I Want a Divorce

A Common Story

Jay comes home from work tired.

Dee is in the kitchen making dinner.

Neither of them is particularly upset when the evening begins.

But both are carrying something.

Jay has been feeling disconnected for months. He misses Dee but doesn’t know how to talk about it anymore. Every attempt seems to end in an argument.

Dee has been feeling alone too. She feels like she carries most of the responsibility at home and wonders whether Jay notices how hard she is trying.

As dinner is being prepared, Jay glances at his phone.

Dee notices.

“Can you put your phone away for five minutes?” she says.

Jay immediately feels criticized.

“I just got a message.”

Dee rolls her eyes.

The tension rises.

Within seconds, they are no longer talking about a phone.

They are talking about everything.

“You never listen to me.”

“Nothing I do is ever enough.”

“You don’t care.”

“You always think the worst of me.”

The argument grows.

The hurt grows.

Neither person feels understood.

And then they arrive at a place they have been many times before.

“I want a divorce,” Dee says.

The room goes quiet.

Jay feels like he has been punched in the stomach.

He’s heard these words before.

Every time she says them, something in him wonders if this time she really means it.

Dee feels exhausted and overwhelmed. In that moment, she can’t imagine how they are ever going to find their way out of this.

They don’t get divorced.

Eventually, the argument ends.

Life goes on.

Until the next argument.

And sooner or later, the words come back.

“Maybe we should just get divorced.”

Both of them hate this place.

Neither of them knows how to stop getting here.

The details of this story are fictional, but the pattern is one we often see in relationships.

When “Let’s Get Divorced” Becomes Part of the Cycle

When relationships feel threatened, our nervous system moves quickly.

Much faster than most of us realize.

In a fraction of a second, we can move into protection.

We criticize.

We defend ourselves.

We withdraw.

We shut down.

And sometimes, we threaten to leave.

When “maybe we should just get divorced” begins showing up again and again during conflict, it can become part of the couple’s negative cycle.

It becomes the place one or both partners go when the pain feels unbearable and they don’t know another way out.

This doesn’t mean the words don’t matter.

They do.

For the person hearing them, the repeated threat of losing the relationship can feel frightening and destabilizing. Each time it happens, they may wonder:

Are you really going to leave me this time?

Is our relationship safe?

Can I trust that you’ll still be here tomorrow?

Understanding the protection underneath these words doesn’t erase their impact.

But it can help us begin to understand why a couple keeps ending up in the same painful place.

Sometimes “maybe we should just get divorced” becomes the only way someone knows to say, “I can’t keep hurting like this.”

Is That What Your Heart Really Wants?

When someone repeatedly talks about divorce, it is important to take those words seriously.

Sometimes ending the relationship truly is what a person wants.

But when these words repeatedly appear in the heat of conflict—and the couple continues choosing the relationship afterward—there may be more happening underneath.

Sometimes what a person desperately wants in that moment is relief.

Relief from loneliness.

Relief from disappointment.

Relief from feeling unseen.

Relief from feeling trapped in the same painful arguments.

Relief from the fear that nothing will ever change.

When the negative cycle takes over, both people can lose sight of another way forward.

The pain becomes so overwhelming that ending the relationship can momentarily feel like the only way to make the pain stop.

Not necessarily because leaving is what the heart truly wants.

But because, in that moment, the person doesn’t know another way out.

The pain is real. But the protection may not tell the whole story.

What Is the Protection Protecting?

One of the most important questions we can ask is:

What is happening underneath the anger?

What is happening underneath the criticism?

What is happening underneath the threat to leave?

Anger is often a protective emotion.

It helps us mobilize.

It gives us energy when we feel hurt, frightened, powerless, or alone.

But anger rarely walks alone.

Beneath it we often find hurt.

Fear.

Sadness.

Longing.

The wish to matter to someone we love.

The wish to feel important.

The wish to feel chosen.

The wish to know that somehow, together, we can find a way out of this pain.

Sometimes the person threatening to leave isn’t trying to get away from the relationship as much as they are desperately trying to get away from the pain.

That doesn’t make threatening divorce harmless.

And it doesn’t mean couples should continue using the threat of ending their relationship every time conflict becomes overwhelming.

But understanding what the protection is trying to accomplish gives us somewhere new to begin.

Instead of only asking:

“Why do you keep saying you want to leave me?”

We can become curious about another question:

“What happens inside of you when things become so painful that leaving feels like the only way out?”

That question can lead us somewhere very different.

Finding the Heart Beneath the Protection

In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we help couples understand the negative cycle that keeps pulling them into these painful places.

We begin to recognize what happens in those moments before the words come out.

Not because anger is bad.

Not because protection is wrong.

And not because the impact of hurtful words should be ignored.

But because the people we love cannot respond to needs they never get to see.

The more clearly we understand our own deeper experience, the more clearly we can communicate it.

Sometimes that begins with noticing what is happening in the body.

The tightness in the chest.

The lump in the throat.

The knot in the stomach.

The urge to shut down.

The urge to attack.

The urge to run.

The desperate feeling of needing the pain to stop.

When we can stay with ourselves long enough to become curious about those experiences, we often discover something deeper underneath.

And eventually, instead of:

“Maybe we should just get divorced.”

There may be room for:

“I’m scared we’re never going to find our way out of this.”

“I feel so alone right now, and I don’t know how to reach you.”

“I’m terrified that nothing between us is ever going to change.”

“I don’t want to lose us. I just don’t know how to keep hurting like this.”

Those are very different messages.

They give our partner something different to respond to.

When we begin speaking from these deeper places, our partners are finally given the opportunity to respond not only to our protection, but to our heart.