Should I Stay or Leave My Marriage? Why You Can't Seem to Make a Decision

Why It's So Hard to Know What to Do When Your Marriage Isn't Working

If you've been asking yourself, Should I stay or leave my marriage?, you've probably been asking it for a while. Maybe months. Maybe even years.

And if you're like many of the people I work with, you're not just thinking about it occasionally. You're thinking about it all the time. You wake up thinking about it. You analyze conversations. You replay old fights. You imagine what divorce would look like. You Google things like How do I know if my marriage is over? or Can my marriage be saved?

You make a decision. Then you unmake it. Or worse, you just stay in a constant indecision loop.

Monday, you're sure you're done. Tuesday, you have a decent day and you think, Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe we can fix this. You have the same old fight and think, I cannot live like this anymore. Then you imagine telling your kids you're getting divorced and think, I can't do this to them. You picture staying for another ten years and feel trapped. You picture leaving and feel terrified.

Around and around you go. And eventually you start wondering: Why can't I just make a decision?

If you can't decide whether to stay or leave your marriage, it may be because you're trying to answer the biggest question before you've answered the smaller ones. What is actually happening in your marriage? What have you tried? What could still change? What can't you know yet? Getting unstuck isn't about pushing yourself toward staying or leaving. It's about getting better information so you can make a clearer decision in either direction.

Why Can't I Decide Whether to Stay or Leave My Marriage?

Here's something I want you to consider: The fact that you're thinking about your marriage nonstop doesn't mean you're actually deciding.

There's a difference. When things are bad, leaving can feel like the obvious answer. When things are okay, staying can feel like the obvious answer. When you're imagining the effect of divorce on your children, staying may feel like the only possible answer. When you're imagining yourself still having the same fight five years from now, leaving may feel like the only possible answer. The thoughts literally go round and round, but they’re not deciding anything.

Notice something important here: The facts about your marriage may not have changed. Your emotional state has.

This is one reason marital indecision can feel so crazy-making. You're trying to solve one of the biggest decisions of your life while you're inside the emotional storm of the decision itself.

How Do I Stop Going Back and Forth About Divorce?

Thinking about your marriage constantly isn't the same as actually deciding. To stop going back and forth, you need to get out of the emotional swirl long enough to look deliberately at what you know, what you don't know, and what you may still be able to learn. I call this getting into your Deciding Mind.

Deciding Mind isn't some perfectly calm, wise version of you who suddenly knows exactly what to do. She (or he) doesn't exist. Deciding Mind is just you—but a calm-enough you to think clearly. Calm enough to look honestly at what you do know, learn more about what you can know, and accept that there are some things you simply can't know. Good decisions aren’t made in a storm, and they aren’t made when things become bad enough that you’re left with no other choices.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman famously described two modes of thinking. One is fast, automatic and intuitive. The other is slower, more effortful and deliberate. The problem is that when you're frightened, angry, hurt or desperate for relief, slowing your thinking down is easier said than done.

That's where Deciding Mind comes in. Deciding Mind is the mental stance that helps you move out of reaction and into deliberate evaluation. It doesn't mean ignoring your feelings. Your emotions contain important information about your marriage. Feelings need a seat at the table, but they don't get to run the meeting.

When you're in Deciding Mind, the question starts to shift from How do I make this feeling stop? to What is this feeling telling me, and what do I actually know? That's a very different kind of thinking.

The point isn't to talk yourself into staying or give yourself permission to leave. It's to understand your marriage and options more clearly so you can make a thoughtful decision about either.

What If I Don't Have Enough Information to Know Whether I Should Get Divorced?

This is where people can get stuck for a very long time. You keep looking for more information because you believe that eventually you'll find the piece that makes the decision obvious.

Maybe your spouse will do something so terrible that you'll finally know. Maybe things will get better and you'll finally know. Maybe your therapist will tell you what to do. Maybe you'll read the right book, listen to the right podcast, or stumble across the right Instagram post. Maybe you'll wake up one morning and simply know.

So you keep gathering evidence. The problem is that human beings aren't particularly neutral evidence gatherers.

If you're angry with your spouse today, your brain can produce an impressive catalog of every selfish, disappointing or hurtful thing they've done. See? This is never going to change. Then you have a good weekend together, and suddenly your brain has another file available. See? This isn't so bad. Maybe leaving would be a huge mistake.

Neither version is necessarily false. That's what makes this so hard. You probably have real evidence on both sides.

And there is another problem: some of the information you're waiting for simply doesn't exist yet. You don't know how you'll feel two years after a divorce. You don't know exactly how your children will respond, or whether staying married or divorcing will ultimately be better for them. You don't know who your spouse might become if you stay—or who you might become if you leave. You don't know whether you'll regret your decision. Those answers live in the future. No amount of thinking today can give them to you.

