- Should you fight for your marriage, or should you,
♪ Let it die, let it die ♪
♪ Let it wither up and die ♪
It's from "The Lorax," if you...
Mended Light.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Crap Therapists Say,
where you write in advice that you got from therapists
that you thought wasn't very good
and get a second opinion from me.
This is from a therapist
who said let it die about a marriage, right?
The couple was there and the therapist just said,
"Let it die."
Was this good advice or not?
And bigger picture,
when do you know that your marriage is over?
And not, I don't like the phrase not worth fighting for,
but that it's not gonna happen, right?
And so it's time to move on, it's time to let it go.
First of all, I became a marriage counselor
because of my parents.
My parents had a very healthy marriage, very happy marriage.
And I thought that was more the norm than it actually is.
There are a lot of great marriages out there,
don't get me wrong,
but marriage is hard,
and even good marriages have a lot of struggles,
and a lot of couples come very close to calling it quits
many, many times.
And it's one of the hardest things.
I tell people when they come to couples therapy,
almost always, here's what happens.
They come in, it's the 11th hour, right?
They should have come in years ago.
Instead they're coming in and they're saying,
"Well, we're probably gonna get a divorce,
but we wanted to be able to say
that we did everything we could."
And I'm sitting there going,
"What am I supposed to do with this?"
Because they're just going, "Fix it,"
and I'm like, "Ah!"
At this point it's terminal, right?
And so I always tell them the same thing,
which is that my bias,
I became a couple's counselor to help couples stay together.
But I also recognize that sometimes
that's not what's gonna happen.
I'm always gonna start with couples therapy
to try and save the relationship,
unless they're specifically there for divorce mediation.
And then we'll see.
And we may pivot towards divorce mediation later on.
And it's really hard, it's agonizing.
People stay up nights, weeks, months over this, years,
'cause there's so many reasons to stay in a relationship.
You know, it's funny,
some people, they expect bliss,
and when there's not bliss, they're just done, right?
But I feel like we hear about those people
more often than they actually exist. (laughs)
We hear a lot about people not taking marriage seriously
and, you know, that they expect it to be wonderful
and they're ready to just run at the first sign of trouble,
but that's not been my experience
either personally or professionally.
My experience is that people will fight for their marriage,
that people don't get married intending to get divorced,
that you spend this amount of time and effort and energy
and emotional investment and financial investment
and spiritual investment and mental investment
in another person, and it's hard to let it go.
And that could be for a lot of reasons.
It could be hard to let go
because you're afraid of judgment.
You're afraid of people looking down on you
or afraid to admit that you quote/unquote "failed," right?
And I use those quotations very intentionally.
You may fear that it's gonna be worse for the kids
if you get divorced.
You may have an assumption
that divorce has to be ugly and nasty,
and that divorce is gonna be worse than staying together.
You may feel like you are financially reliant on this person
and don't know how you're gonna survive on your own,
or emotionally that you're unhappy
and it's not getting any better,
but you're afraid of going out on your own
and starting over from scratch.
Sometimes we hold on because there's a lot of good times.
Sometimes we hold on because we have a great friendship,
even if we don't have an amazing partnership.
Sometimes we hold on
'cause the sex is really good, you know?
There are so many reasons why we hold on.
Dr. John Van Epp in his book,
"How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk,"
he calls this reluctant commitment.
And it's a type of commitment meaning I'm committed to you,
but only 'cause I'm reluctant to let go.
I have reasons for wanting to leave.
Abuse, infidelity, and neglect are big ones,
dishonesty are big ones.
But also irreconcilable differences,
which I'm learning more and more is a real thing.
I always thought that was a code word.
Like, people would say,
"This celebrity couple is divorcing
due to irreconcilable differences."
And I'm like, "Yeah, one of you cheated,
one of you is a cokehead, one of you is abusive."
And then I realized the more I grew up
and worked with people and had my own experiences,
that sometimes you just can't bridge the gap
no matter how hard you try.
No matter what relationship skills you have,
no matter what talents you have,
sometimes the partnership just doesn't work and it's hard.
And a therapist who tells you you should just call it quits
is not doing good therapy.
Why?
Because it's not a therapist's job to tell you what to do.
I'm gonna banging that drum all day long.
As a therapist, you don't tell people what to do
because then you're taking the reins from their life.
And I don't wanna be responsible
for what happens in somebody's life,
because that should be with the person.
That should be with the individual.
I'm an influence, right?
As a therapist, I'm someone who guides.
I'm someone who helps explore,
"Okay, if you take that line of thought
to its logical conclusion, what's gonna happen?
Let's explore that.
If you do this other option,
if you try this other behavior,
what's that gonna get you?
Let's explore that.
