part is in it. It's different than I trust you no matter what or that I'm ready to have sex with you again. That's a different question, but you're staying in honest conversation and you're building a real bridge back to each other that's based on something more honest, more real, more trustworthy. And it's a deeper friendship. Esther Perrell talks about this that some people have breaches in the marriage and they divorce. And the other people have breaches and they stay married, but they resent each other for the rest of the marriage. It's just never, or you have one who's in pursuit, the offender is off in pursuit and the one who was offended is in a distancing position, but they just keep that alive for the rest of the marriage. It never mends the marriage. They never use it as a catalyst to look more deeply at who they have been and how they got to that place and what they're going to create going forward. And other people use the breach to build something more whole and they never think, oh, that was such a great year. We loved that year. Okay. They say that was like one of the hardest years of our lives. And yet we're proud of what we created through it with it. Okay. What reasons can make it right? Trusting myself is difficult under the history of I hate to call it emotional abuse, but it's the simplest way to portray it. Okay. So what reasons can make it right to stay? I mean, I think if it's not an abusive situation, if you can hold onto your dignity there and you think you can not trash the other person to your kids, you should never do that. Divorce or together. Don't do that. That is their parent. That is their DNA. That is their web of connection. And when you do that, you're using your child to manage your own neediness and your own emotional justification. And anytime you're using those kids to get some approval or validation for yourself, even if your spouse is doing that, you should not do that. Okay. So if you're able to be decent towards your spouse and they then get the stability. Okay. Your kids don't care that much if you're sharing a bed. They care if you're decent and collaborative, if you're fair to each other. If there's contempt wreaking through the house, if there's hostility, if there's use of the children to manage those divisions and you're creating fault lines in the family, that's really, really tough on kids. And it's really tough on their development because they're watching that dysfunction. You can't really protect your kids from seeing dysfunction because they're going to see flaws in your spouse and in you. But the more you're really taking what you do seriously, thinking about your impact on others, right? And cleaning that up, you'll know better, I think, whether or not it's right to stay and that you can stay and you can hold your dignity or you know it's too much. It's better to break the pattern. It's better to create the separation even though it will cost my kids. They're comfort, their ease. You know, one of the things that I've seen couples do that I've worked with is that they've created a family home. And even the ability to do this speaks a lot to the goodness of the parents. You know, I worked with a couple where they decided it was right to end the marriage. But they didn't want to disrupt their kids who were still in high school and middle school and so on. And so they basically each had separate small places and then they would come and the family home stayed the family home. And so the kids weren't having to move their stuff or pack up a bag every other week. And the parents just switched in and out of taking care. And the parents, you know, it was the breakup was hard. They had feelings about it. But they were each dealing with themselves and really making the kids well being their shared priority and their feelings about the marriage and their marriage partner secondary priority. And so those kids did quite well. I mean, they still wished their parents were together. They didn't want to deal with the divorce. But they also saw through their parents behavior that they were making their kids the priority, stability for the kids, the priority. And that they were going to make sacrifices to that end. That's a big deal. Okay, let me just take this one. I've been married 20 years, three kids. My husband is dismissive avoidant. He has a history of infidelity porn that came 15 years ago, came out 15 years ago. And I feel like I chose to stay and put this back together, courageously option back then. He just disclosed betrayal for the last five years. I wish I could justify working on it again, but I think the dismissive avoidant pain of no emotional or physical connection all these years is more painful than the betrayal. Let me just agree that. Okay, I think what you're saying is that your spouse has been not in real connection with you throughout all these years. And so even though the betrayal is painful, it's that it's that the marriage died a long time ago, hasn't been invested and that you're recognizing how painful. Yeah, I mean, I think that is a very legitimate point that many people basically give up on their marriages while lying next to each other. But there's a coldness that enters in and it can look peaceful because there's no fighting, especially if you're two avoidants. It can look like you're doing all the right things in a way. And yet there's this deep awareness of a kind of death that has set into the marriage and it's so painful. I think there's nothing more lonely than lying next to someone who you wanted to love and you wanted to love you. And there's a deep contempt there. And I think that's really, it speaks to how easy it is to avoid in the name of goodness. You know, I know situations in my life that are difficult, there's conflict there and I will just kind of be polite around those situations but not deal with it directly because I can tell myself the story that well, being polite is being nice, he has been loving. I mean, I'm being friendly. But what I'm avoiding is what I'm really doing though is not going towards the conflict and investing in the relationship enough to address what I can feel. And because that takes more courage and exposure and potentially explicit invalidation or explicit self-confrontation, it's easier to say, well, I'll just be polite here. I'll keep doing my job in this relationship while you're still living in the pain, you're still living in the disconnection while avoiding addressing it. And so again, just coming back to this theme of courage, we have to figure out where we're going to take our discomfort because when we address our situations with honesty and courage, it is uncomfortable. That's why it requires courage. It is asking us to self-define, to bring the strength of our own integrity, our own courage, our own desire to address what's true in the most fair way we can. And bringing that strength allows a new possibility, which may be ending a relationship. But you are bringing your courage to be able to better discern and sort out what's most right. When we shrink from it and try to like, you know, get away from the discomfort, we end up just living in discomfort all the time. So I think the question to ask yourself is, where do I need to be more honest with myself? What is the truth I'm avoiding facing about my situation and/or about myself in that situation? And what does courage mean for me? What do I need to do differently? What do I need to address more directly? What do I need to choose that I don't want to choose, but I know is right for me to choose? Always we're going to find more strength out of honest action. Honest self-definition is going to always get us stronger even if loss is connected to it, even though loss will be connected to it. I really do think the Adam and Eve story captures something that's so fundamental to development is that there's not a lot. You know, we want, don't tell me the right answer. Adam and Eve are kind of like, well, there's this loss on this side and this loss on this side. What do I desire? What can I back up? And that's requires that we take moral responsibility onto ourselves. It's hard to do it. It's easy to want someone to tell you the right thing or wait for other people to do the right thing as opposed to discerning and having the courage to do what you believe is most right. We are moral centers. We have impact on one another. We are shaping one another and how much courage and honesty we bring is I think the responsibility God holds us to and has a real impact on everyone around us and our own souls. And so it's important to work even though it's not easy. Okay. We are at time. I'm teaching a 90 to 100 minute session on the behaviors we do in our marriages that undermine aros. And what I mean by aros is that sense of connection, that sense of being special to each other, that sense of a liveness that brought us together in the first place. And that's a part of a good sexual relationship. And so when we fall in love, we get that sense of what a marriage can be. It feels so exciting and so alive. And then we proceed when we then move in together and they start really bugging you because they're doing life the wrong way. We start doing things then that interfere, the build resentment, create disconnection, feel good to our egos, but then create a division in the marriage that makes it very hard. Even if you have sex, it's very hard for it to feel energetic, special. And so you know, you're my person. And so I'll be speaking about that teaching for 100 minutes. And also at the end, we'll be showing that some of you may have seen it, but the mini documentary that we made about how I've come to do the work I'm doing. And so that's a documentary we'll show at the end. So if you want to come have a date night in person, get a book, say hello to me, eat some food. I'll be there. So there's our George on November 8th. Thank you everyone for being here and we have lots of things coming up on the calendar, so visit our website and hopefully we'll see you in person soon. Great. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, we ask that you please rate, review, and share the podcast so that more people can find and benefit from Dr. Jennifer's work. [Music]