Decision researcher Annie Duke writes extensively about making decisions when we don't have all the information. One of her ideas that I love is that a good decision and a good outcome aren't the same thing. You can make a good decision that ends badly and you can make a terrible decision and get lucky.

The goal, then, can't be to guarantee the outcome. The goal is to create the best decision process you can with the information you actually have.

How Do I Know If I Should Stay Married or Get Divorced?

You probably won't reach 100% certainty about whether to stay married or get divorced. Famed couples therapist, Esther Perel calls that goal a “set up.” A better goal is clarity: understanding what's happening in your marriage, what you've tried, what could still change, what matters most to you, and what you simply can't know about the future.

This brings us to a distinction I think is enormously important: You don't need certainty. You need clarity.

Most people in marital limbo are looking for certainty. Certainty sounds like: I know this is the right decision. I know I won't regret it. I know my kids will be okay. I know I've tried absolutely everything. I know I'll be happier if I leave. I know my spouse will never change.

But you can't know most of those things. And if you've unconsciously decided that you're not allowed to make a decision until you do know them, you can waste years in limbo.

Clarity is different. Clarity is getting real about: What is actually happening in my marriage? What have we tried? What has changed? What hasn't? What matters most to me? What am I no longer willing to live with? What would I need to see in order to feel differently?

Those are questions you can begin to answer.

Clarity doesn't mean you're 100%. It means you're finally understanding what your decision really involves.

What If I've Already Tried Everything to Save My Marriage?

This is where I often hear: But I have tried.

I don't want to dismiss that. You probably have. You've asked your spouse to help more. You've complained about how little time you spend together. You've told them you need more affection. You've fought about the phone, the parenting, the sex, the anger, the work schedule or the emotional distance. Maybe you've been having versions of the same conversation for years.

That all matters, but here’s the question I want to you think about:

Have you complained about the problems—or have you made it unmistakably clear how deeply they're affecting you and your marriage?

Those aren't the same thing.

Often, one spouse has become increasingly unhappy, discouraged or disconnected while the other spouse thinks, Yes, I know they’re frustrated. We've been fighting about this forever. They hear the complaints, but they don't necessarily register that those complaints have become something bigger—that their marriage itself may be in trouble. That’s why so many spouses come into my office feel blindsided by the “D” word when the other spouse exasperatingly feels they’re been complaining for years. Both things can be true.

That distinction deserves much more attention than I can give it here. For now, I don't want you to automatically translate I've complained about this for years into I already have all the information I need.

You may. But you may not.

A First Step When You Don't Know Whether to Stay or Leave

For now, stop trying to answer Should I stay or leave my marriage? It's too big.

Instead, take one statement you find yourself repeating about your marriage. Maybe it's He's never going to change. I'll never be happy if I stay. My kids will be devastated if we divorce. I'll regret leaving. She doesn't care about me anymore. We've tried everything.

Now run that statement through three questions.

1. What do I actually know?

Stick with observable information. Not what you think something means. Not what you're afraid will happen. What do you actually know?

For example: I've told him so many times I'm tired of doing everything around here. He always agrees to help. He always stops after a few weeks. The pattern has continued for three years.

That's information.

2. What am I predicting?

Now look for the future hidden inside your statement. He's never going to change is a prediction. It may turn out to be correct. Your past experience may give you very good reasons for making it. But it is still a prediction.

Or maybe your thought is: If I leave, my children will never forgive me. What you actually know might be: My 15-year-old told me she doesn't want us to divorce. That's real information. She will never forgive me is a prediction about the future.

Separating those two things matters.

3. What don't I know yet?

Some of what you don't know can't be known. You can't know for certain whether you'll regret leaving, how your children will feel five years from now, or whether you'll be happier on your own. Those answers live in the future.

But some of it can be tested. This is where you need to have the courage to rock the boat. Be really clear about what’s going on. Not just I’m so tired of coming home to a sink full of your dishes, but I’m tired of feeling like nothing I say matters, like I don’t matter to you and it’s changing how I feel about you and about our marriage.

Only with that brutal honesty do things have the chance of changing — or not. Either way it’s information that can begin to move you from endlessly thinking about your marriage toward actually deciding what you want to do about it.

You don't need to know everything. And you definitely don't need to be 100% certain.

You just need to start getting clear.

Still Not Sure What This Means for Your Marriage?

If you're stuck between staying and leaving, you may be in what I call marital limbo—that exhausting place where you're not ready to leave, but you can't keep going the way things are.

And not all limbo looks the same. Where you are in the process matters, including what may still be possible in your marriage.

I created a free guide, Can My Marriage Still Be Saved? The 6 Hidden Stages of Marital Limbo (and Your Window to Change Course), to help you understand where you may be right now—and what that could mean for what comes next.

Get the free guide →