If it were me here's what I would do."
Like, those sorts of things.
But people have to act of their own volition.
So a therapist who would say let it die,
in my opinion isn't doing their job
'cause you don't tell people what to do.
As a therapist, you might see people holding on
when you think it's time for them to let go.
That's where you use the phrase,
"In my professional opinion."
"In my professional opinion,
you two have tried for years
and you're here right now doing the work,
and you're both still miserable
and you're both depressed and anxious,
and you're both struggling.
Maybe it's time to explore different options."
There are people who are better friends after divorce.
There are people who get along really well as co-parents.
You maybe have heard me say this elsewhere,
but if you're fighting while married
and then you get divorced
and you're fighting while divorced,
well, what the hell did you get divorced for?
Because you would think you would get divorced
so you weren't fighting all the time, right?
But you're still going.
You're still trying to win.
You're still trying to get revenge
or put the other person in their place
or make sure that they see just how wrong they were.
And there's no way to live.
If you're gonna get divorced,
it should be because it's gonna be a path
to greater peace for both of you.
If you get divorced,
it's because doing so means less stress on the kids overall.
If you get divorced, it should be because you realize
you want different things out of life,
and in order for either of you to get what you want,
the other person's gonna have to sacrifice who they are.
How do you know your marriage is done
and not worth fighting for?
Obvious answers are if there's ongoing abuse
and it's not getting any better.
If there's ongoing infidelity
and it's not getting any better.
If there's continued lying, betraying, you can't trust them,
'cause there's no relationship without trust.
These are the easy answers.
These are the times where it's like,
"Yes, you should get a divorce."
It's harder when you feel like there's a lot of good things.
It's harder when you feel like there's still love there.
And in some cases, the answer is absolutely fight for it.
The answer is absolutely, work on it.
That's why couples therapists exist.
In some cases it is,
absolutely, these differences aren't irreconcilable.
We can figure this out.
But in cases like that, how do you know it's time to let go?
If it's been years and nothing's getting any better,
and you've had new insights,
and you've had accountability,
and you've taken accountability,
and there's been growth and there's been change,
and the spark isn't coming back,
the desire isn't coming back,
and being together is holding you down
from who you want to be.
I've heard it said that just cause for divorce,
like do you have just cause for proceeding with a divorce?
Because it's a big step,
and it's a tremendous upheaval for everybody involved.
And yes, kids can pass through it healthily,
and it can be in some cases even a good thing.
In some cases, it's a real struggle.
So do you have just cause for divorce?
I've heard it said that that just cause for divorce
is a prolonged and apparently irredeemable relationship
which is destructive of a person's dignity as a human being.
Prolonged and apparently irredeemable relationship.
Prolonged, you've been trying to make it work
for a long time and it's not happening.
Irredeemable, it's not getting any better, right?
And there's no indicators that it will get any better,
which is destructive of a person's dignity as a human being.
That can be verbal abuse, that can be emotional abuse,
that can be physical abuse,
that can be cheating and lying and deceiving.
The harder pill to swallow is that sometimes,
it's just, "I don't wanna be your partner.
It's not a fit."
Which sounds petty,
but when you get down to the core of,
"I want to be who I am,
I wanna be who I am inside me,
and being together is holding me from that,"
then that's destructive to your dignity.
And those are the cases where people can let it go.
I've seen a lot of times where they can let it go and say,
"I care about you and I wanna maintain a friendship
and a co-parenting relationship,"
and it's a beautiful thing.
So there is no one-size-fits-all answer,
and what you think you would do in the situation
is not something to be copied and pasted onto somebody else.
That we don't know the burdens that others carry,
we don't know the struggles that they have,
we don't know what they're going through,
and we don't know what they need.
So when it comes to whether or not
you're gonna get a divorce,
or how you view others who've made that decision,
we need to treat each other with a lot of grace
and with a lot of compassion and non-judgment,
because we're all just out here doing the best we can.
So this has been Crap Therapists Say.
If you enjoyed this I've got Sex Fixes Everything.
That's something that a therapist said to somebody.
"You've got relationship problems?
You don't need to talk about or work through 'em.
Just have sex," right?
I'm not entirely convinced that's right. (laughs)
So I'll share my $0.02 in this video.
What do you think about how do you know
when a relationship is time to be done,
especially if it's a marriage?
How do you know when it's time to let it go
versus keep fighting for it?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
If you're going through a divorce
or you're struggling with this,
we've got a program, a Hope After Divorce program,
that one of our specialists can take you through.
Go to mendedlight.com
and schedule a complimentary 15 minute consultation today.
Thank you for joining me for Crap Therapists Say.
Until next time, keep shining, folks.
We need your light.
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