Adapted from a recent online discussion.
Hi, Carolyn:
At what point do you know it’s time to end a marriage? I found out almost a year ago that my spouse had cheated. We have a young child, and I initially stayed because of our kid. We’re in counseling and both doing everything the counselor says, and spouse is doing everything I ask, sometimes without me asking, and trying to meet my needs. We’re both working on ourselves, too.
But my heart is not in it. I think my heart was in it at the beginning, but now that the shock has worn off, I’m just feeling blah about the whole thing. Is this part of the process? Our counselor says it is, and we can try to get through it, but I wake up every day wishing I was waking up alone.
I’m not even angry; I just don’t like the person I’m waking up next to. I feel like I’m wasting my time. I talk to the counselor about all of this, and she tried to be upbeat about getting past it, but it hasn’t been getting better.
— Should I Stay or Should I Go?
At this point I would be asking the therapist what the basis is for her optimism — besides her apparent preference that you stay married? (Problematic if true.)
If your current unhappiness is indeed just one stage in a longer process, then what are the other stages she has seen? And what is the general emotional pathway from anger to “I just don’t like the person” to feeling love?
I won’t say “feeling love again,” because there’s no going back, there’s only forward, which will be new regardless of what it is.
If you don’t hear anything from your therapist in response to these questions that you find promising, and if this period of blah dislike is lasting for months without relief, then it’s time for a new therapist and/or a trial separation. Especially with a child, it’s important to move as gradually as you can, and separation is a key step between uninterrupted-months-of-stalled-therapy-and-unhappy-wakeups and ending a marriage.
Just talk to a lawyer before you do anything. Small missteps can have huge consequences.
Re: Stay or Go:
You might also want to try a different therapist. From the way you describe it, it sounds like she is negating how you feel, by repackaging your feelings as “part of the process.”
— Anonymous
Fair point, thanks. Even without that, stuck is stuck and reason enough to consider a change.
Dear Carolyn:
I am a high school teacher. My department chair, “Ken,” occasionally makes laminated signs for everyone in our department to hang on our walls. He uses some special cardstock with historical figures and scenes.
Ken likes to use Comic Sans font and, more often than not, his signs include a typo or grammatical error. If these signs were not made with the special cardstock, I wouldn’t hesitate to reprint my own. Fear is holding me back from rooting through his office when he’s not there to find the cardstock. What should I do?
— A Sign
NO NOT COMIC SANS!!!
Tell him you found a typo and ask if he’d like you to reprint it for him. Everyone needs an editor.
— Washington Post Writers Group
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